On Black Writing

Black Fiction, by Roger Rosenblatt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 211 pp.

Roger Rosenblatt begins this book by telling us what it is not—and one is relieved to discover that it is not another study promoting (or decrying) cultural nationalism or worrying about whether or not white critics have the credentials to review Afro-American writing. He does, however, warn that he has not written this work merely to examine black fiction on its own terms; rather he will attemp...