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A review by savaging
Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset
4.0
"It’s wrong for men to have both money and power; they’re bound to make some woman suffer."
Jessie Redmon Fauset was mentored by W.E.B. DuBois, and in her turn mentored so many other young writers during the height of the Harlem Renaissance that she earned the nickname "The Midwife" (she was the first person ever to publish Langston Hughes and might have even taught a young James Baldwin in high school).
This fascinating person, who was also literary editor of NAACP magazine The Crisis, wrote a novel about race, color, class, and gender in America and subtitled it "A Novel without a Moral." I mostly believe her on that. I think she was reaching towards a literature that could be political without being hardened into dogma, entrenched in condemnation of everyone who isn't good enough. So though we're allowed to hate the rich white racist dude-bro frat boy, Angela's own cruelties in attempting to pass as white are dealt with in a more nuanced, careful way.
Angela, the main character, is an artist, who wants to pass as white because she's bored with racism and wants to pursue beauty and pleasure. In most situations, though, she's forced at some point to make race the big question of her life. I wonder if this isn't indicative of some of Fauset's own desires and experiences, pushing her to create a novel that's deeply about race without being reducible to 'a novel about race.'
Jessie Redmon Fauset was mentored by W.E.B. DuBois, and in her turn mentored so many other young writers during the height of the Harlem Renaissance that she earned the nickname "The Midwife" (she was the first person ever to publish Langston Hughes and might have even taught a young James Baldwin in high school).
This fascinating person, who was also literary editor of NAACP magazine The Crisis, wrote a novel about race, color, class, and gender in America and subtitled it "A Novel without a Moral." I mostly believe her on that. I think she was reaching towards a literature that could be political without being hardened into dogma, entrenched in condemnation of everyone who isn't good enough. So though we're allowed to hate the rich white racist dude-bro frat boy, Angela's own cruelties in attempting to pass as white are dealt with in a more nuanced, careful way.
Angela, the main character, is an artist, who wants to pass as white because she's bored with racism and wants to pursue beauty and pleasure. In most situations, though, she's forced at some point to make race the big question of her life. I wonder if this isn't indicative of some of Fauset's own desires and experiences, pushing her to create a novel that's deeply about race without being reducible to 'a novel about race.'