PageTurners: 'Double Consciousness' and Dual Paths of Persistence at the Forefront of Black Literature

Anyone who has experienced some form of racial oppression has experienced W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “double consciousness.” From code-switching to sinking into the comfort of one’s family history, it’s a persistent concept that plagues and challenges one’s everyday existence.

Author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers fully embodies this concept in her 800-page novel about Ailey Pearl, desperate to forge her own identity but constantly finding herself pulled into her family’s traumatized history. In a complete contrast yet following the same train of thought, The Great Mrs. Elias by Barbara Chase-Riboud follows Hannah Elias and her mission to hide her Black heritage in public—passing as a white woman—only to find peace in her solitary mansion decorated to honor Cleopatra.

Often when reading we come up with our own images to substitute for the words on a page. But Run: A Novel about the late Congressman John Lewis is a graphic reimagining of his life during the Civil Rights movement and subsequent years of radicalized backlash. Also resurfaced is a novel from the late fantasist Octavia Butler, one of her Lilith’s Brood series.

Sometimes there’s no way to know where one part of one’s identity begins, but literature examining these ways of thinking has a way of teasing it apart and putting it back together.

Tina Campt examines what it means to exist within a Black gaze and how our interaction with visual art and curation nurtures that existence. Visual artists such as Deana Lawson, Arthur Jafa, Khalil Joseph and Dawoud Bey form their work in such a way that the viewer is forced to reassess the way they see Black art, but how it makes them feel. Campt specifically chose artists whose work “explores [and[ challenge[s] the fundamental disparity that defines the dominant viewing practice,” and asks where Blackness exists within whiteness—or does it even exist in white space at all?

August 24, 2021, The MIT PRESS

Leila Darling has the talent and drive to be a fantastic actress—the only problem, the industry hates her, seeing her only as a “high maintenance, impulsive party girl with a reputation for leaving men in the dust. After exiting the world of modeling, Leila is determined to land the role of her dreams, and the only way to do so is by marrying TV producer Carter Bain and staying married for six months. This game was one Leila was determined to win because beyond the finish line is her choice of any A-list role she wants. But if she loses, she’s doomed to a life of Carter’s choices, indefinitely.

Octavia Butler’s 1988 novel Adulthood Rites is now available as a rereleased paperback from Grand Central Publishing.

August 24, 2021, Grand Central Publishing

Quincy Troupe, poet, biographer and friend of Miles Davis writes poetry in waves. Words are just another way of expressing music notes, after all, and it’s the music you choose to make with them that actually matters. His work examines the legacy of racism and slavery as well as love, friendship and camaraderie. The book includes a 50-page poem about reconnecting with one’s past, a short poem dedicated to Garcia Lorca and Miles Davis, and the embodiment of music, art and poetry.

August 24, 2021, Seven Stories Press

“First you march, then you run.”

Late political icon Rep. John Lewis didn’t just represent the state of Georgia as its congressman, but an entire movement that spanned from the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. His achievements—leading sit-in protests, fighting segregation on interstate busways as one of the original Freedom Riders, becoming the youngest ever speaker at the March on Washington—will withstand the test of time. History is often described in short vignettes of victories, beginning with one conflict and ending superior. However, to Rep. John Lewis, the victories only marked the beginning.

Reunited with co-author Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell—the artist behind the March trilogy—are joined by L. Fury. The unstoppable team of four make a graphic novel debut depicting the trials and victories of an “often overlooked chapter of civil rights history.”

From Stacey Abrams:

Run recounts the lost history of what too often follows dramatic change—the pushback of those who refuse it and the resistance of those who believe change has not gone far enough. John Lewis’s story has always been a complicated narrative of bravery, loss, and redemption, and Run gives vivid, energetic voice to a chapter of transformation in his young, already extraordinary life.

August 23, 2021, Abrams ComicArts

Hannah Elias was a very private person. She lived alone in her five-story, 20-room mansion on the Upper West Side, and kept her identity a secret—using her light skin to pass as Southern European. She’s been married—and divorced—to a white man, and subtly invests her alimony into stocks, amassing millions and hiding the money in merchant banks, and 129 private accounts.

She finally had the life she’d always dreamed of.

But the death of her lover by the hands of a past paramour has her private world crumbling, and what was once a sanctuary of secrets had become blown open, her true identity as a Black woman exposed. Protestors lined the street in front of her home, and Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, “ensnared in a scandalous trial, and accused of stealing her fortune from whites.”

August 24, 2021, Amistad

W.E.B. Du Bois was known for his writings on “double consciousness,” described as “a concept in social philosophy referring, originally, to a source of inward ‘twoness’ putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society,” in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk.

For as long as she can remember, Ailey Pearl Garfield has had to carry the burden of her own double consciousness. She is the namesake of famed choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great-grandmother Pearl, a descendant of enslaved Georgians. From an early age, Ailey has spent the summers in the small Georgian town where her family has lived since they were brought from Africa as slaves. But Ailey spends one summer coming to terms with her own identity and where she might be able to separate it from her family’s past. Looking within, she finds herself embracing her family’s history and reconciling with its past.

 August 24, 2021, Harper