This is the most exciting work on the development of literary and artistic modernism in the United States that I have read in a long time. Unlike many other scholars who see African American modernism as either distinct from or on the margins of 'high modernism,' Jacques takes a leaf from Mary Helen Washington's famous question about American Studies and ... Read moreinvestigates what happens when we put African American expressive culture at the center of modernism.... The breadth of the author's interdisciplinary knowledge is stunning.... Much of this study is groundbreaking. - James Smethurst, author of The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s in cross-disciplinary studies these days, and so this book should appeal to a wider-than-usual spectrum of readers both inside and outside the academy."" - Aldon L. Nielsen, author of Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism Show Less