The "New Negro" in the Old World

Book excerpt: "This book investigates the relationship between the "New Negro" moment of the early twentieth-century America and the Old World of Europe, as represented in James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Jessie Fauset's There Is Confusion (1924), and Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928). The episodes set in Europe form a lens through which the role of the African American in Western civilization can be studied. The African-American artist/protagonists are seen as cultural intermediaries, who bridge Euro-American and African-American culture, national and folk culture, high and low culture. This study suggests that in the novels of Johnson, Fauset, and Larsen, the trope of performance (based on double consciousness) is used to critique the notions of race and culture, whereby conceptions of racial essentialism and cultural authenticity are questioned. The novels themselves are also considered as performative acts that helped form the concept of a "New Negro" in the 1920s."--BOOK JACKET.