Facing Black and Jew

A reading of African American and Jewish American writers from Henry Roth and Ralph Ellison to Philip Roth and David Bradley. Reading the work of such writers alongside and through one another, Newton\'s book offers an original way of juxtaposing two major traditions in modern American literature, and rethinking the sometimes vexed relationship between two constituencies ordinarily confined to sociopolitical or media commentary alone. Newton combines Emmanuel Levinas\'s ethical philosophy and Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory in shaping an innovative kind of ethical-political criticism. Through artful, dialogical readings of Saul Bellow and Chester Himes, David Mamet and Anna Deavere Smith, and others, Newton seeks to represent American Blacks and Jews outside the distorting mirror of ‘Black-Jewish Relations’, and restrictive literary histories alike. A final chapter addresses the Black/Jewish dimension of the O. J. Simpson trial.

• Highly topical and controversial subject matter: relationship between Blacks and Jews • Wide-ranging analysis of twentieth-century African-American and Jewish literature • Elegantly written, author’s previous book won a prize, and contains an up-to-the-minute review of the O. J. Simpson trial

Preface; Introduction, Part I. The Space Between Black and Jew: Part II. History and Allegory: A Match Made in Shadow: 1. ‘An antiphonal game’ and beyond: facing Call It Sleep and Invisible Man; 2. ‘Jew me sue me dont you black or white me’: the (ethical)politics of recognition in Saul Bellow and Chester Himes; 3. Words Generally Spoil Things and Giving a Man a Final Say: facing history The Chaneysville Incident and Operation Shylock; 4. Literaturized Blacks and Jews; or, Golems and Tar Babys: fates of recognition in John Edgar Wideman and Bernard Malamud; 5. Black-Jewish inflations: face (off) in Mamet’s Homicide and the O. J. Simpson trial; Postface Déja vu all over again: Ann Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror.

‘… this is an absorbing and highly intelligent work …’ Journal of Jewish Studies