Ambiguous sounds: African American music in modernist American literature

In the 1920s and 1930s, the blues and jazz profoundly influenced authors such as Carl Van Vechten, Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, and Sterling Brown, who in turn brought a new aesthetic—if not a new perspective—to American letters. Today, critics recognize texts influenced by African American music as some of the finest in American literature; but during the modernist era, they met with mixed reception. Ambiguous Sounds: African American Music in Modernist American Literature examines critical and creative works by Van Vechten, Hughes, Stevens, and Brown—four vastly different writers associated with modernism. Despite their differences, the four authors fused popular forms of African American music with the written word for artistic, social, and philosophical purposes. An interdisciplinary study, Ambiguous Sounds explicates literary texts and contextualizes them with cultural documents, music journalism, and secondary criticism. Apart from aesthetic innovations, which collapse traditional disciplinary boundaries and attempt to redefine “modernism,” these authors also provide in their works the blueprint for a more equitable America.