View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.
A New York Times Notable Book of 2002!
"Alexander's significant, welcome book gives us so much to think
about in the moving story of two people, trying to find their way
into the world and each other's lives"
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"An engaging study of the couple's courtship and marriage in
light of the social customs of the period, both within and outside
the African American community. . . Highly recommended."
--"Library Journal, starred review"
"Tells a fascinating tale of two compelling figures whose lives
were intriguing, at times harrowing, and in many ways tragic. At
the same time, Alexander investigates a broader topic. . .A
riveting narrative."
--Martha Hodes
Sexism, racism, self-hatred, and romantic love: all figure in
prominently in this scholarly-but nicely hard-boiled-discussion of
the bond between the famous Paul Laurence Dunbar and his wife
Alice. Eleanor Alexander's analysis of
turn-of-the-twentieth-century black marriage is required reading
for every student of American, especially African-American,
heterosexual relationships."
--Nell Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Princeton
University, Author of "Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol"
"Rich in documentation and generous in analysis, "Lyrics of
Sunshine and Shadow" advances our understanding of late nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century African American social and cultural
history in compelling and unexpected ways. By exposing the
devastating consequences of unequal power dynamics and gender
relations in the union of the celebrated writers, Paul Laurence
Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore, and by examining the hiddenunderside
of the Dunbars' storybook romance where alcohol, sex, and violence
prove fatal, Eleanor Alexander produces a provocative, nuanced
interpretation of late Victorian courtship and marriage, of
post-emancipation racial respectability and class mobility, of
pre-modern sexual rituals and color conventions in an emergent
elite black society."
--Thadious M. Davis, Vanderbilt University
"Eleanor Alexander's vivid account of the most famous black
writer of his day, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and his wife Alice,
illuminates the world of the African American literati at the
opening of the twentieth century. The Dunbars' fairy-tale romance
ended abruptly, when Alice walked out on her alcoholic, abusive
spouse. Alexander's access to scores of intimate letters and her
sensitive interpretation of the Dunbars mercurial highs and lows
reveal the tragic consequences of mixing alcohol, ambition and
amour. The Dunbars were precursors for another doomed duo: Scott
and Zelda Fitzgerald. Alexander's poignant story of the Dunbars
sheds important light on love and violence among DuBois's "talented
tenth."
--Catherine Clinton, author of "Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars"
"Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow debunks Dunbar myths...
Lyrics asks us to consider the ways in which racism and sexism
operate together."
-- "The Crisis"On February 10, 1906, Alice Ruth Moore, estranged
wife of renowned early twentieth-century poet Paul Laurence Dunbar,
boarded a streetcar, settled comfortably into her seat, and opened
her newspaper to learn of her husband's death the day before. Paul
Laurence Dunbar, son of former slaves, whom Frederick Douglass had
dubbed "the most promising young colored man in America," wasdead
from tuberculosis at the age of 33.
Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow traces the tempestuous romance of
America's most noted African-American literary couple. Drawing on a
variety of love letters, diaries, journals, and autobiographies,
Eleanor Alexander vividly recounts Dunbar's and Moore's tumultuous
affair, from a courtship conducted almost entirely through letters
and an elopement brought on by Dunbar's brutal, drunken rape of
Moore, through their passionate marriage and its eventual violent
dissolution in 1902. Moore, once having left Dunbar, rejected his
every entreaty to return to him, responding to his many letters
only once, with a blunt, one-word telegram ("No").
This is a remarkable story of tragic romance among
African-American elites struggling to define themselves and their
relationships within the context of post-slavery America. As such,
it provides a timely examination of the ways in which cultural
ideology and politics shape and complicate conceptions of romantic
love.
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