Winner of the 2012 Book Award, College Language Association Winner of the 2012 Literary Award for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. Winner of the 2011 PROSE Award in Literature, Association of American Publishers Finalist for the 2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction, The Hurston/Wright Foundation Finalist for the 2011 National Book Award, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute ... Read morefor Social Change, University of Memphis Winner of the 2010 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association "[Jackson's] encyclopedic book offers a chronological, old-fashioned history of literature, covering a period desperately in need of thorough-going research and detail, and presents a deeply documented, dense but thoroughly readable account... Jackson's detail may offer more than the casual sightseer seeks, but scholars will rely upon and mine his monumental work and the prodigious research upon which it is based. It should guide the way African-American and American literature is studied."
Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A meticulously researched, detailed account of African American literature and its critics from the end of the Harlem Renaissance to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement... A valuable resource for scholars and graduate students in African American studies."
William Gargan, Library Journal "[This] exhaustive compilation
covering from the well-known writers to the little recognized
traverses the journeys of the artists and their links in the hubs of Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C."
Maudlyne Ihejirika, Chicago Sun-Times "Ambitious... Rich with photos and well written, the book merits praise for the deserved attention it brings to the rise of African American criticism and intellectualism and to the many important people who figured in the rise of better-known novelists."
Choice "Jackson's formulation of the indignant generation is a prodigious contribution to African American literary history."
Andrew M. Fearnley, Journal of American Studies "The Indignant Generation is a must-read for scholars of American culture on both sides of the Atlantic... Jackson's book is invaluable for its historiographic, hermeneutic, and literary merits."
Sieglinde Lemke, American Studies "African-American writers had plenty to be indignant about during the middle decades of the 20th century... Lawrence P. Jackson surveys the era with clarity and perception. Focusing on the literary hubs of Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., the book captures the complexities of the period, the great hope and skepticism its black writers engendered."
Steve Bogira, Chicago Reader "Lawrence Jackson's monumental and epic study, The Indignant Generation, provides a masterful overview of yet another key period in African American literary history... At every level, this book of encyclopedic proportions ... is well researched and well written in an elegant and superb style."
Riche Richardson, Southern Literary Journal Show Less