African American Literature

African American Literature Synopsis

This title provides an accessible, comprehensive and flexible guide to the field of African American literature. It ranges across fiction, poetry, drama, the essay and life writing from the late eighteenth century to the present day, introducing significant concerns, forms, texts, contexts and critical approaches. It has a thematic structure of five chapters designed to stimulate the observation of cross-connections as well as of differences between frequently taught works and moments: (1) Performing the Self: Autobiographical Writing; (2) Homespaces: South, North and Beyond; (3) Sounding Speakerly: Oral, Musical and Vernacular Strains; (4) Discontinuities, a chapter which reads texts through key debates about national and racial identity, gender, sexuality and class; and (5) Recent and New Directions. Combining awareness of contextual specificities in terms of production and reception with detailed discussion of works by such authors as Charles Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W E B DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Ann Petry, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman and Walter Mosley, the volume takes a questioning approach to definitions of what has constituted and might constitute 'African American Literature' and emphasises throughout diversity of experience and representation. Key Features o A single-volume, comprehensive, flexible and accessible introduction to African American literature encompassing all genres o A detailed discussion of a diverse set of literary texts and authors from the late eighteenth century to the present day, organised within a distinctive thematic structure to highlight significant traditions, concerns and modes o Lucid engagement with critical and theoretical debates as well as emphasis on a range of cultural and historical contexts o Supplementary student resources, including a timeline, bibliographies, starting points for research, key terms and definitions etc.