Description: The first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence and Black writers, Laura Ryan examines connections between Lawrence and four key Black and mixed-race modernist writers - Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston - positioning all five as co-creators of modernism.
Brief description: Laura Ryan is an independent scholar based in North East England.
Review Quotes:
"Laura Ryan's book demonstrates how the New Modernist Studies continues to inspire innovative transnational and Black modernist scholarship. Spanning authors from Claude McKay and Langston Hughes to Hurston, Baldwin, and Morrison, Ryan convincingly argues that DH Lawrence, an author seldom invoked by Black modernists, either directly influenced or indirectly shared common concerns with New Negro Renaissance authors and their mid- to late-twentieth-century successors." --Laura Winkiel, Professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
"D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature showed how one English literary modernist read American writers; now, Laura Ryan has amply demonstrated how several Black American modernists read Lawrence, and/or are productively read alongside him. Ryan's study of influence and confluence has added a new dimension to analyses of Lawrence and race and makes an important contribution to cross-cultural and cross-national approaches to modernism in general." --Judith Ruderman, Former Vice Provost and Adjunct Professor, Duke University, USA