Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America

Black Land explores how African American writing and art engaged with visions of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, highlighting the increasing tensions and ironies behind cultural celebrations of an African country asserting itself as an imperial power.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 17 September 2019
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Ethiopia, as the sole African nation to evade colonization, has held a profound allure for African Americans, particularly due to its status as an independent entity. In her book, Black Land, Nadia Nurhussein delves into the artistic and journalistic representations of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shedding light on the escalating tensions and paradoxes underlying cultural celebrations of an African country asserting its imperial power. Nurhussein explores a range of texts by notable authors such as Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Harry Dean, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, George Schuyler, and others, alongside visual and performing artifacts that illustrate the interconnectedness of African America with Ethiopia during significant political upheavals. From a recounting of a notorious 1920 Star Order of Ethiopia flag-burning incident in Chicago to a discussion of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie's recognition as Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1935, Nurhussein highlights the growing complexities that modern Ethiopia presented for American writers and activists. American media coverage of Ethiopia unveiled a stark contrast between the Pan-African ideal and the contemporary reality of Ethiopia as an antidemocratic imperialist state. Did Ethiopia symbolize the black nation of the future or a stagnant relic of the past? Black Land offers a comprehensive reevaluation of black transnationalism, presenting a thorough exploration of a period when Ethiopia's influence in African American culture reached its zenith.

Weight: 626g
Dimension: 167 x 242 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691190969