Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> American - African American & Black

Focusing on the trope of passing -- black characters lightskinned enough to pass for white -- M. Giulia Fabi shows how early African-American authors such as William Wells Brown,...

..". a rare combination of inclusiveness and honesty.... cogent introduction s]... confirm the central point of the tales: a search for cultural identity and freedom. First-rate." Library Journal

..". deserves a place alongside the classic collection of Negro tales, Mules and Men. Folktales are the stories people tell, and Shuckin and Jivin presents a splendid representative sheaf of the stories black Americans of all social classes tell today.... Professional folklorists will applaud Dance s candor and scholarly rigor." Richard M. Dorson

An exciting new collection of Black...

"The Changing Same" examines defining moments in African American women's fiction and its reception: the "Women's Era" of the 1890s, the Harlem Renaissance, and the "New Black Renaissance" of the 1970s and 1980s. Deborah McDowell maps this history in readings of Emma Dunham Kelley, Frances E. W. Harper, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Sherley Anne Williams. She examines representations of slavery, sexuality, and homoeroticism; the reception of African American women's fiction in the 1980s; and African American feminist writing in the "Age of Theory."

The figure of the violent man in the African American imagination has a long history. He can be found in 19th-century bad man ballads like "Stagolee" and "John Hardy," as well as in the black convict recitations that influenced "gangsta" rap. "Born in a Mighty Bad Land" connects this figure with similar characters in African American fiction. Many writers-McKay and Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance; Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison in the '40s and '50s; Himes in the '50s and '60s-saw the "bad nigger" as an archetypal figure in the black imagination and psyche. "Blaxploitation" novels in the...

"Heretofore scholars have not been willing--perhaps, even been unable for many reasons both academic and personal--to identify much of the Harlem Renaissance work as same-sex oriented.... An important book." --Jim Elledge

This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers' works vary...

Episodes of slave rebellions such as Nat Turner's are central to speculations on the trajectory of black history and the goal of black spiritual struggles. Using fiction, history, and oral poetry drawn from the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa, this book analyzes how writers reinterpret episodes of historical slave rebellion to conceptualize their understanding of an ideal "master-less" future. The texts range from Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave and Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World to Yoruba praise poetry and novels by Nigerian writers Adebayo Faleti and Akinwumi...

The dynamic course of Afro-American literature from oppression through protest to liberation is depicted in the anthology. Long and Collier have added contemporary writers, introductions, and head notes to make this the most comprehensive, up-to-date anthology available. From Phillis Wheatley to Alice Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks, from Booker T. Washington to Martin Luther King and Amiri Baraka, the Afro-American writers are represented here.

This new biography takes into account the whole woman--not just the prolific author of such great works as "Their Eyes Were Watching God," "Moses, Man of the Mountain," "Jonah's Gourd Vine," "Mules and Men," as well as essays, folklore, short stories, and poetry--but the philosopher and the spiritual soul, examining how each is reflected in her career, fiction and nonfiction publications, social and political activity, and, ultimately, her death.

When we ask what animated the woman who achieved all that she did, we must necessarily probe further. Not one of the other existing...

Known for his blending of philosophy, spirituality, humor, and a rollicking good story, Charles Johnson is one of the most important novelists writing today. From his magical first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, to his decidedly philosophical Oxherding Tale; from his swashbuckling indictment of the slave trade in the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage, to his more recent imaginative treatment of Martin Luther King Jr. in Dreamer, Johnson has continually surprised, instructed, and entertained his many avid readers. As this collection of interviews suggests, the novelist is as...

Known for his blending of philosophy, spirituality, humor, and a rollicking good story, Charles Johnson is one of the most important novelists writing today. From his magical first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, to his decidedly philosophical Oxherding Tale; from his swashbuckling indictment of the slave trade in the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage, to his more recent imaginative treatment of Martin Luther King Jr. in Dreamer, Johnson has continually surprised, instructed, and entertained his many avid readers. As this collection of interviews suggests, the novelist is as...

When Houston A. Baker Jr. one of America s foremost literary critics, first published Afro-American Poetics in 1988, it was hailed as a major revisionist history of both African American culture and criticism. Now available in paperback, this ambitious and enlightening book juxtaposes two of the most fertile periods of African American culture, the 1920s and the 1960s; it includes essays on Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Hoyt Fuller. This is also Baker s most personal book, an intellectual autobiography tracing his own beginnings as a scholar of Victorian...

This is the first collection of essays in which African critics present an in-depth study of African-American writers. These prominent critics from different African countries and backgrounds bring an important perspective to the complex relationship between African Americans and Africa. Through provocative readings of prominent African-American writers, the contributors provide insights into contemporary African-American issues. This collection offers a rare opportunity to view African opinions on what it means to be African American.

The work of Chester Himes is now undergoing a critical and popular reevaluation as it gradually comes back into print after years of neglect. His protest novels from the 1940s and early 1950s, his Harlem Domestic crime books, first published in France and later released in English in the United States, and his remarkable two-volume autobiography are now gaining a wider readership through their republication. Nonetheless, the critical writings on his work remain scattered and are often difficult to obtain. This collection of reviews and essays from both popular and academic sources traces...

Alice Walker is one of the most influential and controversial figures in twentieth-century American literature. This collection of essays represents a dispassionate scholarly effort to comprehend the essential elements of her prolific imagination, which celebrates women by chronicling their troubled journey from silence to self-expression and from pain to resistance. The essays fall largely into three main groups, focusing on Walker's most famous and controversial novel, "The Color Purple," on her poetry, which has for too long met with critical neglect, and on her ecofeminist novel, "The...

Ishmael Reed has emerged as one of the most innovative and controversial novelists in contemporary African American literature. By focusing on his nine published novels, this volume charts the critical response to his works over time. The book is organized by decade, with each section containing book reviews and articles. Beginning with material from the 1960s, it explores Reed's concern with artistic freedom and examines the evolution of his Neo-HooDoo aesthetic, which combines satire and parody, comedy and fantasy, African and African American religion, and myth, history, film, and other...