The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel / Edition 1

by Maryemma Graham

Overview

Combining scholarship covering one hundred fifty years of novel writing in the U.S., newly commissioned essays examine eighty African American novels. They include well-known works as well as writings recently recovered or acknowledged. The collection features essays on the slave narrative, coming of age, vernacular modernism, and the post-colonial novel to help readers gain a better appreciation of the African American novel's diversity and complexity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521016377
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2004
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Literature
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors; Chronology; Introduction Maryemma Graham; Part I. The Long Journey: The African American Novel and History: 1. Freeing the voice, creating the self: the novel and slavery Chris Mulvey; 2. Reconstructing the race: the novel after slavery M. Guilia Fabi; 3. The novel of the New Negro Renaissance George Hutchinson; 4. Caribbean migration, ex-isles, and the New World novel Giselle Liza Anatol; Part II. Search for a Form: The New American Novel: 5. The neo slave narrative Ashraf H. A. Rushdy; 6. Coming of age in the African American novel Claudine Raynaud; 7. The blues novel Steven Tracy; 8. From modernism to post modernism: black culture at the crossroads Fritz Gysin; 9. The African American novel and popular culture Susanne Dietzel; Part III: African American Voices: From Margin to Center: 10. Everybody's protest novel: the era of Richard Wright Jerry W. Ward, Jr.; 11. Finding common ground: Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin Herman Beavers; 12. American neo-hoodooism: the novels of Ishmael Reed Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure; 13. Spaces for readers: the novels of Toni Morrison Marilyn Mobley Mckenzie; 14. African American womanism: from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Walker Lovalerie King; 15. Vernacular modernism in the novels of John Edgar Wideman and Leon Forrest Keith Byerman.

Editorial Reviews

"Considered separately, the essays in this book are significant works of criticism examining a broad range of the issues implicated in African American literary history. Viewed as a whole, they engage in the kind of open reading 'companion' editor Maryemma Graham cautions is our best approach to the African American novel—one that does not flinch at the vastness of the project." North Dakota Quarterly, Lisa Trochmann, University of Minnesota

From the Publisher