Product Description
The period between 1880 and 1918, at the end of which Jim Crow was firmly established and the Great Migration of African Americans was well under way, was not the nadir for black culture, James Smethurst reveals, but instead a time of profound response from African American intellectuals. The African American Roots of Modernism explores how the Jim Crow system triggered significant artistic and intellectual responses from African American writers, deeply marking the beginnings of literary modernism and, ultimately, notions of American modernity.
In identifying the Jim Crow period with the coming of modernity, Smethurst upsets the customary assessment of the Harlem Renaissance as the first nationally significant black arts movement, showing how artists reacted to Jim Crow with migration narratives, poetry about the black experience, black performance of popular culture forms, and more. Smethurst introduces a whole cast of characters, including understudied figures such as William Stanley Braithwaite and Fenton Johnson, and more familiar authors such as Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, and James Weldon Johnson. By considering the legacy of writers and artists active between the end of Reconstruction and the rise of the Harlem Renaissance, Smethurst illuminates their influence on the black and white U.S. modernists who followed.
... Read more

Product Description

Through a reading of periodicals, memoirs, speeches, and fiction from the antebellum period to the Harlem Renaissance, this study re-examines various myths about a U.S. progressive history and about an African American counter history in terms of race, democracy, and citizenship. Reframing 19^th century and early 20^th-century African-American cultural history from the borderlands of the U.S. empire where many African Americans lived, worked and sought refuge, Knadler argues that these writers developed a complicated and layered transnational and creolized political consciousness that challenged dominant ideas of the nation and citizenship. Writing from multicultural contact zones, these writers forged a "new black politics"—one that anticipated the current debate about national identity and citizenship in a twenty-first century global society. As Knadler argues, they defined, created, and deployed an alternative political language to re-imagine U.S. citizenship and its related ideas of national belonging, patriotism, natural rights, and democratic agency.

Product Description

This book examines how cultural and ideological reactions to activism in the post-Civil Rights Black community were depicted in fiction written by Black women writers, 1965–1980. By recognizing and often challenging prevailing cultural paradigms within the post-Civil Rights era, writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Paule Marshall fictionalized the black community in critical ways that called for further examination of progressive activism after the much publicized 'end' of the Civil Rights Movement. Through their writings, the authors’ confronted marked shifts within African American literature, politics and culture that proved detrimental to the collective 'wellness' of the community at large.

Product Description
Teaching the Harlem Renaissance: Course Design and Classroom Strategies addresses the practical and theoretical needs of college and high school instructors offering a unit or a full course on the Harlem Renaissance. In this collection many of the field's leading scholars address a wide range of issues and primary materials: the role of slave narrative in shaping individual and collective identity; the long-recognized centrality of women writers, editors, and critics within the "New Negro" movement; the role of the visual arts and "popular" forms in the dialogue about race and cultural expression; and tried-and-true methods for bringing students into contact with the movement's poetry, prose, and visual art. Teaching the Harlem Renaissance is meant to be an ongoing resource for scholars and teachers as they devise a syllabus, prepare a lecture or lesson plan, or simply learn more about a particular Harlem Renaissance writer or text. ... Read more

Product Description
The time has come to delve into the story of South Africa’s turbulent history – a story of exploration and conquest, rampant growth and war, oppression and ultimately, liberation.

This selection of writings, from the most illuminating, entertaining and significant works written about the country and its diverse people, covers almost five centuries – from the earliest encounters between colonists and the original inhabitants to the discovery of unimaginable wealth on the diamond and gold fields, from the Boer War and its bitter legacy to the greater tragedy of apartheid and its eventual demise.

South Africa’s rich history – a story of exploration and conquest, of racial oppression and, ultimately, liberation – deserves to be told in the raw. Here, then, are the words not so much of historians, biographers and journalists but of settlers, explorers, hunters, travellers, missionaries, soldiers and politicians as well as of novelists, playwrights and poets.

The writers are settlers, explorers, administrators, missionaries, hunters, travellers, novelists, playwrights, poets and politicians. They include Jan van Riebeeck, the first Dutch governor of the Cape, whose journal is the most detailed account in history of a colony's founding; Mazisi Kunene, the Xhosa poet, who chronicled the rise of Shaka, the Zulu empire builder, in epic verse; W C Scully, who took part in the diamond rush at Kimberley that set South Africa on the path to unimaginable wealth; Jan Smuts, the Boer War general who, with Cecil Rhodes, the arch Imperialist, was one of the architects of apartheid; and Nelson Mandela, apartheid's most famous victim, who became its nemesis. The novelists include two Nobel prizewinners, Nadine Gordimer and John Maxwell Coetzee.

All have been eye-witnesses to South Africa's long journey from subjugation to freedom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential companion for any literary lover!
For any interested in the culture and history of African American literature, published in 1992, this is a great guide, a keepsake.If you don't know of any famous or not so famous African novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, biographers, this book will introduce you to plenty.

Frank McGill has compiled this companion to Masterpieces of American Literature (Masterpieces of ... Series),Masterpieces of World Literature, and Masterpieces of World Philosophy.

Here, you will get a summary of the plot, description of the central characters, an analysis, and critical evaluation of the work.The summary and analysis average 1,000 words, while the critical evaluation is about 500 words. Included with publication date, is the genre, such as:autobiography, novel, poetry, play.But on top of that, you will learn the type the genre is, mainly: slave narrative, social criticism, poetic drama, naturalism, psychological realism, etc.

McGill has enlisted the aid of contributing reviewers, namely distinguished professors from universities, but only a name is applied to the end of the essays.

You will find enough on James Baldwin, Terry McMilan, Maya Angelou, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, W.E.B. Dubois, Malcolm X, August Wilson, Richard Wright, Ntozake Shange, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, etc. Plenty of poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan, Claude McKay and more.

This compilation is absolutely essential to any literary lover!......Rizzo
... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

Women have had a complex experience in African American culture. The first work of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective. While Yolanda Williams Page's Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers provides biographical entries on more than 150 literary figures, this book is much broader in scope. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on African American women writers, as well as on male writers who have treated women in their works. Entries on genres, periods, themes, characters, historical events, texts, places, and other topics are included as well. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and relates its subject to the overall experience of women in African American literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography.

African American culture is enormously diverse, and the experience of women in African American society is especially complex. Women were among the first African American writers, and works by black women writers are popular among students and general readers alike. At the same time, African American women have been oppressed, and texts by black male authors represent women in a variety of ways. The first of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective, and thus significantly illuminates the African American cultural experience through literary works.

Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, written by numerous expert contributors. In addition to covering male and female African American authors, the encyclopedia also discusses themes, major works and characters, genres, periods, historical events, places, and other topics.

Included are entries on such authors as:

; Maya Angelou

; James Baldwin

; Frederick Douglass

; Nikki Giovanni

; June Jordan

; Claude McKay

; Ishmael Reed

; Sojourner Truth

; Phillis Wheatley

; And many others.

In addition, the many works discussed include:

; Beloved

; Blanche on the Lam

; Iknow Why the Caged Bird Sings

; The Men of Brewster Place

; Quicksand

; The Street

; Waiting to Exhale

; And many more.

The many topical entries cover:

; Black Feminism

; Black Nationalism

; Conjuring

; Children's and Young Adult Literature

; Detective Fiction

; Epistolary Novel

; Motherhood

; Sexuality

; Spirituality

; Stereotypes

; And many others.

Entries relate their topics to the experience of African American women and cite works for further reading.

Features and Benefits:

; Includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries.

; Draws on the work of numerous expert contributors.

; Includes a selected, general bibliography.

; Offers a range of finding aids, such as a list of entries, a guide to related topics, and an extensive index.

; Supports the literature curriculum by helping students analyze major writers and works.

; Supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to understand the experience of African American women.

; Covers the full chronological range of African American literature.

; Fosters a respect for cultural diversity.

; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information.

; Builds bridges between African American history, literature, and Women's Studies.

Product Description
The slave narrative has become a crucial genre within African American literary studies and an invaluable record of the experience and history of slavery in the United States. This Companion examines the slave narrative's relation to British and American abolitionism, Anglo-American literary traditions such as autobiography and sentimental literature, and the larger African American literary tradition. Special attention is paid to leading exponents of the genre such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as many other, less well known examples. Further essays explore the rediscovery of the slave narrative and its subsequent critical reception, as well as the uses to which the genre is put by modern authors such as Toni Morrison. With its chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion provides both an easy entry point for students new to the subject and comprehensive coverage and original insights for scholars in the field. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Ultimate Collection of Essays and Research!
Dr. Audrey Fisch (Professor, New Jersey City University) has edited a book, The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative, complete with complex but understandable essays and articles about the importance of the slave narratives. Not until graduate school was I aware of the class slave narratives in American history, culture and literature, the slave narratives are an essential part but disgraceful part of American history. The slaves who were able to read and write were only a few but they were staunch abolitionists when they recognized the wrongs of slavery in America. The writers, researchers, and professors have studied the slave narrative from the eighteenth century until it's abolishment in 1865 with the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves were fully aware of their enslavement and their situation as impossible until abolition was established illegalizing slavery. The abolition movement was one of the major factors in the Civil War. Freedom came with the heavy price of finding a new life. For the slave narratives, we understand their point of view and determination to see the atrocity end. The essays here are well-researched and documented in explaining and analyzing the slave narratives. ... Read more

Product Description

The book examines how modern global development largely privileges Western multinational interests at the expense of local or indigenous concerns in the "developing" nations of the East. The practices of development have mostly led not to economic, social, and political progressivism in local society but rather to instability, poverty, debt, and repression. "Modernization" may therefore be seen as the catalyst of anti-Western reaction. The record of exploitative "development" is traceable in the anti-colonial works of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as in the fiction and memoirs of several North African authors, including Albert Camus, Naguib Mahfouz, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, and Edward Said, who address decolonization in the middle twentieth century. The critical regard of development provides better understanding of the independence movements in North Africa. Further, one may look to the colonial past for perspective upon global development today. One sees similar practices and rhetoric are now invoked under "globalization." This recognition is key to understanding today’s so-called "war on terror." The understanding of things "postcolonial" is therefore critical for Americans today. Grounded in literature in English translation, this work has relevance for cultural studies in the Middle East, Africa, globalization, postcolonialism, and women’s studies.

Product Description
Brazil, the most racially diverse Latin American country, is also the most contradictory: for centuries it has maintained fantasy as reality through the myth of racial democracy. Enshrined in that mythology is the masking of exclusionism that strategically displaces and marginalizes Afro-Brazilians from political power. In this absorbing new study, Niyi Afolabi exposes the tensions between the official position on racial harmony and the reality of marginalization experienced by Afro-Brazilians by exploring Afro-Brazilian cultural production as a considered response to this exclusion. The author examines major contributions in music, history, literature, film, and popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reveal how each performance by an Afro-Brazilian artist addresses issues of identity and racism through a variety of veils that entertain, ridicule, invoke, provoke, protest, and demand change at the same time. Raising cogent questions such as the vital role of Afro-Brazilians in the making of Brazilian national identity; the representation of Brazilian women as hapless, exploited, and abandoned; the erosion of the influence of black movements due to fragmentation and internal disharmony; and the portrayal of Afro-Brazilians on the national screen as domestics, Afolabi provides insightful, nuanced analyses that tease out the complexities of the dilemma in their appropriate historical, political, and social contexts. ... Read more

Product Description
This curriculum guide provides anthropological and historical research as well as literary criticism on five narratives from North and East Africa: A Sister to Scheherazade by Assia Djebar, Fountain and Tomb by Naguib Mahfouz, Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol by Okot p'Bitek, and A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The background and critical materials are integrated into well-developed lesson plans which include reproducible student handouts, teacher resources, and reading resources.

Voices from the Continent will be a useful tool for college professors and teachers of English and social studies on the high school level who seek to diversify the standard curriculum by introducing students to modern African literature written or translated into English.

The featured literary works are available in the United States and appropriate for use in a variety of courses with students at different reading levels. These literary works introduce a wide range of universal themes while simultaneously presenting the experiences of particular ethnic groups in different regions of North and East Africa.

The lessons contained in this guide may be used in whole or in part, and they may be integrated into larger units on world literature, cultural diversity, psychology, social studies, sociology, and women's studies. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent interdisciplinary endeavor.
Miller's book provides the reader with an extremely well thought-out interdisciplinary journey through the issues current in Francophone African literature. His careful analysis is fully supported through insistentreferences to a myriad of other works, and a conscientious and sensitiveapproach to discussing African literaure. I highly recomend it to anyonewith interests in African discourse, literary theory, culture studies,anthropology, and textual practice. ... Read more

Product Description
Francophone Women: Between Visibility and Invisibility underscores the writing of authors who foreground the female body and who write across geographical borders, as part of a global literary movement that has the French language as its common denominator. This edited collection exposes how female authors portray the tensions that exist between visibility and invisibility, public and private, presence and absence, and excess and restraint when it is linked to femininity and the female body. ... Read more

Product Description
Representing Bushmen draws on the work of Jacques Derrida, Edward Said, and Martin Bernal to show how the study of language was integral to the formation of racial discrimination in South Africa. Author Shane Moran demonstrates the central role of literary history to the cultural racism and ideology that fed into apartheid by tracing the ethno-aesthetic figuration of the Bushmen in W. H. I. Bleek's theory of the origin of language. Moran examines the gestation of colonial ideology, and provocatively traces aspects of the post-apartheid rhetoric of commemoration and national unity to their colonialist roots. This detailed and compelling volume contributes significantly to current trends in post-apartheid scholarship. Moran emphasizes the need for a cautious interrogation of the colonial archive and scrutiny of critical discourses used by the would-be postcolonial intellectual, and poses a timely challenge to those committed to exorcising that legacy. ... Read more

Product Description
THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT BONDAGE-though its pages bleed with evidence of slavery's cruel reign. Neither is it a chronicle of the Reconstruction era or twentieth-century racial strife, though these events have left indelible marks on the lives of the authors. First and foremost, it is a collection of literature, replete with pain, joy, humor, wisdom-the range of human experiences and expressions-all set within the context of black history.This Prestwick House anthology captures the essence of the African American canon with an assortment of poems, essays, short stories, speeches, and excerpted autobiographies spanning three centuries. Featuring Toni Morrison's short story Recitatif, alongside seasoned classics by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others, this volume is an indispensable part of any personal library or classroom curriculum. ... Read more