Author: Henry Louis Gates (Jr.)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195136470
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
A groundbaking work of enduring influence. The Signifying Monkey illuminates the relationship between the African and African American vernacular traditions and literature. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., uncovers a unique system for interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. This superb twenty-fifth-anniversary edition features a new preface and introduction by Gates that reflect on the book's genesis and its continuing relevance for today's culture, as well as a new afterword written by the noted critic W.J.T. Mitchell. --Book Jacket.
Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874514
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative" and in The Washington Post Book World as "brilliantly original," Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey is a groundbreaking work that illuminates the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature. It elaborates a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Gates uncovers a unique system for interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. Exploring the process of signification in black American life and literature by analyzing the transmission and revision of various signifying figures, Gates provides an extended analysis of what he calls the "Talking Book," a central trope in early slave narratives that virtually defines the tradition of black American letters. Gates uses this critical framework to examine several major works of African-American literature--including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo--revealing how these works signify on the black tradition and on each other. This superb 25th-Anniversary Edition features a new preface by Gates that reflects on the impact of the book and its relevance for today's society as well as a new afterword written by noted critic W. T. J. Mitchell.
Author: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199722757
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The Signifying Monkey is the first book of literary criticism to trace the roots of contemporary Black literature to Afro-American folklore and to the traditions of African languages. As the author examines the ancient poetry of the Ifa Oracle (found in Nigeria, Benin, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti), he uncovers the origins of a sacred system of divination, brought to America by black slaves who felt it to be the very "heart-beat" of their souls. Gates demonstrates how a heroic and popular character called the Signifying Monkey emerged from this divination and came to pervade Afro-American culture. In providing masterful readings of literary works by Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, and Ishmael Reed--and in defining how the works of these authors "signify upon" each other--the author delivers a powerful and ground-breaking work of critical theory. Many previously unpublished tales about the Monkey, as well as those already published, are collected in a detailed appendix.
Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374279127
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 638
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Book Description
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me. This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Tree of Smoke is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.
Author: Henry Louis Gates (Jr.)
Publisher: Civitas Books
ISBN: 0465014100
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
A major figure in African American studies, Gates (Harvard)--whose earlier works include Signifying Monkey (CH, Jun'89, 26-5523) and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (CH, Jun'97, 34-5887)--here joins such theorists as Paul Gilroy (The Black Atlantic, CH, May'94, 31-5034), Hazel Carby (Cultures in Babylon, 1999), and Stuart Hall (editor, Representation, 1997) in taking a culture-studies approach to examining the politics and culture of the African diaspora. In four far-ranging chapters (written between 1989 and 1992), Gates considers the British Black Arts Movement and the continuing US "culture wars." Though the study is thought-provoking, this reviewer would have liked a longer preface that could effectively tie together the four separate essays. Gates sometimes (for example, in the essay titled "Critical Fanonism") succumbs to the overly dense language of theory, but at his best--as in the essay "Enlightenment's Esau," in which he makes the case for Edmund Burke as an unlikely early anti-colonialism advocate--he is brilliant. Required reading for scholars of cultural studies and/or black-diaspora studies. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. Graduate Students; Researchers/Faculty. Reviewed by L. J. Parascandola.
Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307765652
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
"This is a book of stories," writes Henry Louis Gates, "and all might be described as 'narratives of ascent.'" As some remarkable men talk about their lives, many perspectives on race and gender emerge. For the notion of the unitary black man, Gates argues, is as imaginary as the creature that the poet Wallace Stevens conjured in his poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." James Baldwin, Colin Powell, Harry Belafonte, Bill T. Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Anatole Broyard, Albert Murray -- all these men came from modest circumstances and all achieved preeminence. They are people, Gates writes, "who have shaped the world as much as they were shaped by it, who gave as good as they got." Three are writers -- James Baldwin, who was once regarded as the intellectual spokesman for the black community; Anatole Broyard, who chose to hide his black heritage so as to be seen as a writer on his own terms; and Albert Murray, who rose to the pinnacle of literary criticism. There is the general-turned-political-figure Colin Powell, who discusses his interactions with three United States presidents; there is Harry Belafonte, the entertainer whose career has been distinct from his fervent activism; there is Bill T. Jones, dancer and choreographer, whose fierce courage and creativity have continued in the shadow of AIDS; and there is Louis Farrakhan, the controversial religious leader. These men and others speak of their lives with candor and intimacy, and what emerges from this portfolio of influential men is a strikingly varied and profound set of ideas about what it means to be a black man in America today.
Author: Henry Louis Gates Jr
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465029248
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 869
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Book Description
Educator, writer, critic, intellectual, film-maker-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been widely praised as being one of America's most prominent and prolific scholars. In what will be an essential volume, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Reader collects three decades of writings from his many fields of interest and expertise. From his earliest work of literary-historical excavation in 1982, through his current writings on the history and science of African American genealogy, the essays collected here follow his path as historian, theorist, canon-builder, and cultural critic, revealing a thinker of uncommon breadth whose work is uniformly guided by the drive to uncover and restore a history that has for too long been buried and denied. An invaluable reference, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Reader will be a singular reflection of one of our most gifted minds.
Author: Henry Louis Gates
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195060751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Pronde's the critical framework to examine several major works including, Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Invisible man by Ralph Ellison, and Mumbo jumbo by Ishmael Reed.
Author: Kim Mitzo Thompson
Publisher: Twin Sisters
ISBN: 9781599225814
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 8
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Book Description
Five little monkeys jumping on the bed! Listen, sing and read along as one-by-one each little monkey falls off and bumps its head! You'll be surprised by mama's solution! When the story is finished, continue the fun and learning with 14 additional fun animal songs! But then, it's time for bed, track 17-25 include 20+ minutes of instrumental bedtime songs!
Author: Houston A. Baker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022616084X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic undertones are both central to the American narrative and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling it.
