The Write to Stay Home: Southern Black Literature from the Great Depression to Early Twenty-first Century

Abstract

My research explores two primary phenomena: the Great Migration out of the American South (1910 to 1970) and the reverse migration (1970 to the present) back to it. I attempt to answer the question: did the Great Migration improve the conditions of African Americans, particularly those who stayed in place in the American South? By close-reading African American literature of the South—alongside agro-environmental histories—I emphasize Southern Blacks’ belief in sustainable agrarianism as the key to freedom. Within this framework, the Great Migration is a tragic indication of the massive Black land loss in the American South over the 20th century and the unfinished work of the civil rights movement. Therefore, I study Black Southern writers whose work emphasizes the agency of protagonists who did not migrate during the Great Migration and contend that Southern Black literature emphasizes a “right to stay home.” This phrase, coined by David Bacon to tell the story of a visionary group in Mexico, Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, asserts that community-based development and political reform in Mexico itself is as important as fighting for the rights of Mexican immigrants in the US. After all, land reforms and economic development would solve the root of the problem of outmigration. Similarly, Black Southerners who refused to leave their home region worked towards an alternative economic and land development course that makes migration truly a voluntary choice. By close-reading the works of Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward alongside a backdrop of Black Southerners’ resistance to land dispossession—and collective determination to create a more sustainable environment and achieve food sovereignty—I argue that a constituent feature of 20th century Black Southern literature is the “write” to stay home.