New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America / Edition 1

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Overview

The first of its kind, this volume presents the largest, most inclusive multi-genre anthology of contemporary (1970 to the present) African-American literature available. Unlike all other collections of contemporary Black literature (which are genre-specific), this volume includes works from all genres--fiction, poetry, drama, essays, speeches, and mixed-genre works--by important, well-known authors as well as by significant lesser-known authors, many never previously anthologized. It comprehensively captures the breadth, the scope, the depth, and the impact of contemporary African-American literature. Features works (mostly whole works, not just excerpts) by important, well-known authors, such as by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lore, August Wilson, Octavia Bintler, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, John Edgar Wideman, Gwendolyn Broaks; and by lesser-known, but excellent authors, such as Michelle Cliff, Wanda Coleman, Randall Kenan, Essex Hemphill, Ruth Forman. Special Focused Writers sections provide an extended look at a writer's contributions, and includes interviews and critical essays along with a large selection of material. A General introductory essay situates the selections and the whole field; and introductory critical essays and headnotes for each writer introduce each author's selections (i.e., the writer's career, influences, impact, and themes), and locates the works included within the writer's entire body of work. For anyone interested in contemporary African-American literature or American literature in general.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780130141279
  • Publisher: Pearson
  • Publication date: 9/11/2000
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 1152
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 1.59 (d)

Read an Excerpt

PREFACE:

PREFACE

This book New Bones is an amazing collection. Of course, we can say this because of the extensive work that has been put into completing the project. But there are other reasons for holding this anthology in high esteem, including that it is the first and most extensive collection of its kind. There are other well-regarded texts that collect contemporary writings by African Americans, but those works often organize around a theme, genre, or subject matter. New Bones pulls together, in one well-compiled resource, writings by Black writers since 1970, the time period that many readers are most familiar with and intrigued by. What makes New Bones an even more exciting collection is the way that it brings together well-known writers and newer voices, creating a lovely gathering of Black voices. These are, quite literally, new bones.

In organizing the anthology we have selected works that best represent authors, but also works that introduce and expand ideas of what contemporary African-American literature is. We have chosen a broad spectrum of writing: fiction, poetry, autobiography, nonfiction essays, speeches, plays; covering a wide range of topics, including relationships, gender, history, social problems, migration, education, mythology, color, identity, language, amongst others. We have also carefully avoided, in most cases, using excerpts of works, especially with fiction, and instead used representative short fiction when possible so that the reader can appreciate the entire piece. In the cases where excerpts are used, we have offered a generous selection for context.

There are three prominent features of theanthology that bear some comment; the first is the introductory essay that precedes each writer. This essay serves to introduce the reader to the writer using biographical and career information as well as providing a brief overview of the themes and aesthetics of the included selections. These introductory essays also offer ways of reading the work, sometimes give insight on common ways that a writer or a work has been received, and often make reference to other writers in the anthology whose work evokes similar themes or ideas. In this way, the introductory essays serve to clarify the incredible web that is contemporary African-American literature.

Another important feature of New Bones is the inclusion of "Focused Study" sections. These focused studies aim to give a reader a more extensive introduction to a particular writer, and in this respect, those sections are significantly longer than others. Each focused study provides a longer introductory essay, a wider selection from the author's work, and at least one secondary essay relevant to the author (for example, an interview, or a critical essay). The eight such sections included are divided across genres and subject matter, and also highlight newer as well as established writers.

A final noteworthy feature is the very comprehensive introductory essay that proceeds this preface. This essay, written in very readable prose, provides a very effective introduction to contemporary African-American literature, offering insight into the historical and political factors that preceded this body of writers. The essay further explores the development of contemporary aesthetics in various genres. What is most effective about this essay is the way that it offers general and thematic frameworks with specific examples, such that readers of other works included in the anthology can readily consider texts in light of the body of information in the introduction. The anthology also includes key artwork by Black visual artists in the last thirty years, and ends with a list of writers not included in the anthology, but who are also part of this larger body of contemporary African-American writers and thinkers.

We hope that you will find this collection useful, inspiring, and engaging.

Kevin Everod Quashie
R. Joyce Lausch
Keith D. Miller

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Table of Contents

Ai.
Twenty-Year Marriage. Abortion. Young Farm Woman Alone. Interview with a Policeman.

Maya Angelou.
Joe Louis Fight. Phenomenal Woman. New Directions. Style. Getups.

Tina McElroy Ansa.
Willie Bea and Jaybird.

Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995).
My Man Bovanne. Gorilla, My Love. The Organizer's Wife.

Joseph Beam.
Brother to Brother: Words from the Heart.

Becky Birtha.
Johnnieruth.

David Bradley.
197903121800 (Monday) (from The Chaneysville Incident).

Gwendolyn Brooks.
Two Dedications. when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story.

Octavia Butler.
Bloodchild. Speech Sounds.

Bebe Moore Campbell.
Chapter 1 from Sweet Summer: Growing Up with and without My Dad.

Maxine Clair.
Cherry Bomb.

Michelle Cliff.
Transactions.

FOCUSED STUDY: Lucille Clifton.
In Salem. Sisters. New Bones. Roots. She Understands Me. if mama. iwas born in a hotel. Breaklight. the thirty eighth year. the lost baby poem. the bodies broken on. adam and eve. homage to my hips. mary. to the unborn and waiting children. holy night. island mary. testament. perhaps. caroline and son. samuel. last page of the "thelma" section. winnie song. this belief. the woman in the camp. the death of thelma sayles. leukemia as white rabbit. she won't ever forgive me. Interview with Naomi Thiers. In Her Own Images: Lucille Clifton and the Bible, Akasha (Gloria) Hull.

Wanda Coleman.
Women of My Color. Today I Am a Homicide in the North of the City. A Lyric. The Library. The Seamstress. Without Visible Means.

Jayne Cortez.
I Am New York City. So Many Feathers. Rape. Flame. There It Is. Shut Off the System. Poetry.

Edwidge Danticat.
Night Women.

Angela Davis.
I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama: Ideology, Sexuality, and Domesticity.

Toi Derricotte.
Touching/Not Touching: My Mother. Tender. For Black Women Who Are Afraid. Passing. Workshop on Racism.

Melvin Dixon.
Jesse.

Rita Dove.
Mother Love. Courtship. Courtship, Diligence. Dusting. Testimonial.

Cornelius Eady.
I Know (I'm Losing You) One Kind Favor. A Rag, A Bone, and A Hank of Hair. You Don't Miss Your Water. Grace.

Trey Ellis.
The New Black Aesthetic.

Mari Evans.
I Am a Black Woman. into blackness softly. Vive Noir! Music as Heartbeat and Blood. Amtrak Suite.

Percival Everett.
Randall Randall.

Carolyn Ferrell.
Proper Library.

Nikky Finney.
The Blackened Alphabet. Irons at Her Feet. My Centipeding Self. Making Foots.

Ruth Forman.
Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon. Poetry Should Ride the Bus. You So Woman. Momma. Green Boots in Lil Honeys. Strength. Come between My Knees Child. Venus's Quilt. Tracie Double Dutch on the Tongue. Before I Leave My Doorstep to Mama's Grave.

Leon Forrest.
There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden.

Ernest Gaines.
The Sky is Gray.

Nikki Giovanni.
Stardate Number 18628.190. Nikki-Rosa. For Saundra. Revolutionary Dreams. Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why). Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day. All Eyez on U. Griots. Paper Dolls, Iron Skillets, Libraries, and Museums.

Jewelle Gomez.
Don't Explain.

Hattie Gossett.
old woman. a night at the fantasy factoryÂ… world view, world view, world view. setting up. butter #1. butter #2.

Michael S. Harper.
Eve (Rachel). Healing Song. Nightmare Begins Responsibility. The Meaning of Protest. Song: I Want a Witness. History as Apple Tree. Here Where Coltrane Is. Brother John.

FOCUSED STUDY: Essex Hemphill.
American Hero. Heavy Breathing. Visiting Hours. For My Own Protection. Commitments. The Occupied Territories. In an Afternoon Light. To Some Supposed Brothers. Isn't It Funny. American Wedding. Better Days. Serious Moonlight. Where We Live: A Conversation with Essex Hemphill and Isaac Julien.

FOCUSED STUDY: bell hooks.
Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness. Homeplace: A Site of Resistance. bell hooks interviewed by Cornel West. Bone Black, Chapters 1, 17, 29.

Angela Jackson.
The Fitting Room. Why I Must Make Language. grits. greens. Making the Name. Foreword.

Jesse Jackson.
The Candidate's Challenge: The Call of Conscience, the Courage of Conviction.

Kelvin Christopher James.
Ties.

Charles Johnson.
The Soulcatcher. The Transmission. The Mayor's Tale.

Gayl Jones.
Jervata.

Barbara Jordan.
Argument for Impeachment, 1974.

June Jordan.
Who Look at Me. Gettin Down to Get Over. I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies. Roman Poem Number Nine. Of Nightsong and Flight. Foreword. A New Politics of Sexuality.

FOCUSED STUDY: Randall Kenan.
Things of This World; Or, Angels Unawares. The Foundations of the Earth. An Interview with Randall Kenan.

Jamaica Kincaid.
In the Night. Columbus in Chains.

Etheridge Knight.
Cell Song. The Idea of Ancestry. Haiku. My Life, the Quality of Which. The Bones of my Father. For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide. Ilu, The Talking Drum. Belly Song. A Black Poet Leaps to His Death.

Ruth Ellen Kocher.
Poem to a Jazz Man. Liturgy of the Light-Skinned. Braiding. Desdemona's Fire.

Yusef Komunyakaa.
Passions. Back Then. Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival. February in Sidney. Venus's-flytraps. Nude Tango. Memory Cave. Kosmos. Buried Light. Anodyne.

FOCUSED STUDY: Audre Lorde.
Black Mother Woman. Conclusion. The Winds of Orisha. Coal. A Woman Speaks. From the House of Yamenjá. The Women of Dan Dance with Swords in their Hands to Mark the Time When They Were Warriors. A Litany for Survival. Recreation. Power. Love Poem. To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet who Happens to be a Woman. Chapter 11 from Zami. Poetry is not a Luxury. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Interview with Claudia Tate. 'Coming Out Blackened and Whole': Fragmentation and Reintergration in Audre Lorde's Zami and The Cancer Journals (by Elizabeth Alexander).

Haki Madhubuti.
The Secrets of the Victors. The Changing Seasons of Ife. Lady Day. Some of the Women are Brave. The Damage We Do. Sun and Storm. Woman with Meaning.

Clarence Major.
Letters. My Seasonal Body. The Way the Roundness Feels. First. The String.

Paule Marshall.
From the Poets in the Kitchen. Chapter 4 from Praisesong for the Widow.

Colleen McElroy.
Monologue for St. Louis. In My Mother's Room. Queen of the Ebony Isles. Pike Street Bus. Tapestries. Imogene.

Reginald McKnight.
The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas.

James Alan McPherson.
The Story of a Scar.

E. Ethelbert Miller.
Panama. Fire. October 31. Whispers, Secrets, and Promises. Conjure. Aaron. in small town usa. Urban Zen. black boys. untitled. another love affair/another poem. untitled.

FOCUSED STUDY: Toni Morrison.
The Nobel Lecture. Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation. A Conversation with Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison. Home.

Thylias Moss.
Washing Bread. The Warmth of Hot Chocolate. Renegade Angels. Remembering Kitchens. Sunrise Comes to Second Avenue.

Harryette Mullen.
Muse and Drudge, pages 3-7.

Gloria Naylor.
The Two.

Pat Parker.
love isn't. legacy. untitled. For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend.

Richard Perry.
Blues for My Father, My Mother, and Me.

Ishmael Reed.
I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra. Middle Class Blues. Untitled. Flight to Canada.

Carolyn Rodgers.
Blue. A Round. how i got ovah. Some Body Call (for help).

Sonia Sanchez.
Small Comment. Personal Letter No. 3. Haiku sister's voice. Homecoming. Philadelphia: Spring, 1985.

Sapphire.
Are You Ready to Rock? Strange Juice (or the murder of Latasha Harlins).

Ntozake Shange.
Excerpt from for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. hands & holding. senses of heritage. the old men. an ol fashion lady. i live in music.

Reginald Shepherd.
Wide Sargasso Sea. Slaves. A Muse. Soul Music.

Anna Deveare Smith.
The Territory.

Quincy Troupe.
In Texas Grass. Blood-Rivers. St. Louis Teenage Days. Impressions 2. Old Black Ladies Standing on Bus Stop Corners #2. Eye Change Dreams.

Alice Walker.
Everyday Use. Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells. womanist definition. In Search of Our Mother's Gardens.

Michelle Faith Wallace.
Entertainment Tomorrow.

Marilyn Nelson Waniek.
The House on Moscow Street. Dedication. My Grandfather Walks in the Woods. The American Dream. The Leaves are Losing the War. Compline.

Michael S. Weaver.
Ego. Christmas, 1941. Salvation.

Cornel West.
The Paradox of the African American Rebellion. Malcolm X and Black Rage.

FOCUSED STUDY: John Edgar Wideman.
all stories are true. casa grande. fever. An Interview with John Edgar Wideman, Charles H. Rowell.

Sherley Anne Williams.
Drivin Wheel. 1 Poem 2 Voices A Song. The Empress Brand Trim (ruby reminisces). I Want Aretha to Set This to Music. you were never miss brown to me.

FOCUSED STUDY: August Wilson.
Fences . The Ground on Which I Stand.

Read More Show Less

Preface

PREFACE:

PREFACE

This book New Bones is an amazing collection. Of course, we can say this because of the extensive work that has been put into completing the project. But there are other reasons for holding this anthology in high esteem, including that it is the first and most extensive collection of its kind. There are other well-regarded texts that collect contemporary writings by African Americans, but those works often organize around a theme, genre, or subject matter. New Bones pulls together, in one well-compiled resource, writings by Black writers since 1970, the time period that many readers are most familiar with and intrigued by. What makes New Bones an even more exciting collection is the way that it brings together well-known writers and newer voices, creating a lovely gathering of Black voices. These are, quite literally, new bones.

In organizing the anthology we have selected works that best represent authors, but also works that introduce and expand ideas of what contemporary African-American literature is. We have chosen a broad spectrum of writing: fiction, poetry, autobiography, nonfiction essays, speeches, plays; covering a wide range of topics, including relationships, gender, history, social problems, migration, education, mythology, color, identity, language, amongst others. We have also carefully avoided, in most cases, using excerpts of works, especially with fiction, and instead used representative short fiction when possible so that the reader can appreciate the entire piece. In the cases where excerpts are used, we have offered a generous selection for context.

There are three prominent features oftheanthology that bear some comment; the first is the introductory essay that precedes each writer. This essay serves to introduce the reader to the writer using biographical and career information as well as providing a brief overview of the themes and aesthetics of the included selections. These introductory essays also offer ways of reading the work, sometimes give insight on common ways that a writer or a work has been received, and often make reference to other writers in the anthology whose work evokes similar themes or ideas. In this way, the introductory essays serve to clarify the incredible web that is contemporary African-American literature.

Another important feature of New Bones is the inclusion of "Focused Study" sections. These focused studies aim to give a reader a more extensive introduction to a particular writer, and in this respect, those sections are significantly longer than others. Each focused study provides a longer introductory essay, a wider selection from the author's work, and at least one secondary essay relevant to the author (for example, an interview, or a critical essay). The eight such sections included are divided across genres and subject matter, and also highlight newer as well as established writers.

A final noteworthy feature is the very comprehensive introductory essay that proceeds this preface. This essay, written in very readable prose, provides a very effective introduction to contemporary African-American literature, offering insight into the historical and political factors that preceded this body of writers. The essay further explores the development of contemporary aesthetics in various genres. What is most effective about this essay is the way that it offers general and thematic frameworks with specific examples, such that readers of other works included in the anthology can readily consider texts in light of the body of information in the introduction. The anthology also includes key artwork by Black visual artists in the last thirty years, and ends with a list of writers not included in the anthology, but who are also part of this larger body of contemporary African-American writers and thinkers.

We hope that you will find this collection useful, inspiring, and engaging.

Kevin Everod Quashie
R. Joyce Lausch
Keith D. Miller

Read More Show Less

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