A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt

In this excellent biography, Chakkalakal (Novel Bondage), an American literature professor at Bowdoin College, chronicles the life of groundbreaking novelist Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932). Born to free Black parents who fled the South for Cleveland, Chesnutt became a teacher at age 16—it was one of the few professions open to ambitious young Black men. Aspiring to a more literary line of work, Chesnutt took a stenography job in 1883 and spent his nights writing short stories and novels, becoming in 1887 the first Black author to publish fiction in The Atlantic. Though Chesnutt’s day job put his writing on the back burner for nearly a decade, he secured a publishing deal with Houghton Mifflin and in 1899 published the short story collection The Conjure Woman, which marked the first time a major American publisher printed a fictional work by a nonwhite writer. Chakkalakal makes clear the enraging difficulties Chesnutt faced as a Black author in a white publishing industry, noting, for example, that Houghton misleadingly marketed The Conjure Woman as sentimental plantation fiction. She presents Chesnutt as something of a tragic figure for clawing his way to the upper echelon of American letters only to quit amid lackluster sales well over a decade before the Harlem Renaissance renewed interest in his work. An overdue celebration of an unjustly forgotten author, this enthralls. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)