The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America's Most Famous Opera.

Abstract

Ellen Noonan has written a provocative, imaginative study chronicling the complicated artistic and racial politics surrounding the American classic Porgy and Bess. First as DuBose Heyward's seminal 1925 novel, and two years later as his theatrical production, Porgy and Bess moved through U.S. history creating a vibrant discussion of the meaning of American art and, even more centrally, the cultural representations of African Americans. At a time when theatrical exposure represented elite sophistication and when the arts were propagated abroad as a form of Cold War cultural democracy, Porgy and Bess reigned supreme. Yet Porgy and Bess was one of the most highly contested stories in all of its media iterations, and our contemporary wistfulness for the lazy lullaby of “Summertime” should not obscure African American hostility to Heyward's musical rendering of the black inhabitants of “Catfish Row.” Noonan expertly traces the complexity and heterogeneity of responses to the novel, play, and opera, demonstrating what was at stake for both white and black Americans. In the 1920s, Porgy and Bess engendered a dialogue within the black community about the denigrating effect of persistent stereotypes and the financial and artistic opportunities available for African Americans. For white Charlestonians, the novel and the 1927 play energized “old South” nostalgia while boosting tourism to the region. Heyward secured his place among the literary elite and, like many other white Southerners, fashioned himself as an expert on the “real black folk” he had encountered as a boy on the waterfront.

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