Frank J. Webb and the Fate of the Sentimental Race Man

Abstract

As the example of Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig illustrates, the literary expectations attached to the works of early African American authors have not only aesthetic but also political ramifications. If such texts are implicitly expected to provide first-hand insight into the historical realities of black culture, so too are they expected to focus on what are assumed to be specifically African American concerns and to utilize what are assumed to be specifically African American narrative modes. In other words, as Frances Smith Foster points out, there exists still a significant critical expectation that the works of early black authors should feel and sound “authentically” black. Moreover, as critic Ann duCille notes, there remains a scholarly “tendency to treat black literary texts not as fictive invention but as transparent historical documents, evaluated in terms of their fidelity to ‘the black experience’ and their attention to ‘authentically black’ subject matter.” As a result, duCille argues, “this racial litmus test has misread the aesthetics and politics of much of the early work of African American authors.”¹