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''For a Few Days We Would Be Residents in Africa Garcia - Dark Algiers the White ''For a few dayswe would be residents in Africa": JessieRedmon Fausct's "Dark Algiers the White'' Claire Garcia ColoradoCollege "TI1ebattle ground of therace is no longerby bounded Ameiica'sshores. To-day,It is the world." :from'The AmeiicanNegro and Forei gnOpinion'', William S. Nelson TheCrisis, August 1923 Amciican scholarship on theHarlein Rmaissancc has, untilrecently, been strongly U.S.-cent:tic, but the w01k of many of tl1e important wiitei-s of theNew Negro-erahas an international dimmsion, as wiiters attempted to place the Afiican Ameiican struggle for political and civil rights and cultural auth01ity in larger, often global, contexts. Recent scholarshiphas revealedtl1at the tenn, ''H.arlern Rmaissance," used as a rubricto characteiize the floweiing of black cultme-building and political activism in the fit-styearn of the 20th centuryis somethingof a misnomer. While Harlemwas certainlya cent:talsite of politicaland creative activity dUting the peiiod betwem the wai-s, and caiTied great symbolic weight as "the Mecca of the New Negro," it was by no means tl1eonly Ameiican site: Washington,D.C., Chicago, Illinois, and Philadelphia, Penru,)'lvania, also pmvidcd settings for Vibrant black political and intellectuallife. Moreovei·,although conventional scholaishiphas tended toeinphasize the cet1t:tality of the United States and the Great Migration in the New Negro movement, Londona11d Paiis, as irnpeiialmet:Iupoles, also cfrew black intellectualsand political activists fium across theblack diaspora. Many of the figmes commonly anthologized under the rubiic, ''Hai·lein Rmaissancc," were not based in New York (Georgia Douglas Johnson, JeanToomer, Maiita Bonner and otl1crs) and several, such as ClaudeMcKay, were not even Amciican. Manyof themajor wiitcrs and aitists of theRenaissance peiiod were widely traveled in Ewupeand Afiica AlainLocke, for example, lived and worked in Washington,D.C., but regularly visited not only Harlem but Frai1ce, Geirnany, and Italy. Langston Hughes wandereda11d worked tl11Dugh West Afiica, France, and Italy before settling in Harlein, and Claude McKay wiutehis famousnovel, Horneto Harlem while sojourningin London. TI1e most widely taught HarlemRenaissai1ce novel, Nella Larne11'sQuicksand is informedby theyeai-s Larsen lived as a girlin Dmmaik,and complicates the Great Mi grationmotif with a compaiisonof Hai·leinto Copeilhagenand the novel's close in thennal South. W.E.B. DuBois, of coUt-se,was pmfotmdlyaware thethat civil lights st:tuggle of peopleof color in tl1eUnited States was linkedto tl1e struggles forliberation "the of darker races" 31Dlll1d the world 103 Ethnic Studies Review Volume 30: 1 &2 Blackintellectuals who werenot as well-knownon thenational stage- faculty ofthe major AfricanAmerican universities, schoolteachers and aspiring mtists- often used their summers to travel to France, Italy, and other European countries1 and black perfonning artistsregularly toured the majorcities of Europedtning this era While manyNew Negro­ eramtists and writerslooked directly to Africa as a way of understandingand talking about AfricanAmerican identity, history, and cultme, many of their ideasof Africawere mediated throughtheir personal travels in Europe as well as theirawareness of colonial struggles2in LatinAmerica as well as theAfrican continent It mightbe more accmate tothink of Harlem as a majornodal point through which black internationaldiscourses flowed, and to look at the wotkof canonical Harlem Renaissance writers as engaged in transnational conversations aboutthe natme of black identityand cultme in an arenacharacterized by transatlat1ticas well as north-southAmericm1 migrations and sojomns. JessieRedmon Fauset was one of themost widely traveledand prolific wiiters of the New Negro-era Although her four novels-There is Confusion (1924), Pltn11Bun: A Novel withouta Moral(1929), TI1eChinabeny Tree (1931) m1dComedy: American Style (1934)-have received much critical attention in the last twenty years, thm1ks to feminist scholm-swho challengedem·lier characteiizations anddismissals of Fauset as a clu-oniclerof thetrivialities of black bourgeoislife, there has been little conversation about the transnational dimensions ofFauset'swork. Fluent in French, an avid traveler, and widely readin both classicaland contemporary literatme (she seivedfor many years as the litermy editorfor the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis: ARecordo f the Darker Race�), Fauset was a black cosmopolitan,and herfiction, poetry, essays and reviews were often inf01med by herinterest in black global issues. In his autobiography, TI1eBig S91 Lang5ton Hugl1es notes that Fausct's pat1ies involved "ertjoying conversations in French" among "seiious people who liked books and the Biitish Museum, m1d perhaps had been toFlorence. (Italy, not Alabama)'". Thereferences to EtnDpe (pat1icularlyFrance), Africa, and the United States in her fiction and non-fiction writing serve to radically re-map global power fi-om ablack womm1's �pectivc as she, like other New Negro writers, seeks to reconfigme and politicallyd eploy theidea of' 'blackness"in themodem world An active member of W.E.B. DuBois's Ameiicandelegation tothe Second Pan AfiicanCongress in 1921, whoserepo1ts the on multi-cityconference appeared in several installments in The Crisis4, Fauset wroteextensively on transnational racial issuesin other Crisi�articles such as ''Nationalismin Egypt''in 1920 and'111e Emanci pationofBrazil" in 1921. Severalof herbook reviews and translationsalso focused on anti-irnpeiialiststruggles by peopleof color at-olllldthe world. Like otherNew Negro-erawriters, Fauset raised and confrontedquestions of racialidentity across national bordei-s and cultural boundaties. While EiicaGriffin argues that Fauset explores the world outside the United States as an"invisible woman" writingfi-om a position within the"veil" to ''tmit[e] blackAmeiican women withEtnDpean and North African women througl1 theirshared status as invisible 5 mcmbct-sof patriarchal cultme" , I argue thatFausct's focus on Etn-ope,Africa, and Latin 104 Garcia - Dark Algiers the White Americain bothher fiction and non-fiction wiiting is partof a broaderand more complex critique of and self-conscious participation in western modernity which involves both deployingher· multilayered subjectivity (a blackwoman, an American, a bilingual person, a writer, a towist, a waniorin thecivil rights snuggle, to namebut a few of theidentities she constrnctsin her·wiiting) and re-mapping the relationship between the United States,Europe, and the colonized world from theperspective of a woman of color. Her writing evokes, rather than avoids, the complexities andcontradictions inhermt in trying to bothposit and exploitthe idea of a commonconsciousness uniting people, especially women, of color. A sense of black internationalism allowedNew Negro-era writers to question and destabilizethe Ametican undet'Standing of racethat supported discrimination and oppres.sion in all areas of American life. Fauset, like several othet·wiiter'S in black publications drew comparisons and contrasts betweenthe conditions andstruggles of people of color arolllld theworld as pait of a metoricalarsenal in theAmerican civil-tights stmggle. Indeed, many of the clainis for black Americans' tights to citizenship, economic and educational opportunity,and cultural authotity wet-e infonned by therepositioning of America's ''Negro problem"on a global,not just national,stage: thePan-A.mean Congresses of 1919 and1921, the expetiencesof A.meanAmetican soldiers in Emope dwingthe Great War, andMarcus Gatvey's calls for a revet'Seaspo di ra all conttibuted to black writer'S' seeing the black condition--politically as well as cultmally--in a context that extended well beyond the bordet'Sof theUnited States. TI1etransnational dimension ofNew Negro-erawiiting clearnd new spacefor etitiquing the appaimt intractability of theAmctican color-line and et-eated a broadand complex diasporicunde1'Standing of theintet'SCCtions of race,power, economics, and culture. However, attempts to consttuct and politically deploy a black identity across national,eultwal, and sometimes religious lines posed both rhet01ical and political challenges. Brent Hayes Edwards, in The Practice of Diaspog proposes the concept of "decalage" as a tool for undet'Standing the impulses toward and thetoric of black intenmtionalism and its inevitable misreadings and mistta11Slations:. Probletnatizing Leopold Sengl10r's assertionthat the cliffmnces between ''Negro Americans"and ''Negro Afiicans"is a matterof "a simple decalage--intime and in space,"Edwards asse1ts the that fundan1et1talrelationship among membet'S of the black dim.'J)Orais always "haunted"by that which can't be tta11Slatcd or undet'Stood, and that aiticulations of racial unity (such as Scngl10r's concept of Negiitude or DuBois's of Pan Afiicanisrn) ai-e always thetorical aitilicesprndicated upon cliffetmce and disaiticulation: "Articulationis alwaysa strangeand ainbivalentgesture, because, finally, in thebody it is onlycliffetmce - theseparation between booesor membcrs--thatallows moveinent"6 This concept of decalage and its attcndailt l11etorical and political challenges ai-e dramatically illustrated in Jessie Redmoo Fauset's account of her visit to the Frmch colonizedcity of Algiers in 1925. "DarkAlgiet'S the White," published in The Crisisin April and May 1925, and illustrated by hertt'aveli ng companion and fellow Crisis conttibutor, Laura Wheeler, richly prnsct1ts the questions and cros.s-clll1'Cnts
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