Spectres from the Past: Slavery and the Politics of History in West African and African-American Literature

ISBN-13: 9781032239637 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 148 str.

Portia Owusu

Opis

Spectres from the Past: The "History" of Slavery in West African and African-American Narratives explores slavery in contemporary West African and African-American literature by looking at the politics of history and memory.

Spis treści

Introduction: Evoking Spectres in History.

Chapter 1: Literary Archaeology: The Uncovering and Recovering of Historical Memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Chapter 2: Articulating ‘Silence’: The Language of Death as Memory in Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost.

Chapter 3: Bloodlines and Blurred lines: Contested Memories and Freedom in Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings.

Chapter 4: The Limitations of ‘History’: Chika Ezeanya’s Re-visioning of the Early Years of Olaudah Equiano and Slavery in Before We Set Sail.

Chapter 5: Wreckages of History: The Past as Ongoing in Amiri Baraka’s Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant.

Chapter 6: The Magic of ‘History’ and Contradictions of ‘Return’ to the M(other) land in Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar.

Conclusion: Defining Silences.

O autorze

Portia Owusu is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include history and memory, cultural philosophy and literature and West African and African-American contemporary narratives. She received her PhD in 2017 in Africana Literature at the SOAS, University of London.