Demonstrating the extraordinary versatility of African-American men's writing since the 1970s, this forceful collection illustrates how African-American male novelists and playwrights have absorbed, challenged, and expanded the conventions of black American writing and, with it, black male identity. From the John Henry Syndrome - a definition of black masculinity based on brute strength or violence - to the submersion of black gay identity under equations of gay with white and black with straight, the African-American male in literature and drama has traditionally been characterized in ways...

Clark explores how in their own work, three major African American writers contest classic portrayals of black men in earlier literature, from slave narratives through the great novels of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.

This welcome study delivers a long-overdue analysis of the works of Ann Petry (1908 1997), a major mid-twentieth-century African American author. Primarily known as the sole female member of the "Wright School of Social Protest," Petry has been most recognized for her 1946 novel The Street, about a woman's struggle to raise her son in a hardscrabble Harlem neighborhood. Keith Clark moves beyond assessments of Petry as a sort of literary descendent of Richard Wright to acclaim her innovative approaches to gender performance, sexuality, and literary technique. Engaging a variety of disciplinary...