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essays by 20 teaching writers using Black writing ... Read more

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Engaging Tradition, Making It New offers a rich collection of fresh scholarly and pedagogical approaches to new African American literature. Organized around the theme of transgression, the collection focuses on those writers who challenge the reading habits and expectations of students and instructors, whether by engaging themes and literary forms not usually associated with African American literature or by departing from traditional modes of approaching historical, social, or legal struggles. Each chapter offers a specific reading of a particular novel, memoir, or poetry collection, sometimes in concert with a second, related text, and suggests both a useful critical context and one or more pedagogical approaches. Engaging Tradition, Making It New points the way toward exciting new methods of teaching and researching authors in this dynamic field. ... Read more

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Having its origins in the slave narratives and the folktales transmitted orally during that period, the literature of the African American has been rich and varied. Beginning with the first published work of fiction (Clotel; Or, the President's Daughter) in 1853, continuing under the influence of W E B Du Bois during the first part of this century, and reaching a flowering during the Harlem Renaissance, major contributions have been made to American literature. Today African American writers , such as Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, and Maya Angelou are recognised as among the most significant and popular authors in this country. This new book presents an important overview of African-American literature as well as a comprehensive bibliography with easy access provided by title, subject, and author indexes. ... Read more

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The first real reviewing of African-American literature in France began in 1844, when audiences welcomed the romantic dramas of Victor Sejour. With the passing of time, African-American works have become increasingly known in France, where they are now translated almost as soon as they come out in the United States. This bibliography charts the French critical response to African-American literature from the 19th century to 1970. ... Read more

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A Students’ Guide to African American Literature, 1760 to the Present is designed to assist college students (and others) who are relative novices to the study of African American literature. Focusing on the prose tradition (from early autobiographical narratives to contemporary fiction), the author highlights themes, issues, and motifs peculiar to, and recurring in, African American literature, while providing students with more specific information on a number of key texts. Each chapter comes with suggestions for assignments and a selected bibliography for further research. The book also contains an appendix, which contains six student essays, as well as a useful glossary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Emotional As Well As Educational
Lovalerie King has obviously done her homework in exploring the African American experience of each historical figure that is cherished in her book.She makes you see the passion of her subjects' convictions in how they write their stories and why.I was taken through every page in a comprehensive manner as I developed a larger understanding of the origins of African American literature and how it has impacted the modern-day writing of African Americans.

Thank you, Dr. King, for sharing your passionate journey into this rich history and for providing students and educators with an exceptional text full of written images they will appreciate and remember. ... Read more

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Comparative essays, excellent analysis ... Read more

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An excellent book for educators or new African Lit. readers.
This book serves as a very useful tool for educators who would like to introduce junior high or high school students to African-American literature.The anthology also works well for anyone who is looking for aninteresting compilation of important writers.The discussion questionsfollowing each entry are very well written and the biographicalintroductions are a nice touch (especially since the authors are sointeresting).The book begins with an insightful introduction by NikkiGiovanni and then outlines African history in American.The anthologyentries are divided into themes, which focus the reader's attentions andthoughts. ... Read more

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The (Underground) Railroad in African American Literature offers a brief history of the African American experience of the railroad and the uses of railroad history by a wide assortment of twentieth-century African American poets, dramatists, and fiction writers. Moreover, this literary history examines the ways in which trains, train history, and legendary train figures such as Harriet Tubman and John Henry have served as literary symbols. This repeated use of the train symbol and associated train people in twentieth-century African American literature creates a sense of literary continuity and a well-established aesthetic tradition all too frequently overlooked in many traditional approaches to the study of African American writing.The metaphoric possibilities associated with the railroad and the persistence of the train as a literary symbol in African American writing demonstrates the symbol's ongoing literary value for twentieth-century African American writers-writers who invite their readers to look back at the various points in history where America got off track, and who also dare to invite their readers to imagine an alternate route for the future. ... Read more

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This work uses close analysis of key African-American literary texts to investigate the links between the development of blues and jazz and the development of modern African-American literature."Cross-Rhythms" investigates the literary uses and effects of blues and jazz in African-American literature of the twentieth century. Texts by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed variously adopt or are consciously informed by a jazz aesthetic; this aesthetic becomes part of a strategy of ethnic identification and provides a medium with which to consider the legacy of trauma in African-American history. These diverse writers are all thoroughly immersed in a socio-cultural context and a literary aesthetic that embodies shifting conceptions of ethnic identity across the twentieth century. The emergence of blues and jazz is, likewise, a crucial product of, as well as catalyst for, this context, and in their own aesthetic explorations of notions of ethnicity these writers consciously engage with this musical milieu.By examining the highly varied manifestations of a jazz aesthetic as possibly the fundamental common demoninator which links these writers, this study attempts to identify an underlying unifying principle.As the different writers write against essentializing or organic categories of race, the very fact of a shared engagement with jazz sensibilities in their work redefines the basis of African-American communal identity. ... Read more

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This work examines the development of African American literature for young people--in terms of recurrent thematic content and underlying philosophies--from 1920 to the present. Johnson provides a close reading of various texts including: The Brownies Book magazine, edited by W.E.B. DuBois and Jessie Fauset from January 1920 through December 1921; fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps in the 1930s and 1940s, and the historical fiction that their work prefigures; and the picture book canon of poet and writer Lucille Clifton. The book also provides a useful introduction and model for a broad audience. ... Read more