LibGuides: African & African American Literature: Books & eBooks

Featured eBooks

Go to A-Z Databases: Books & eBooks to search for more eBooks. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding books or eBooks? Try our How to Use Books & eBooks guides.

Alice Walker's The Color Purple A compilation of current criticism on the characters and themes in 'The Color Purple'. Also included is a chronology of Alice Walker's life.
Bearing Witness to African American Literature Bearing Witness to African American Literature: Validating and Valorizing Its Authority, Authenticity, and Agency collects twenty-three of Bernard W. Bell's lectures and essays that were first presented between 1968 and 2008. From his role in the culture wars as a graduate student activist in the Black Studies Movement to his work in the transcultural Globalization Movement as an international scholar and Fulbright cultural ambassador in Spain, Portugal, and China, Bell's long and inspiring journey traces the modern institutional origins and the contemporary challengers of African American literary studies. This volume is made up of five sections, including chapters on W. E. B. DuBois's theory and trope of double consciousness, an original theory of residually oral forms for reading the African American novel, an argument for an African Americentric vernacular and literary tradition, and a deconstruction of the myths of the American melting pot and literary mainstream. Bell considers texts by contemporary writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, William Styron, James Baldwin, and Jean Toomer, as well as works by Mark Twain, Frederick Douglas, and William Faulkner. In a style that ranges from lyricism to the classic jeremiad, Bell emphasizes that his work bears the imprint of many major influences, including his mentor, poet and scholar Sterling A. Brown, and W. E. B. DuBois. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate Bell's central place as a revisionist African American literary and cultural theorist, historian, and critic. Bearing Witness to African American Literature will be an invaluable introduction to major issues in the African American literary tradition for scholars of American, African American, and cultural studies.
Black Literature Criticism Focuses on writers and works published since 1950. The majority of the authors surveyed are African American, but representative African and Caribbean authors are also included.
Booker T. Washington in Perspective This book, an important companion volume to Louis R. Harlan's prize-winning biography of Booker T. Washington, makes available for the first time in one collection Harlan's essays on the life and career of the celebrated black leader. Written over a span of a quarter of a century, they present a remarkably rich and complex look at Washington, the educator and leading precursor of the Civil Rights Movement who rose from slavery to be the dominant force in black America at the opening of the twentieth century. Harlan's mastery of biography is revealed in essays printed here exploring the nature of biographical writing. Readers interested in the art of historiography and biography will find here Harlan's essays detailing his experience in crafting his acclaimed biography of Washington, which received two Bancroft Awards, the Beveridge Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Booker T. Washington in Perspective reveals Harlan as historian and biographer in the essays that were the prelude to his masterwork.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Things Fall Apart, set in Nigeria about a century ago, is widely regarded as Chinua Achebe's masterpiece. Considered one of the most broadly read African novels, Achebe's work responded to the two-dimensional caricatures of Africans that often dominated Western literature. This guide contains a selection of contemporary criticism of this novel.
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature This abridgement of The Oxford Companion to African American Literature will make the entries of the greatest general interest available to a wider audience, providing the same calibre of scholarship and information as the original volume. The Concise collects more than 400 biographies (authors, critics, literary characters and historical figures) of both well-known figures and the lives and careers of writers not found in other reference works. The abridgement also includes the 150 plot summaries of major works. The editors briefly update the biographic details for author entries to include mention of major new works, death dates, and awards since the Companion's 1997 publication. A revised introduction, contributors list, subject index, cross-references, and updated bibliographical notes are also included. The volume reprints in its entirety the five-part fifteen page essay, "Literary History", capturing the full sweep of African American writing in the U.S. from the colonial and early national eras to the present day.
Critical Insights: Alice Walker Essays in this volume discuss a multitude of critical viewpoints about Walker's work. topics include a discussion of her symbolism, metaphysics, and aesthetics; her views on feminism; and her responses to the issues of politics, slavery, poverty and sexism.
Critical Insights: Beloved Toni Morrison's 1987 tale of Sethe, an escaped slave living in Cincinnati and struggling to overcome her past, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 along with instant international acclaim. Several essays in this volume study major themes of Beloved, including motherhood, the psychological impacts of slavery, and repression of memory, as well as connections to the real-life slave who inspired Morrison's story. Taken together, the essays presented in this volume give special attention to the traumatic horrors of slavery. Indeed, although their authors examine Sethe's act of infanticide from various perspectives, it is evident that the recurring theme throughout the volume is not the question of rightness or the wrongness of the act itself, but the ways in which the characters contend with and survive a dehumanizing and absurd historical movement. Beloved, the narrative, and Beloved the character, become Morrison's conduits for confronting a story that is impossible to tell but needs to be told. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays Further Readings Detailed Bibliography Detailed Bio of the Editor General Subject Index
Critical Insights: Civil Rights Literature, Past & Present Outstanding, in-depth scholarship by renowned literary critics; great starting point for students seeking an introduction to the theme and the critical discussions surrounding it. American civil rights literature has largely been associated with speeches, letters, and non-fiction works produced by African-American activists of the 1950s and 60s such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. This volume not only examines key works of the African-american civil rights debate past and present, it also explores issues of gender equality and sexual orientation integral to civil rights studies. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays Further Readings Detailed Bibliography Detailed Bio of the Editor General Subject Index
Critical Insights: Gwendolyn Brooks Four original essays in this set explore how the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement influenced Brooks's work, with close readings of selections from A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters, In the Mecca, Riot, and Family Pictures. Essays also survey the major Brooks criticism and Brooks's novel Maud Martha and offer a close reading of "The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock."
Critical Insights: Harlem Renaissance Outstanding, in-depth scholarship by renowned literary critics; great starting point for students seeking an introduction to the theme and the critical discussions surrounding it. Critical Insights: Harlem Renaissance presents the period of unparallel growth in art and literature from the African American Community, also known as the Harlem Renaissance. With its production of key authors, from Langston Hughes to Claude McKay, among others, the Harlem Renaissance saw the rise in creative endeavors by black artists and writers eager to celebrate the unique characteristics of black life and to challenge the institutionalized racial hierarchy pervasive within twentieth-century American society. These creative thinkers, certainly intellectuals in their own right, used their poetry, short stories, novels, and plays as a vehicle to critique the longstanding issues within society that limited socioeconomic mobility for blacks, while perpetuating startling stereotypes about a community too long oppressed. Because of its undeniable impact in shaping the American cultural imagination regarding blacks and on the larger American literary canon, the Harlem Renaissance has since been heavily studied as the most significant period of artistic as well as cultural development the African American community has ever experienced. This title seeks to offer not only expanded readings of the central themes that have long captivated the attention of scholars across time, but also providing valuable insight into the texts, authors, and critical perspectives too often overlooked. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume; Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays; Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays; Further Readings; Detailed Bibliography; Detailed Bio of the Editor; General Subject Index.
Critical Insights: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings This title includes in-depth critical discussions of Maya Angelou's novel. Maya Angelou's ""I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"" took the world by storm when it was published in 1969. As it shot to the top of best-seller lists, it made Angelou one of the most recognized black women in America. Despite controversy over its frank depiction of sexual abuse, the autobiography is still widely read in high schools and colleges across the country. Three decades after it was published, readers continue to admire Angelou's artistry, wit, and indomitable spirit. Edited by Mildred R. Mickle, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Greater Allegheny, this volume brings together a variety of critical offerings on Angelou's famous autobiography. Mickle's introduction pays tribute to Angelou's achievement and examines the inspiration she drew from Phillis Wheatley's civil rights advocacy as well as the similarities between ""Caged Bird"" and Harriet Jacobs' ""Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"" and Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poetry. ""The Paris Review""'s Christopher Cox reminds readers of how revolutionary Angelou's autobiography was when it was published and recounts the comments Angelou made on her work in an interview with George Plimpton. Four original essays by Amy Sickels, Pamela Loos, Neil Heims, and Robert C. Evans provide valuable context for reader's new to Angelou's work. Sickels discusses the historical events that surround Angelou's life: the civil rights, black power, and black arts movements as well as the emergence of black women's literature with the first publications of Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, and Lucille Clifton. Loos provides a survey of the major pieces of criticism on ""Caged Bird"", paying special attention to the book's early reception and how it fits in the autobiographical genre and slave narratives, as well as issues of race, gender, aesthetics, and identity. Neil Heims discusses the struggle for a black identity through readings of both ""Caged Bird"" and James Baldwin's ""If Beale Street Could Talk"". Finally, Robert C. Evans examines the role that both formal and informal education play in the young Maya's maturation. The collection also includes ten previously published essays that examine ""Caged Bird"" through a variety of lenses. Critics examine the character of young Maya, noting how her rootlessness contributes to her perseverance and adaptability, as well as how Angelou's narrative technique allows her to recount the details of incredible life without being controlled by them. The book's treatment of sexual abuse is also investigated in the larger context of other black women's narratives of sexual abuse. Other critics attend to ""Caged Bird""'s place in the genre of ethnic autobiography and the particular challenges it presents to teachers seeking to expose students multicultural literature; the childhood roots of Angelou's political activism; the influence of blues music on the narrative's structure; and, the young Maya's relationships with the black community, literature, and the women in her life.
Critical Insights: James Baldwin Although James Baldwin today holds a secure position in the canon of twentieth-century literature, more than twenty years after his death, he still remains one of America's most evasive authors. The body of his work is wide-ranging, complex, and occasionally contradictory, the product of a mind in a tireless dialogue itself and its paradoxical and swiftly changing culture.
Critical Insights: James McBride This volume discusses the varied works of James McBride, including his memoir The Color of Water and his National Book Award winning novel The Good Lord Bird among other works. The themes covered include: historical ties to World War II; the Civil War; his family relationships and unique upbringing. The volume provides critical analysis and close readings of his work. Arguably, his most famous work, The Color of Water (1996), which is a composite memoir comprised of his mother’s and his life’s experiences, is the work that placed him solidly within the African American canon, and it has received the most scholarly attention. This collection does contain a few essays that discuss The Color of Water; however, its primary focus is to touch on the other fiction and prose books that he has published.
Critical Insights: Langston Hughes Essays in this volume about African American writer Langston Hughes include a biographical sketch and four essays that survey the critical reception of his work and explore the cultural and historical contexts and key themes in Hughes's works. Other essay
Critical Insights: Martin Luther King Jr. This volume examines both the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., highlighting a variety of interpretive approaches, including rhetorical analysis, close reading, and explorations setting King's work in social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Critical analyses offer an overview of important previous work on King's writings and speeches while also making new contributions to the study of his written and spoken works. Race, class, and gender are closely examined, along with a discussion of the skill of King's writing.
Critical Insights: Maya Angelou As an author, poet, actor, singer, dancer, civil rights activist, and more, Maya Angelou lived a life worthy of seven autobiographies. From a troubled childhood in St. Louis to her work with Martin Luther King, Jr. to her vast oeuvre of poetry and prose, this volume profiles one of the most prolific African American voices of the 20th century, highlighting her most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Critical Insights: Richard Wright Critical Insights: Richard Wright explores the work of this groundbreaking author of Black Boy and Native Son, to place the author's body of work in the canon of American literature, the literature of identity and literature of protest.
Critical Insights: The Slave Narrative Edited by Kimberly Drake, who directs the writing program and teaches writing and American literature and culture at Scripps College, this volume includes chapters on the more widely read slave narratives, including those by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Solomon Northup, but also relatively lesser-known narratives, such as neo-slave narrative novels and slave narratives about slavery outside the U.S. Individual chapters will provide researchers with a wide range of approaches to the slave narrative genre, and the volume's Preface will discuss the history of the slave narrative genre from its origins to the present day, where it makes its way into popular films and novels.
Critical Insights: Toni Morrison Essays consider Morrison's body of work and the cultural contexts in which that work was written. In an essay by leading African American literary scholar Trudier Harris readers will get a sweeping overview of the importance of Morrison's first six novels. Other essays examine community and identity in works such as Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise.
Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston is today recognized as a major contributor to the Harlem Renaissance literature of the 1920s and American modernist literature. Hurston’s most important works, published in the 1930s, emerge from her interest in African American oral and vernacular culture, represented in her most studied publications Mules and Men (1935) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
Encyclopedia of African-American Writing A timely survey of an important sector of American letters, The Encyclopedia of African-American Writing covers the role and influence of African American cultural leaders, from all walks of life, from the 18th century to the present. Readers will explore what inspired various African-American writers to create poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, opinion pieces and numerous other works, and how those writings contributed to culture in America today.
Ernest Gaines Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Ernest Gaines.
The Harlem Renaissance Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s was the epicenter of a rebirth in African-American literature with the poetry and prose of writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gwendolyn Brooks. This volume examines the defining themes and styles of African-American literature during this period. Presents essays that document the origins and influence of the Harlem Renaissance, focusing on key writing figures and artists and the many challenges they faced.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison Many critics view Invisible Man as one of the great American novels of the 20th century and perhaps the greatest novel by an African-American writer. This classic novel reflected race relations in America at the beginning of the civil rights movement. Few works have brought to life with such candor and lyrical grace, the life of a man who feels himself marginalized to the point of being rendered invisibly nonexistent. This new offering in the Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations series considers Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man through a selection of critical essays. Additional features include an index for easy reference, notes on the contributing writers, a bibliography of the author's work, a chronology detailing the author's life, and an introductory essay by literature professor Harold Bloom.
James Baldwin : America and Beyond "This fine collection of essays represents an important contribution to the rediscovery of Baldwin's stature as essayist, novelist, black prophetic political voice, and witness to the Civil Rights era. The title provides an excellent thematic focus. He understood both the necessity, and the impossibility, of being a black 'American' writer. He took these issues 'Beyond'---Paris, Istanbul, various parts of Africa---but this formative experience only returned him to the unresolved dilemmas. He was a fine novelist and a major prophetic political voice. He produced some of the most important essays of the twentieth century and addressed in depth the complexities of the black political movement. His relative invisibility almost lost us one of the most significant voices of his generation. This welcome 'revival' retrieves it. Close call." ---Stuart Hall, Professor Emeritus, Open University    This interdisciplinary collection by leading writers in their fields brings together a discussion of the many facets of James Baldwin, both as a writer and as the prophetic conscience of a nation. The core of the volume addresses the shifting, complex relations between Baldwin as an American--"as American as any Texas GI" as he once wryly put it--and his life as an itinerant cosmopolitan. His ambivalent imaginings of America were always mediated by his conception of a world "beyond" America: a world he knew both from his travels and from his voracious reading. He was a man whose instincts were, at every turn, nurtured by America; but who at the same time developed a ferocious critique of American exceptionalism. In seeking to understand how, as an American, he could learn to live with difference--breaking the power of fundamentalisms of all stripes--he opened an urgent, timely debate that is still ours. His America was an idea fired by desire and grief in equal measure. As the authors assembled here argue, to read him now allows us to imagine new possibilities for the future. With contributions by Kevin Birmingham, Douglas Field, Kevin Gaines, Briallen Hopper, Quentin Miller, Vaughn Rasberry, Robert Reid-Pharr, George Shulman, Hortense Spillers, Colm T#65533;ib#65533;n, Eleanor W. Traylor, Cheryl A. Wall, and Magdalena Zaborowska.
Langston Hughes This eBook presents a new collection of full-length critical essays on Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet, playwright, novelist, short-story writer, and public figure. Hughes, a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, is best known for such accessible and inspiring poems as The Negro Speaks of Rivers, but he also wrote poignantly of the failures of American society. World-renowned scholar Harold Bloom offers an introduction to this valuable resource.
Major Black American Writers Through the Harlem Renaissance -- Covers more than 1,400 of the most important authors who write in English -- Ranges from the author of Beowulf to present-day writers -- Includes writers in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- Each volume covers approximately 12 authors and includes a concise biography, a selection of critical extracts, and a complete and up-to-date bibliography of the author's separate publications
Native Son - Richard Wright Richard Wright is one of the greatest African-American writers of the 20th century. His masterpiece Native Son is analyzed in this volume of essays.
Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book. Born in Gambia in 1753, she came to America aboard a slave ship, the Phillis. From an early age, Wheatley exhibited a profound gift for verse, publishing her first poem in 1767. Her tribute to a famed pastor, "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield," followed in 1770, catapulting her into the international spotlight, and publication of her 1773 Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral in London created her an international star. Despite the attention she received at the time, history has not been kind to Wheatley. Her work has long been neglected or denigrated by literary critics and historians. John C. Shields, a scholar of early American literature, has tried to help change this perception, and Wheatley has begun to take her place among the elite of American writers. In Phillis Wheatley and the Romantic Age, Shields contends that Wheatley was not only a brilliant writer but one whose work made a significant impression on renowned Europeans of the Romantic age, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who borrowed liberally from her works, particularly in his famous distinction between fancy and imagination. Shields shows how certain Wheatley texts, particularly her "Long Poem," consisting of "On Recollection," "Thoughts on the Works of Providence," and "On Imagination," helped shape the face of Romanticism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Phillis Wheatley and the Romantic Age helps demolish the long-held notion that literary culture flowed in only one direction: from Europe to the Americas. Thanks to Wheatley's influence, Shields argues, the New World was influencing European literary masters far sooner than has been generally understood.
A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry This classic American drama tells the story of the Youngers, a family that must struggle with their own inner divisions--in addition to the racist attitudes of society at large--as they move into their dream house in a community unwelcoming to African Americans. This invaluable new study guide contains a selection of the finest contemporary criticism of Hansberry's landmark play.
Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope : A Political Companion to Invisible Man An important new collection of original essays that examine how Ellison's landmark novel, Invisible Man (1952), addresses the social, cultural, political, economic, and racial contradictions of America. Commenting on the significance of Mark Twain's writings, Ralph Ellison wrote that "a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal." Ellison believed it was the contradiction between America's "noble ideals and the actualities of our conduct" that inspired the most profound literature--"the American novel at its best." Drawing from the fields of literature, politics, law, and history, the contributors make visible the political and ethical terms of Invisible Man, while also illuminating Ellison's understanding of democracy and art. Ellison hoped that his novel, by providing a tragicomic look at American ideals and mores, would make better citizens of his readers. The contributors also explain Ellison's distinctive views on the political tasks and responsibilities of the novelist, an especially relevant topic as contemporary writers continue to confront the American incongruity between democratic faith and practice. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope uniquely demonstrates why Invisible Man stands as a premier literary meditation on American democracy.
Student Companion to Richard Wright Born in rural Mississippi, the grandson of slaves, Richard Wright overcame every social obstacle, including poverty, racism, and limited education to achieve literary recognition as the creator of some of America's most powerful Black literature. Written with unprecendented candor, Wright's works changed the cultural landscape by challenging old stereotypes and myths about race. Wright scholar Robert Felgar has written a critical volume to help students appreciate the literary significance of such groundbreaking works as Native Son and the autobiographical Black Boy. This study serves students of both literature and social history as it explores the themes of racism and all types of insitutionalized oppression that Wright exposed in his provocative writing. Felgar approaches each of Wright's major works in chronological order, offering insightful literary analysis of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and The Outsider, as well as Wright's two works published posthumously, Eight Men, a collection of stories, and Lawd Today The original, censored works are discussed and compared with the more recently re-published unexpurgated versions. This Student Companion introduces readers to Richard Wright with a biographical chapter, recounting the writer's struggles and achievements. A literary heritage chapter examines the genres, themes, and stylistic traditions that figured in Wright's work. Each of Wright's major works of fiction is given careful literary interpretation, with analysis of plot, character development, thematic concerns and a close alternate reading. A selective bibliography of critical works and reviews, in addition to the listings of Wright's stories, essays and full-length works will help students derive the most from their study of this important American writer.
Student Companion to Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the most controversial yet prominent figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance. This introductory study examines Hurston's contributions to that literary movement, as well as her role as mediator between the black and white worlds in which she lived. Readers will appeciate the clear presentation of the biographical facts of her life, as well as an overview of the issues and varying perceptions surrounding her literary achievements. A full chapter is devoted to analysing each of Hurston's major works of fiction: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) as well as her short fiction and her fictionalized autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). For each of the works, plot, character development, themes, setting and symbols are identified and discussed in clear accessible language. An alternate critical perspective enhances the understanding of each of Hurston's full length works. Contemporary reviews are cited in a bibliography which also helps students find further biographical and critical information on Zora Neale Hurston.
Toni Morrison : Paradise, Love, a Mercy Toni Morrison features a collection of ten new essays by noted Morrison scholars, including recipients of the Toni Morrison Society Book Award. Focusing upon Morrison's most recently published novels (Paradise, Love, A Mercy) the contributors to this volume revisit issues that continue to engage Morrison and are part of the currency of contemporary American literary and cultural history. These selections examine Morrison's ongoing "romance" with African Americans as they continue to battle the demons of race, gender, class, and poverty, to name a few. Together, these essays offer comprehensive and nuanced discussions of Morrison's latest novels and provide new directions for Morrison scholarship in the 21st century. This volume provides students of literature, cultural studies, and history with an overview of Morrison's examination of African American progress and leadership at key moments in American history and culture from the Colonial Period to the present. Through their thematic interconnectedness, the essays reveal Morrison at her most brilliant in her ability to reach into the past to comment on contemporary issues.

Featured Print Books

Go to OneSearch to search for more print books.

Want more on finding print books? Try our How to Use OneSearch guide.

Alice Walker Critical Perspectives - Past and Present Alice Walker is considered by many to be a feminist and literary 'giant'. Now, this provocative collection of essays delves into the work of this bestselling and critically acclaimed writer. Contributors include bell hooks, Griel Marcus, Barbara Christian and J M Coetzee.
Alice Walker : A Critical Companion Alice Walker, born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944, overcame a disadvantaged sharecropping background, blindness in one eye, and the tense times of the Civil Rights Movement to become one of the world's most respected African American writers. While attending both Spelman and Sarah Lawrence Colleges, Walker began to draw on both her personal tragedies and those of her community to write poetry, essays, short stories, and novels that would tell the virtually untold stories of oppressed African and African American women, providing readers with hope and inspiring activisim. Perhaps best known for her novel "The Color Purple" (1982), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and became a controversial film three years later, Walker has introduced and developed womanist theory, criticism and practice, and continues to champion the causes of women of color by encouraging their strength and liberation in her life and her writings. Literary works analyzed in this volume: "The Third Life of Grange Copeland," "Meridian," "The Color Purple," "The Temple of My Familiar," "Possessing the Secret of Joy," "By the Light of My Father's Smile," "The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart," "Now is the Time to Open Your Heart."
Harriet Jacobs : A Life Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains the most-read woman's slave narrative of all time. Jean Fagan Yellin recounts the experiences that shaped Incidents-the years Jacobs spent hiding in her grandmother's attic from her sexually abusive master-as well as illuminating the wider world into which Jacobs escaped. Yellin's groundbreaking scholarship restores a life whose sorrows and triumphs reflect the history of the nineteenth century, from slavery to the Civil War, to Reconstruction and beyond. Winner of the 2004 Frederick Douglass Prize, presented by Yale University’s Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, awarded to the year’s best non-fiction book on slavery, resistance and abolition, the most prestigious award for the study of the black experience.
Maya Angelou A literature of black women's courage and experience is at the heart of Maya Angelou's writing. She has been called a national institution and the people's poet. It has been suggested that she has manifested an indomitable spirit and benign will in her most famous book, ""I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"". This addition to the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Views"" series is enhanced by a chronology, bibliography, notes on the contributors, and an introductory essay by noted literary scholar Harold Bloom.
Ralph Ellison Ellison's Essays / R.W.B.Lewis -- Nightmare of a Native Son / Jonathan Baumbach -- American Nightmare / Allen Guttmann -- The Music of Invisibility / Tony Tanner -- Literacy and Hibernation: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man / Robert B. Stepto -- Ritual and Rationalization: Black Folklore in the Works of Ralph Ellison / Susan L.Blake -- The Mixed Heritage of the Modern Black Novel / Charles T. Davis -- Creativity and Commerce in the Trueblood Episode / Houston A.Baker,Jr -- Solitude / Michael G.Cooke -- Call me Jonah / Douglas Robinson -- Anthropology, Modernism, and Jazz / Berndt Ostendorf.
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man : A Casebook This volume offers students and scholars a rich variety of interpretations from which to fashion their own views of the novel and the man who created it. Both Ellison's comments, a number of which appear in print here for the first time, and those of ten distinguished scholars of American andAfrican-American literature take the position that there can be no last word on Invisible Man. Different as they are, the essays share a respect for the novel's fluidity and for every reader's encounter with its narrator, story, and meanings.
Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, Washington’s strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.
W. E. B. du Bois, American Prophet Pioneering historian, sociologist, editor, novelist, poet, and organizer, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his efforts and achievements in the political and intellectual world. Often labeled an atheist, Du Bois was in fact deeply and creatively involved with religion. Historian Edward J. Blum reveals how spirituality was central to Du Bois's approach to Marxism, pan-Africanism, and nuclear disarmament, his support for black churches, and his reckoning of the spiritual wage of white supremacy. His writings, teachings, and prayers served as articles of faith for fellow activists of his day, from student book club members to Langston Hughes. A blend of history, sociology, literary criticism, and religious reflection in the model of Du Bois's best work, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet recasts the life of this great visionary and intellectual for a new generation of scholars and activists. Honorable Mention, 2007 Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards