"This cutting-edge text not only increases our understanding of African American literature and film; it also enlarges the accessibility and the possibilities of the field of ecocriticism."--Yvonne Atkinson, Mt. San Jacinto College and president of the Toni Morrison Society

While there is no lack of scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage and the Middle Passage as tropes in African diasporic writing, to date there has not been a comprehensive analysis of bodies of water in African American literature and culture.

In Water and African American Memory, Anissa Wardi offers the...