Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial" Self

For over centuries, critics and the black neighborhood have tended to procedure African-American literature as easily another entrance within the vital struggle opposed to racism, valuing slave narratives and twentieth-century works alike, essentially for his or her political impression. during this quantity, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Slave Narratives after Slavery

The pre-Civil conflict autobiographies of well-known fugitives reminiscent of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs shape the bedrock of the African American narrative culture. After emancipation arrived in 1865, former slaves persisted to put in writing approximately their adventure of enslavement and their upward fight to gain the promise of freedom and citizenship.

Manly Love: Romantic Friendship in American Fiction

The trendy proposal of Victorians is they have been impassive prudes, imprisoned via sexual repression and suffocating social constraints; they expressed love and affection basically in the bounds of matrimony—if in any respect. And but, a wealth of proof contradicting this concept has been hiding in simple sight for just about a century.

"Born in a Mighty Bad Land": The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction (Blacks in the Diaspora)

The determine of the violent guy within the African American mind's eye has a protracted background. He are available in 19th-century undesirable guy ballads like "Stagolee" and "John Hardy," in addition to within the black convict recitations that prompted "gangsta" rap. "Born in a strong undesirable Land" connects this determine with comparable characters in African American fiction.