Bright Skin - Paperback

by Julia Peterkin (Author), Ted Rosengarten (Foreword by)

Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness. In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride.

Back Jacket

A dissection of social upheaval, Bright Skin is Julia Peterkin's most sophisticated book, dealing with urban migration, miscegenation, illegitimacy, and racism from the low country of South Carolina to the streets of Harlem. The story of Cricket and Blue - a woman who leaves and a man left behind - is at the heart of the African American experience. As technology replaced manual labor on the plantation, thousands of descendants of slaves made their way north to jobs in the cities, where black separatism flourished. Peterkin writes of these changing times with keen perception and descriptive brilliance in Bright Skin - a story of getting ahead by getting away, rejecting the past and embracing a new future.

Author Biography

Julia Peterkin (1880-1961) was the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, and, with photographer Doris Ulmann, a nonfiction collection of essays entitled "Roll, Jordan, Roll." She was the first South Carolinian to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize.