Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora PDF Author: Mae Henderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195116593
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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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.

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora PDF Author: Mae Henderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195116593
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

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.

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora PDF Author: Mae G. Henderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199375208
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The oral tradition has always played an important role in African American literature, ranging from works such as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God to Toni Morrison's Beloved. These and countless other novels affirm the power of sonance and sound in the African American literary canon. Considering the wide swath of work in this powerful lineage -- in addition to its shared heritage with performance -- Mae G. Henderson deploys her trope of "speaking in tongues" to theorize the preeminence of voice and narration in black women's literary performance through her reconstruction of a fundamentally spiritual practice as a critical concept for reading black women's writing dialogically and intertextually. The first half of the book is devoted to influential works of fiction, as Henderson offers a series of spirited, attentive readings of works by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, and Nella Larsen. The second half shifts gears to consider the world of female African American performance, most notably in the figures of Josephine Baker and the video dancer. Drawing on the trope of "dancing diaspora," Henderson proposes a model of theorizing based on "performing testimony" and "critical witnessing." Throughout the book, Henderson draws on a history of black women not only in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, but also within the traditions of classical, Christian, African, and black diasporic spirituality and performance. Ultimately, Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora provides a deeply felt reflection on race and gender and their effects within the discourses of speaker/listener and audience/performer.

Embodied Economies

Embodied Economies PDF Author: Israel Reyes
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978827857
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Embodied Economies compares works of Latinx Caribbean fiction and theater that explore the pitfalls and successes of economic upward mobility in diasporic communities. Each chapter compares two works in a counterpoint analysis that reveals the contradictions of using Latinx Caribbean culture to get ahead in the competitive fields of education, business, entertainment, and finance.

The Josephine Baker Critical Reader

The Josephine Baker Critical Reader PDF Author: Mae G. Henderson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476665818
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Star of stage and screen, cultural ambassador, civil rights and political activist--Josephine Baker was defined by the various public roles that made her 50-year career an exemplar of postmodern identity. Her legacy continues to influence modern culture more than 40 years after her death. This new collection of essays interprets Baker's life in the context of modernism, feminism, race, gender and sexuality. The contributors focus on various aspects of her life and career, including her performances and public reception, civil rights efforts, the architecture of her unbuilt house, and her modern-day "afterlife."

Transnational Africana Women’s Fictions

Transnational Africana Women’s Fictions PDF Author: Cheryl Sterling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000461041
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This book explores the works of women writers and filmmakers across the African and African Diaspora world, reflecting on how the transnational sphere can serve to highlight voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies. The book demonstrates how in discourse and theory Africana women are the centers of their own knowledge production and agency, as the artists and their characters point the way forward. Their multi-perspectivism leads to avenues of selective mutuality and influence to generate transformative creative work, scholarship, and practices. Writers included are Sylvia Wynter, Edwidge Danticat, Amanda Smith, Werewere Liking, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nnedi Okorafor, Mariama Bâ, Ama Ata Aidoo, Igiaba Scego, Léonara Miano, Gisèle Hountondji, Monique Ilboudo, and Maryse Condé, as well as filmmaker Kemi Adetiba. Over the course of the book, the contributors critically explore and update the canon on women in the African and African Diaspora literary sphere, highlighting their contributions to theoretical debates and providing substantive nuance to diasporic subjectivity. This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Africana Studies, comparative literature, and women and gender studies.

Female Subjectivity in African-American Women's Poetry

Female Subjectivity in African-American Women's Poetry PDF Author: Tanima Kumari
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527501337
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
This book is aimed at constructing the Black female subjectivity of African-American women through the works of chosen poets: Marilyn Nelson, Rita Dove, Elizabeth Alexander, and Patricia Smith. The study delves into the intricacies of African-American women’s issues such as objectification, rape, motherhood, and racism. This work is unique, as it takes up the study of African-American women’s poetry and studies different creative expressions and artistic genres in their struggle for identity. It illuminates Black female aesthetics, and the liberation of self, thus, celebrating their blackness. By examining historical and contemporary issues, the book invites the readers to re-counter the dominance of the established White Order and stimulates the question of the agency of Black women. This book debunks the perceptions and offers a genuine contribution to the discourse on African-American women’s lives. It goes beyond the customary reflections on women’s experiences and addresses the poignant odyssey of ‘women of color’, marking a shift to ‘politics of survival’.

The Specter and the Speculative

The Specter and the Speculative PDF Author: Mae G. Henderson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 197883408X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The Specter and the Speculative: Afterlives and Archives in the African Diaspora engages in a critical conversation about how historical subjects and historical texts within the African Diaspora are re-fashioned, re-animated, and re-articulated, as well as parodied, nostalgized, and defamiliarized, to establish an “afterlife” for African Atlantic identities and narratives. These essays focus on transnational, transdisciplinary, and transhistorical sites of memory and haunting—textual, visual, and embodied performances—in order to examine how these “living” archives circulate and imagine anew the meanings of prior narratives liberated from their original context. Individual essays examine how historical and literary performances—in addition to film, drama, music, dance, and material culture—thus revitalized, transcend and speak across temporal and spatial boundaries not only to reinstate traditional meanings, but also to motivate fresh commentary and critique. Emergent and established scholars representing diverse disciplines and fields of interest specifically engage under explored themes related to afterlives, archives, and haunting.

Race Sounds

Race Sounds PDF Author: Nicole Brittingham Furlonge
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609385616
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Forging new ideas about the relationship between race and sound, Furlonge explores how black artists--including well-known figures such as writers Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, and singers Bettye LaVette and Aretha Franklin, among others--imagine listening. Drawing from a multimedia archive, Furlonge examines how many of the texts call on readers to "listen in print." In the process, she gives us a new way to read and interpret these canonical, aurally inflected texts, and demonstrates how listening allows us to engage with the sonic lives of difference as readers, thinkers, and citizens.

Midwifing—A Womanist Approach to Pastoral Counseling

Midwifing—A Womanist Approach to Pastoral Counseling PDF Author: Myrna Thurmond-Malone
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532643276
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Midwifing--A Womanist Approach to Pastoral Counseling: Investigating the Fractured Self, Slavery, Violence, and the Black Woman, is an investigation of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the impact of slavery, violence, racism, sexism, classism, and other isms on the self of the Black woman. This examination of the complexity of pain speaks to the multidimensional reality of some Black women and the necessity for a therapeutic technique that invites the fullness of the Black woman's historical narrative. Dr. Thurmond-Malone's work exposes hidden pain in a safe and sacred space that speaks to the deep-rooted anguish experienced through generations of Black women and invites her readers to understand the necessity for a rebirthing to occur. This work also empowers women of African descent to become unarmored through the naming, claiming, and reauthoring of their story, and empowers therapists to become midwives adept at empathizing with the intense pain carried by some Black women. Lastly, the book provides clinicians with insight into how to become midwives capable of holding the accounts of Black women while illustrating the author's approach as a method of interdependence, communal, and cultural competency. Taking an analytical look at the counselee's past then births hope for their future as a whole and transformative self.

A Theoretical Approach to Modern American History and Literature

A Theoretical Approach to Modern American History and Literature PDF Author: W. Lawrence Hogue
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1785272616
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
This book reconfigures the history of modern America, showing how multiple and, at times, vulnerable social, economic, literary, and political movements, levels, divisions, and conditions such as the emergent middle class, the labor movement, the Progressive Movement, the socialist and communist parties, the Women’s movements, the NAACP, the Garvey movement, Asian and Native American resistance movements, writers, artists, and intellectuals seized upon social, gender, economic, and racial inequalities and challenged a singularly defined modern America. This book re-represents the modern American novel, accenting the different critical literary voices that come out of the mainstream consumer society but also out of the various unequal social, economic, gender, and political movements and situations. In including racial, gender, sexual, colonial, class, and ethnic others—who reject the rigidity, the repression, the racial and ethnic stereotyping, the external and internal colonialism, the complication/rejection of the past/nature, and the violence of the institutionalized, conformist norm—in a discussion of the modern American novel, it effects a fundamental recasting of the modern Americanist paradigm, one that is de-centered, richer, more complex, and more diverse.