| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Imagining the African American West. By Blake Allmendinger. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xx, 161 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-8032-1067-1.)
Imagining the African American West does not explore the realities of the black frontier experience. Instead, Blake Allmendinger navigates the rich body of cultural artifacts about the West, perceived through the eyes of African American artists. Rather than solely focusing on literary fiction, the author also considers film, music, and autobiography, illustrating how the various mediums intersected with each other. What Allmendinger does focus on is the "idea" of the West in African American literary and artistic circles. Acknowledging that there was "no such thing as a 'representative' African American western experience" he also argues that there are "many different impressions of place" (p. xvi).	1
Allmendinger appropriately begins the volume with James P. Beckwourth, one of the most prominent African American mountain men on the Western frontier. While other authors have questioned the authenticity of Beckwourth's autobiography, the author expertly illustrates the frontiersman's literary "passing"—the explicit non-acknowledgment of his racial ancestry.	. . .

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