"Lawrence Jackson's authoritatively detailed and lively Indignant Generation is an omnium gatherum of virtually everybody of color in the mid-twentieth century who tried to write the Great American Novel. This excellent study should become a literary and cultural history benchmark."--David Levering Lewis, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"The Indignant Generation is the most comprehensive portrait of the literary history in that glorious interregnum between the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and the Black Arts Movement of the sixties. Combining close reading with a keen sensitivity to cultural and political context, Jackson has brought this little-studied period to life, and he has done so with compelling erudition. This book is a major contribution to literary scholarship. I learned quite a lot reading it, and enjoyed every minute doing so."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
"This is a magisterial book. Lawrence Jackson is a first-rate historian--I salute him!"--Cornel West, Princeton University
"The Indignant Generation is a thoroughly researched, highly informative, and remarkably important African American literary study about a neglected period of black creative writing. It fills some very important holes in black literary history, and all of us who work in literature are grateful that Jackson has taken on this task and done it so well."--Gerald Early, series editor of Best African American Fiction and Best African American Essays
"This is a landmark work in the history of African American studies and American intellectual history. Writing with verve, Jackson brings to life a large cast of characters and traces an ongoing conversation among the writers and critics of this period. This book is likely to become a model for a new generation of scholars, both for the breadth of its engagement and the depth of its archival research."--Werner Sollors, Harvard University
"The Indignant Generation is a massively well-researched narrative history of African American writing from the Great Depression through the first wave of the nonviolent Civil Rights movement. Jackson's inclusive and often fresh detail promises to install his work as a standard reference on African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century."--William J. Maxwell, Washington University in St. Louis