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GOLDSBY, JACQUELINE, ed. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Norton Critical Edition. By James Weldon Johnson. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. 439 pp. $13.12 paperback.
James Weldon Johnson is remembered for penning the lyrics of the black civil rights anthem "LiftEvery Voice and Sing" and for serving as the first African American executive secretary of the NAACP (1920-1930). Just as Johnson's activism prefigured the tactics of later waves of civil-rights protest-he led a silent march against lynching in New York City during the summer of 1917-his literary innovations placed him at the avant-garde of both the New Negro arts movement and Anglo-American modernism. In her 2015 Norton Critical Edition of Johnson's novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (ECM), Jacqueline Goldsby foregrounds Johnson's modernism and avant-garde stats, building on approaches taken by Henry Louis Gates, in his introduction to the 1989 Vintage edition, and William L. Andrews, in his preface to the 1990 Penguin edition. Goldsby's is the first annotated, scholarly edition that allows readers to explore how Johnson's ECM-as well as its publication and reception history-challenges our notions of what makes a work "modern" and what counts as a "novel." Goldsby provides excerpts from drafts of ECM, historical sources, correspondence relating to the novel's publication and composition, and reviews contemporary with its 1912, 1927, and 1948 printings, along with copious explanatory footnotes. This material illuminates Johnson's engagement with the African American race novel, American literary modernism, and 1940s mass culture, making this edition a valuable resource for scholars...