Let me start from the beginning.
There once was a man from Wimbledon. Let’s say his name was Mark Shackleton. A great academic, fun and eccentric, supervised my doctoral dissertation. In addition to my perceptive, encouraging, and limerick-loving first Ph.D. supervisor, I want to thank my other supervisors Howard Sklar and Nely Keinänen. Without their meticulous insight and unwavering support until the very end of my doctoral studies, I would not have been able to write this book. I am beyond honored to have had Tommy J. Curry and Thabiti Lewis as my preliminary examiners. While I am indebted to Professor Curry for his seminal theoretical work within academia, I am especially grateful that Professor Lewis agreed to serve as my opponent in the public defense of my dissertation. I also appreciate his guidance when I began revising my dissertation into this monograph.
One does very little without community, and I have been blessed with the opportunity of having many of them. I am grateful for being able to call the John Morton Center for North American Studies my academic home while editing this book for publication. In addition to the director of the JMC, Benita Heiskanen, the group of dedicated and insightful colleagues at the Center have provided invaluable intellectual, collegial, and emotional support during the writing of this book. Thank you, Mila Seppälä, Jaakko Dickman, Pekka Kolehmainen, Niko Heikkilä, Oscar Winberg, Nadia Nava Contreras, Julia Niinistö, Ella Laattala, and Emma Lähteenmäki. You are an inspiration.
I am grateful to the people at my alma mater, the University of Helsinki, where numerous people not only read and commented on my drafts, but also provided collegial support along the years. Thank you, Bo Pettersson, Heta Pyrhönen, Merja Polvinen, Maria Salenius, Anna Solin, Päivi Väätänen, Laura Hekanaho, Hanna-Mari Pienimäki, Ylva Biri, Wilma Andersson, Noora Kumpulainen, Saara Moisio, Paula Kontio, Maura Ratia, Kaisa Kortekallio, Esko Suoranta, and Eric Bergman, and anyone else I ever crossed paths with during this process. While I have made friends with many of these people also outside academia, a special thanks goes to my other academic friends Nana Arjopalo, Reetta Humalajoki, Laura Nissin, and the lovely people at the Thursday online writing group at the University of Helsinki. Thank you for being there through all the ups and downs of my early career and sharing your own experiences with generosity and honesty. It means a great deal to me.
I am forever grateful to the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) for granting me the Rob Kroes publication award, and the anonymous reviewers who not only recommended my manuscript to receive the prize, but gave thoughtful and extremely useful comments on how to improve the text. I would not have been able to complete this book alone. The patient professionalism of Brill’s Simona Casadio, Series Editor Marek Paryż, and my lovely copyeditor Layla Saleh has been indispensable.
I am grateful to my father who raised me surrounded by thousands of books and from whom I internalized the love of literature and an interest in cultures including, but not restricted to, my own. An orphan who himself grew up in poverty and made a living by driving the forklift, he has always been supportive of my “class trip.” Kiitti, faija.
A special thanks goes to my family of friends including, in particular, Anni Selin, Sanna Hirvonen, Susanna Nurminen, and Sigrid Sulg Statovci, as well as my godchildren Alina, Ella, and Leone. Thank you for always keeping me in check of my non-academic self and reminding me of the importance of family.
I am grateful to have been able to republish some of my earlier texts in revised form. This book as a whole is an edited version of my doctoral dissertation (Kolehmainen 2022), and Chapter 3 is based on “Toni Cade Bambara’s Vulnerable Men,” published in a monograph entitled Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre by UCL Press (Kolehmainen 2021). In addition, an earlier version of Chapter 4 was published as an article in American Studies in Scandinavia (Kolehmainen 2018), and I also examined Tar Baby and stereotypes/othering in my master’s thesis (Kolehmainen 2011). I would like to thank all the publishers for granting me the opportunity to reuse the materials.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my most important teachers. To all African American authors: Thank you for educating me. Thank you for writing.