Book Notes

Enrolling as a math major at Mount St. James, Adenike Davidson ’89, like many Holy Cross students, had no idea what interesting paths lay ahead of her. Davidson, who switched her major to English, is now an associate professor of English at Fisk University in Nashville, director of the Fisk University W.E.B. DuBois honors program, a published author and an important voice in African-American nationalist research. Her first book, The Black Nation Novel: Imagining Homeplaces in Early African American Literature (Third World Press, 2008), analyzes how the writings of many early African-American authors, such as W.E.B. DuBois, Martin R. Delany,  Sutton Griggs and Pauline E. Hopkins, all portray certain nationalist themes that have shown up again in the literature of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. While maintaining that “books talk to one another,” Davidson shows how themes that show up in contemporary literature certainly have roots in texts from an earlier period. “I’ve always been interested in issues of exclusion, politics and literature. Literature frees you up to imagine things. These authors are able to imagine and envision a world in which they could separate.”

Davidson also addresses the role of spirituality and religion in Black nationalism, tapping into Ernest Renan’s theory of nation as a spiritual family.

Davidson cites her independent study with associate professor Susan Elizabeth Sweeney as particularly influential in her literary development. It introduced her to many African-American women authors, including Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry and Gloria Naylor. Similarly, classes with professors Patricia Bizzell and B. Eugene McCarthy familiarized her with 19th-century American women writers and other African-American texts and the guidance of Dr. Ogretta McNeil was also pivotal throughout her college career.

When asked how her new book could speak particularly to today’s youth, Davidson states: “Today’s young generation follows more than questions. It is important to question what is going on, while realizing the struggles that have come in the generations before you.” She is already working on her next book, Blackness and Modernism in the City of Light: New Negro and Negritude Conversations, which will examine Negritude, an early-20th century literary movement against French colonial racism and assimilation that began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris (including future Sengalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor and Martinican poet Aimé Césaire). Davidson’s new book will explore how the movement was significantly influenced by the collaboration between the French colonials and the New Negro artists who traveled to Paris in the early 20th century.
– Kristen Rooney ’09