Department of Family Social Science Professor Emeritus Paul Rosenblatt’s new book, The Impact of Racism on African American Families: Literature as Social Science, explores how African American authors of 27 novels depicted the influence of racism on African American family life.
From the publisher, Ashgate:
Despite thousands of published social science studies dealing with the influence of racism on African Americans, there is almost no research dealing with how racism influences the interior life of African American families. The social science literature has focused primarily on individuals and on aggregate statistical indicators such as income, wealth, and home ownership. By contrast, the novels of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Gloria Naylor, and many other African American novelists are rich in accounts of how racism impacts African American family relationships. This book is both an examination of how racism may influence African American family interactions and of the gains and challenges of using fiction in exploring social science issues.
