Another Social Protest Adaptation -- ep. by Nicole Dixon

A brief take on James Baldwin’s critique of “social protest fiction,” exploring how audiences continue to embrace and adapt works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Native Son.

Script by Nicole Dixon

Read by Kassandra Timm

Transcript

In 1955, James Baldwin boldly critiqued two novels considered cultural cornerstones of the American literary canon, calling both works “social protest fiction.” Those novels? Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Native Son by Richard Wright. 

 Contemporary audiences frequently embrace Baldwin’s insights about American culture and history, often sharing and reproducing quotes from his speeches and essays on social media and in other public forums. But if the number of film adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son and more “social protest” literature is any indication, audiences did not and do not agree with Baldwin on this point. 

 You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions — a podcast about the reach and circulation of African American literary art and more.

 In “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” one of Baldwin’s most well-known essays, he argues that Stowe’s and Wright’s novels represent part of the American literary tradition of social problem fiction. This genre, often called “the social novel,” typically builds character and plot developments to explicitly explore pressing societal issues such as race, class, or gender inequalities. For Baldwin, however, this form sacrifices artistic quality and is often prescriptive and formulaic, leaving little for the audience to consider or determine on their own. 

 And yet, the sheer number of adaptations these works have inspired demonstrates lasting audience interest in fiction that deploys its characters, settings and dramatic plot shifts to guide readers to arrive at new moral conclusions or realizations about racial, class, gender and other social inequities.  

 Consider this: together, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Native Son have been adapted for the screen over seven times, with each receiving at least two feature-length film versions. By contrast, just one of Baldwin’s own works, If Beale Street Could Talk, has been adapted into a feature film. 

More, film adaptations of social protest fiction by African American writers proliferate today, including The Hate U Give, and On the Come Up by Angie Thomas, Push by Sapphire, and Monster by Walter Dean Myers. 

Reception histories are remarkable in part because they provide insight into the various ways that readers responded to well-known African American literary works, even and perhaps especially when not everyone was on the same page.

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This episode was written by Nicole Dixon. The episode was edited by Elizabeth Cali and Howard Rambsy, and read by me, Kassandra Timm.

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