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The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures
A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama
In this series of interlocking essays, which had their start as lectures inspired by the presidency of Barack Obama, Robert Burns Stepto sets canonical works of African American literature in conversation with Obama’s Dreams from My Father. The elegant readings that result shed surprising light on unexamined angles of works ranging from Frederick Douglass’s Narrative to W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
Stepto draws our attention to the concerns that recur in the books he takes up: how protagonists raise themselves, often without one or both parents; how black boys invent black manhood, often with no models before them; how protagonists seek and find a home elsewhere; and how they create personalities that can deal with the pain of abandonment. These are age-old themes in African American literature that, Stepto shows, gain a special poignancy and importance because our president has lived through these situations and circumstances and has written about them in a way that refreshes our understanding of the whole of African American literature.
Stepto amplifies these themes in four additional essays, which investigate Douglass’s correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe; Willard Savoy’s novel Alien Land and its interracial protagonist; the writer’s understanding of the reader in African American literature; and Stepto’s account of his own schoolhouse lessons, with their echoes of Douglass’ and Obama’s experiences.
Stepto draws our attention to the concerns that recur in the books he takes up: how protagonists raise themselves, often without one or both parents; how black boys invent black manhood, often with no models before them; how protagonists seek and find a home elsewhere; and how they create personalities that can deal with the pain of abandonment. These are age-old themes in African American literature that, Stepto shows, gain a special poignancy and importance because our president has lived through these situations and circumstances and has written about them in a way that refreshes our understanding of the whole of African American literature.
Stepto amplifies these themes in four additional essays, which investigate Douglass’s correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe; Willard Savoy’s novel Alien Land and its interracial protagonist; the writer’s understanding of the reader in African American literature; and Stepto’s account of his own schoolhouse lessons, with their echoes of Douglass’ and Obama’s experiences.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 2010
34 people want to read
About the author
Robert B. Stepto
10 books13 followersRobert B. Stepto is Professor of English, African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 28, 2013
A Home Elsewhere is an impressive collection of six academic lectures and essays by Robert Stepto, Professor of American Studies, African-American Studies, and English at Yale University. I was first drawn to this book after reading Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama. In the first half of the compilation, Stepto collates 'Dreams...' with other classic African-American narratives and novels such as My Bondage and My Freedom - Frederick Douglass, Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Souls of Black Folk to name a few. The authors and/or characters and the episode, scene or storyline are compared and contrasted to bring similarities to light.
The second half of the book ranges from an engaging memoir of Stepo's first year of collegiate life in 'A Greyhound Kind of Mood' to an erudite essay in 'Afterword: Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives'. Also included here is a brief introduction to Willard Savoy and his protagonist, Kern Roberts, in Savoy's novel Alien Land (Northeastern Library of Black Literature).
If you are a reader, avid or otherwise, of important African-American literary work, you will appreciate Stepo's scholarly treatment as he situates authors, characters and narratives in the Age of Obama.
Besides the titles listed above, the following are other notable references used in A Home Elsewhere:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Heroic Slave (Dodo Press)
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Song of Solomon
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself
The second half of the book ranges from an engaging memoir of Stepo's first year of collegiate life in 'A Greyhound Kind of Mood' to an erudite essay in 'Afterword: Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives'. Also included here is a brief introduction to Willard Savoy and his protagonist, Kern Roberts, in Savoy's novel Alien Land (Northeastern Library of Black Literature).
If you are a reader, avid or otherwise, of important African-American literary work, you will appreciate Stepo's scholarly treatment as he situates authors, characters and narratives in the Age of Obama.
Besides the titles listed above, the following are other notable references used in A Home Elsewhere:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Heroic Slave (Dodo Press)
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Song of Solomon
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself
Displaying 1 of 1 review