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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Marginalized-Literature-Market-Life: Black Writers, a Literature of Appeal, and the Rise of Street Lit Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2d45f381 Author Norris, Keenan Franklin Publication Date 2013 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2d45f381#supplemental Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Marginalized-Literature-Market-Life: Black Writers, a Literature of Appeal, and the Rise of Street Lit A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Keenan Franklin Norris June 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Erica Edwards, Chairperson Dr. Tiffany Lopez Dr. Toby Miller Copyright by Keenan Franklin Norris 2013 The Dissertation of Keenan Franklin Norris is approved: _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of both my Ph.D. study at UC Riverside and my M.F.A. at Mills College. Therefore, I’d like to acknowledge people at both institutions that have helped me to conceptualize, craft and finalize this work. I’ve been very lucky to have Dr. Erica Edwards as my committee chair. I will forever be thankful to her for her generosity and all the work she’s done on my behalf. Likewise, the guidance of committee members Drs. Tiffany Lopez and Toby Miller has been a tremendous help in this process. I’m appreciative of the entire committee for allowing me the latitude to pursue this unique topic in a somewhat unconventional style— wedding scholarship with creative writing. Dr. Jennifer Doyle has been an inspiration to me since I first took class with her as an undergrad, probably in 2000 or 2001. Susan Straight, whom I have also known and worked with for more than a decade now, is the best teacher I’ve ever encountered, whether as student or colleague. Just as important in the Ph.D. process has been Tina Feldmann. There is no way myself and other Ph.D. students would be able to go very far in this complicated academic space without all that Tina does. At Mills College, I worked with professors Victor LaValle, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, and Dr. Thomas Strychacz, each of whom I truly appreciate. iv Academics from around the country have helped me to improve portions of this manuscript, either for publication, conference presentation, or what have you. Thanks to Kristina Graaff, Drs. Jerry Ward, Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Nathan Grant and Ronald Tyson. I am grateful to my interview subjects Faron Roberts, Ken Robidoux, Rudy Lewis, Ayori Selassie, Omar Tyree, Paul Guess, Pueng Vongs, Andrew Tonkovich and Jeremiah Dubovoya, as well as to Kathryn Benjamin, who transcribed many of these interviews. This dissertation is the product not only of formal but informal exchanges, conversations and relationships. So I thank my whole Ph.D. cohort, but most especially Regis Mann. I look forward to Regis’ scholarship and friendship for many years to come. The same is true of my Mills classmates, especially Laleh Khadivi. Lastly, let me take a moment for two good brothers now passed on, Dr. Lindon Barrett, and Reggie Lockett, West Oakland’s poet laureate. v Dedication To my mom and dad, Hiawatha and Calvin Norris vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Marginalized-Literature-Market-Life: Black Writers, a Literature of Appeal, and the Rise of Street Lit by Keenan Franklin Norris Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2013 Dr. Erica Edwards, Chairperson This dissertation examines the relationship of the American publishing industry to Black American writers, with special focus on the re-emergence of the street lit sub-genre. Understanding this much maligned sub-genre is necessary if we are to understand the evolution of African-American literature, especially into the current era. Literature is best understood as a combinative process, produced not only by writers but various mediating figures and processes besides, at the combined levels of content, commercial production and distribution, and social and literary context. Therefore, offered here is a critical intervention into what has until now largely been a moralistic and polarizing high art/low art argument by considering street lit within the vast flows of literature by and about Black Americans, writing about urban areas, the market forces at work within the publishing industry and the writer's place in the midst of it all. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface x Introduction 1 Chapter I: The Content of the Cover 48 Chapter II: Reading Street and Urban Literature Closely and Comparatively 96 Chapter III: Black History 158 Chapter IV: How Underground Publishing Methods (case in point: David Walker) Re-Purpose Dominant Ideologies 190 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Frontispiece. 52 Figure 2 David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, “libertas justitia” frontispiece. 57 Figure 3: “Bandits’ Roost” photograph (Additional Page) Figure 4: Dirty Game cover art 89 ix PREFACE My study takes as its subject the relationship both historical and current of the publishing industry to Black American writers, with special focus on the advent of and recent developments in street lit. The study asserts that this sub-genre, despite being unpopular within critical circles, is important to understand if we are to appreciate the evolution of African-American literature in its totality. Street lit (and literature by and about Black Americans more generally) needs to be understood at the combined levels of commercial production, distribution, content and literary context. The study, thus, marks out a unique critical intervention into what has basically been a moralistic and dichotomous high art/low art discussion around street lit by considering the lit[erature] within the vast flows of Black American letters, the publishing industry’s changing market forces and the artist's evolving positionality. In terms of form, this work is both critique and story. I’m not sure, then, what verb to use as I start to explain the form that I’ve undertaken. My dissertation is both “told” and “argued,” “narrated” yet also “explicated.” The dissertation holds in tension two perspectives, that of a father and that of his son. The father, a stalled intellectual and state employee, was first inspired to read extensively during the late 60s with the initial rise of such street narrativists as Donald Goines, Chester Himes and Claude Brown. After being stymied in his own attempts as a novelist and academic, the father initiates the dissertation’s discussion not only of street lit narratives but of the relationship of African-American literature to the market apparatus that has been its traditional means of conveyance. The father historicizes the study in the Introduction, which is written entirely from his perspective. We also learn significant details about the man’s childhood experiences and his adult life, all of which informs his literary concerns and, implicitly, those of his son. In Chapter One, the father initiates the critique on visual rhetorics, citing Barthes, x Rohrbach and other critics. The objects of analysis range from his old, frayed pictures of Jesse Owens to the frontispieces of slave narrative texts. At a certain point in the chapter, the father somewhat formally introduces his son’s published essay on street lit cover art as a means to bridge the generational chasm between his analysis of visuality and more up-to-date analysis applied to contemporary texts. At various points (indicated by changes in font, not to mention tone) throughout the remainder of the chapter, the father intercedes into the son’s essay, editing and commenting upon it. Chapter Two displays a dramatic shift in narrative control, with the son at first the principle, and eventually the sole controller (i.e., the only author) of the text. This change is commented on at different points within the chapter by both father and son. The father would like to play a greater role in Chapter Two, but understands that his son is establishing firmer control not only over his analysis of contemporary street lit but of the sub-genre both as a type of African-American literature and urban American literature. Essentially, the intense focus that the son’s scholarship allows him to bring to the study is outpacing the father’s vast but haphazard experience in the field. Basically, the son is coming into his own as a scholar. Miscellaneous comments that the son makes in Chapter Two about his work as an instructor and his experience as a writer indicate a growing breadth of experience around the subject matter. The father realizes this shift in textual control, which is also a shift in form, not without some mixed emotions. Sadly, the shift is not only intellectual in nature, but also suggests the father’s declining health. The fact that the process of the dissertation has required a half-decade of work and spans the course of his diabetic breakdown is subtly evident in his interwoven commentary in this section. xi At the outset of Chapter Three, the son reports that his father has passed away. The son takes the study forward, in fact to its conclusion: It is the son who fully contemporizes the discussion around street lit's production and distribution and the book industry's current conditions of commerce. It is the son (in Chapter Four) who links this modern day subject to the work of David Walker, emphasizing Walker’s role as entrepreneur, self-publisher and distributor. It is also through the son that the reader comes to understand the creative impulse underlying the entire project—explained in a brief dream-like encounter with his father.

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