Author: Katherine Clay Bassard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822599
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance of their writings would be profound for all African Americans' sense of their own identity as a people. Katherine Clay Bassard's book is the first detailed account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities. Her study--which examines the relationship among race, culture, and community--focuses on four women: the poet Phillis Wheatley and poet and essayist Ann Plato, both Congregationalists; and the itinerant preacher Jarena Lee, and Shaker eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, who, with Lee, had connections with African Methodism. Together, these women drew on what Bassard calls a "spirituals matrix," which transformed existing literary genres to accommodate the spiritual music and sacred rituals tied to the African diaspora. Bassard's important illumination of these writers resurrects their path-breaking work. They were cocreators, with all black women who followed, of African American intellectual life.
Spiritual Interrogations
Author: Katherine Clay Bassard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822599
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance of their writings would be profound for all African Americans' sense of their own identity as a people. Katherine Clay Bassard's book is the first detailed account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities. Her study--which examines the relationship among race, culture, and community--focuses on four women: the poet Phillis Wheatley and poet and essayist Ann Plato, both Congregationalists; and the itinerant preacher Jarena Lee, and Shaker eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, who, with Lee, had connections with African Methodism. Together, these women drew on what Bassard calls a "spirituals matrix," which transformed existing literary genres to accommodate the spiritual music and sacred rituals tied to the African diaspora. Bassard's important illumination of these writers resurrects their path-breaking work. They were cocreators, with all black women who followed, of African American intellectual life.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822599
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance of their writings would be profound for all African Americans' sense of their own identity as a people. Katherine Clay Bassard's book is the first detailed account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities. Her study--which examines the relationship among race, culture, and community--focuses on four women: the poet Phillis Wheatley and poet and essayist Ann Plato, both Congregationalists; and the itinerant preacher Jarena Lee, and Shaker eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, who, with Lee, had connections with African Methodism. Together, these women drew on what Bassard calls a "spirituals matrix," which transformed existing literary genres to accommodate the spiritual music and sacred rituals tied to the African diaspora. Bassard's important illumination of these writers resurrects their path-breaking work. They were cocreators, with all black women who followed, of African American intellectual life.
In the Life and in the Spirit
Author: Marlon Rachquel Moore
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438454090
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Taking up the perceived tensions between the LGBTQ community and religious African Americans, Marlon Rachquel Moore examines how strategies of antihomophobic resistance dovetail into broader literary and cultural concerns. In the Life and in the Spirit shows how creative writers integrate expressions of faith or the supernatural with sensuality, desire, and pleasure in a way that highlights a spectrum of black sexualities and gender expressions. Through these fusions, African American writers enact queer spiritualities that situate the well-known work of James Baldwin into a broader community of artists, including Bruce Nugent, Ann Allen Shockley, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Jewelle Gomez, Becky Birtha, an d Octavia Butler. In these texts from 1963 to 1999, Moore identifies a pervasive, affirming stance toward LGBTQ people and culture in African American literary production.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438454090
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Taking up the perceived tensions between the LGBTQ community and religious African Americans, Marlon Rachquel Moore examines how strategies of antihomophobic resistance dovetail into broader literary and cultural concerns. In the Life and in the Spirit shows how creative writers integrate expressions of faith or the supernatural with sensuality, desire, and pleasure in a way that highlights a spectrum of black sexualities and gender expressions. Through these fusions, African American writers enact queer spiritualities that situate the well-known work of James Baldwin into a broader community of artists, including Bruce Nugent, Ann Allen Shockley, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Jewelle Gomez, Becky Birtha, an d Octavia Butler. In these texts from 1963 to 1999, Moore identifies a pervasive, affirming stance toward LGBTQ people and culture in African American literary production.
All Those Strangers
Author: Douglas Field
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199384150
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Adored by many, appalling to some, baffling still to others, few authors defy any single critical narrative to the confounding extent that James Baldwin manages. Was he a black or queer writer? Was he a religious or secular writer? Was he a spokesman for the civil rights movement or a champion of the individual? His critics, as disparate as his readership, endlessly wrestle with paradoxes, not just in his work but also in the life of a man who described himself as "all those strangers called Jimmy Baldwin" and who declared that "all theories are suspect." Viewing Baldwin through a cultural-historical lens alongside a more traditional literary critical approach, All Those Strangers examines how his fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. Showing how external forces molded Baldwin's personal, political, and psychological development, Douglas Field breaks through the established critical difficulties caused by Baldwin's geographical, ideological, and artistic multiplicity by analyzing his life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time. The book explores under-researched areas in Baldwin's life and work, including his relationship to the Left, his FBI files, and the significance of Africa in his writing, while also contributing to wider discussions about postwar US culture. Field deftly navigates key twentieth-century themes-the Cold War, African American literary history, conflicts between spirituality and organized religion, and transnationalism-to bring a number of isolated subjects into dialogue with each other. By exploring the paradoxes in Baldwin's development as a writer, rather than trying to fix his life and work into a single framework, All Those Strangers contradicts the accepted critical paradigm that Baldwin's life and work are too ambiguous to make sense of. By studying him as an individual and an artist in flux, Field reveals the manifold ways in which Baldwin's work develops and coheres.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199384150
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Adored by many, appalling to some, baffling still to others, few authors defy any single critical narrative to the confounding extent that James Baldwin manages. Was he a black or queer writer? Was he a religious or secular writer? Was he a spokesman for the civil rights movement or a champion of the individual? His critics, as disparate as his readership, endlessly wrestle with paradoxes, not just in his work but also in the life of a man who described himself as "all those strangers called Jimmy Baldwin" and who declared that "all theories are suspect." Viewing Baldwin through a cultural-historical lens alongside a more traditional literary critical approach, All Those Strangers examines how his fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. Showing how external forces molded Baldwin's personal, political, and psychological development, Douglas Field breaks through the established critical difficulties caused by Baldwin's geographical, ideological, and artistic multiplicity by analyzing his life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time. The book explores under-researched areas in Baldwin's life and work, including his relationship to the Left, his FBI files, and the significance of Africa in his writing, while also contributing to wider discussions about postwar US culture. Field deftly navigates key twentieth-century themes-the Cold War, African American literary history, conflicts between spirituality and organized religion, and transnationalism-to bring a number of isolated subjects into dialogue with each other. By exploring the paradoxes in Baldwin's development as a writer, rather than trying to fix his life and work into a single framework, All Those Strangers contradicts the accepted critical paradigm that Baldwin's life and work are too ambiguous to make sense of. By studying him as an individual and an artist in flux, Field reveals the manifold ways in which Baldwin's work develops and coheres.
Reading Pleasures
Author: Tara A. Bynum
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053788
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter. A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053788
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter. A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.
Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760-1835
Author: Cedrick May
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
This study focuses on the role of early African American Christianity in the formation of American egalitarian religion and politics. It also provides a new context for understanding how black Christianity and evangelism developed, spread, and interacted with transatlantic religious cultures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cedrick May looks at the work of a group of pivotal African American writers who helped set the stage for the popularization of African American evangelical texts and the introduction of black intellectualism into American political culture: Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, Prince Hall, Richard Allen, and Maria Stewart. Religion gave these writers agency and credibility, says May, and they appropriated the language of Christianity to establish a common ground on which to speak about social and political rights. In the process, these writers spread the principles that enabled slaves and free blacks to form communities, a fundamental step in resisting oppression. Moreover, says May, this institution building was overtly political, leading to a liberal shift in mainstream Christianity and secular politics as black churches and the organizations they launched became central to local communities and increasingly influenced public welfare and policy. This important new study restores a sense of the complex challenges faced by early black intellectuals as they sought a path to freedom through Christianity.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
This study focuses on the role of early African American Christianity in the formation of American egalitarian religion and politics. It also provides a new context for understanding how black Christianity and evangelism developed, spread, and interacted with transatlantic religious cultures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cedrick May looks at the work of a group of pivotal African American writers who helped set the stage for the popularization of African American evangelical texts and the introduction of black intellectualism into American political culture: Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, Prince Hall, Richard Allen, and Maria Stewart. Religion gave these writers agency and credibility, says May, and they appropriated the language of Christianity to establish a common ground on which to speak about social and political rights. In the process, these writers spread the principles that enabled slaves and free blacks to form communities, a fundamental step in resisting oppression. Moreover, says May, this institution building was overtly political, leading to a liberal shift in mainstream Christianity and secular politics as black churches and the organizations they launched became central to local communities and increasingly influenced public welfare and policy. This important new study restores a sense of the complex challenges faced by early black intellectuals as they sought a path to freedom through Christianity.
Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity
Author: Ron Welburn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143845578X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, there's little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem "The Natives of America." Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Plato's profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143845578X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, there's little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem "The Natives of America." Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Plato's profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure.
Black Heart
Author: Phillip M. Richards
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820471228
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Black Heart is a provocative and polemical critique of African American literary studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Through a series of sharp and insightful essays on a wide range of critical thinkers, Phillip M. Richards traces what he sees as an erosion of moral reflection in African American literary culture - a process that has left contemporary black academic criticism socially, politically, and culturally hollow. Exploring the work of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michael Dyson, Karla Holloway and others, Black Heart sets forth the rhetorical strategies of present-day African American critical writing, and probes the ethical dimensions of its institutional life in the academy, the media, and the public sphere. Richards undertakes to recover the procedures by which cultural and moral value may be recovered for black literary culture and to establish the possibilities for a new humanism in African American writing and literary culture.
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820471228
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
Black Heart is a provocative and polemical critique of African American literary studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Through a series of sharp and insightful essays on a wide range of critical thinkers, Phillip M. Richards traces what he sees as an erosion of moral reflection in African American literary culture - a process that has left contemporary black academic criticism socially, politically, and culturally hollow. Exploring the work of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michael Dyson, Karla Holloway and others, Black Heart sets forth the rhetorical strategies of present-day African American critical writing, and probes the ethical dimensions of its institutional life in the academy, the media, and the public sphere. Richards undertakes to recover the procedures by which cultural and moral value may be recovered for black literary culture and to establish the possibilities for a new humanism in African American writing and literary culture.
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic
Author: Cassander L. Smith
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807180726
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic examines the means through which people of African descent embodied tenets of respectability as a coping strategy to navigate enslavement and racial oppression in the early Black Atlantic world. The term “respectability politics” refers to the way members of a minoritized population adopt the customs and manners of a dominant culture in order to gain visibility and combat negative stereotypes about their subject group. Today respectability politics can be seen in how those within and outside Black communities police the behavior of Black celebrities, critique protest movements, and celebrate accomplishments by people of African descent who break racial barriers. To study the origins of the complicated relationship between race and respectability, Cassander L. Smith shows that early American literatures reveal Black communities engaging with issues of respectability from the very beginning of the transatlantic slave trade. Concerns about character and comportment influenced the literary production of Black Atlantic communities, particularly in the long eighteenth century. Uncovering the central importance of respectability as a theme shaping the literary development of cultures throughout the early Black Atlantic, Smith illuminates the mechanics of respectability politics in a range of texts, including poetry, letters, and life writing by Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, and expatriates on the west coast of Africa in Sierra Leone. Through these early Black texts, Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic considers respectability politics as a malleable strategy that has both energized and suppressed Black cultures for centuries.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807180726
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic examines the means through which people of African descent embodied tenets of respectability as a coping strategy to navigate enslavement and racial oppression in the early Black Atlantic world. The term “respectability politics” refers to the way members of a minoritized population adopt the customs and manners of a dominant culture in order to gain visibility and combat negative stereotypes about their subject group. Today respectability politics can be seen in how those within and outside Black communities police the behavior of Black celebrities, critique protest movements, and celebrate accomplishments by people of African descent who break racial barriers. To study the origins of the complicated relationship between race and respectability, Cassander L. Smith shows that early American literatures reveal Black communities engaging with issues of respectability from the very beginning of the transatlantic slave trade. Concerns about character and comportment influenced the literary production of Black Atlantic communities, particularly in the long eighteenth century. Uncovering the central importance of respectability as a theme shaping the literary development of cultures throughout the early Black Atlantic, Smith illuminates the mechanics of respectability politics in a range of texts, including poetry, letters, and life writing by Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, and expatriates on the west coast of Africa in Sierra Leone. Through these early Black texts, Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic considers respectability politics as a malleable strategy that has both energized and suppressed Black cultures for centuries.
Writing African American Women [2 volumes]
Author: Elizabeth A. Beaulieu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313024626
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1035
Book Description
Women have had a complex experience in African American culture. The first work of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective. While Yolanda Williams Page's Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers provides biographical entries on more than 150 literary figures, this book is much broader in scope. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on African American women writers, as well as on male writers who have treated women in their works. Entries on genres, periods, themes, characters, historical events, texts, places, and other topics are included as well. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and relates its subject to the overall experience of women in African American literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. African American culture is enormously diverse, and the experience of women in African American society is especially complex. Women were among the first African American writers, and works by black women writers are popular among students and general readers alike. At the same time, African American women have been oppressed, and texts by black male authors represent women in a variety of ways. The first of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective, and thus significantly illuminates the African American cultural experience through literary works. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, written by numerous expert contributors. In addition to covering male and female African American authors, the encyclopedia also discusses themes, major works and characters, genres, periods, historical events, places, and other topics. Included are entries on such authors as: ; Maya Angelou ; James Baldwin ; Frederick Douglass ; Nikki Giovanni ; June Jordan ; Claude McKay ; Ishmael Reed ; Sojourner Truth ; Phillis Wheatley ; And many others. In addition, the many works discussed include: ; Beloved ; Blanche on the Lam ; Iknow Why the Caged Bird Sings ; The Men of Brewster Place ; Quicksand ; The Street ; Waiting to Exhale ; And many more. The many topical entries cover: ; Black Feminism ; Black Nationalism ; Conjuring ; Children's and Young Adult Literature ; Detective Fiction ; Epistolary Novel ; Motherhood ; Sexuality ; Spirituality ; Stereotypes ; And many others. Entries relate their topics to the experience of African American women and cite works for further reading. Features and Benefits: ; Includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries. ; Draws on the work of numerous expert contributors. ; Includes a selected, general bibliography. ; Offers a range of finding aids, such as a list of entries, a guide to related topics, and an extensive index. ; Supports the literature curriculum by helping students analyze major writers and works. ; Supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to understand the experience of African American women. ; Covers the full chronological range of African American literature. ; Fosters a respect for cultural diversity. ; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information. ; Builds bridges between African American history, literature, and Women's Studies.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313024626
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1035
Book Description
Women have had a complex experience in African American culture. The first work of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective. While Yolanda Williams Page's Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers provides biographical entries on more than 150 literary figures, this book is much broader in scope. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on African American women writers, as well as on male writers who have treated women in their works. Entries on genres, periods, themes, characters, historical events, texts, places, and other topics are included as well. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and relates its subject to the overall experience of women in African American literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. African American culture is enormously diverse, and the experience of women in African American society is especially complex. Women were among the first African American writers, and works by black women writers are popular among students and general readers alike. At the same time, African American women have been oppressed, and texts by black male authors represent women in a variety of ways. The first of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective, and thus significantly illuminates the African American cultural experience through literary works. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, written by numerous expert contributors. In addition to covering male and female African American authors, the encyclopedia also discusses themes, major works and characters, genres, periods, historical events, places, and other topics. Included are entries on such authors as: ; Maya Angelou ; James Baldwin ; Frederick Douglass ; Nikki Giovanni ; June Jordan ; Claude McKay ; Ishmael Reed ; Sojourner Truth ; Phillis Wheatley ; And many others. In addition, the many works discussed include: ; Beloved ; Blanche on the Lam ; Iknow Why the Caged Bird Sings ; The Men of Brewster Place ; Quicksand ; The Street ; Waiting to Exhale ; And many more. The many topical entries cover: ; Black Feminism ; Black Nationalism ; Conjuring ; Children's and Young Adult Literature ; Detective Fiction ; Epistolary Novel ; Motherhood ; Sexuality ; Spirituality ; Stereotypes ; And many others. Entries relate their topics to the experience of African American women and cite works for further reading. Features and Benefits: ; Includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries. ; Draws on the work of numerous expert contributors. ; Includes a selected, general bibliography. ; Offers a range of finding aids, such as a list of entries, a guide to related topics, and an extensive index. ; Supports the literature curriculum by helping students analyze major writers and works. ; Supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to understand the experience of African American women. ; Covers the full chronological range of African American literature. ; Fosters a respect for cultural diversity. ; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information. ; Builds bridges between African American history, literature, and Women's Studies.
Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora
Author: Mae Henderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195116593
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Tropes ranging from Houston Baker's "bluesman," to Henry Louis Gates' "signifyin'" to Geneva Smitherman's "talkin' and testifyin'" to bell hooks' "talking back" to Cheryl Wall's "worrying the line" all affirm the power of sonance and sound in the African American literary tradition. The collection of essays in Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora contributes to this tradition by theorizing the preeminence of voice and narration (and the consequences of their absence) in the literary and cultural performances of black women. Looking to work by such prominent black female authors as Alice Walker, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Zora Neal Hurston, among many others, Mae G. Henderson provides a deeply felt reflection on race and gender and their effects within the discourse of speaker and listener.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195116593
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Tropes ranging from Houston Baker's "bluesman," to Henry Louis Gates' "signifyin'" to Geneva Smitherman's "talkin' and testifyin'" to bell hooks' "talking back" to Cheryl Wall's "worrying the line" all affirm the power of sonance and sound in the African American literary tradition. The collection of essays in Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora contributes to this tradition by theorizing the preeminence of voice and narration (and the consequences of their absence) in the literary and cultural performances of black women. Looking to work by such prominent black female authors as Alice Walker, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Zora Neal Hurston, among many others, Mae G. Henderson provides a deeply felt reflection on race and gender and their effects within the discourse of speaker and listener.