A Spy in the Enemy's Country

In Part One I examine the literary, historical, and social contexts within which the emerging Black literature took root. Conditions encouraged certain qualities in the literature, qualities which have persisted as racism has persisted: 1) a collective point of view; 2) the mimetic mode; 3) a sensitivity to the play of power; 4) a consciousness of the fragility of the self; 5) a predilection for the moral imperative; and 6) a recurrence of the tactic of masking. The preoccupation with identity and the self, among the writers considered in Part Two, grows out of the pressures explored in Part One. - p. x.