Polarities

It wasn’t until a while ago, while reading a review of Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land, that I became acquainted with the term, “Negro genre writing.” I wondered why I hadn’t come across it before, for I sensed in the expression a certain smoothness of texture which suggested it had been in use for a long time. However, I had no difficulty recognizing its meaning: “Negro genre writing” was a clear enough reference to an alleged penchant in the work of Negro writers for “anger, rage, and social protest.” In the words of the critic, Albert Murray, most white commentators “seem to assume that for the Negro, literature is simply incidental to protest.”