Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean (Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future)

In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers and performers sought to convey the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to the labor, movement, speech, sound, and ritual of everyday "folk." Many critics have perceived these representations of folk culture as efforts to reclaim an authentic past. Imani D. Owens recasts Black creators' relationship to folk culture, emphasizing their formal and stylistic innovations and experiments in self-invention that reach beyond the local to the world. Turn the World Upside Down explores how Black writers and performers reimagined folk forms through the lens of the unruly—that which cannot be easily governed, disciplined, or managed. Drawing on a transnational and multilingual archive—from Harlem to Havana, from the Panama Canal Zone to Port-au-Prince—Owens considers the short stories of Eric Walrond and Jean Toomer; the ethnographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Price-Mars; the recited poetry of Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén, and Eusebia Cosme; and the essays, dance work, and radio plays of Sylvia Wynter. Owens shows how these figures depict folk culture—and Blackness itself—as a site of disruption, ambiguity, and flux. Their works reveal how Black people contribute to the stirrings of modernity while being excluded from its promises. Ultimately, these works do not seek to render folk culture more knowable or worthy of assimilation, but instead provide new forms of radical world-making. "Black hemispheric writing in the first half of the twentieth century was forged by the intertwined legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers sought to transmit the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to representations of folk culture. Many critics and scholars have perceived these representations as an effort to reclaim an authentic folk heritage as the foundation for national literary movements. In Turn the World Upside Down, Imani Owens tells a different story showing how writers and performers crafted alternatives to the tropes of authenticity and developed a different set of theories and aesthetic forms and styles to understand the relationship between folk culture and the modern Black experience. Turning to a transnational and multilingual archive, Owens considers a wide range of writers, including Eric Walrond and Jean Toomer, the experimental ethnographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Price Mars, the written and recited poetry of Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén and Eusebia Cosme, and finally, the essays, dance work, and radio plays of Sylvia Wynter. She considers how these writers and performers depicted folk culture-and blackness itself-as a site of disruption, experimentation, ambiguity, and flux. In their attunement to Black labor, movement, speech, ritual, these figures show how "everyday folk" contributed to the stirrings of modernity while being excluded from its promises. At the same time, she argues that the aim of these works is not to render the folk more knowable or worthy of assimilation into predetermined models of citizenship or resistance but rather to suggest alternatives"-- Provided by publisher Honorable Mention, 2024 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award, Caribbean Studies AssociationIn the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers and performers sought to convey the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to the labor, movement, speech, sound, and ritual of everyday “folk.” Many critics have perceived these representations of folk culture as efforts to reclaim an authentic past. Imani D. Owens recasts Black creators'relationship to folk culture, emphasizing their formal and stylistic innovations and experiments in self-invention that reach beyond the local to the world.Turn the World Upside Down explores how Black writers and performers reimagined folk forms through the lens of the unruly—that which cannot be easily governed, disciplined, or managed. Drawing on a transnational and multilingual archive—from Harlem to Havana, from the Panama Canal Zone to Port-au-Prince—Owens considers the short stories of Eric Walrond and Jean Toomer; the ethnographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Price-Mars; the recited poetry of Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén, and Eusebia Cosme; and the essays, dance work, and radio plays of Sylvia Wynter. Owens shows how these figures depict folk culture—and Blackness itself—as a site of disruption, ambiguity, and flux. Their works reveal how Black people contribute to the stirrings of modernity while being excluded from its promises. Ultimately, these works do not seek to render folk culture more knowable or worthy of assimilation, but instead provide new forms of radical world-making.