Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay

by Shanna Greene Benjamin

Overview

Nellie Y. McKay (1930–2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay's life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Shanna Greene Benjamin examines McKay's path through the professoriate to learn about the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy. Benjamin shows that McKay's secrecy was a necessary tactic that a Black, working-class woman had to employ to succeed in the white-dominated space of the American English department. Using extensive archives and personal correspondence, Benjamin brings together McKay's private life and public work to expand how we think about Black literary history and the place of Black women in American culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469661896
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	87,029
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Shanna Greene Benjamin is an independent scholar living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Half in Shadow is a significant contribution to the intersecting fields of African American and women's studies and stands as a lasting tribute to a devoted mentor. Shanna Benjamin paints a compelling and convincing portrait of Nellie Y. McKay as a complex mentor, an ambitious single mother, and a discipline-defining scholar. The result is a fascinating exploration of a life told with sensitivity rather than sensation."—Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Madison



Shanna Benjamin has written the kind of book so many of us have longed to read: a history concerning Black women scholars who significantly shaped African American literary studies. The project highlights aspects of a scholar who was widely known yet remained Half in Shadow. Though this book primarily concentrates on a single person, we see the stakes in the field for women, especially Black women, in the academy. Benjamin does essential work here."—Howard Rambsy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville



Shanna Benjamin's biography of Nellie McKay is a remarkable portrait of a Black feminist literary scholar who helped to craft the influential field of Black Women's Studies and made significant contributions to African American literary studies. Very compelling as well is Benjamin's unusual method, which weaves her own personal narrative as a literary scholar into the extraordinary, complex life of her former professor."—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Spelman College

Editorial Reviews

Illustrating the challenges and exclusion often experienced by Black women in academia, Shanna Greene Benjamin has written this compelling and unexpected biography of Nellie Y. McKay, a formidable scholar of contemporary literature and women's studies." —Ms. Magazine

From the Publisher

02/19/2021

This biography is an incomplete account of McKay's life (1930–2006), but a thorough assessment of her academic career as an undergraduate at Queens College, City University of New York; a graduate student at Harvard University; and professor of African American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1978–2006). McKay was an early and consistent advocate for the representation of Black women in the academy and of Black women writers in the canon and curricula of African American Literature. She also played a decisive role as editor, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. After her death, friends and colleagues discovered that McKay had been married with two children and claimed to be a decade younger. Her motivation remains obscure since her family declined interviews, though independent scholar Benjamin relies on personal archives and correspondence to make the case that the motivation was out of necessity, in order for a Black working-class woman to succeed in the white-dominated academy. However, it would have been helpful if Benjamin offered more insight on Jamaica, McKay's place of birth, her adolescence, and her marriage. VERDICT McKay's life remains in shadow; her legacy awaits a comparative assessment of the contributions of her contemporaries to Black feminist studies and African American literature.—Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

Library Journal