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AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
EN 3303 (full
unit, 2 terms)
Tutor: Tim
Armstrong
This
course provides a survey of African-American literature in relation to the
troubled history of race in America. It begins with the first
writings of black Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries – mainly slave narratives – and charts the emergence of more
literary forms of writing, culminating in the explosion of activity in Harlem in the 1920s, an
important moment in Modernism. In the period which follows we examine the
political novel in the wake of Richard Wright’s Native Son; modernist and postmodernist writings; writings on
black history and historiography; and the prominence of recent black women
writers.
The
course aims to provide students with an understanding of the context of
African-American culture, including oral culture, the blues, and folklore,
and the debates which surround these forms; it addresses notions of race,
dislocation (the Middle Passage), religion, and other topics in
African-American history; as well as gender, class and other issues. It also
considers the signifying practices and commonplaces of the tradition:
call-and-response, ‘signifying,’ the divided self, ‘passing’, etc.
Teaching
and Attendance
The
course is taught by a weekly two-hour seminar, with eight hours a week
private study and preparation expected.
In common with other courses, there is a 70% attendance threshold,
which means that if you miss more that three seminars a term without good
reason (e.g. illness), you may not be allowed to sit the exams and can, as a
consequence, fail the course.
Course Work
Required reading. The reading for each seminar, which may
comprise a novel, essay, poetry or other kinds of writing, is detailed in the
Course Description below. Many of the texts studied are included in
the set text, the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, which you should
buy as soon as possible.
Additional Reading. Suggestions for additional reading are
detailed below. Although the main task is the primary reading, secondary
material will be needed for presentations and essays. When writing essays,
you are also advised to read more widely in the primary texts in the Norton Anthology, which has a wealth
of material which can be incorporated.
Course Essay. There are two non-assessed essays of 2,500 words, one in each
term. You will also be asked to make a presentation
at some point in the term, perhaps paired with another student. The deadline for the non-assessed essay
will be set in class. It will be returned to you with feedback within two
weeks. Late work will be read to
ensure that it is of appropriate quality, but it may not receive a mark or feedback.
Assessment
The
course will be examined by two essays totaling 7-8,000 words, which may be on
linked subjects, submitted by the first day of Term 3. Late essays are subject to penalties (see
department guide).
Feedback
If
there are any issues you need to discuss during the course, please see Tim
Armstrong, Room 203 (email: t.armstrong@rhul.ac.uk). The usual anonymous questionnaire will be
distributed to collect your comments.
Primary Texts
Because
of problems of availability, this is a ‘long’ list: it includes a few texts
which may not be taught or which may have gone out of print. NB. If Dillons do not stock a book, you can
usually get it from Amazon (the UK site is quicker).
Students are free to use any of the texts listed, or any other relevant
texts.
It
is recommended that you read one or two of the longer novels studied later in
the course (Native Son, Another Country, Invisible Man, Beloved)
over the Summer before the course.
The
set text is the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (you
should buy this as soon as possible).
It is expensive, but contains around half the texts studied (marked N
below). In addition, it will enable you to read widely in the tradition, and
has many essays which we will refer
to. It includes a CD with spirituals,
blues, work-songs and speeches. Topics
covered
may include:
· Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano (1789) (sections from Norton only) N
[full edn. is 808.89896 BL]; The
Confessions of Nat Turner (handout)
·
Frederick Douglass, Narrative
of the Life of an American Slave (1845) N
· Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
(1861, Harvard) [326.0973 JAC]
· African-American poetry of
the nineteenth century (N + handout)
· Charles Chestnutt and
others, trickster stories (N + handout); George Herriman, Krazy Kat cartoons (handout)
· DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) N;
songs of the slaves: spirituals and blues N
· James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
(1912, Penguin) N
· Poets and critics of the
Harlem Renaissance N
· Jean Toomer, Cane (1923, Norton) N
· Nella Larsen, Passing (1929, Serpent’s Tail)
· Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937,
Virago) [825 HUR]
· Richard Wright, Native Son (1940, Harper Collins or
Picador) [815 WRI]
· Chester Himes, If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945,
Serpent’s Tail)
· Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952, Penguin) [815
ELL]
· James Baldwin, Another Country (1962, various
edns.) [815 BAL]
· Black Arts: Gwendolen
Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, poems & play N
· Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972, Allison &
Busby, if in print) [815 REE]
· Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1983, Women’s
Press) [815 WAL]
· Toni Morrison, Beloved (1985, Picador) [815 MOR]
· Gloria Naylor, Mama Day or Linden Hills
(1985, Methuen), depending of what is in print [815 NAY]
· Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990, Picador)
· Octavia Butler, Dawn
Music: As a minimum, you should listen to the
disc which comes with the Norton Anthology, which offers a selection from the
tradition (work-songs, Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Rap, speeches and
toasts). Any other music from the
tradition will help you, particularly music referred to in texts (e.g. in Another
Country recordings of Bessie Smith and Mahalia Jackson referenced in the
text).
Poetry recordings: see the selection at: http://factoryschool.org/content/sounds/havanaglen.html
(Hughes, Cullen, Brown, Jordan, Sanchez and
others)
Some Films which you might like to
refer to:
Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien, 1988). Controversial ‘outing’ of the poet.
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) Famous melodrama on ‘passing’, a remake of
a 1934 John Stahl film.
Native Son (Chenal, 1951), with an
improbably old Wright in the lead role. Hard to find.
The Color Purple (Speilberg, 1985). How close
to the novel is it, in its sentimentality?
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1993). Set in the Sea Islands at the turn of the
century, on the eve of a Northern Migration: most useful if we do Naylor’s Mama Day.
Preliminary Reading: Secondary Texts
These
are general texts which provide useful preparation for classes: a more
comprehensive reading list aimed at providing for specific essay topics is appended
below.
Andrews, W. L., et al. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997) [ ]
Awkward, Michael, Inspiriting Influences: Tradition,
Revision and the Afro-American Women
Novelists (1989) [825.399289 AWK]
Baker, Houston, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (1987) [815.9 BAK]
Baker, Houston, Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (1984) [810.9352 BAK]
Braxton, J., ed., Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American
Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance (1990) [810.99287 WIL]
Callahan, J., In the Afro-American Grain (1988)
[815.3 CAL]
Carby, Hazel, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence
of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (198 ) [815.33 CAR]
Cook, M., Afro-American Literature in the
Twentieth Century (1984) [815.9896
COO]
Dickson, Bruce, Black American Writing from the Nadir: The
Evolution of a Literary Tradition 1877-1915 (1989)
Douglas, Ann, Terrible Honesty: Mongerel Manhattan in
the Twenties (1995)
Gates, Henry Louis, The Signifying Monkey (1988) [810.9 GAT]
Hutchinson, George, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and
White
(1995) [ ]
Mitchell, Angelyn, ed., Within the Circle: An Anthology of
African-American Literary Criticism From the Harlem Renaissance to the
Present
(1994) [810.9352 WIT]
Sudquist, Eric J., To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of
American Literature (1993) [825.9896 SUN]
Steptoe, Robert, From Behind the Veil: A Study of
African-American Narrative (1979) [810.9352 STE]
Willis, Susan, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American
Experience (1987) [815.399278 WIL]
Some
web material is listed on my links page.
About the
remainder of this booklet
In
what follows you will find
· a week-by-week course description, including
relevant secondary reading.
· a list of topics which you might consider each
week (students giving presentations are encouraged to add others).
· a more comprehensive list
of further reading which will
useful for essays. You are encouraged to find other materials as well, and
especially to use the resources of the Senate House (University of London) Library, which has very
strong holdings on American Literature (5th floor, south end).
· a list of non-assessed essay questions.
· advice on seminar
presentations
· a reproduction of assessed essay questions from the last year the course ran.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
N = the Norton Anthology of African American
Literature
TERM 1 : Beginnings
to the Harlem Renaissance
Week 1 Introduction; Olaudah
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of
the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) (sections from Norton) N
[full edn., ed.Vincent Carretta, is in the library at 808.89896
BL]
Topics:
·
the Middle Passage
·
cultural encounter and assimilation
·
oral vs. written culture
·
style: first and third person voice.
Further
reading: Gates on the ‘trope of the talking book’, in The Signifying Monkey.
Week 2 Black Resistance: The Confessions of Nat Turner (1832,
short handout); Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave (1845) N
; George Boyer Vashon, ‘Vincent Ogé’ (poem, available here)
Topics:
·
autobiography
·
the paratexts (introductions
·
the use of violence
·
the ‘value’ of a person
·
religion (Christianity)
·
black cultural forms: magic, music
·
oral vs. written (literacy, rhetoric)
Further
reading: Sundquist, Eric, ed. Frederick Douglass: New Literary &
Historical Essays (1990).
Week 3 Women and Slavery: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861, Norton) [326.0973
JAC]; short excerpts from Contending
Forces N; poems by Harper N.
Topics:
·
masculine vs. feminine experience of slavery
·
domestic slaves vs. field hands
·
sexuality and gentility
·
colour distinctions
·
generic issues: romance, gothic
Further
reading: Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark.
Week 4 Oral forms and their literary versions: African
tales vs. Brer Rabbit N; Charles Chestnutt, trickster
stories (N + handout) – this
is the main text for discussion; toasts (‘Titanic Toast’, ‘Stagolee’ etc. N);
George Herriman, Krazy Kat cartoons
(handout)
Topics:
·
problems of recording ‘oral’ forms
·
African ‘survivals’
·
Chestnutt and the trickster: storytelling as resistance
·
Krazy Kat as modernist trickster?
Further
reading: Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of
American Literature (1993).
Week 5 James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912, N)
Topics
·
the entry into racial experience
·
‘Passing’ as culture
·
‘Passing’ and race
·
music: issues of cultural interchange and commodification
Further
reading: E. K. Ginsberg, ed., Passing and Fictions of Identity
(1996).
Reading week: Possible
Film Screening and discussion: eg. Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life
Week 6 W. E. DuBois, The
Souls of Black Folk (1903), selected chapters. N.
Debates
on the politics of black art: (1)
DuBois v. Locke; (2) Hughes v.
Schyler N.
Topics
·
Double Consciousness
·
the South
·
African-American culture and its political status
·
radicalism, separatism, assimilation
Further reading: Paul Gilroy,
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993).
Week 7 Jean Toomer, Cane
(1923) N
Topics
·
modernist form and the narrator
·
distance and engagement
·
women and sexuality
·
the South vs. North (rural vs. urban)
Further reading: Laura Doyle, Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction (1994)
Week 8 Music and poetry: worksongs, spirituals and blues N;
poems by Dunbar, McKay, Cullen, Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. N You should also
listen to any other recordings you can get hold of, eg. Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Bessie
Smith, Ma Rainey, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters.
Topics
· performance vs. text; folk
vs. literary versions
· syncopation and the beat
· formalism and black
tradition
Further reading: Houston Baker, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature (1984).
Week 9 Nella Larsen, Passing
(1929), in Quicksand and Passing
(Serpent’s Tail)
Topics
·
Passing and women
·
class in Harlem
·
sexuality
·
the indeterminate ending
·
passing and plagiarism
Further
reading: E. K. Ginsberg, ed., Passing and Fictions of Identity
(1996).
Week 10 Zora Neale
Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937, Virago) [825 HUR]. Also read her
essay ‘Characteristics of Negro Expression’, N and look briefly at
the portrait of her in Wallace Thurman’s novel Infants of the Spring, N
Topics
·
feminine Bildungsroman
·
Eatonsville – a separate community
·
folk-law (the mule etc.) and storytelling
·
the narrative frame and free indirect
discourse (Gates)
Further
reading: Alice Walker, ‘In Search of
Our Mother’s Gardens’ (N); Henry Louis Gates, The
Signifying Monkey
TERM 2: Wright and after
Monday:
First assessed essay due
Week 1 Richard Wright, Native
Son (1940, Harper Collins or Picador) [815 WRI] . Any
overspill from this week will be included in Week 2. Discussion
in week 1 will center on Parts I and II of the novel
Topics
·
Status
of the text
·
Bigger
- Wright’s ‘gamble’ with white stereotypes
·
the
Forensic structure and the use of Max
·
Third
person narrator/Free indirect discourse
·
Violence
·
Gender
– Bessie, Mary, Mrs Thomas
·
Chicago and urban space
Further reading: handout from J-P Sartre, The Literature of
Commitment
Week 2 Chester Himes, If
He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945, Serpent’s Tail)
Topics
·
the
internal discussion of Wright’s novel
·
wartime
prosperity and westward shifts
·
pressure
and fury.
·
class,
work, gender
·
the
depiction of ‘white’
Further reading: Richard Wright, ‘Blueprint for
Negro Writing’ (N)
Week 3 Ralph Ellison, Invisible
Man (1952, Penguin) [815 ELL]
Topics
·
modernist
form
·
race
and invisibility
·
the
politics of going underground: re-writing the protest tradition
·
language
and tricksters
·
depiction
of African-American history (Tuskagee, CP and Harlem Renaissance,
Garvey etc.)
Further reading: Ellison, ‘The World and the Jug’ and Baldwin’s essay
‘Everyone’s Protest Novel’, both N
Week 4 Invisible Man continued.
Some more topics attached to particular episodes include:
·
the
opening: music and subversion; electricity
·
incest
and the trickster (Trueblood and Norton)
·
racial
ideology in the paint factory
·
folk
culture and the hospital
·
‘I
yam what I yam’ : Southern ethnic identity
·
cyclops/glass
eye = communism
·
Brother
Tod: oratory and black leadership
·
Tarp’s
chain, Reinhardt and other figures
Further reading: Ralph Ellison, ‘The World and the Jug’, N; Irving
Howe, ‘Black Boys and Native Sons’ (1963), excerpts at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/howe-blackboys.html
Week 5 James Baldwin, Another Country (1962, various
edns.) [815 BAL].
Topics
·
the
novel’s construction
·
mourning
the young black male
·
inter-raciality
and inter-corporeality
·
Homosexuality
and its role; the sex scenes
·
New York v. Europe
·
music
in the text: Rufus, Ida, be-bop, Mahalia Jackson
Further reading: Baldwin, ‘The Fire Next Time’ (1963)
Week 6 Reading
Week: screening of Suture.
Week 7 Black Arts
Movement: Gwendolen Brooks, poems (N); Amiri
Baraka, poems & his short play Dutchman (N) ;
Maulana Karenga, essay (N). The selections from Brooks and
Baraka include elegies for Malcolm X: please also read and compare the other
poems on him in the Norton by Robert Hayden and Haki Madhubuti.
Topics
·
Black
Arts and the abandonment of the protest tradition
·
Community
aethetics
·
Brooks:
from formalism and irony to politicization and voice
·
Baraka:
from ‘Beat’ to radical
·
Violence
and racial difference
·
Malcolm
X: the lost leader
Further Reading:
Larry Neal, ‘The Black Arts Movement’ (1968), N
Week 8 Alice Walker, The
Color Purple (1983, various edns.) [815 WAL].
Topics
·
why
the epistolary novel?
·
structure
(the separation of the sisters etc.)
·
Africa
·
black
feminism and narratives of personal growth
·
sexuality,
lesbianism
·
melodrama:
tears and the happy ending
Further reading: Walker’s essay on
‘Womanist writing’ N and June Jordan’s essay on the novel (handout)
Week 9 Toni Morrison, Beloved
(1985, Picador) [815 MOR]
Topics
·
the
history of slavery in the novel
·
violence/sacrifice
·
gendered
stories
·
class
and community
·
ghosts
·
the
Middle Passage, trauma and memory
Further reading: Peter Nicolls, chapter on Beloved in S. Vice,
ed. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism (1995).
Week 10 Science
Fiction: Octavia Butler, Dawn (vol. 1 of the trilogy
Lilith’s Brood [formerly known as the Xenogenesis trilogy])
Topics:
·
race
and the ‘alien’
·
gender
and race
·
the
cyborg body
·
afrofuturism
Further reading: Damien Broderick, Reading By Startlight:
Postmodern Science Fiction (1995)
Week 11 Post-race? Suture (film), Dr. Scott McGehee and David Siegel
(1993)
 Secondary Reading : A Guide
Your
first point of reference will often be the excellent introductory notes and
section essays in the Norton Anthology. In most cases, the Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997) also has
entries on authors and book, and on cultural and historical issues we will
touch on (on ‘Race’, ‘Violence’, ‘Passing’, ‘Miscegenation’, ‘Jim Crow’,
‘Names and Naming’, ‘Gender’, Gay & Lesbian writing, etc.). You may also
find it useful to look at general accounts of black culture and consciousness
(Genovese, Levine, Patterson, etc.) – doing so will give you more of a
historical sense, and looking at historical studies will also help you avoid
unsupported historical generalization (eg. students often write that slaves
were not allowed to learn to read and that teaching them was illegal: this is
only true of certain States and certain periods. Likewise definitions of what
a ‘black’ person was varied from state to state, with the ‘one drop’ rule
being more notional than real; and later ‘Jim Crow’ laws were also variable).
Full
details of texts referred to below can be found in the bibliographies which
follow (divided into pre- and post-1940).
In all cases, you will be
able to find more on the texts studied via a search in the MLA Bilbliography
(available in the library and on the intranet). Some of these books are not
in the College Library: the London University (Senate House) library in
central London has better American resources than the College
(especially journals), and it is strongly advised that you use it for this
course. If you are not a member, see the help desk at the College library
about how to join.
On Equiano, Vincent Caretta’s recent book, Equiano the
African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005) is now the first port of call.
Paul Edward’s introduction to his (abridged) edition of the
Interesting Narrative is useful, as
is that in the Penguin edition edited by Caretta.. Gates discusses the ‘trope
of the talking book’ in The Signifying
Monkey. For other early texts see Potkay & Burr, eds., Black Atlantic Writers of the 18th Century.
On the Middle Passage see Nathan Huggins, Black
Odyssey. Equiano is discussed in a variety of other texts: for the
English context, see Peter Fryer, Staying
Power: The History of Black People in Britain (1984).
On Slave Narratives and
Douglass:
they are discussed in most of the surveys of black literature: see also
Andrews, Bloom, Dickinson, Gates (The
Slave’s Narrative), Gilroy, Kawash, Plasa,
Sundquist; and articles by Cassuto, Gibson, Morgan, Mitchell, Sale, among others.
Harriet Jacobs Essays by Berlant,
Berliani, Kaplan, Morgan, Randle, Smith and Warhol; and in Gates (ed.)., Reading Black, Reading Feminist;
Morrison’s Playing in the Dark;
Carby’s Reconstructing Womanhood; Ernest’s Resistance and Reformation. Jean
Fagin Yellin’s introduction to the Harvard edition of Incidents is useful; and the new Norton Critical Edition, ed.
Nellie McKay, excerpts a number of good essays. The Schomberg/Oxford library has other C19
narratives by women, and there are later ones (collected in the 1930s) at the
‘American Memory’ (Library of Congress) WPA website. You might also consider
the text in relation to the sentimental novel and the ‘tragic mulatto’
tradition.
Poetry of the
Nineteenth-Century See the introduction to Joan
R. Sherman, ed., Afro-American Poetry
of the Nineteenth-Century (1992), and D. Bruce Dickson, Black Writing from the Nadir
(borrowable from me if you can’t find them); also Ernest’s Resistance and
Reformation. You could also consider more primary reading in the Norton Anthology and elsewhere (try
the Chadwick-Healey WWW databases, for which the
Library has a site license, for more poetry - access via Library’s homepage).
On the Spirituals, start with Du
Bois, but see also White.
On
the trickster-figure, see Gates, The Signifying Monkey; on Chestnutt, Wideman essay in Davis
& Gates (ed), The Slave’s Narrative; Sundquist, To Awake the Nations, ch.4; article by
Sale. On ‘puttin’ on the ole massa’ tactics, see Lawrence
Levine, Black Culture and Black
Consciousness. There is a further selection of ‘Old John and the Massa’ stories in The Heath Anthology of American Literature,
vol. I. The cartoons by Herriman are from The Comic Art of George Herriman,
which has a good bibliographical introduction. There is a brief discussion of
Herriman in Ronald Paulson’s Figure and
Abstraction in Contemporary Painting (1990), and some Krazy Kat netsites
(try www.krazy.com).
On
DuBois, Shamoon Zamir’s Du Bois and David Levering Lewis’s comprehensive
biography.
Chapters
on DuBois in Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic and Sundquist, To Awake the Nations, and in Conn, The Divided Mind and Wald’s Constituting
America. The Oxford W. E. Du Bois
Reader has more primary texts. Most of the surveys (Cooke etc) discuss
him.
James
Weldon Johnson is also discussed in most surveys of African-American literature (eg.
Ikonne, Cooke), though there is surprisingly little good writing on the Autobiobraphy
in periodicals See article by Kawash
in Ginsberg (ed), Passing & Fictions of Identity; recent
articles by Goellnicht, Pfeiffer, Sheehy, and Japtok.
On
the Harlem Renaissance generally,
see George Hutchinson’s ground-breaking The
Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, which demolishes many of the myths
of the period; de Jongh’s Vicious
Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination, 1990; and Houston
Baker’s Modernism and the Harlem
Renaissance Nathan Huggins’s Harlem
Renaissance now seems dated and rather harsh. Ann Douglas’s Terrible Honesty is a lively
multi-racial account of the decade; and Matthew Guteri’s The Color of Race
in America looks at the problems of the color-line (on mixed-race issues,
see also Sollers, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both). The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined, ed. Kramer, is not
readily available. On the status of folk culture, see Favor, Authentic
Blackness.
There
is also some good recent work on Gay Harlem (ie. Hughes, Cullen,
Locke, McKay, Nugent, Thurman and others): see Nelson (ed) Critical Essays,
Woods, A History of Gay Literature; George Chauncey’s Gay New York;
and articles by Avi-Ram, Garber, Reimonenq. General studies of gay literature
like Mark Lilley’s Gay Men’s Literature in the Twentieth Century also
have some material. There is less on lesbian writers apart from work on Passing
(see below): Hull has some discussion of
the issue.
On
the turn to politics in the thirties, see Smedhurst, The New Red
Negro; Maxwell, New Negro, Old Left; and Young, Black Writers
of the Thirties; and articles by Singh and (on Hughes) Dawahare; see also
Hughes, Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings.
On
Toomer, see Therman B. O’Daniel,
ed., Jean Toomer: A Critical Evaluation
[if available]; Gates, Figures in Black;
Favor, Authentic Blackness; Morrison, Playing in the Dark;
Michael North’s The Dialect of
Modernism and Doyle’s Bordering on
the Body, ch.4; Barbara Bowen’s essay in Gates, ed., Black Literature and Literary Theory; Charles Larson, Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen; essays
by Webb and Foley. There are also essays in Sollers & Diedrich, The Black Colombiad.
On the Blues, see Houston Baker, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature and the works of Paul Oliver and Lawrence Levine; Anderson’s Deep River is also useful on the
Harlem Renaissance and music. Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty, is also good on Harlem Renaissance music-making
and particularly on women blues-singers. The primary text to begin with is The Souls of Black Folk; for
conflicting views on high/low art see the debate between Ralph Ellison in Shadow and Act and LeRoi Jones/Amiri
Baraka in Blues People [excerpt in The Baraka Reader], later essays by Baldwin in various places; and
the perceptive discussion of music in Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. There is a huge range of other texts on the
Blues, of course, and on its influences (eg. on Robert Johnson, Griel
Marcus’s Mystery Train). On Jazz, see articles by Heble, Rice and
others; Adorno’s writings on Jazz might also provide ideas (or ideas to
attack!).
Harlem Renaissance Poetry On Langston
Hughes, there is a useful collection edited by Harold Bloom, as well as a
lot of journal literature; and the library video collection includes Issac
Julien’s film pursuing Hughes’s context and (suppressed?) homosexuality, Looking for Langston. [NB. This was
quite hard to find in the catalogue, but it is there!]. On Cullen, see
Houston Baker, Afro-American Poetics
and the Kramer and Shiver collections; articles by Avi-Ram and Reimonenq. For
more examples of women’s poetry see Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, ed.
Maureen Honey. See also Gloria Hull’s Color,
Sex and Poetry. On Brown see Smethurst, The New Red Negro
(also has Hughes material) and Gabbin, Sterling A. Brown.
Nella Larsen See Deborah McDowell’s excellent
introduction to her U.S. edition of Quicksand
and Passing (1986); Douglas, Terrible
Honesty; Larson, Jean Toomer and
Nella Larsen; Ammons, Conflicting
Stories; Butler, Bodies that Matter;
Wald, Crossing the Line, Ginsberg ed., Passing and Fictions of Identity; Tate, Psychoanalysis and Black Novels;
and articles by Condé, Rhodes, duCille (also her book), Haviland,
Madigan, Hostetler, Sheehy, Sullivan, Youman, Wall; and others in collections
edited by Kramer, Shivers, and
Weixlemann.
There
is a good deal of writing in Zora
Neale Hurston, in the wake of Alice Walker’s ‘In Search of Our Mother’s
Gardens.’ One good collection is New
Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God, ed. M. Awkward, which has a good
bibliography; also the collection edited by Cronin, and Edwards’s book.Race
and Gender. See also: Gates, The Signifying Monkey, Robert
Hemmenway’s Zora Neale Hurston: A
Literary Biography, and the section in Gambrell, Women Intellectuals You could also look at Hurston’s other
writing, and in particular her ethnographic (folklore) writings in Mules and Men, completed just before
she wrote Their Eyes. On language,
see Muferene et al., African-American
English.
On
Richard Wright, there is a huge corpus: famous
responses by Baldwin (‘Everyone’s Protest Novel’, in Mitchell, ed.; and ‘Many Thousand’s
Gone’, in Gross and Hardy, eds.); contemporary essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and
Irving Howe (Howe attacked Ellison using Wright as his positive
counter-example); good discussions by Fishburn, Kostelanitz , Kinnamon, Watts. There are various
biograpies by Fabre and others. Useful collections are: Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Rampersand; Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives,
ed. Gates & Appiah; New Essays on
Native Son, ed. Kinnamon (this has a good bibliography); Richard Wright’s Native Son, ed. Bloom
(esp. Johnson essay); Bigger Thomas,
ed. Bloom; Critical Essays on Richard
Wright, ed. Hakutani (1982); Twentieth
Century Interpretations of Native Son, ed. Baker (1972); discussions in
Bell, Cooke; and articles by Bryant, Gallagher, Walls, JanMohamed, Butler,
among others.
Chester
Himes
criticism, such as it is, often focuses on his detective novels. There is a
recent life by James Sallis, Chester Himes: A Life; books by Milliken
and Skinner; articles by Lee and (tangentially) Boris and Mullen on WWII.
Ralph Ellison Gates, The
Signifying Monkey; Schor, Visible
Ellison; Watts, Heroism and the Black
Intellectual (on the Ellison-Wright debate); Robert O’Meally, ed. New Essays on Invisible Man; Kimberley
Benson, ed., Speaking for You: The
Vision of Ralph Ellison; Susan Parr and Pancho Savery, eds., Approaches in Teaching Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man; Butler, The
Critical Response. Also
good is Doyle’s Bordering on the Body,
ch.6. You should also read Ellison’s
brilliant essays, particularly those collected in Shadow and Act. For an
example of relations between the Communist Party and the NAACP leadership,
see Walter White, ‘The Negro and the Communist’ (1931), in Gerald Early, ed., Speech and Power, vol.1.
On
James Baldwin, there are number of
lively biographies and commemorative volumes, by David Leeming, Trudier
Harris, Horace Porter and others. Volumes by Sylvander, Macebuh; collections
by Kinnamon, Standley, and (most recent) Miller. Discussions in Bell, Cooke. Recent articles by Cohen, France, Rowden are worth looking
at; also Feldman on sexual politics (in Miller, ed.).
On
Gwendolyn Brooks, see the
biography by George Kent (1989); collection ed. Mootry & Smith; Shaw;
Melhem; the chapter in Erkkila, and in Evans (ed); and articles by Taylor
& Horvath. On Baraka and the Black Arts
Movement, see The LeRoi Jones/Amiri
Baraka Reader, ed. William J. Harris (1991); the entry for ‘The Black
Arts Poets’ in The Colombia History of
American Poetry, ed. J. Parini (1993); Larry Neale’s ‘The Black Arts
Movement’ and other related essays in Within
the Circle, ed. Mitchell and the article in The Oxford Companion to African American Literature; A. L. Nielsen, Black Chant; Olaniyan, Scars
of Conquest; Baker, Afro-American
Poetics; and articles by Early,
Harney, Heble. Deburg’s Modern Black
Nationalism has excellent background material. You could also look at
other plays by Baraka (available in New
Black Playwrights, Four Black
Revolutionary Plays and
elsewhere).
There
is a lot on Alice Walker: see
discussions in Awkward, Willis, Lauret, Braxton (ed); articles by
Abbandonato, Berlant, Christian, Early, Harris, Hite, hooks, Light, McDowell,
Proudfit, Naylor, Walker, and Waters; as well as June Jordan’s essay,
considered in class; and various black feminist collections. You should also
look at Walker’s own ‘Womanist’ critical and political writings
(some in Norton). On the language
issue, see also African-American
English, ed. Muferene et al.
The
Toni Morrison bibliography is huge
(the MLA Bibliography CD-Rom lists over 200 ‘hits’ on Beloved alone). Good early work includes the discussions in
Willis, Specifying (1987) [also in Black American Literature Forum 16
(1982): 34-4]; Steptoe; Gates, The Signifying Monkey (1988); Awkward, Inspiring Influences (1989);
Braxton, Wild Women in the Whirlwind (1990); Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (1993) – good on Beloved. As well as recent books by Peach, Matus (recommended),
Furman, and others, collections edited by Peterson, Plaza (recommended),
Middleton, and Bloom. There was a mfs
(Modern Fiction Studies), 39, 3-4
(1993), double issue on Toni Morrison; recent articles by Wyatt, Hamilton, Rody, Armstrong,
Robbons, & many others. Use the MLA (available online) for specific
topics. On the issue of memory, see King, Nicholls, Mitchell among many
others.
On
Butler, see Broderick, Donawerth; articles by
Mehaffy, Mitchell. Most overviws of Science Fiction have a short section on
her; and tere are interviews with Butler also available (eg. in Callaloo, 20.1 (1997), 47-66, on JSTOR). You might also look at
work on the cybiorg and gender: Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the Gedered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (1996);
and Kirkup, Gill et al (eds), The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader (2000)
On
Gloria Naylor [if taught this year], see her own
piece ‘Love and Sex in the Afro American Novel’, The Yale Review, 78:1 (1989), 19-31; and ‘A Conversation: Gloria
Naylor and Toni Morrison’, in G.D. Taylor (ed. & intro.), Conversations with Toni Morrison,
1994, pp.188-217. On Mama Day (1988) see books by
Whitt, Gates and Appiah (eds.), Felton and Lauris (eds.), and Showalter; and
articles by Donlon, Erikson, Kubitschek, Storhoff, Puhr, Christol, Korenman,
Tucker, Warren, Wall, Traub, Mesienhelder.
Also William S. McFeely, Sapelo’s People, a historical study of
one of the Sea Islands where the descendents of an Arabic-speaking slave
live. On Linden Hills (1985) the books above plus articles by Gates (‘Significant Others’),
Homans, Mishkin, Sandiford, Toombs, Ward.
.
Bibliography 1 : Some General
Historical and Cultural Criticism
Christian, B. Black Feminist
Criticism, 1986.
Foner, E. and The Readers
Companion to American History, 1991. Succinct
J Garraty, eds. articles on historical background: see
eg. on Slavery, Emancipation
Proclamation, Reconstruction, Lynching, KKK, NAACP, etc.
*
Gates, H. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
Afro-American Literary Criticism, 1988. Influential post-structuralist
discussion of signifying practices.
Gates, H. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, & the
`Racial’ Self, 1989.
*
Genovese, E. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, 1974.
Gilroy, P. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness, 1993.
Frankenberg, R. ed. Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social
and Cultural Criticism, 1997.
Levine, L. Black
Culture and Black Consciousness, 1977.
Pioneering study.
Mitchell, A. ed. Within the Circle: An Anthology of African-American Literary
Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, 1994. Excellent collection with many foundational
essays of the Harlem Renaissance, plus later essays.
Morgan, K. ed. Slavery in America: A Reader and Guide, 2005.
Morrison, T. Playing
in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992.
Patterson, O. Slavery and Social Death, 1982.
Patterson, O. Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery
in Two American Centuries, 1998.
Wonham, W. B. Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American
Literary Studies, 1996.
Bibliography 2 : Literature to 1940
The
list below indicates some available secondary reading, but you should always
consider primary reading outside the set list: Aptheker (below) provides essays written in
the period, for example; an essay on Hurston might refer to her autobiography
or enthnographic writings, etc.
Askerisked texts * are ones that have been particularly influential,
or which provide a collection of materials or useful surveys.
Ammons, E. Conflicting
Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,
1992. See on Larsen.
Anderson, P. Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought, 2001.
* Andrews, W. L. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, 1997.
et al (eds)
Andrews, W.L., ed. African
American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1994.
* Aptheker, H. ed A Documentary History
of the Negro People of the United States. Vol. 3, 1910-32 (1973) reprints
pieces on race and writing by Hughes, Johnson, Faucet, Toomer and many
others, as well as giving an excellent general sense of the period.
Avi-Ram, A. ‘The Unreadable Black Body: “Conventional” Poetic Form
in the Harlem Renaissance’, Genders 7
(1990), 32-46.
Awkward, M. Inspiring
Influences: Tradition, Revision & Afro-American Women Novelists,
1989.
Awkward, M. ed. New
Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God, 198 .
Baker, H. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, 1987.
* Baker, H. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature, 1984.
Baker, H. Afro-American
Poetics, 1988.
Boon & Cadden, eds. Engendering Men (1992). Article on
Cullen and the sonnet.
Baker, H. Afro-American
Poetics: Revisions of Harlem & the Black Aesthetic, 1988.
* Bell, B. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, 1987.
Berlant, S. ‘The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Harriet Jacobs, Frances
Harper, Anita Hill,’ American
Literature 65 (1993).
Bloom, H. ed. Frederick
Douglass’s Narrative, 1988.
Bloom, H. ed. Modern Critical
Interpretations: `Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ 198 .
Bloom, H. ed. Langston Hughes.
Bruce, D. Black
American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition
1877-1915, 1989
Butler, J. Bodies that Matter (1994). Influential chapter on Nella Larsen
(also available in E. Abel et al (eds), Female Subjects in Black and
White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism).
Butler, R.J. ed. The Critical Response to Ralph
Ellison, 2000.
* Carby, H. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of
the Afro-American Woman Novelist, 1987.
Caretta, V. ‘Property of Author: Olaudah Equiano’s Place in the
History of the Book’, in Caretta & Goulds, eds., Genius in Bondage:
Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, 2001.
Cassuto, L. ‘Frederick Douglass and the Work of Freedom: Hegel’s
Master-Slave Dialectic in the Fugitive Slave Narrative’, Prospects 21 (1996): 229-59.
Conn, P. The Divided Mind:Ideology & Imagination in America, 1898-1917,1983.DuBois.
* Cooke, M. Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth
Century: The Achievement of Intimacy, 1984.
Christian, B. Black Women
Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976, 1980.
Cronin, G.L. ed. Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, 1998.
Cruse, H. The Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual, 1967.
Dawahare, A. ‘Langston Hughes’s Radical Poetry and the “End of Race”’,
MELUS 23:3 (1998).
* Davis, C.T. The Slave’s Narrative, 1985.
Good essays by a variety of contributors.
& H.L. Gates, eds.
Davis, T. M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s
Life Unveiled (1994)
Dickinson D. B. Black Writing from the
Nadir, 199*. Douglass and others.
Douglas, A. Terrible Honesty: Mongerel Manhattan in the Twenties, 1995.
Fascinating cultural history - see on the Harlem Renaissance generally.
Doriani, B. ‘Black Womanhood in 19th Century America: Subversion
and Self-Construction on Two Women’s Autobiographies,’ American Quarterly 43:2 (1991). On Jacobs.
Doyle, L. Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix
of Modern Fiction, 1994. Toomer.
duCille, A. ‘Blue Notes on Black Sexuality: Sex and the Texts
of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen’, Journal
of the History of Sexuality 3:3
(1993), 418-44.
duCille, A. The Coupling
Convention: Sex, Text and Tradition in Black Women’s Fiction, 1993.
Du Bois, W. E. The Oxford W. E. Du Bois Reader, ed. E. Sundquist, 1996.
Early, G., ed. Speech and Power:
The Afro-American Essay and its Cultural Context from Polemics to the Pulpit,
2 vols., 1992.
Edwards, S. Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston,
1999.
Ernest, J. Resistance and Reformation in
Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature, 1995.
Evans, M. ed. Black Women
Writers, 1984.
Favor, J M Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro
Renaissance, 1999.
Foley, B. ‘”In
the Land of Cotton”: Economics and Violence in Jean Toomer’s Cane’, African-American
Review 32:2 (1998), 181-98.
Gabbin, J.V. Sterling A. Brown: Building
the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1985)
Gambrell, A. Women Intellectuals,
Modernism and Difference, 1997 (Hurston)
Garber, E. ‘A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay
Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem’, in
Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. M
B Duberman, M Vicinus & G Chauncey, 1991.
* Gates, H.L. The Signifying
Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, 1988. Influential
post-structuralist discussion of signifying practices.
* Gates,
H.L. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, & the `Racial’ Self, 1989.
* Gates,
H.L. ed. Black Literature and Literary Theory, 1984.
Gates, H.L. ed. ‘Race’, Writing and
Difference, 1986.
Gates, H.L. ed. Reading Black,
Reading Feminist, 1990. Essays on Jacobs and others.
Gibson, D.B. ‘Reconciling Public and Private in Frederic Douglass’s
Narrative’, American Literature 57
(1985): 549-69.
* Gilroy, P. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, 1993. DuBois and others.
* Ginsberg,
E.K., ed. Passing and Fictions of Identity, 1996.
Goellnicht, D C ‘Passing as Autobiography: The Autobiography of an
Ex-Colored Man’, African-American Review 30:1 (1996), 17-33.
Guteri, M. P. The Color of Race in America 1900-1940 (2001)
Harris, T. Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin,
1985.
Haviland, B. ‘Passing from Paranoia to Plagiarism: The Abject
Authority of Nella Larsen’, mfs (Modern
Fiction Studies) 43 (1997):
Hemmenway, R. Zora Neale Hurston: A
Literary Biography, 1977.
hooks, bell. Ain’t
I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 1992.
hooks, bell ‘Representing Whiteness and the Black Imagination,’
in Cultural Studies, ed. L.
Grossberg et al., 1992, 338-346.
Hostetler, A. ‘The Aesthetics of Race and Gender in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand’. PMLA 105:1 (1990), 35-46.
Huggins, N.I. Harlem Renaissance, 1971. Now seems rather
harsh.
Huggins,N.I. Black Odyssey: The
Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery, 1977. [Context]
Hughes, L. Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social
Protest Writings, ed. F. Berry (1973)
Humm, M. Border Traffic, 1991 (chapt. on
Hurston).
Humphries, J. ed Southern Literature and
Literary Theory, 1990. Essays on Chestnutt, Hurston.
Hull, G. Color, Sex and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, 1987.
* Hutchinson, G. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and
White,
1995.
Ikonne, C. From Du Bois
to Van Vechten: The Early Negro Literature 1903-1926, 1981.
Japtok, M. ‘Between “Race” as Construct and “Race” as Essence:
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man’, Southern Literary Journal
28:2 (1996): 32-47.
Jongh, J. de Vicious
Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination, 1990.
Kaplan, C. ‘Narrative Contracts and Emancipatory Readers: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,’
Yale Journal of Criticism 6:1 (1993). Recommended.
Kawash, S. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity
and Singularity in African-American Narrative, 1997.
Kellener, B. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical
Dictionary,
1987.
Kramer, V., ed. The Harlem Reniassance Re-examined (1987)
Larson, C. Invisible
Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen, 1993.
Lee, A.R. Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature
and Culture of Afro-America, 1998.
Lee, A.R. ed. Black Fiction: New
Essays on the Afro-American Novel Since 1945, 1980.
Lewis, D. When Harlem
was in Vogue, 1981.
Lewis, D, W.E.B.
DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, 1993.
Madigan, M. ‘Miscegenation and ‘The Dicta of Race and Class’: The
Rinelander Case and Nella Larsen’s Passing,’
Modern Fiction Studies 36 (1990):
523-29.
Maxwell, W.J. New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and
Communism between the Wars (1999)
Mills, B. ‘Lydia Maria Child and the Endings to Harriet
Jacobs’s Incidents,’ American Literature 62:2 (1992).
Morgan, W. ‘Gender-related Difference in the Slave Narratives of
Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass’, American
Studies 35:2 (1994): 73-94.
* Morrison, T. Playing in the
Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992.
Muferene, S. et al African-American
English, 1998.
Nelson, E. S. ed. Critical Essays: Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color,
1993.
North, M. The Dialect
of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature, 1994.
Oliver, P. Blues Fell this Morning: Meaning in the
Blues
Oliver, P. Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues
(1990)
Pfeiffer, K. ‘Individualism, Success and American Identity in The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man’, African-American Review 30:3
(1996): 406-19.
Plaza, K. & The Discourse of
Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison, 1994.
B. Ring eds.
Essays on
Douglass, Jacobs, Morrison.
Potkay, A. & Black Atlantic
Writers of the 18th Century: Living the New Exodus in
S. Burr England and the Americas, 1995. Equiano and his contemporaries.
* Pryse, M. & Conjuring: Black
Women, Fiction, and Literary
Tradition, 1985.
H. Spillers eds.
Randle, G. ‘Between the Rock and the Hard Place: Mediating Spaces in Harriet
Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’, African-American
Review 33:3 (1999): 45-56.
Reimonenq, A. ‘Countee Cullen’s Uranian “Soul Windows”, in Nelson, ed., Critical
Essays.
Reising, R. A Useable
Past: Theory and American Literature, 1986. On Douglass.
Rhodes, C. ‘Writing up the New Negro’, Journal of American Studies 28 (1994),
191-207. [on Nella Larsen]
Rice, A. ‘Finger-Snapping
to Train-Dancing and Back Again: The Development of a Jazz Style in
African-American Prose’, Yearbook of English Studies 24 (1994):
105-116.
Sale, M. ‘Critiques from Within:
Antebellum Projects of Resistence,’ American
Literature 54 (1992). Chestnutt,
Douglass.
Schor, E. Visible
Ellison: A Study of Ralph Ellison’s Fiction, 1993.
Sheey, J. ‘The Mirror and the Veil: The Passing Novel and
the Quest for American Racial Identity’, African-American Review 33.3
(1999): 401-15.
Shivers,
S. et al eds. The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations, 1980. [hard to find]
Singh, N. P. ‘Retracing the Black-red Thread’, American Literary
History 15: 4 (2003).
Smethurst, J. The New Red Negro: The
Literary Left and African-American Poetry 1930-1946, 1999. [Hughes, Brown]
Smith, V. ‘“Loopholes of Retreat”: Architecture
and Ideology in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’,
in Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism and
the Politics of the Body, ed. K. Sachez-Eppler, 1997.
Sollers, W. Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic
Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997)
Sollers, W. & The Black
Colombiad: Defining Moments in African-American Literature
M. Diedrich, eds. and Culture, 1994.
Stanson, E., ed. Black Sister: Poetry
by Black American Women, 1746-1980, 1981. [Anthology]
Staub, M. Voices of
Persuasion, 1994. Chapt. on Hurston.
Steptoe, R. From Behind
the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative, 1979.
Sullivan, N. ‘Nella Larsen’s Passing
and the Fading Subject,’
African-American Review 32 (1998): 373-85.
* Sundquist,
E. To
Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, 1993. Useful
on Chestnutt in particular, but also Douglass and others.
Sundquist, E., ed. Frederick
Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, 1991.
Tate, C. Psychoanalysis
and Black Novels: Desire and Protocols of Race, 1998.
Wald, G. Crossing
the Line:Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture, 2000.
Wald, P. Constituting America: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form, 1995. See on Douglass, Our Nig, Du Bois.
* Walker, A. In Search of Our Mothers’s Gardens, 1983.
Wall, C. ‘Passing
for What? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels’, Black American Literary Forum 20 (1986).
Warhol, R. ‘“Reader Can You Imagine? No, You Cannot”: The
Narratee as Other in Harriet Jacobs’s Text’, Narrative 3.1 (1995):
57-77.
Webb, J. ‘Literature
and Lynching: Identity in Jean Tomer’s Cane’,
ELH 67 (2000): 205-28.
Weixlemann, J. Black Feminist
Criticism and Critical Theory, 1988.
White, J. ‘Veiled Testimony: Negro Spirituals and Slave
Experience’, American Studies 17
(1983).
Willis, S. Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience, 1987.
Wintz, C. Black
Culture and the Harlem Renaissance, 1988.
Woods, G. A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition,
1998. [Harlem Rennaissance, Baldwin]
Yellin, J. ‘Written By Herself: Harriet Jacob’s Slave
Narrative,’ American Literature 53,
1981.
Youman, M. ‘Nella Larsen’s Passing:
a study in irony’, College Language
Association Journal 18 (1974-5): 235-41.
Young, J. Black Writers of the Thirties (1973)
Zamir, S. W.E. DuBois, 1994.
Bibliography 3 :
Literature from 1940
Again,
the list below indicates some available secondary reading, but you should
always consider primary reading outside the set list: an essay on Ralph
Ellison might refer to his short stories; a piece on Morrison or Baldwin
could refer to novels not studied in class.
There is a great deal more available on some of the writers in this
part of the course, especially Morrison.
Abbandonato, L. ‘A
View from Elsewhere: Subversive Sexuality and the Retelling of the Heroine’s
Story in The Color Purple’, PMLA 106:5 (1991):1106-15.
* Andrews, W.L. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, 1997.
et al (eds)
Armstrong, N. ‘Why Daughters Die: The Racial Logic of American
Sentimentalism’, The Yale Journal of
Criticism 7: 2 (1994): 1-24. [Beloved]
* Awkward, M. Inspiring
Influences: Tradition, Revision, & Afro-American Women Novelists,
Baker, H., ed. Twentieth Century
Interpretations of Native Son,
1972. 1989.
Baker, H. Afro-American
Poetics, 1988.
Bell, B. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, 1987.
Benston, K. Baraka: The
Renegade and the Mask, 1976.
Berlant, L. ‘Race, gender & Nation in The Color Purple’, Critical
Inquiry 14(1988): 606-23.
Bigsby, C., ed. The Second Black
Renaissance, 1980.
Bloom, H., ed. Bigger Thomas,
1990.
Bloom, H., ed. Richard Wright’s
Native Son, 1988.
Bloom, H., ed. Modern Critical
Views: Toni Morrison, 1990.
Borris, E. ‘“You Wouldn’t Want One of ‘em Dancing with Your
Wife”: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II’, American Quarterly
50:4 (1998): 77-108.
Braxton, J. & Wild
Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture
A. McLaughlin and the Contemporary
Literary Renaissance, 1990.
Broderick, D. Reading By Startlight: Postmodern Science Fiction (1995)
Bryant, J. ‘The Violence of Native Son’, Southern
Review 17:2 (1981): 303-19.
Butler, R. ‘The Function of Violence in
Richard Wright’s Native Son’, Black American Literary Forum 20:1-2
(1986): 9-25.
Butler-Evans, E. Race, Gender &
Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni
Morrison and Alice Walker (1989)
Callahan, J. In the
African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth-Century Black
Fiction, 1988.
* Carby, H. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman
Novelist, 1987.
Cohen, W. ‘Liberalism, Libido, Liberation: Baldwin’s Another Country’, Genders
12 (1991):1-21.
Cooke, M. Afro-American
Literature in the Twentieth Century: The Achievement of Intimacy, 1984.
Christian, B. Black Women
Novelists, 1980.
Christian, B. ‘Being the Subject and the Object: Reading
African-American Women’s Novels,’ in Greene and Kahn, eds., Changing Subjects, 1993.
Christol, H. ‘Reconstructing American History: Land and Genealogy
in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’, in
Werner Sollors & Maria Diedrich, eds., The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature
and Culture, 1994, pp.347-56.
* Cruse, H. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,
1967.
Deburg, W. ed. Modern Black
Nationalism from Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakan, 1997.
Dhairyam, S. ‘Artifacts for Survival: Remapping the Contours of
Poetry with Audre Lorde,’ Feminist
Studies 18 (1922): 229-256.
Donawerth, J. Frankenstein’s
Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction (1997)
Donlon, J.H. ‘Hearing
is Believing: Southern Racial Communities and Strategies of Story-Listening
in Gloria Naylor and Lee Smith’, Twentieth Century Literature 41
(1995): 16-35.
Early, G. ‘The
Case of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka’, Salgamundi
70-71 (1986): 343-52.
Early, G. ‘The Color
Purple as Everybody’s Protest Novel,’ Antioch
Review 50:1-2 (1992): 399-412.
* Ellison, R. Shadow and Act, 1964.
Erikson, P. ‘Shakespeare’s
Naylor, Naylor’s Shakespeare: Shakespearean Allusion as Appropriation in
Gloria Naylor’s Quartet’, in Tracy Mishkin, ed., Literary Influence and African-American Writers, 1996,
pp.325-57.
Erkkila, B. The Wicked
Sisters, 1990. Ch. on Gwendolen Brooks.
Evans, M. ed. Black Women
Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, 1984.
Fabre, M. et al Chester Himes : an annotated
primary and secondary bibliography (1992)
Felton, A. and The Critical
Response to Gloria Naylor, 1997.
M. Loris, eds.
Fishburn, K. Richard Wright’s
Hero, 1979.
France, A. ‘Misogyny and Appropriation in Wright’s Native Son’, Modern Fiction Studies 34:3 (1988): 413-423.
Froula, C. ‘The Daughter’s Seduction: Sexual Violence and
Literary History’, Signs 11:4
(1986): 621-44.
Furman, J. Toni
Morrison’s Fiction, 1996.
Gallagher, K. ‘Bigger’s Great Leap to the Figurative’, CLA Journal 27:3 (1984): 293-314.
* Gates, H. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
Afro-American Literary Criticism, 1988.
Gates, H. Figures in
Black: Words, Signs, and the ‘Racial’ Self, 1989.
Gates, H. ed. Black Literature
and Literary Theory, 1984.
Gates, H. ed. ‘Race,’ Writing
and Difference, 1986.
Gates, H. ed. Reading Black,
Reading Feminist, 1990.
Gates, H. ‘Significant Others’, Contemporary Literature 29:4 (1988): 606-23. [Naylor]
Gates, H., & Richard Wright:
Critical Perspectives, 1993.
K. Appiah, eds.
Gates, H.L. and, Gloria Naylor: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present, 1999.
K. Appiah, eds.
* Gilroy, P. The Black Atlantic, 1993.
Morrison.
Green, G., ed. Making a
Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism, 1985.
Gross, S.L. & Images of the
Negro in American Literature, 1996.
J.E. Hardy, eds.
Hakutani, Y., ed. Critical Essays on
Richard Wright (1982)
Hamilton, C. ‘Revisions, Rememories and Exorcisms: Toni Morrison
and the Slave Narrative’, Journal of
American Studies 30:3 (1996): 429-45.
Harney, S. ‘Ethnos and the Beat Poets’, Journal of American Studies 25:3 (1991): 363-80.
Harris, T. ‘From Exile to Asylum’, in Women’s Writing in Exile, ed. M Broe & A Ingram 1989. On
Alice Walker.
Heble, A. ‘The Poetics of Jazz: From Symbolic to Semiotic’, Textual Practice 2:1 (1988): 51-68.
Henderson, S. Understanding the
New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References,
1973.
Hilfer, T. American
Fiction Since 1940, 1992.
Hite, M. ‘Romance,
Marginality and Matrilineality: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God’, Novel 22 (1989): 257-73.
Homans, M. ‘The Woman and the Cave: Recent Feminist Fictions and
the Classical Underworld’, Contemporary
Literature 29:3 (1988): 369-402. [Naylor]
hooks, bel ‘Writing the Subject: Reading The Colour Purple’, Reading
Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. H L Gates, 1990.
Horvath, B. ‘The Satisfactions of What’s Difficult in Gwendolen
Brook’s Poetry’, American Literature
62:4 (1990): 606-16.
* Howe, I. ‘Black
Boys and Native Sons’ (Dissent, 1963 – the essay Ellison’s ‘The World
and the Jug’ responds to). Widely reprinted in Howe’s various collections.
Edited version available at: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/howe-blackboys.html
JanMohamed, A. ‘Sexuality on/of the Racial Border: Foucault, Wright and the
Articulation of ‘Racialized Sexuality’, in Discourse of Sexuality, ed. D. Stanton, 1992.
Jordan, J. Moving
Towards Home: Political Essays, 1989.
King, N. Memory,
Narrative and Identity: Remembering the Self, 2000. [on Beloved]
Kinnamon, K. The Emergence of
Richard Wright, 1972.
Kinnamon, K., ed. New Essays on `Native Son’,
1990.
Kinnamon, K., ed. James Baldwin: A
Collection of Critical Essays, 1974.
Korenman, J. S. ‘African American Women Writers, Black Nationalism, and the
Matrilineal Heritage’, College Language
Association Journal, 38:2 (1994), 143-61
Kostelanitz, R. Politics in the
Afro-American Novel, 1991.
Kubitschek, M. D. ‘Toward a New Order: Shakespeare, Morrison, and Gloria Naylor’s
Mama Day’, MELUS 19:3 (1994), 75-90.
Lauret, M. Liberating
Literature:Feminist Fictions in America, 1994. [Alice Walker]
Lauret, M. Alice Walker,
2000.
Lee, A. R. ‘Violence Real and Imagined: The World of Chester
Himes’s Novels’, Negro American Literary Forum 10.1 (1976): 13-22. See
also his Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of
Afro-America, 1998.
* Levine, L. Black Culture
and Black Consciousness, 1977.
Light, A. ‘Fear of the Happy Ending: The Color Purple, reading & racism,’ in L. Anderson, ed, Plotting Change, 1990 [also pub. in Essays & Studies 40 (1987):
103-17].
McDowell, D. ‘New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism,’ in E.
Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist
Criticism, 1986. (See essay by Smith in same collection.)
McDowell, D. ‘The Changing Same: Generational Connections and Black
Women Novelists’, New Literary History
18:2 (1987): 281-302.
Margolies A Chester Himes Bibliography
& Fabre
Matus, J. Toni
Morrison (1994)
Mehaffy, M. & ‘“Radio Imagination”: Octavia Butler on the Poetics of
Narrative Embodiment,’
A. Keating MELUS,
26.1 (2001), 45-76. [Available through
JSTOR.]
Meisenhelder, S. ‘The Whole Picture in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, African-American Review, 27:3 (1993), 405-19.
Melhem, D. Heroism in the
New Black Poetry, 1990.
Melhem, D. Gwendolen Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice, 1987
Middleton, D., ed. Toni
Morrison’s Fiction: Contemporary Criticism, 1997.
Miller, D. ed. Re-viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen, 2000.
Miller, E. Voice of a
Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright, 1990.
Milliken, S. Chester Himes: A Critical
Appraisal,
1976.
Mishkin,T., ed. Literary Influence
and African-American Writers, 1996. [Naylor and others]
Mitchell, A. ed. Within the Circle: An Anthology of African-American Literary
Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, 1994. Excellent collection.
Mitchell, K. ‘Bodies that Matter: Science Fiction, Technoculture,
and the Gendered Body’, Science Fiction
Studies, 33.1 (2006), 109-128
Mitchell, W. J. T. ‘Narrative, Memory and Slavery’, in his Picture Theory
(1994); also in Ezell, Margaret J.M. & K. O’Keefe, eds., Cultural
Artefacts and the Production of Meaning: The Page, the Image and the Body
(1994).
Mootry, M. et al A Life Distilled:
Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry & Fiction, 1987.
* Morrison, T. Playing in the
Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992.
Muferene, S. et al African-American
English, 1998.
Mullen, B. ‘Popular Fronts Negro Story Magazine and the
African-American Literary Response to World War Two’, African-American
Review 30.1 (1996): 5-15.
Muller, H. ‘Optic White: Blackness and the Production of
Whiteness’, Diacritics 24:2-3
(1994): 71-89. [On ‘passing’ and
related issues]
Naylor, G. ‘Love and Sex in the Afro-American Novel’, Yale Review 78:1 (1989): 19-31.
Nelson, E., ed. Critical Essays:
Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color, 1993.
Nielsen, A. L. Black Chant: Languages
of African-American Postmodernism, 1997.
Nicholls, P. Chapter on Beloved
in Sue Vice, ed. Psychoanalytic
Literary Criticism, 1995.
O’Daniel, T. James Baldwin: A
Critical Evaluation, 1977.
O’Meally, R. The Craft of
Ralph Ellison, 1980.
Olaniyan, T. Scars of
Conquest/Masks of Resistance, 1995.
Patterson, O. Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two
American Centuries (1998)
Peach, L. Toni
Morrison, 1995.
Peterson, N.J. ed. Toni
Morrison: Critical & Theoretical Approaches, 1997.
Plaza, K. Beloved
(Icon Guide), 1998.
Prowdfit, C. ‘Celie’s Search for Identity: A Psychoanalytic
Developmental Reading of Alice Walker’s The
Color Purple’, Contemporary
Literature 32:1 (1991): 12-37.
Pryse, M. & Conjuring: Black
Women, Fiction, and Literary
Tradition. 1985.
H. Spillers, eds.
Puhr, K. M. ‘Healers in Gloria Naylor’s Fiction’, Twentieth Century Literature 40:4
(1994), 518-27.
Rampersand, A. Richard Wright: A
Collection of Critical Essays,
1995.
Reilly, J. Richard Wright: The Critical Reception, 1978.
Rigney, B. The Voices of
Toni Morrison, 1991.
Robbins, S. ‘Gendering the History of the Anti-slavery
narrative’, American Quarterly 49:3
(1997), 531-67. Morrison, Johnson.
Rody, C. ‘Toni
Morrison’s Beloved: History,
Rememory and a “Clamor for a Kiss”’, American
Literary History 7:1 (1995): 92-119.
Rowden, T. ‘A Play of Abstractions: Race, Sexuality and
Community in James Baldwin’s Another
Country’, Southern Review 29:1
(1993): 41-50.
Sallis, J. Chester Himes: A Life, 2000.
Sandiford, K.A. ‘Gothic & Intertextual Constructs in Linden Hills,’ Arizona Quarterly 47:3 (1991): 117-39.
Shaw, H. Gwendolen Brooks, 1980.
Showalter, E. Sister’s Choice:
Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing (1991) [Naylor]
Skinner, Two Guns from Harlem: The Detective Fiction of
Chester Himes (1989).
Standley, F., ed. Critical Essays on
James Baldwin, 1988.
Stanson, E., ed. Black Sister: Poetry
by Black American Women, 1746-1980, 1981. Anthology.
Steptoe, R. From Behind
the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative, 1979.
Storhoff, G. ‘‘The Only Voice Is Your Own’ Gloria Naylor’s
Revision of The Tempest’, African-American Review, 29:1 (1995),
35-45.
Sylvander, C. James Baldwin,
1980.
Tate, C. Black Women Writers at Work, 1983.
Taylor, H. ‘Gwendolen Brooks: An Essential Sanity’, Kenyon Review 13:4 (1991) 115-31.
Thomas, L. ‘Communicating by Horns: Jazz and Redemption in the
Poetry of the Beats and the Black Arts Movement’, African-American Review 26:2 (1992): 291-98.
Toombs, C. ‘The Confluence of Food and Ideas in Gloria Naylor’s
Linden Hills’, CLA (College Language Association) Journal 37:1 (1993): 1-18.
Traub, V. ‘Rainbows of Darkness: Deconstructing Shakespeare
in the Work of Gloria Naylor and Zora Neale Hurston’, in Marianne Novy (ed.),
Cross Cultural Performances:
Differences in Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare, 1993, pp.150-63.
Tucker, L. ‘Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts
in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’,
African-American Review, 28:2 (1994), 173-88.
* Walker, A. In Search of Our Mothers’s Gardens, 1983.
* Walker, M. Down from the Mountaintop: Black Women Novelists in the Wake of the
Civil Rights Movement, 1966-89, 1991.
Wall, C. ‘Extending
the Line from Sula to Mama Day,’ Callaloo 23.4 (2000),
1449-63,
Walls, D. ‘The Clue Undetected in Richard Wright’s Native Son’, American Literature 57:1 (1985): 125-8.
Ward, C. C. ‘Gloria Naylor’s Linden
Hills: A Modern Inferno’, Contemporary
Literature 28:1 (1987): 67-86.
Warren, N. ‘Cocoa and George: A Love
Dialectic’, SAGE, 7:2 (1990),
19-25.
Waters-Dawson, E. ‘From Victim to Victor: Walker’s Women in The Color Purple’, in The Aching Heart: Family & Violence in
Life and Literature, ed. S. Deats, 1991.
Watts, J.G. Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politivs and
Afro-American Intellectual Life, 1994.
Whitt, M. E. Understanding
Gloria Naylor, 1999.
Willis, S. Specifying:
Black Women Writing the American Experience, 1987.
Wisker, G., ed. Black Women’s
Writing, 1993.
Wyatt, J. ‘Giving Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic
in Toni Morrison’s Beloved,’ PMLA 106 (1993): 474-488.
Journals For specific authors recent articles may be
the best source (a number are listed above). Useful journals held in the
either at RHBNC (hard copy + electronic journals on JSTOR) or (a better print
collection) Senate House include African
American Review, Callaloo, Black American Literature Forum, American
Literature, American Quarterly,
Journal of American Studies, Twentieth Century Fiction, Modern Fiction Studies. Articles can be
located via the MLA Annual Bibliography, available on the College network, or
in the Senate House library. You can search by author, subject, keyword
strings, etc.
Internet Increasingly you will find good material
here, though you’ll have to wade through a lot of dross. It is particularly
good for hard-to-get contextual and primary material and for bibliography.
For example: if you wondered how Frederick Douglass actually escaped north,
you can find a magazine article in which he described his escape archived on
the web. Any search engine will give results, and there are established lists of black
history and culture sites.
Some
useful web material is listed on my links page.
Some Advice on
Seminar Presentations
Here
is some general advice on presenting papers in seminars. Remember: this is part of you non-assessed
requirement for the course, and comments on it are incorporated into the
report on the course which your tutor writes for your file. The skills used here
are an essential part of the degree.
· Keep it simple and short
(5-10 minutes). A short vivid response to a text is fine, raising a few items
of interest for discussion. If you
have the confidence, it is better to talk to bullet points than to read out a
script: the aim is to communicate well to the rest of the group. It helps to
rehearse a little.
· Avoid intoning a list of
general facts about an author or text, dates, etc.; and avoid plot-summary.
As with an essay, anything too general will simply become diffuse. A handout (which I will copy if you get it
to me in advance) is often useful for dealing with any factual material you
want covered.
· There are no rules about
what to deal with. You might decide to look at a few aspects of the text
closely; or flesh out a historical context; or pursue a line of
interpretation (even one borrowed from a secondary text, with acknowledgment
and, hopefully, a critique or assessment of the line taken and comparison
with another possible interpretation).
· Joint papers can be
delivered by one of you, but what is produced should normally be a genuinely
collaborative effort rather than two unrelated papers. Students have experimented in the past with
dialogues, alternating speeches, opposed papers, etc. Consider using visual aids.
top
Course-Work Essay Questions
These are the topics for
the non-assessed course-work essay. I
have suggested general areas of investigation rather than precise topics,
leaving it up to you to choose your texts and approach. Come and
see me if confused, or if you want to negotiate a topic not allowed
by this list. The essays should be no more than 2,500-3,000 words.
1. Intertextual relations: discuss the way in which any of the texts
you have studied rework other texts, allude to them, subvert them. Or
consider the notion of a black tradition: how is it constructed? Is it
implicitly separatist?
2. Genre: the issues raised by the use of different
forms (poetic, the novel, the autobiographical narrative, the trickster story
etc.). You might also consider the relations between speaking (oral forms)
and writing.
3. Language Practices: consider the use of
particular forms of speaking, storytelling, joking, insulting, naming, etc.
in relation to the texts you have studied.
How do such usages reflect Afro-American culture and its relations to
the dominant culture?
4. History: discuss the way in which the
history of Afro-Americans in America is described or used in
any of the texts studied (as topic, structuring device, etc.). If you wish, focus on one moment/place or
on one topic (eg. the escape north; the achievement of literacy).
5.
Gender: write on some aspect of gender relations in the novels studied; or
attempt to explain a different ‘women's tradition’ in Afro-American writing
in terms of a different experience. Or ralated issues such as sexuality,
homosexuality, mixed-race desire.
6. Music: present in many of the texts studied. Can you relate the Blues or Jazz to
Afro-American literature (use one text or a combination; an in-depth
discussion or survey plus general comments on the significance of music,
improvization, tradition etc.).
7. Identity: issues relating to the self and
its definition in terms of social and racial categories: ‘passing,’ the ‘double self,’ the role of
the intellectual or artist, etc.
8. ‘Blackness’: what metaphorical connotations
are attributed to ‘blackness’ in Western Cultures? How do Afro-American Writings incorporate
or resist such connotations, and the discourse of racism generally?
9. Politics:
the call to action; Radicalism vs. Liberalism; Separatism vs.
Integration; analyses of and attacks on White America.
top
LAST YEAR’S ASSESSED
ESSAY QUESTIONS
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
BA EXAMINATION 2005
for Internal Students of Royal Holloway
EN 3303:
AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
FIRST EXAMINED ESSAY
1.
Using any at least three of the texts
you have studied, illustrate some of the different conceptions – implict or
explicit – of the relationship between race and culture which have
characterized African-American tradition.
2.
With reference to at least two texts, discuss
one of the following topics in the African-American tradition: the voyage to Europe;
the first encounter with race (the ‘mirror stage’); the lost parent; the
return to the South.
3.
Discuss the different theories of resistance that are
deployed in the texts of two or more of the following writers: Frederick Douglass; Harriet Jacobs; Charles
Chesnutt; W. E. Du Bois; Zora Neale Hurston.
10.
All night now the jooks clanged and clamored . . .
Blues made and used right on the spot.
Dancing, fighting, and singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing
love every hour. . . The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the
skin like ants. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God)
Would you agree that the desire to create a utopian or livable space is a
recurrent concern in Afro-American writing?
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
BA EXAMINATION 2005
for Internal Students of Royal Holloway
EN 3303:
AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
SECOND EXAMINED ESSAY
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