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

Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrison's novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea O'Reilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black women's experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the...

The 1993 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Toni Morrison is well established as one of the leading voices in American letters. Even so, her novels are often read narrowly rather than expansively, read as literary artifacts rather than as dynamic cultural texts.

Without ignoring the literary and artistic achievements of Morrison's writing, Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches calls attention to the cultural and political dimensions of her work. Drawing on a diverse range of approaches and theories--from W. E. B. DuBois to deconstruction and postmodernism, from black...

This study of the first six novels of Toni Morrison situates her as an African American writer within the American literary tradition who interrogates national identity and reconstructs social memory. The text portrays Nobel Laureate Morrison as a historiographer attempting to bridge the gap between emergent black middle-class America and its sub-altern origins.

In Race, Theft, and Ethics, Lovalerie King examines African American literature's critique of American law concerning matters of property, paying particular attention to the stereotypical image of the black thief. She draws on two centuries of African American writing that reflects the manner in which human value became intricately connected with property ownership in American culture, even as racialized social and legal custom and practice severely limited access to property. Using critical race theory, King builds a powerful argument that the stereotype of the black thief is an...

The horrific 1955 slaying of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till marks a significant turning point in the history of American race relations. An African American boy from Chicago, Till was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta when he was accused of "wolf-whistling" at a young white woman. His murderers abducted him from his great-uncle's home, beat him, then shot him in the head. Three days later, searchers discovered his body in the Tallahatchie River. The two white men charged with his murder received a swift acquittal from an all-white jury. The eleven essays in Emmett Till in Literary...