Jesse McCarthy Livres

A supremely talented young critic's essays on race and culture, from Toni Morrison to trap, herald the arrival of a major new voice in American letters.

The Bern Book is a travelogue, a memoir, a "diary of an isolated soul" (Darryl Pinckney), and a meditation on the myth and reality of race in midcentury Europe and America. In 1953, having left the US and settled in Bern, Switzerland, Vincent O. Carter, a struggling writer, set about composing a "record of a voyage of the mind." The voyage begins with Carter's furiously good-humored description of how, every time he leaves the house, he must face the possibility of being asked "the hated question" (namely, Why did you, a black man born in America, come to Bern?). It continues with stories of travel, war, financial struggle, the pleasure of walking, the pain of self-loathing, and, through it all, various experiments in what Carter calls "lacerating subjective sociology." Now this long-neglected volume is back in print for the first time since 1973.

"Virtuosic ... glorious in its exploration." —The New York Times A singular and powerful debut novel about a young black American learning the difficulties of forming your own identity when society has already assigned you one Like most recent college graduates, Jonah Winters is unsure of what's next. A young black American raised in France and living in New York City, he tries on a couple of careers only to find that nothing feels right. And as Jonah struggles to envision his future, he feels pressured by his friends and family to put the struggles of his community before his search for self. But then a chance encounter with an ex-NBA player with his own regrets, inspires Jonah to take his life into his own hands. Deciding to leave the country entirely, he sets off for Brazil. And as he makes and breaks friendships on the way, reflects on his past relationships, and learns to rely on himself, Jonah slowly forms an understanding of self, community, and freedom that is rarely afforded to young black men.

Black writers during the early Cold War navigated a complex landscape of ideological conflict, facing alienation from both revolutionary Communism and Jim Crow America. Jesse McCarthy explores how figures like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Paule Marshall transformed their discontent into innovative literary forms. By emphasizing racial identity and personal experience, these writers created an aesthetic resistance that challenged prevailing narratives, marking a significant era in American literature known as "the Blue Period," spanning from World War II to the rise of Black Power.

"To be a Black writer in the early years of the Cold War was to face a stark predicament. On the one hand, revolutionary Communism promised egalitarianism and lit the sparks of anticolonial struggle, but was hostile to conceptions of personal freedom. On the other hand, the great force opposing the Soviets at midcentury was itself the very fountainhead of racial prejudice, represented in the United States by Jim Crow. Jesse McCarthy argues that Black writers of this time were equally alienated from the left and the right and channeled that alienation into remarkable experiments in literary form. Embracing racial affect and interiority, they forged an aesthetic resistance premised on fierce dissent from both US racial liberalism and Soviet Communism. Ranging from the end of World War II to the rise of Black Power in the 1960s, from Richard Wright and James Baldwin to Gwendolyn Brooks and Paule Marshall and others, Jesse McCarthy shows how Black writers defined a distinctive moment in American literary culture that McCarthy calls "the Blue Period.""--