Discussed in this essay:
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Penguin Press. 320 pages. $30.
Humour, by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press. 224 pages. $24.
Tears of the Trufflepig, by Fernando A. Flores. FSG Originals. 336 pages. $16.
Shifting the Gaze, by Titus Kaphar © The artist Courtesy Titus Kaphar Studio. Collection of the Brooklyn Museum
In 1899, decades before the Harlem Renaissance brought black writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston to national attention, Charles Waddell Chesnutt published his…