In this comprehensive work, Tyrone R. Simpson, II, explores how six American writers Anzia Yezierska, Michael Gold, Hubert Selby Jr., Chester Himes, Gloria Naylor, and John Edgar Wideman have artistically responded to the racialization of U.S. frostbelt cities in the twentieth century. By using the critical tools of spatial theory, critical race theory, urban history, and urban sociology, Simpson accounts for how these writers imagine the subjective response to the racemaking power of space.