January 5, 2021: Hope-full Texts: The Marrow of Tradition

[If there’s one thing I think we all need as we begin this new year, it’s hope. So this week, I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of cultural works which offer stories and images of that vital emotion—share the texts or voices which give you hope for a hope-full crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]

I don’t think there’s any literary work that I’ve written about more frequently, hereand elsewhere, than Charles Chesnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901). One of my most recent such engagements was a Saturday Evening Post Considering History columnfor this past February’s Black History Month, on the novel’s embodiment of critical optimism (a parallel to the critical patriotism I write about in my next book, out next week!). That critical optimism, what I called “hard-won hope” in my book History & Hope in American Literature, is presented at the climax of a book that has portrayed some of the most horrific and destructive aspects of American history and identity, a climax when the possibility of a better future hangs on by the most fragile of threads. Chesnutt’s concluding line is “There’s time enough, but none to spare,” a sentiment that, like every aspect of his fraught, fragile, hard-won hope, feels here in January 2021 goddamn right (a bit of foreshadowing for tomorrow’s focal text).

Next hope-full text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Texts or voices which help you find hope?