Unmaking the Self-Made Man: Fortune and (Fore)Fathers in the Autobiographies of Langston Hughes

被引：0

作者：

Horne, Abigail ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] Hampden Sydney Coll, English, Hampden Sydney, VA 23943 USA

来源：

LANGSTON HUGHES REVIEW | 2020年 / 26卷 / 02期

关键词：

Langston Hughes; The Big Sea; I Wonder as I Wander; wealth; African American autobiography;

D O I：

10.5325/langhughrevi.26.2.0139

中图分类号：

I3/7 [各国文学];

学科分类号：

摘要：

In Langston Hughes's autobiographies The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956), he critiques the American mythos of individual, financial uplift in a meritocratic nation. Instead of illustrating the achievability of rising from poverty to riches, Hughes highlights the near-impossibility of such a rise for black Americans and challenges a conflation between money and virtue. His autobiographies voice the role of luck in wealth-building and describe an American son who values freedom and community over capital. In so doing, Hughes distinguishes his self-formation from forefathers of American autobiography, from his most important patron, and from his own father. Examining Hughes's focus on fortune in The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander reveals a greater challenge to white supremacist and capitalist values than critics of these books have previously acknowledged, and the narrative structures of the autobiographies enact an alternative, horizontal model as a challenge to the idealized American trajectory of a vertical rise.

引用

页码：139 / 159

页数：21

共 50 条

[1] SELF-MADE MAN
ARING, CD
[J]. ARCHIVES OF INTERNAL MEDICINE, 1970, 126 (02) : 309 - &
[2] A 'SELF-MADE MAN'
TROOP, E
[J]. DRAMA, 1984, (154): : 47 - 47
[3] Sutpen's designs: Masculine reproduction and the unmaking of the self-made man in 'Absalom, Absalom!'
Cunningham, JC
[J]. MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY, 1996, 49 (03): : 563 - 589
[4] 'SELF-MADE MAN AND MOON'
GENEGA, P
[J]. EPOCH, 1978, 27 (03): : 220 - 222
[5] CARUSO + 'SELF-MADE MAN'
CLELAND, EM
[J]. OPERA, 1980, 31 (03): : 314 - 314
[6] 'SELF-MADE MAN AND THE MOON'
GENEGA, P
[J]. NEW YORK QUARTERLY, 1978, 23 : 57 - 58
[7] The self-made man + Tony Blair
Fenton, J
[J]. NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, 1997, 44 (10) : 10 - 11
[8] White trash? ('Self-Made Man')
Nolan, KA
[J]. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 2006, : 6 - 6
[9] White trash? ('Self-Made Man')
Belisle, K
[J]. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 2006, : 6 - 6
[10] White trash? ('Self-Made Man')
McCarthy, R
[J]. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 2006, : 6 - 6

← 1 2 3 4 5 →