Dorothy West, The Living is Easy

A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Ed. by A Yemisi Jimoh, University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1948

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

When Dorothy West's first novel, The Living Is Easy, was published in 1948, the United States was emerging from the war years and was still haunted by the collapse of its economy in the 1930s. During these decades, black writers were encouraged by publishers to move away from questions of social justice, even though the period saw persistent racialized social unrest. Prevailing social policies in the United States and its publishing industry during the 1940s emphasized an ideology which Philip Butcher, in a 1948 review of West's novel in Opportunity magazine, referred to as “raceless writers”. Dorothy West's title for her novel, The Living Is Easy, suggests that she was aware of this optimistic mood, even as …

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882 words

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "The Living is Easy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=310, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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