Book Description
Most of the authors and writings covered in Gale's Black Literature Criticism: Excerpts of the Most Significant Works of Black Authors over the Past 200 Years (1992) and its one-volume supplement (1998) were published prior to 1950, hence this new set of three volumes focusing on African-American (and some African and Caribbean) writers and works published since 1950. It includes coverage of 80 writers whose works are considered canon and have therefore been subjected to major critiques, as well as writers who have appeared in major anthologies and encyclopedias of African American literature. Each author entry includes an introduction that covers biographical details, the major literary interests of the author, descriptions and summaries of the author's best known works, and critical commentary about the author's achievement, status, and importance; a chronological list of principal works; and multiple excerpts of criticism, including book reviews, academic studies of individual works, and comparative studies, arranged chronologically to give a sense of how critical reception evolved over time; and, finally, a further reading list. Also included are author, nationality, and title indexes, comprehensive for these volumes together with the predecessors mentioned above. Annotation.
