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Summary
Summary
A unique and comprehensive collection of 26 literary essays that explore the rich cultural history of black women in America.
Black women's writing has finally emerged as one of the most dynamic fields of American literature. Here, leading literary critics--both male and female, black and white--look at fiction, nonfiction, poetry, slave narratives, and autobiographies in a totally new way. In essence, they reconstruct a literary history that documents black women as artists, intellectuals, symbol makers, teachers, and survivors.
Important writers whose work and lives are explored include Toni Morrison, Gloria Gaynor, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker, and the fascinating list of essays range from Nellie Y. McKay's "The Souls of Black Women Folk in the Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois" to Jewelle L Gomez's very personal tribute to Lorraine Hansberry as a dramatist and crusader for social justice. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the editor of this anthology and a noted authority on African-American literature, has provided a thought-provoking introduction that celebrates the experience of "reading black, reading feminist." A penetrating look at women's writing from a unique perspective, this superb collection brings to light the rich heritage of literary creativity among African-American women.
"Why is the fugitive slave, the fiery orator, the political activist, the abolitionist always represented as a black man? How does the heroic voice and heroic image of the black woman get suppressed in a culture that depended on her heroism for survival?"--Mary Helen Washington, from her essay in Reading Black, Reading Feminist
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
An incisive collection of literary criticism on the cutting edge of the new wave of black feminist literature that has been sweeping the country since 1970 and is represented by such artists as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, and Phillis Wheatley. Twenty-six contributors--black and white, male and female--provide scholarly analyses of these and other African American writers' major works--works that have created what Gates in his superb introductory overview calls a "new voice" and a distinct literary tradition that "blends realistic and lyrical narrative modes." The essays in this anthology probe the historical roots and significance of this new tradition as well as what distinguishes the current black feminist literature from earlier traditions, both black (e.g., the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement) and white. A lucid, trailblazing volume. With chapter notes, notes on the contributors, and conversations with four of the newest black feminist writers. No index. ~--Mary Banas
Library Journal Review
This erudite and all-inclusive anthology of original essays examines literature written by African-American women. The diverse roster of contributors--not limited to a single gender, race, sexual orientation, or discipline--includes Dorothy Allison, Houston A. Baker Jr., Barbara Christian, Marianne Hirsch, John Shoptaw, and Hortense Spillers. The literature ranges from an enlightened re-reading of the 18th-century poet Phyllis Wheatley to interviews with and expositions of such contemporary poets and novelists as Gwendolyn Brooks, Octavia Butler, and Rita Dove. There are no sacred cows: positions advanced on Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's Sula , for example, offer fertile ground for thought and discussion. Engaging in a welcome dialectic with hegemonic, white feminist and black male-centered writers and critical theorists, the collection sustains throughout the vivacity established by the tone and economy of expression in Zora Neale Hurston's unpublished essay Art and Such . Essential for serious literature collections.-- Veronica Mitchell, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.