What Is African American Literature

Author : Margo N. Crawford
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2021-01-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781119123347

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What is African American Literature? by Margo N. Crawford Pdf

After Kenneth W. Warren's What Was African American Literature?, Margo N. Crawford delivers What is African American Literature? The idea of African American literature may be much more than literature written by authors who identify as "Black". What is African American Literature? focuses on feeling as form in order to show that African American literature is an archive of feelings, a tradition of the tension between uncontainable black affect and rigid historical structure. Margo N. Crawford argues that textual production of affect (such as blush, vibration, shiver, twitch, and wink) reveals that African American literature keeps reimagining a black collective nervous system. Crawford foregrounds the "idea" of African American literature and uncovers the "black feeling world" co-created by writers and readers. Rejecting the notion that there are no formal lines separating African American literature and a broader American literary tradition, Crawford contends that the distinguishing feature of African American literature is a "moodscape" that is as stable as electricity. Presenting a fresh perspective on the affective atmosphere of African American literature, this compelling text frames central questions around the "idea" of African American literature, shows the limits of historicism in explaining the mood of African American literature and addresses textual production in the creation of the African American literary tradition. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Manifestos series, What is African American Literature? is a significant addition to scholarship in the field. Professors and students of American literature, African American literature, and Black Studies will find this book an invaluable source of fresh perspectives and new insights on America's black literary tradition.

Author : Kenneth W. Warren
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780674066298

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What Was African American Literature? by Kenneth W. Warren Pdf

African American literature is over. With this provocative claim Kenneth Warren sets out to identify a distinctly African American literatureÑand to change the terms with which we discuss it. Rather than contest other definitions, Warren makes a clear and compelling case for understanding African American literature as creative and critical work written by black Americans within and against the strictures of Jim Crow America. Within these parameters, his book outlines protocols of reading that best make sense of the literary works produced by African American writers and critics over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. In WarrenÕs view, African American literature begged the question: what would happen to this literature if and when Jim Crow was finally overthrown? Thus, imagining a world without African American literature was essential to that literature. In support of this point, Warren focuses on three moments in the history of Phylon, an important journal of African American culture. In the dialogues Phylon documents, the question of whether race would disappear as an organizing literary category emerges as shared ground for critical and literary practice. Warren also points out that while scholarship by black Americans has always been the province of a petit bourgeois elite, the strictures of Jim Crow enlisted these writers in a politics that served the race as a whole. Finally, WarrenÕs work sheds light on the current moment in which advocates of African American solidarity insist on a past that is more productively put behind us.

Author : Dickson D. Bruce
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 0813920671

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The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865 by Dickson D. Bruce Pdf

From the earliest texts of the colonial period to works contemporary with Emancipation, African American literature has been a dialogue across color lines, and a medium through which black writers have been able to exert considerable authority on both sides of that racial demarcation. Dickson D. Bruce argues that contrary to prevailing perceptions of African American voices as silenced and excluded from American history, those voices were loud and clear. Within the context of the wider culture, these writers offered powerful, widely read, and widely appreciated commentaries on American ideals and ambitions. The Origins of African American Literature provides strong evidence to demonstrate just how much writers engaged in a surprising number of dialogues with society as a whole. Along with an extensive discussion of major authors and texts, including Phillis Wheatley's poetry, Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Martin Delany's Blake, Bruce explores less-prominent works and writers as well, thereby grounding African American writing in its changing historical settings. The Origins of African American Literature is an invaluable revelation of the emergence and sources of the specifically African American literary tradition and the forces that helped shape it.

Author : Hans Ostrom,J. David Macey Jr.
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 454 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781440871511

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African American Literature by Hans Ostrom,J. David Macey Jr. Pdf

This essential volume provides an overview of and introduction to African American writers and literary periods from their beginnings through the 21st century. This compact encyclopedia, aimed at students, selects the most important authors, literary movements, and key topics for them to know. Entries cover the most influential and highly regarded African American writers, including novelists, playwrights, poets, and nonfiction writers. The book covers key periods of African American literature—such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the Civil Rights Era—and touches on the influence of the vernacular, including blues and hip hop. The volume provides historical context for critical viewpoints including feminism, social class, and racial politics. Entries are organized A to Z and provide biographies that focus on the contributions of key literary figures as well as overviews, background information, and definitions for key subjects.

Author : Aida Levy-Hussen
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2016-12-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781479838141

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How to Read African American Literature by Aida Levy-Hussen Pdf

How to Read African American Literature offers a series of provocations to unsettle the predominant assumptions readers make when encountering post-Civil Rights black fiction. Foregrounding the large body of literature and criticism that grapples with legacies of the slave past, Aida Levy-Hussen’s argument develops on two levels: as a textual analysis of black historical fiction, and as a critical examination of the reading practices that characterize the scholarship of our time. Drawing on psychoanalysis, memory studies, and feminist and queer theory, Levy-Hussen examines how works by Toni Morrison, David Bradley, Octavia Butler, Charles Johnson, and others represent and mediate social injury and collective grief. In the criticism that surrounds these novels, she identifies two major interpretive approaches: “therapeutic reading” (premised on the assurance that literary confrontations with historical trauma will enable psychic healing in the present), and “prohibitive reading” (anchored in the belief that fictions of returning to the past are dangerous and to be avoided). Levy-Hussen argues that these norms have become overly restrictive, standing in the way of a more supple method of interpretation that recognizes and attends to the indirect, unexpected, inconsistent, and opaque workings of historical fantasy and desire. Moving beyond the question of whether literature must heal or abandon historical wounds, Levy-Hussen proposes new ways to read African American literature now.

Author : William L. Andrews
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780807829943

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The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature by William L. Andrews Pdf

The first African American to publish a book in the South, the author of the first female slave narrative in the United States, the father of black nationalism in America--these and other founders of African American literature have a surprising connectio

Author : D. Quentin Miller
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317605638

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The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature by D. Quentin Miller Pdf

The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature considers the key literary, political, historical and intellectual contexts of African American literature from its origins to the present, and also provides students with an analysis of the most up-to-date literary trends and debates in African American literature. This accessible and engaging guide covers a variety of essential topics such as: Vernacular, Oral, and Blues Traditions in Literature Slave Narratives and Their Influence The Harlem Renaissance Mid-twentieth century black American Literature Literature of the civil rights and Black Power era Contemporary African American Writing Key thematic and theoretical debates within the field Examining the relationship between the literature and its historical and sociopolitical contexts, D. Quentin Miller covers key authors and works as well as less canonical writers and themes, including literature and music, female authors, intersectionality and transnational black writing.

Author : Yolanda Williams Page
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 534 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2011-10-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313352041

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Icons of African American Literature by Yolanda Williams Page Pdf

The 24 entries in this book provide extensive coverage of some of the most notable figures in African American literature, such as Alice Walker, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston. Icons of African American Literature: The Black Literary World examines 24 of the most popular and culturally significant topics within African American literature's long and immensely fascinating history. Each piece provide substantial, in-depth information—much more than a typical encyclopedia entry—while remaining accessible and appealing to general and younger readers. Arranged alphabetically, the entries cover such writers as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and August Wilson; major works, such as Invisible Man, Native Son, and Their Eyes Were Watching God; and a range of cultural topics, including the black arts movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the jazz aesthetic. Written by expert contributors, the essays discuss the enduring significance of these topics in American history and popular culture. Each entry also provides sidebars that highlight interesting information and suggestions for further reading.

Author : Maryemma Graham,Jerry Washington Ward
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 861 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2011-02-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780521872171

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The Cambridge History of African American Literature by Maryemma Graham,Jerry Washington Ward Pdf

A major new history of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States.

Author : William L. Andrews
Publisher : Henry Holt
Page : 1032 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : UOM:49015002037209

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African American Literature by William L. Andrews Pdf

Author : Demetrice A. Worley,Jesse Perry
Publisher : McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages
Page : 532 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : STANFORD:36105029516627

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African-American Literature by Demetrice A. Worley,Jesse Perry Pdf

A collection of eighty-five selections that exemplify the range and depth of the writing of Africian Americans. f.

Author : Yoshinobu Hakutani,Robert Butler
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0838635652

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The City in African-American Literature by Yoshinobu Hakutani,Robert Butler Pdf

More recent African-American literature has also been noteworthy for its largely affirmative vision of urban life. Amiri Baraka's 1981 essay "Black Literature and the Afro-American Nation: The Urban Voice" argues that, from the Harlem Renaissance onward, African-American literature has been "urban shaped," producing a uniquely "black urban consciousness." And Toni Morrison, although stressing that the American city in general has often induced a sense of alienation in many African-American writers, nevertheless adds that modern African-American literature is suffused with an "affection" for "the village within" the city.

Author : Frank N. Magill
Publisher : Collins Reference
Page : 608 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 1992-12-08
Category : Reference
ISBN : 0062700669

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Masterpieces of African-American Literature by Frank N. Magill Pdf

A unique and vital guide that summarizes, explains and evaluates the greatest works of African-American literature -- including articles on writings from James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison and many more.

Author : Jasmine Nichole Cobb
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 614 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021-05-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781108687843

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African American Literature in Transition, 1800–1830: Volume 2, 1800–1830 by Jasmine Nichole Cobb Pdf

African American literature in the years between 1800 and 1830 emerged from significant transitions in the cultural, technological, and political circulation of ideas. Transformations included increased numbers of Black organizations, shifts in the physical mobility of Black peoples, expanded circulation of abolitionist and Black newsprint as well as greater production of Black authored texts and images. The perpetuation of slavery in the early American republic meant that many people of African descent conveyed experiences of bondage or promoted abolition in complex ways, relying on a diverse array of print and illustrative forms. Accordingly, this volume takes a thematic approach to African American literature from 1800 to 1830, exploring Black organizational life before 1830, movement and mobility in African American literature, and print culture in circulation, illustration, and the narrative form.

Author : Maria Giulia Fabi
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0252026675

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Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel by Maria Giulia Fabi Pdf

Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel restores to its rightful place a body of American literature that has long been overlooked, dismissed, or misjudged. This insightful reconsideration of nineteenth-century African-American fiction uncovers the literary artistry and ideological complexity of a body of work that laid the foundation for the Harlem Renaissance and changed the course of American letters. Focusing on the trope of passing -- black characters lightskinned enough to pass for white -- M. Giulia Fabi shows how early African-American authors such as William Wells Brown, Frank J. Webb, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, James Weldon Johnson, Frances E. W. Harper, and Edward A. Johnson transformed traditional representations of blackness and moved beyond the tragic mulatto motif. Celebrating a distinctive, African-American history, culture, and worldview, these authors used passing to challenge the myths of racial purity and the color line. Fabi examines how early black writers adapted existing literary forms, including the sentimental romance, the domestic novel, and the utopian novel, to express their convictions and concerns about slavery, segregation, and racism. She also gives a historical overview of the canon-making enterprises of African-American critics from the 1850s to the 1990s and considers how their concerns about crafting a particular image for African-American literature affected their perceptions of nineteenth-century black fiction.