The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903
The founding text of African-American intellectual life. Du Bois names the color line and double consciousness. Published in 1903, still unanswered.
The case against
Du Bois writes in a high Victorian register, all invocation and cadence, that can feel ornate to a modern ear and slows the argument down. The book is also a genre jumble: sociology, memoir, a short story dropped in whole, an elegy for his dead son. Some chapters carry the weight of the color-line idea; others read as period set pieces to admire more than absorb.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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