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

Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature is a pioneering study of African-Canadian literary creativity, laying the groundwork for future scholarly work in the field. Based on extensive excavations of archives and texts, this challenging passage through twelve essays presents a history of the literature and examines its debt to, and synthesis with, oral cultures. George Elliott Clarke identifies African-Canadian literature's distinguishing characteristics, argues for its relevance to both African Diasporic Black and Canadian Studies, and critiques several of its key...

With grace and insight, celebrated writer bell hooks untangles the complex personae of women writers. Born and raised in the rural South, hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays. Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. Once again, these essays reveal bell hooks's wide-ranging intellectual scope; she is a universal writer addressing readers and writers everywhere.

Jean Toomer's Cane was the first major text of the Harlem Renaissance and the first important modernist text by an African-American writer. It powerfully depicts the terror in the history of American race relations, a public world of lynchings, race riots, and Jim Crow, and a private world of internalized conflict over identity and race which mirrored struggles in the culture at large. Toomer's own life reflected that internal conflict, and he has been an ambiguous figure in literary history, an author who wrote a text that had a tremendous impact on African American authors but who...

Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the major American poets of this century and the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1950). Yet far less critical attention has focused on her work than on that of her peers.

In this comprehensive biocritical study, Melhem -- herself a poet and critic -- traces the development of Brooks's poetry over four decades, from such early works as A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, and The Bean Eaters, to the more recent In the Mecca, Riot, and To Disembark.

In addition to analyzing the poetic devices used,...

Until fairly recently, critical studies and anthologies of African American literature generally began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s. Genius in Bondage situates this literature in its own historical terms, rather than treating it as a sort of prologue to later African American writings. The contributors address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore how black identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian religion and the...

Race and Ideology reveals how various strands of racial thinking and behavior are crucial for maintaining the unequal distribution of wealth that is more pronounced in the U.S. than in any other advanced industrial country. Though primarily concerned with the U.S., this collection contains chapters on other societies in order to highlight commonalties and the global nature of the race/color problem.

This book proposes a new understanding of racism by examining a variety of issues that show how racism and colorism, along with other forms of oppression, are interconnected and maintained...

Virtually unknown for the better part of the twentieth century, Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) is one of the most interesting rediscoveries of recent African American literary history. This is the first study devoted exclusively to Hopkins s life and her influential career as an editor, political writer, social critic, pioneering playwright, biographer, and fiction writer. Hanna Wallinger s discoveries break much new ground, especially regarding Hopkins s relationship with such notable men and women as Booker T. Washington and Anna Julia Cooper, her position in Boston s black women s club...

Author, intellectual, and social critic, Ralph Ellison (1914-94) was a pivotal figure in American literature and history and arguably the father of African American modernism. Universally acclaimed for his first novel, "Invisible Man," a masterpiece of modern fiction, Ellison was recognized with a stunning succession of honors, including the 1953 National Book Award. Despite his literary accomplishments and political activism, however, Ellison has received surprisingly sparse treatment from biographers. Lawrence Jackson s biography of Ellison, the first when it was published in 2002,...

Boldly speaking his mind, Walcott takes many...

For over forty years, Clarence Major (b. 1936) has engaged several artistic and literary pursuits, garnering acclaim for his paintings, edited anthologies, poetry collections, essays, and novels.

His work within literature ranges from his popular dictionary of slang, Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994), to such experimental novels as Emergency Exit (1979), Reflex and Bone Structure (1975), and My Amputations (1986). He has gained a reputation as one of America's most visionary and experimental African American writers.

In...

Margaret Walker (1915-1998) began her writing career as a poet in the late 1930s. But she was cast into the limelight in 1966 when her novel Jubilee was published to wide critical and commercial acclaim.

In interviews ranging from 1972 to 1996, Conversations with Margaret Walker captures Walker's voice as she discusses an incredibly wide range of interests. The same erudition, wit, and love of language on display in Jubilee comes through in conversations, as well as her sense of moral authority--imbued by a resonant Christian humanism--and her attention to historical...