Legacies of Departed African Women Writers: Matrix of Creativity and Power proffers varied perspectives of the invaluable contributions of ten deceased African writers from all across Africa who have cleared the path to a vibrant African feminist arena. The dynamics of change gleaned from both their textual and contextual concerns unarguably set the pace for contemporary African women writers who have striven to follow in the footsteps of their literary mothers as well as their oral foremothers. This book, edited by Helen Chukwuma and Chioma Carol Opara, shows the collective testament of ample creativity and power generated by these departed heroes: Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Grace Ogot, Zulu Sofola, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Yvonne Vera, and Nadine Gordimer. These chapters revolve around the positive impact of the celebrated writers on creative writing, theoretical formulations, and socio-cultural change. The contributors argue that these corpuses of works have illuminated creativity rooted in power, vision, and freedom.
Legacies of Departed African Women Writers: Matrix of Creativity and Power proffers varied perspectives of the invaluable contributions of ten deceased African writers from all across Africa who have cleared the path to a vibrant African feminist arena. The dynamics of change gleaned from both their textual and contextual concerns unarguably set the pace for contemporary African women writers who have striven to follow in the footsteps of their literary mothers as well as their oral foremothers. This book, edited by Helen Chukwuma and Chioma Carol Opara, shows the collective testament of ample creativity and power generated by these departed heroes: Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Grace Ogot, Zulu Sofola, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Yvonne Vera, and Nadine Gordimer. These chapters revolve around the positive impact of the celebrated writers on creative writing, theoretical formulations, and socio-cultural change. The contributors argue that these corpuses of works have illuminated creativity rooted in power, vision, and freedom.
As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances. Each of the scholars represented has chosen a different "site of memory"--from a variety of historical and geographical points, and from different ideological, theoretical, and artistic perspectives. Yet the book is unified by a common concern with the construction of an emerging African-American cultural memory. The renowned group of contributors, including Hazel Carby, Werner Sollors, Vèvè Clark, Catherine Clinton, and Nellie McKay, among others, consists of participants of the five-year series of conferences at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University, from which this collection originated. Conducted under the leadership of Geneviève Fabre, Melvin Dixon, and the late Nathan Huggins, the conferences--and as a result, this book--represent something of a cultural moment themselves, and scholars and students of American and African-American literature and history will be richer as a result.
Arranged alphabetically from "Alice of Dunk's Ferry" to "Jean Childs Young," this volume profiles 312 Black American women who have achieved national or international prominence.
African American women writers published extensively during the Harlem Renaissance and have been extraordinarily prolific since the 1970s. This book surveys the world of African American women writers. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on more than 150 novelists, poets, playwrights, short fiction writers, autobiographers, essayists, and influential scholars. The Encyclopedia covers established contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, along with a range of neglected and emerging figures. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a brief biography, a discussion of major works, a survey of the author's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Literature students will value this book for its exploration of African American literature, while social studies students will appreciate its examination of social issues through literature. African American women writers have made an enormous contribution to our culture. Many of these authors wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, a particularly vital time in African American arts and letters, while others have been especially active since the 1970s, an era in which works by African American women are adapted into films and are widely read in book clubs. Literature by African American women is important for its aesthetic qualities, and it also illuminates the social issues which these authors have confronted. This book conveniently surveys the lives and works of African American women writers. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on more than 150 African American women novelists, poets, playwrights, short fiction writers, autobiographers, essayists, and influential scholars. Some of these figures, such as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, are among the most popular authors writing today, while others have been largely neglected or are recently emerging. Each entry provides a biography, a discussion of major works, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students and general readers will welcome this guide to the rich achievement of African American women. Literature students will value its exploration of the works of these writers, while social studies students will appreciate its examination of the social issues these women confront in their works.
As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances. Each of the scholars represented has chosen a different "site of memory"--from a variety of historical and geographical points, and from different ideological, theoretical, and artistic perspectives. Yet the book is unified by a common concern with the construction of an emerging African-American cultural memory. The renowned group of contributors, including Hazel Carby, Werner Sollors, Veve Clark, Catherine Clinton, and Nellie McKay, among others, consists of participants of the five-year series of conferences at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University, from which this collection originated. Conducted under the leadership of Genevieve Fabre, Melvin Dixon, and the late Nathan Huggins, the conferences--and as a result, this book--represent something of a cultural moment themselves, and scholars and students of American and African-American literature and history will be richer as a result.
African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being is the nexus to scholarship on manifestations of Africanisms in black art and culture, particularly the scant critical works focusing on African metaphysical retentions. This study examines New World African spirituality as a syncretic dynamic of spiritual retentions and transformations that have played prominently in the literary imagination of black women writers. Beginning with the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction traces applications and transformations of African spirituality in black women's writings that culminate in the conscious and deliberate celebration of Africanity in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The journey from Wheatley's veiled remembrances to Hurston's explicit gaze of continental Africa represents the literary journey of black women writers to represent Africa as not only a very real creative resource but also a liberating one. Hurston's icon of black female autonomy and self realization is woven from the thread work of African spiritual principles that date back to early black women's writings.
Race is everywhere and pretending not to see it only does more damage than good. This book delves into the work of Charles Mills and how his underlying philosophies of race still play out in today’s economic, educational, political and sociological arena. Charles Mills left a legacy of philosophical racial analyses needed to better understand race, racism, whiteness, and white supremacy worldwide. From the Racial Contract to global issues of colonial whiteness and epistemological racial ignorance, Mills’ theories still resonate in the research that race scholars conduct today. Needless to say, despite his passing, Charles’ work lives on. To honour Mills’ scholarship, this book draws on interdisciplinary studies (e.g., sociology, political science, Black studies, and education) to excavate the racial landscape of the U.S. post Trump, Anti-CRT bans, #BLM, and global racial reckonings. Within this volume prominent scholars of race worldwide and, from a variety of disciplines, discuss Mills’ theories as applied to contemporary discourses of race, whilst also offering very personal vignettes that best illuminate who Charles was to us all. Essentially, the man behind the theories. Filled with both deep theoretical analyses and personal stories of Charles, this book will liven the spirits, hearts, and hope for racial justice and those who work endlessly towards it. This book is a key resource for scholars, researchers and practitioners in the fields of education, sociology, political science, racial and ethnic studies, development studies and philosophy. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Race Ethnicity and Education.
This book deconstructs androcentric approaches to spacetime inherited from western modernity through its theoretical frame of the chronotropics. It sheds light on the literary acts of archival disruption, radical remapping, and epistemic marronnage by twenty-first-century Caribbean women writers to restore a connection to spacetime, expanding it within and beyond the region. Arguing that the chronotropics points to a vocation for social justice and collective healing, this pan-Caribbean volume returns to autochthonous ontologies and epistemologies to propose a poetics and politics of the chronotropics that is anticolonial, gender inclusive, pluralistic, and non-anthropocentric. This is an open access book.
Bringing together criticism on both African American and Native American women writers, this book offers fresh perspectives on art and beauty, truth, justice, community, and the making of a good and happy life. The essays draw on interdisciplinary, feminist, and comparative methods in the works of writers such as Toni Morrison, Leslie Silko, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Paula Gunn Allen, Luci Tapahonso, Phillis Wheatley, and Sherley Anne Williams, making them more accessible for critical consideration in the fields of aesthetics, philosophy, and critical theory. The contributors formulate unique frameworks for interpreting the multiple levels of complex, cultural play between Native American and African American women writers in America, and pave the way for innovative hermeneutic possibilities for reassessing writers of both traditions.
