The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War

In The Blue Period, Jesse McCarthy examines how African American writers navigated the political and cultural pressures of the Cold War era. Between World War II and the rise of Black Power, authors like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Paule Marshall found themselves alienated from both the Soviet Union’s authoritarian communism and America’s racially oppressive liberalism. McCarthy argues that this dual estrangement led to bold literary experimentation, as Black writers turned inward, exploring emotion, identity, and artistic freedom as acts of resistance. Through this “Blue Period,” they crafted an underground aesthetic that, rather than retreating from politics, reimagined radical expression for a future liberation.