The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers


Book Description

A bold exploration of the controversial role that black women writers have played in the making of African-American literature by the bestselling author of Sex and Racism in America. "Confirms that black women authors are celebrating a literary Fourth of July in America".--Plain Dealer. (Anchor)




Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism


Book Description

"The essays are provocative and enhance knowledge of Third World women's issues. Highly recommended . . . " —Choice " . . . the book challenges assumptions and pushes historic and geographical boundaries that must be altered if women of all colors are to win the struggles thrust upon us by the 'new world order' of the 1990s." —New Directions for Women "This surely is a book for anyone trying to comprehend the ways sexism fuels racism in a post-colonial, post-Cold War world that remains dangerous for most women." —Cynthia H. Enloe " . . . provocative analyses of the simultaneous oppressions of race, class, gender and sexuality . . . a powerful collection." —Gloria Anzaldúa " . . . propels third world feminist perspectives from the periphery to the cutting edge of feminist theory in the 1990s." —Aihwa Ong " . . . a carefully presented wealth of much-needed information." —Audre Lorde " . . . it is a significant book." —The Bloomsbury Review " . . . excellent . . . The nondoctrinaire approach to the Third World and to feminism in general is refreshing and compelling." —World Literature Today ". . . an excellent collection of essays examining 'Third World' feminism." —The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory These essays document the debates, conflicts, and contradictions among those engaged in developing third world feminist theory and politics. Contributors: Evelyne Accad, M. Jacqui Alexander, Carmen Barroso, Cristina Bruschini, Rey Chow, Juanita Diaz-Cotto, Angela Gilliam, Faye V. Harrison, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, Barbara Smith, Nayereh Tohidi, Lourdes Torres, Cheryl L. West, & Nellie Wong.




The Coupling Convention : Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction


Book Description

What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.




Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender


Book Description

The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.




The Foremother Figure in Early Black Women's Literature


Book Description

Originally published in 1999 The Foremother Figure in Early Black Women's Literature looks at how stereotypical foremother figure exists in nineteenth century American literature. The book argues that older black woman portrayed in early black women’s works differs significantly from the older black women portrayed in early white women’s works. The foremother figure, then emerging in early black women’s fiction revises the stereotypical mother figure in early white women’s fiction. In the context of the mulatta heroine the foremother produces minimal language that, through an Afrocentric rhetoric, distinguishes her from the stereotypical mother and thus links her peripheral role and unusual behaviour to cultural continuity and radical uplift.




Studies in Women Writers in English


Book Description

During The Last Few Centuries Women Writers Have Considerably Widened And Deepened The Areas Of Human Experience With Their Sharp, Feminine Perception Of Life, Successfully Transmuted Into Verbal Artifact. The World Body Of Literature In English Would Have Been Much Poorer Today But For The Contribution Of Women Writers. The New Series Studies In Women Writers In English Is A Grateful Acknowledgment Of That Contribution And Public Recognition Of Their Voice.Nineteen Essays Included In This Third Volume Of The Series Cover A Wide Spectrum Of Women Writers Across Space And Time. The Women Writers Discussed In This Volume Include One From Britain Virginia Woolf, The Twentieth Century Stalwart Of British Novel, Who Has Left Her Indelible Mark On The Art Of Fiction As Well As On Women Writers And Thinkers Of The Subsequent Decades; Four From America Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich; Two African-American Talents Toni Morrison, The Nobel Laureate For Literature In 1993, And Alice Walker, The Eminent Black American Woman Writer; And Margaret Clarke From Canada Besides Eight Authors From India. The Discussion On Indian Writers Include Two Articles On Sarojini Naidu, The Illustrious Icon Of Early Indian English Poetry And The Nightingale Of India ; One On The Charming Nostalgic Fiction Of Shashi Deshpande Who Is Compared To Margaret Clarke; One On The Enigmatic Ruth Jhabvala; Two On Two Different And Equally Well-Known Path-Breaking Novels By The Young Talent Githa Hariharan; And One On The Celebrated Recent Autobiography Of Indira Goswami. We Also Get A Glimpse Of Imtiaz Dharkar, Rama Mehta, And Last But Not Least, Anita Desai, In Addition To A Bird S Eye View Of The Enormous Harvest By Indian Women Novelists In The Last Two Decades Of The Last Century.Since Most Of These Authors Are Prescribed In The English Syllabus In The Universities Of India, Both The Teachers And The Students Will Find Them Extremely Useful, And The General Readers Who Are Interested In Literature In English And/Or Women Writers Will Also Find Them Intellectually Stimulating.




African American Literary Theory


Book Description

Fifty-one essays by writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as critics and academics such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examine the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. Contributions are organized chronologically beginning with the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Black Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR




The Truth That Never Hurts 25th anniversary edition


Book Description

Barbara Smith has been doing groundbreaking work since the early 1970s, describing a Black feminism for Black women. Her work in Black women's literary traditions; in examining the sexual politics of the lives of women of color; in representing the lives of Black lesbians and gay men; and in making connections between race, class, sexuality and gender is gathered in The Truth That Never Hurts. This collection contains some of her major essays on Black women's literature, Black lesbian writing, racism in the women's movement, Black-Jewish relations, and homophobia in the Black community. Her forays into these areas ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers were addressing at the time, and which, sadly, remain pertinent to this day. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition, in a beautiful new package, also contains the essays from the original about the 1968 Chicago convention demonstrations; attacks on the NEA; the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Senate hearings; and police brutality against Rodney King and Abner Louima, which, after twenty-five years, still have the urgency they did when they were first written.




The Anatomy of Prejudices


Book Description

Among the many forms of prejudice, Young-Bruehl pays particular attention to four - antisemitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia - which she exposes in their distinctiveness and their similarities.




Abstractionist Aesthetics


Book Description

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation.