Read complete books and articles on: African-American Literature

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: African-American Literature

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Language and Literature in the African American Imagination » Read Now
by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay. 214 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Drawing together scholars from communication, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields, this edited collection examines the current thinking on African American literature and language. Some of the most significant writers and thinkers in the field have contributed their views on all...
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Drawing together scholars from communication, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields, this edited collection examines the current thinking on African American literature and language. Some of the most significant writers and thinkers in the field have contributed their views on all major aspects of the topic. The widespread debate over the canon in American literature, the issue of cultural diversity, and the need to have books with critical inquiry into African American culture make this collection suitable for scholars and students in diverse fields.
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2.

The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature » Read Now
by Jane Davis. 161 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Davis argues that African American authors have established a tradition of recurring images of whites in their literature and that they use these images to critique white racism. The book constructs a typology of white images in the black imagination. These images include such stereotypes as the...
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Davis argues that African American authors have established a tradition of recurring images of whites in their literature and that they use these images to critique white racism. The book constructs a typology of white images in the black imagination. These images include such stereotypes as the overt bigot, the hypocrite, the liberal, and the good-hearted weakling. While black authors often explicitly reveal the racism of the overt bigot, Davis shows that black writers are much more subtle in their expositions of other forms of bigotry. The volume provides extensive discussions of such writers as Charles Chesnutt, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin and surveys a number of other African American authors.
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3.

The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism » Read Now
by Henry Louis Gates Jr. 290 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the...
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating 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, and particularly the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey whose myths help articulate the black tradition's theory of its literature, Gates uncovers a unique system for interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. His critical approach relies heavily on the Signifying Monkey--perhaps the most popular figure in African-American folklore--and signification and Signifyin(g). Exploring 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. The second volume in an enterprising trilogy on African-American literature, The Signifying Monkey--which expands the arguments of Figures in Black--makes an important contribution to literary theory, African-American literature, folklore, and literary history.
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4.

Modern Black American Poets and Dramatists » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 182 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...IRONY that the greatest African-American poet is one of the least...culture and in European literature and philosophy. And yet...some crucial enigmas of the African-...
5.

Contemporary Black American Poets and Dramatists » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 200 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...ESSENTIAL black literature is the distillation...Expression of Two African American Authors: Rita...Language and Literature in the African American Imagination...Black...
6.

Theories of Social Action in Black Literature » Read Now
by Chester Hedgepeth Jr. 158 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Theories of Social Action in Black Literature American University Studies Series XIX General Literature Vol. 2 PETER LANG New York Berne...Theories of Social Action in...
7.

Black American Poets and Dramatists of the Harlem Renaissance » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 160 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...change in its characters. A literature of the ever-growing inner...1927 , said of the African-American poets of the Twenties that...to be irrelevant to an African-American...
8.

Major Black American Writers through the Harlem Renaissance » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 187 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...characters. A literature of the ever-growing...war of some African-American women writers...Nonetheless, before African-American literature gains a solid...which other...
9.

Black American Poets and Dramatists before the Harlem Renaissance » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 145 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...change in its characters. A literature of the ever-growing inner...seems today the major African-American poet before Sterling Brown...influence upon the first major...
10.

Black American Women Poets and Dramatists » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 247 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...so prominently in recent African American womens writings, it is...directing herself to a general African-American audience using the grammar...world of young peoples...
11.

The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition » Read Now
by Bernard W. Bell. 426 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...and criticism. 2. Afro-Americans in literature. I. Title. PS 153.N5B43 1987 813...such fields as history, philosophy, literature, and language. What I mean to...
12.

Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook » Read Now
by Emmanuel S. Nelson. 530 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

During the last two decades, African American writers have emerged as a distinct and dominant force in world literature. This reference book offers lively, concise, and current information about the lives and imaginative works of 79 contemporary African American novelists. Each of the alphabetically...
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During the last two decades, African American writers have emerged as a distinct and dominant force in world literature. This reference book offers lively, concise, and current information about the lives and imaginative works of 79 contemporary African American novelists. Each of the alphabetically arranged entries begins with a biographical sketch of the author, offers a judicious critical assessment of the author's major works, provides a representative sample of the critical responses the author's books have elicited, and concludes with a selected bibliography that lists the author's publications as well as useful secondary material. Included are entries for major figures, such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, but many noteworthy young writers also receive the attention they deserve. Forty-one of the 79 writers discussed are women, and roughly a dozen of the novelists have identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Intended for students and advanced scholars alike, the volume is sophisticated yet accessible to a wide audience.
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13.

Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature: Brown, Wilson, Jacobs, Delany, Douglass, and Harper » Read Now
by John Ernest. 272 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

An examination of how six prominent African-American writers of the nineteenth century reconfigured a threatening world.
14.

Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892 » Read Now
by Frances Smith Foster. 194 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This is the first comprehensive cultural of history of literature by African American women prior to the Twentieth century. Beginning with the earliest extant writings, Frances Smith Foster her textual analysis within the writers' social and literary contexts.
15.

Scarring the Black Body: Race and Representation in African American Literature » Read Now
by Carol E. Henderson. 184 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Scarring and the act of scarring are recurrent images in African American literature. In Scarring the Black Body, Carol E. Henderson analyzes the cultural and historical implications of scarring in a number of African American texts that feature the trope of the scar, including works by Sherley Anne...
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Scarring and the act of scarring are recurrent images in African American literature. In Scarring the Black Body, Carol E. Henderson analyzes the cultural and historical implications of scarring in a number of African American texts that feature the trope of the scar, including works by Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright.
The first part of Scarring the Black Body, "The Call, " traces the process by which African bodies were Americanized through the practice of branding. Henderson incorporates various materials -- from advertisements for the return of runaways to slave narratives -- to examine the cultural practice of "writing" the body. She also considers ways in which writers and social activists, including Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, developed a "call" centered on the body's scars to demand that people of African descent be given equal rights and protection under the law.
In the second part of the book, "The Response, " Henderson goes on to show that more recent representations of the conditions of slavery by authors such as Williams and Morrison extend the efforts of their predecessors by developing creative responses to those calls centered around the African American body and its scars. Henderson explores Williams's reinvention of the whip-scarred body in her novel Dessa Rose and provides a close analysis of Morrison's use of scar imagery in Beloved. She also devotes a chapter to Petry's The Street and concludes with an investigation of the wounded black male psyche in the works of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright.
Scarring the Black Body demonstrates that the creative acts of theseauthors bind together that which has been wounded both literally and figuratively. Those who hear the voices of the ancestors are urged to connect to that part of themselves wherein wounds of the past carry a self-knowledge
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16.

Moorings & Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women's Literature » Read Now
by Karla F. C. Holloway. 226 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...contextualized within the literature of African and African-American writers has created...Most critics of African-American literature, aware of the...