Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. Writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin rose to prominence during this period, but little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works.Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples.Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait o