Frank Yerby -- ep. by Valerie Matthews

A short take on novelist Frank Yerby. 
Written by Valerie Matthews.
Read by Kassandra Timm

Transcript

Frank Yerby was a best-selling novelist who spent his career challenging historical myths. He published thirty-three novels between 1946 and 1985 that explore various peoples and periods from the antebellum South, to Moorish Spain, to precolonial Dahomey, to contemporary Paris and many points in between.

You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions — a podcast about popular and critical responses to African American novels and more. 

Frank Yerby was the first African American writer to have one of his novels, The Foxes of Harrow (1946), released as a major Hollywood movie in 1947. Before he was the successful novelist who expatriated to France then Spain, his short story, “Health Card,” won the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Award Committee special prize for a first-published short story in 1944. 

In spite of his early critical success in the short story format, the Black protest novel he produced thereafter didn’t garner a publishing contract, so he turned to writing his “costume novels.” These novels utilized the historical, adventure-romance formula that had risen to prominence in the 1930s in novels, such as Gone with the Wind, and most of them featured non-black protagonists. 

In his essay “How and Why I Write the Costume Novel,” Yerby reveals that he decided to call his books “costume novels” because publishers cut so much of his historical research from the novels that it essentially became  only set dressing. 

Although a few of his contemporaries acknowledged Yerby as a great debunker of historical myths, scholars have often ignored Yerby’s work because he published mass-produced, formulaic fiction and because he affirmed that his primary goal was to entertain rather than protest.

However, Yerby championed the oppressed through historical excavation in every novel. His ability to reach huge numbers of White readers, many of whom didn’t know Yerby was Black, and influence their views on social issues is an intriguing reason to reexamine his work. 

Recent critical studies of Yerby’s writing, such as Rediscovering Frank Yerby: Critical Essays edited by Matthew Teutsh, The Short Stories of Frank Yerby, edited by Veronica Watson, and other articles in other scholarly collections indicate that Yerby’s work may enjoy a renaissance with new readers and receive the remarkable scholarly reception that his commercial success earned before his death in 1991.

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This episode was written by Valerie Matthews. The episode was edited by Elizabeth Cali and Howard Rambsy.

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This podcast, Remarkable Receptions, is part of the Black Literature Network, a joint project from African American literary studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas. The project was made possible by the generous support of the Mellon Foundation.  For more information, visit blacklitnetwork.org.