During the period between the first and second World Wars, two different intellectual doctrines vied for control of shaping the future of Black Americans: nationalism and Marxism. In his book Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars, Anthony Dawahare illustrates the influence of this struggle and provides an excellent and thorough examination of the two most influential ideologies of the Harlem Renaissance, historicizing the movements in their proper context.

As the book opens, Dawahare provides an excellent background. The nationalism of Du Bois and Garvey was directly influenced by the Wilsonian nationalism, which appeared after World War I. Garvey’s ethnic nationalism is strongly preoccupied with origins and traditions. He proposed hat people of the African Diaspora “return” to Africa to create a Black republic, the leader of which would be he himself. As Dawahare rightly notes, Garvey had the misconceived belief that a person can return to a place he/she has never been. Garvey’s ideas are rooted in patriarchal notions of the sons returning to the mother, “Mother Africa,” in order to redeem frica. This included the “‘civilizing’ of backward tribes and the expulsion of colonists.” In his desire to “civilize” backward tribes we see that even though he saw Africa as the “ur-mother,” Garvey was not averse to “giving her a makeover to render her more attractive to her modern sons.”

In contrast to Garvey, Du Bois believes in the existence of “a dual identity or ‘double consciousness’ that is both African and American, and, consequently rejects black nationalism proper.” Du Bois makes no suggestion that Black Americans should “return” to Africa, but that they actually have more right to call themselves American since they did the bulk of the work to build America. However, his nationalist ideas are similar to Garvey’s in relation to his beliefs of “origins” and the historical basis of modern Black identity. When he discusses beginnings “he makes a number of claims about the superiority of Africa,” and like Garvey “he professes that more so than other groups, Africans advanced ‘from animal savagery toward primitive civilization.’” Du Bois sees African Americans as a “protonation” not yet realized, a “nation within a nation,” and “privileges an African Gemeinschaft (an organic community based on kinship) over the European Gesellschaft (a rationalized, mechanistic community).”

In direct opposition to these different nationalist programs was socialism. Dawahare believes that “[t]he nationalism of Du Bois, Garvey, and the Harlem Renaissance cannot be fully understood except within this political dynamic and context.” He examines this political dynamic through the three varieties of socialism that confronted Du Bois and Garvey at the time; the Socialist Party, the African Blood Brotherhood and the Communists’ Workers Party. These leftist movements represented a real challenge to the rhetoric of the nationalists. The greatest challenge they raised against Du Bois and Garvey was their belief that identity was more complicated than ethnic nationalism would have it, and that only by allying themselves with the white workers could they overthrow capitalist rule and bring about the liberation of Black Americans. By rehistoricizing these competing positions Dawahare shows that Harlem Renaissance writers did have political choices, and that our popular perception of the Renaissance has been influenced, and often skewed.

Dawahare also provides a study of the poetry of Langston Hughes. It is tragic that Hughes’s radical poetry of the 1930s has been largely ignored in the academic world, especially since it challenges “scholars of Black literature and culture to look more critically at Black nationalist literary aesthetics and politics, and prodding us, perhaps, to rethink the historical relationships between poetics and politics.” Here Dawahare analyzes several of his works, beginning with Scottsboro Limited. According to Dawahare the agit-prop play illustrates Hughes’s move away from his “nationalist perspective as a Harlem Renaissance writer and toward a view of class rather than race as the basis for both racism and collective struggle.” He goes on to examine Hughes’s first anti-imperialist poem “Merry Christmas,” as well as other poems like “Song for Ourselves.” In “Song for Ourselves” Hughes parallels the “‘lynched’ Czechoslovakia and thousands of lynched Black Americans.”

In the end Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars proves to be an important book in the study of Black American literature and culture. It continues the tradition of Black Marxist studies in the vein of Cedric Robinson’s groundbreaking Black Marxism and William Maxwell’s New Negro, Old Left. Dawahare’s use of primary sources such as speeches and pamphlets provides the reader a close look at the period’s important works. A study of the socialist works of the time will prove important to Black cultural studies in the future. As Dawahare says: “[W]e can expect ideologies of race and nation to continue to play an important role in misleading the working class to attack each other instead of the systemic causes of their oppression.

Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora’s Box by Anthony Dawahare Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2002.