Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1

Part I: The Folklore of Racial Capitalism  

1. "A Combination Madhouse, Burlesque Show and Coney Island": The Color Question in George Schuyler's Black No More  33

2. "Inantimate Hideosities": The Burlesque of Racial Capitalism in Nathanael West's A Cool Million  72

Part II: Performing the Folk  

3. "The Last American Frontier": Mapping the Folk in The Federal Writers' Project's Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State  113

4. "Ah Gives Myself de Privilege to Go": Navigating the Field and the Folk in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men  152

Part III: Populist Masquerade  

5. "Am I Laughing?": Burlesque Incongruities of Genre, Gender, and Audience in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels  191

Afterpiece: The Coen Brothers' Ol'-Timey Blues in O Brother, Where Art Thou?  240

Notes  251

Bibliography  287

Index  311

“Taking direct aim at conventional literary and cultural histories of the 1930s that exalt nonfiction and documentary modes of production, this original, provocative study argues instead that readers and scholars need to pay much close attention to more unruly genres and texts produced during this turbulent era. . . . This engaging, engrossing study considerably expands and enriches knowledge or the American 1930s. Highly recommended.”—J. A. Miller, Choice

“When we imagine ordinary Americans in the 1930s, many of us think of the subjects of Dorothea Lange’s photographs or the characters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). But Sonnet Retman complements those images in Real Folks by exploring representations of the folk in five less-well-known works by novelists, ethnographers, and filmmakers
from the decade of the Great Depression.”—Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Journal of American History

“[Retman’s] effort to break down the boundaries separating fiction from ethnography, and documentary from satire, clearly opens new areas for continued study.”—Paula Rabinowitz, Modern Language Quarterly

“Taking direct aim at conventional literary and cultural histories of the 1930s that exalt nonfiction and documentary modes of production, this original, provocative study argues instead that readers and scholars need to pay much close attention to more unruly genres and texts produced during this turbulent era. . . . This engaging, engrossing study considerably expands and enriches knowledge or the American 1930s. Highly recommended.”—J. A. Miller, Choice

“When we imagine ordinary Americans in the 1930s, many of us think of the subjects of Dorothea Lange’s photographs or the characters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). But Sonnet Retman complements those images in Real Folks by exploring representations of the folk in five less-well-known works by novelists, ethnographers, and filmmakers
from the decade of the Great Depression.”—Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Journal of American History

“[Retman’s] effort to break down the boundaries separating fiction from ethnography, and documentary from satire, clearly opens new areas for continued study.”—Paula Rabinowitz, Modern Language Quarterly

“This wonderfully engaging account of the construction of the folk is fascinating for its components and the connections among them. It is an important study of documentary and satirical genres, as well as the relationship between genre categorizations and cultural narratives. Sonnet Retman is especially insightful on the relationship between literary form and cultural change.”—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

“Sonnet Retman presents a deft, razor-sharp revisionist interpretation of Depression-era America. She argues that, rather than social realism, an insurgent taste for satire—sated through idioms of minstrelsy, burlesque, ‘signifying ethnography,’ and screwball comedy—drove the smartest cultural challenges to an economy and polity careening off the tracks. George Schuyler, Nathanael West, Zora Neale Hurston, Preston Sturges, and other artists challenged reflexive celebrations of folk authenticity, dissected the racialist logic of modern market economies, and reframed the struggle to secure the integrity of American selves, both body and soul. Real Folks is profoundly illuminating in its assessment of the Depression era, and it is highly relevant to our own times.”—Adam Green, author of Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955

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