Charles W. Chesnutt, for those who don't know, was a Civil Rights figure of the late 19th century, mostly in New Orleans -- a mixed-race person of partial African descent and a larger portion of European, and a person who could pass for white. He had a decision early on to make -- if he committed to all of the complexities of saying 'yes' to passing for white. Yes, this would have meant extreme reduction in barriers to jobs, housing, public transit, places to eat, telling the census taker to record him as white. However, it would also mean being cut off from his family of origin and being unable to go and see them or hang out with them in public, particularly for those whose appearance was more apparent as Black. He would not have been able to go to Black community centers, churches, or other places of gathering.

Instead, he decided to identify as a mixed-race person of African descent. In doing so, he was putting a target on his back -- and his family's back -- from the local white supremacist groups (including the Klan) who have a documented history of murdering not only Black people whose appearance is more apparent, but also white-passing people who chose to identify as Black (for more on that, look up Vernon Dahmer and the book "When Evil Lived in Laurel" by Curtis Wilkie. [A further addendum here that you also had instances of the Klan and other white supremacist groups violently beating, and killing, white people of Western European descent, like James Reeb, the white Unitarian minister who supported the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and as a result, was targeted by the Klan and murdered viciously].

Back to Chesnutt, I have been fascinated by him not only as a writer, in terms of his literary contributions, but also as a person who fought for equal rights even though he knew that it came at a high cost to himself and posed a danger.

This book, "A Matter of Complexion," is extremely well-researched and detailed for anyone who has wanted to know more about Chesnutt or who studies this period either from a historical lens, English literature and that of Black writers, etc, and other lenses.

It goes into very granular detail back to the start -- when Chesnutt was born, his father having been a Union soldier returning to the South after the war, the history of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and its "black district," the anti-miscegenation laws that his grandparents faced, and more, including Chesnutt's early education at the Howard School. This book goes into granular detail, as mentioned above, about Chesnutt's life, education, when he got to New York and how he interacted with people of different races. He was compared to the other glitterati of the time, like Edith Wharton and Henry James, as a "country bumpkin" -- a poor, Black Southerner "who had been teaching Black students in a one-room schoolhouse how to read and write" who struggled to answer the question of how he would fit in with the rich New Yorkers.

The book is a rich, literary biography that is much-needed because although there are certainly other books about Chesnutt or that discuss him among the context of his contemporaries, there hasn't been one that is this comprehensive and this much of a boon to anyone who has studied the writer for a long time. Highly recommended especially for academic libraries, who should most definitely acquire this.

This was a very interesting read as I didn't know about this history before. The author didn't focus on getting too specific, which made this easier to read and effective in its message. I couldn't believe this only took place not so long ago, and it made me spend time reflecting on this country's history.

At fifteen, Charles W. Chesnutt became a teacher, one of the few jobs open to a highly intelligent youth of color. Unable to pursue higher education, Chesnutt read extensively. He dreamed of becoming an author who wrote about the daily life of colored people, books that would “elevate the whites” and tear down the “spirit of caste” that subjected “a whole race and all connected with it to scorn and social ostracism.”

While working as a school principal, then in the North as a skilled stenographer, and while raising a family, Chesnutt wrote short stories and novels. Chesnutt’s work was well received by the critics, and had readers on “both sides of the color line.” Mark Twain invited him to his 70th birthday party. He became involved with politics, supporting voting rights, and campaigned against the film The Birth of a Nation.

Chesnutt wanted to show Northern writers and readers who these Black people really were, and the kind of story that real Black people told was like nothing white Northern readers and writers has heard before. from A Matter of Complexion by Tess Chakkalakal

One-eighth black, Chesnutt appeared white but self-identified as colored. He wanted to be considered a writer, not as a “negro” writer. He rejected the acceptance of divisions by color. The society he grew up in was socially rigid; colored people didn’t marry down to those with darker skin.

The descriptions of his stories and novels are intriguing. His early ‘conjure stories’ were in dialect. His first novel, which he worked on for a decade, was about a tragic romance between a white man and a colored woman and was made into a silent film.

Chesnutt was a remarkable man who forged the way for later writers of color.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

I really enjoyed reading this and enjoyed learning about Charles Chesnutt and how it was told in this story. It worked as a way to tell the story about Charles Chesnutt and enjoyed getting into this story. Tess Chakkalakal wrote this perfectly and left me wanting to read more from them.

A Fictionalized Biography of the First Black-and-White Pop Author

“A biography of Charles Chesnutt” (1858-1932) “one of the first American authors to write for both Black and white readers… Born in Cleveland to parents who were considered ‘mixed race.’ He spent his early life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing. He went on to become the first Black writer whose stories appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and whose books were published by Houghton Mifflin. Through his literary work, as a writer, critic, and speaker, Chesnutt transformed the publishing world by crossing racial barriers that divided black writers from white and seamlessly including both Black and white characters in his writing….” A writer who broke “into the all-white literary establishment” to “win admirers as diverse as William Dean Howells, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and Lorraine Hansberry.”
The “Prologue: A Friendship Across the Color Line” starts suspiciously with a narration that seems to be coming from Chesnutt’s thoughts, and thus is a fiction… It claims that he was glad there was no “For Colored” cars, but does not use a quote the source of these imaginings or put this passage into quotation marks. It’s possible he had very different ideas during this trip, so putting these words into his head is not a sound research strategy. The first quotes here are basically the names of the first three stories he submitted to The Atlantic: “The Wife of His Youth”, “The March of Progress” and “Lonesome Ben”. To figure out the sources, I turned to the “Notes” section. These sources are listed as: Charles W. Chesnutt Papers in the Houghton, Mifflin and company archive, and books such as Chesnutt’s Colophon (1931), and articles in the Atlantic Monthly and Southern Worman, and essays such as Chesnutt’s “The Free Colored People”. So, this is a fictionalized expanding of snippets of detail offered in these works and manuscripts. What is true, and was is an added fiction is not explained. So, students should not use quotes from this book in graduate-level research papers, as claims might not be supported in the evidence.
“10: Takes Up Literature” begins with a long quote from Chesnutt’s letter to Walter Hines Page in 1899, before describing the reception of “The Wife” article’s publication to puffing reviews. This is relatively factual. This might be an interesting read for those who are interested in this subject, but don’t need to find evidence for research they plan on publishing.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024