Background
He was born in Swansea and educated in England and America.
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- Works
book
Masks: Blackness, Race, and the Imagination
(What is "race"? A biological fact, a social construction,...)
What is "race"? A biological fact, a social construction, or an assumed disguise? In Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination, acclaimed novelist and critic Adam Lively offers a brilliant exploration of how the concept of blackness has evolved in Western thought and literature, and how changing notions of racial identity helped to shape modern consciousness. Lively traces ideas of racial difference to their earliest expressions in European culture, at the time of the Europeans' first encounters with African and American peoples, and follows these ideas to their current incarnations in contemporary America and the Caribbean. He explores the various and sometimes reversible ways in which racial identity has functioned as a mask: the pure white soul inside the black person; the primitive, dark soul ready to break through the civilized white veneer; the "invisible" black whose identity consists of projected white fears. Examining a wide range of works over the last three centuries--including slave autobiographies, sentimental romances, propagandist verse, natural history, jazz (which he calls "a music of disguises") and such 20th-century writers as Jean Genet, Joseph Conrad, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, John Updike, Eugene O'Neill, and others--Lively explores the fluidity of racial identity. He argues that the modernist concern with the uncertainties of identity and indeed that modernism's relativistic, ironic, pluralistic, and perpetually questioning characteristics are derived largely from black experience of a shifting sense of self. Lucidly written and covering an enormous historical expanse, Masks uncovers the changing ways we have tried to understand the elusive and often illusory nature of racial identity.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195133706/?tag=2022091-20
Democracy in Britain: A Reader (Advances in Theoretical and Applied)
(Democracy in Britain includes a rich and varied selection...)
Democracy in Britain includes a rich and varied selection of key writings, from the debates around Britain's representative and democratic institutions, from constitutional commentary and diaries to poetry and fiction; from Locke and Burke to Dryden and Auden; and from Magna Carta to Spycatcher. • Provides the best resource available for the understanding and study of Britain's system of representative democracy • The editors have made efforts throughout to make the material selected accessible to non-specialists • Rather than following one side of the debate on British democracy, this presents the reader with both sides of the argument • Sponsored by the British Council, the book will receive special advertising and promotion
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0631188312/?tag=2022091-20
- Sing the Body Electric (Binding Unknown, Date not stated)
Adam Lively
Edit ProfileCareer
His debut novel Blue Fruit was published in 1988. In 1993, he was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. Lively has also worked as a producer/director of television documentaries and reviews fiction for The Sunday Times newspaper.
Achievements
Works
book
-
Masks: Blackness, Race, and the Imagination
(What is "race"? A biological fact, a social construction,...)
-
Democracy in Britain: A Reader (Advances in Theoretical and Applied)
(Democracy in Britain includes a rich and varied selection...)
-
Sing the Body Electric
(Binding Unknown, Date not stated)
-
Masks: Blackness, Race, and the Imagination
