Lyrics of sunshine and shadow
Subtitle: the tragic courtship and marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore : a history of love and violence among the African American elite
By: Eleanor Alexander.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
Subjects: Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872-1906 -- Marriage; Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore, 1875-1935 -- Marriage; Authors' spouses -- United States -- Biography; Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Married people -- United States -- Biography; African American authors -- Biography; African Americans -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: "On February 10, 1906, Alice Ruth Moore, estranged wife of renowned early-twentieth-century poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, boarded a streetcar, settled comfortably into her seat, and opened her newspaper to learn of her husband's death the day before. Paul Laurence Dunbar, son of former slaves, whom Frederick Douglass had dubbed "the most promising young colored man in America," was dead from tuberculosis at the age of 33.".

"Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow traces the tempestuous romance of America's most noted African American literary couple. Drawing on a variety of love letters, diaries, journals, and autobiographies, Eleanor Alexander vividly recounts Dunbar and Moore's tumultuous affair, from a courtship conducted almost entirely through letters and an elopement brought on by Dunbar's brutal, drunken rape of Moore, through their passionate marriage and its eventual violent dissolution in 1902.

Moore, once having left Dunbar, rejected his every entreaty to return to him, responding to his many letters only once, with a blunt, one-word telegram ("No")." "This is a remarkable story of tragic romance among African American elites struggling to define themselves and their relationships within the context of post-slavery America. As such, it provides a timely examination of the ways in which cultural ideology and politics shape and complicate conceptions of romantic love."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-238) and index.
Table of contents: title: The child is the father of the man; title: To escape the reproach of her birth and blood; title: The wooing; title: One damned night of folly; title: Parted.