Stylin' : African American expressive culture from its beginnings to the zoot suit

For over two centuries, in the North as well as the South, both within their own community and in the public arena, African Americans have presented their bodies in culturally distinctive ways. Shane White and Graham White consider the deeper significance of the ways in which African Americans have dressed, walked, danced, arranged their hair, and communicated in silent gestures. They ask what elaborate hair styles, bright colors, bandanas, long watch chains, and zoot suits, for example, have really meant, and discuss style itself as an expression of deep-seated cultural imperatives. Their wide-ranging exploration of black style from its African origins to the 1940s reveals a culture that differed from that of the dominant racial group in ways that were often subtle and elusive. A wealth of black-and-white illustrations show the range of African American experience in America, emanating from all parts of the country, from cities and farms, from slave plantations, and Chicago beauty contests. White and White argue that the politics of black style is, in fact, the politics of metaphor, always ambiguous because it is always indirect. To tease out these ambiguities, they examine extensive sources, including advertisements for runaway slaves, interviews recorded with surviving ex-slaves in the 1930s, autobiographies, travelers' accounts, photographs, paintings, prints, newspapers, and images drawn from popular culture, such as the stereotypes of Jim Crow and Zip Coon.

Reseñas (5)

Reseña de Publisher's Weekly

As this brisk, illuminating survey amply documents, African American culturefrom the 19th-century dandy mocked by whites to today's baggy hip-hop clothinghas helped make black survival possible in America, both as link to the homeland and as voice of resistance. Using material as varied as runaway slave advertisements, autobiographies, beauty-contest fliers and sociological surveys, these Australian scholar brothers bring to vivid life "the way in which, over more than two centuries, ordinary black men and women developed a style that did indeed affirm their lives." At times, such affirmation worked through parody (uneasily sensed by whites, if only subconsciously); at others it expressed itself directly in pride in fine dress or beauty contests. Slavery's totalitarian domination might be mitigated through the brightly colored patchwork clothing one former slave suggests this in her desire "to look pretty sniptious"); in the North, free black men and women fought for the dignity that intolerant whites strained to deny them by claiming a right to street life. During Reconstruction, in contrast, former slaves paraded through white sections of town to signal communal pride in Emancipation or, later, put on their finery and promenaded in the Saturday-night "Stroll." By the time the book reaches 1940s zoot-suiters, its claims for the vital role played by African American expressive culture seem entirely undeniable; this well-researched and engaging history pulls together a mostly untold story with as much verve as the swinging dandies it depicts. 19 drawings; 37 b&w photos. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Two Australian historians (brothers, incidentally) from the University of Sydney examine the ways in which black style has been interpreted and the political and social implications it has carried from slavery to WW II. African-American history has been written on the black body in a variety of ways, many of them cruel and inhuman. Slaves were branded, had their ears cropped, were whipped mercilessly. A slave's body was not his/her own property in the most literal sense, but as the Whites observe in this engrossing volume, there were many ways in which they could assert some small measure of independence. Focusing on such variegated indicators of black style as dress, hair, body language, and dance, the authors reveal an evolving semiotics of black self-creation that has been designed from its very outset to impose a degree of individuality on the numbing uniformity bred of slavery, poverty, Jim Crow laws, and white racism. In the first half of the book, which is concerned with the period before emancipation, the authors draw creatively on a multitude of sources--ranging from the memoirs and diaries of travelers in the South to handbills advertising rewards for the capture of runaway slaves--to recreate a largely forgotten aspect of black daily life. This volume represents an excellent example of how to use the most unlikely materials, such as newspaper-sponsored beauty pageants from the '20s, to examine how a people's culture defines its values in the face of oppression. Although the book is occasionally a bit repetitive in the early going, as its authors seek to build a case with somewhat slender evidence, it is well written and intelligently argued. It even has that rarity of rarities in a university press book: a preface that is delightfully funny. A highly useful contribution to black history from an unexpected direction, in every sense of that phrase. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Reseña de Booklist

The Whites draw on autobiographies, oral history, newspapers, and a rich vein of secondary literature in analyzing black style and "cultural imperatives that have influenced the ways in which African Americans have clothed themselves, styled their hair, and communicated meaning through gesture, dance, and other forms of bodily display." After chapters on the struggle over slaves' clothing, hairstyles, and communicative body movement in both the North and the South, the authors consider "ways in which the struggle over what freedom meant was played out" after the Civil War in terms of these visible "style" characteristics (again, in both the North and the South) and then examine urban black style in the first half of the twentieth century, with an epilogue on the zoot suit's significance. Although the focus of this study may seem a bit narrow, the Whites' volume provides fascinating glimpses (including more than 50 illustrations) of black culture, from owners' annoyance at their slaves' taste in color to beauty contests (including "beautiful baby" contests) sponsored by African American newspapers around the country. Mary Carroll

Revisar OPCIONES

Written by two Australian scholars, Stylin' considers the significance of the ways in which African Americans have presented their bodies. The authors use advertisements for runaway slaves, interviews recorded with former slaves in the 1930s, autobiographies, travel accounts, photographs, paintings, prints, newspapers, and sheet music covers to discuss how black Americans have dressed, danced, walked, arranged their hair, and communicated tacitly by means of gestures. Although the authors cover the years from 1619, when the first blacks arrived in America, to the 1940s, their emphasis is on the 19th and 20th centuries. They conclude that black style is always ambiguous because it is always subtle and indirect. Generally, the authors' views are persuasive, but occasionally their arguments are not convincing. For example, they maintain that the use of more dignified Sunday attire by black churchgoers indicates their repudiation of "white society's evaluation of the black body as an instrument of menial labor." Perhaps, but just saying this does not make it so. One could just as easily insist that it represents nothing more than blacks following a custom common in many Western cultures. Overall, though, Stylin' is a splendid, albeit admittedly not an encyclopedic, examination of the meaning of black style. All levels. W. K. McNeil Ozark Folk Center

Library Journal Review

The authors (both history, Univ. of Sydney, Australia) conceived and wrote this work in their homeland, providing an outsider's fresh perspective on the African American cultural milieu. Sifting through photographs, paintings, interviews, and surveys, they detail how blacks from the slavery era to World War II developed a self-affirming, expressive body style that differentiated them from the larger society and was manifested in clothing, hairstyles, dance, gestures, and other personal attributes. The authors argue that the politics of "black" style was the embodiment of ambiguity, acting as a subtle jab to the dominant racial group. Several of the chapters have appeared previously in scholarly journals and a monograph. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries with African American collections.Michael A. Lutes, Univ. of Notre Dame Libs., South Bend, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Tabla de contenido

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Chapter 1 Booking Mighty Sprucy	p. 5
Chapter 2 Done Up in the Tastiest Manner	p. 37
Chapter 3 I'd Rather Dance Den Eat	p. 63
Chapter 4 Dandies and Dandizettes	p. 85
Chapter 5 Swingin' like Crazy	p. 125
Chapter 6 Strolling, Tooking, and Fixy Clothes	p. 153
Chapter 7 The Long-Veiled Beauty of Our Own World	p. 180
Chapter 8 The Stroll	p. 220
Epilogue: Suit Men from Suit Land	p. 248
Notes	p. 263
Index	p. 297

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