The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753? 1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who refused to believe that a black woman could produce such dense, intellectual work, let alone influence Romantic-period giants like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson once declared that the compositions published under her name are below dignity of criticism. In recent decades, however, Wheatley s work has come under new scrutiny as the literature of the eighteenth century and the impact of African American literature have been...
The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753? 1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who re...
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789) is one of the most frequently and heatedly discussed texts in the canon of eighteenth-century transatlantic literature written in English. Equiano s Narrative contains an engrossing account of the author s experiences in Africa, the Americas, and Europe as he sought freedom from bondage and became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. While scholars have approached this sophisticated work from diverse critical and historical/biographical perspectives, there has been,...
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789) is one of the most frequently and ...
This timely volume embraces and interprets the increasingly broad and deep canon of life narratives by African Americans. The contributors discover and recover neglected lives, texts, and genres, enlarge the wide range of critical methods used by scholars to study these works, and expand the understanding of autobiography to encompass photography, comics, blogs, and other modes of self-expression. This book also examines at length the proliferation of African American autobiography in the twenty-first century, noting the roles of digital genres, remediated lives, celebrity lives, self-help...
This timely volume embraces and interprets the increasingly broad and deep canon of life narratives by African Americans. The contributors discover an...
