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African-American Literature is thematically arranged, comprehensive survey of African-American Literature.The unique thematic organization of the anthology allows for a concise and coherent assessment of African American literature. The thematic approach gives readers a better sense of the intertextuality that binds a literary tradition together rather than a chronological approach that organizes material strictly on the basis of an author's birth date. Those interested in African-American literature. ... Read more

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African American literature is over. With this provocative claim Kenneth Warren sets out to identify a distinctly African American literature—and to change the terms with which we discuss it.

Rather than contest other definitions, Warren makes a clear and compelling case for understanding African American literature as creative and critical work written by black Americans within and against the strictures of Jim Crow America. Within these parameters, his book outlines protocols of reading that best make sense of the literary works produced by African American writers and critics over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.

In Warren’s view, African American literature begged the question: what would happen to this literature if and when Jim Crow was finally overthrown? Thus, imagining a world without African American literature was essential to that literature. In support of this point, Warren focuses on three moments in the history of Phylon, an important journal of African American culture. In the dialogues Phylon documents, the question of whether race would disappear as an organizing literary category emerges as shared ground for critical and literary practice. Warren also points out that while scholarship by black Americans has always been the province of a petit bourgeois elite, the strictures of Jim Crow enlisted these writers in a politics that served the race as a whole.

Finally, Warren’s work sheds light on the current moment in which advocates of African American solidarity insist on a past that is more productively put behind us.

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B> Tracing African American literary and artistic contributions from the 1700s to the 1990s, this anthology presents a diverse collection that includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, speeches, songs, paintings and photography.Readers learn about historical context, literary content, and rhetorical strategies while exploring sections on The Colonial Period (1746-1800), The Reconstruction Period (1865-1900), The Harlem Renaissance Period (1900-1940), The Protest Movement (1940-1959), The Black Aesthetics Movement (1960-1969), The Neo-Realism Movement (1970-Present), and Literary Criticism.For those interested in African American literature, art, and history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Loved that cd!
I loved my order.The book and cd arrived on time and although the book wasn't in perfect condition, the cd was.I've been playing it out.I'm happy with the service and would definitely order again.It's filled with all the stories from my past and both my childhood and I were escorted down memory lane by the Anthology of African American Literature!Thanks for the fantastic trip!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anthology for Arican American Literature
The seller did not indicate that the CD normally included inside the book was not included upon receipt of the book. There was no note to indicatethat the CD would be forthcoming. The CD is an important part of the book, and I may have chosen another seller had I been aware prior to making my purchase.

Anthology of African American Literature
This book was in wonderful shape when it arrived. I am very pleased with the purchase and shipping process.I have no complaints...GREAT way to buy textbooks!

Just as Described
Although this product took longer to ship than expected, I am extremely pleased.This textbook (for my class next semester) is extremely expensive so I was happy to find it for such a great price.Most of the other sellers didn't have the cd that goes with it but this seller did.There are NO markings in the book.I would definitely purchase from this seller again.

Great resource
Excellent anthology.Very good for teachers who want to take a thematic approach to teaching African American Literature.The introduction to each period gives a nice look into what the period focused on.Excellent companion CD. ... Read more

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A breathtaking achievement, this Concise Companion is a suitable crown to the astonishing production in African American literature and criticism that has swept over American literary studies in the last two decades. It offers an enormous range of writers-from Sojourner Truth to Frederick Douglass, from Zora Neale Hurston to Ralph Ellison, and from Toni Morrison to August Wilson. It contains entries on major works (including synopses of novels), such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Richard Wright's Native Son, and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. It also incorporates information on literary characters such as Bigger Thomas, Coffin Ed Johnson, Kunta Kinte, Sula Peace, as well as on character types such as Aunt Jemima, Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Stackolee, and the trickster. Icons of black culture are addressed, including vivid details about the lives of Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman.
Here, too, are general articles on poetry, fiction, and drama; on autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday School literature, and oratory; as well as on a wide spectrum of related topics. Compact yet thorough, this handy volume gathers works from a vast array of sources--from the black periodical press to women's clubs--making it one of the most substantial guides available on the growing, exciting world of African American literature.Amazon.com Review
This important sourcebook for information about black writersand their craft is a welcome companion to the recently issuedNorton Anthology of African American Literature. More to thepoint, it shows how much black literature, once relegated to themargins, has become mainstream. Here are brief biographies of morethan 400 black writers, entries on some 150 works, and a host ofentries on characters from novels, stories, and plays. In addition,there are entries on topics such as Afrocentricity (as well as ontopics of more general interest, such as the novel), that make thisessential for anyone who cares about black literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

OUTSTANDING RESOURCE
Everything that you wanted to know or needed to know about African American Literature is contained in this eight hundred page volume. This comprehensive volume covers the historical and cultural contexts of African American literature that has been too long neglected.

Oxford's Companionencompasses thetraditional genres of poetry, fiction and drama but goes beyond them. It gives the same analysis to special genres such as Slave Narratives, Oratory, Folk Literature, etc. that you don't normally find in reference works of this kind. These special features and others give this book a unique spot in reference works of literature.

From the moment I got this volume in my hands, I couldn't put it down. Its numerous essays, brief biographies and analysis of the various hues of African American Literature was overwhelming and enjoyable. A referance guide such as this should be in every home. It is user friendly, informative and entertaining. Most of all it will give you a deeper appreciation of the vast types of African American literature produced throughout the years.

An English Graduate Student in Nashville
I purchased this anthology to assist me in my African-American literature class. This book has given me great insight about the literature of African-Americans. Not only does it give great details about the many authors, but it also explains the nature of their many works. I strongly recommend this book to anyone taking an African-American literature course - regardless of the time period. ... Read more

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These brief anthologies of ethnic American literature are ideal for ethnic, multicultural and American literature courses. They are designed to introduce undergraduates to the rich but often neglected literary contributions of established and newer ethnic writers to American literature. Each text is organized chronologically by genre and represent a wide range of literature. An introduction provides an historical overview and a celebration of the diversity within each ethnic group. It also addresses the general literary concerns students are likely to encounter in their readings. A seperate thematic table of contents provides the instructor with more flexibility in the classroom. ... Read more

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This is the first readers' advisory guide to focus specifically on African American literature. It is designed to help book professionals better serve not only African American readers, but all readers who enjoy works by African American authors. Like other titles in the series, the s book organizes titles by genres—crime and detective fiction, frontier literature, historical fiction, inspirational literature, speculative fiction, romance, and mainstream fiction. In addition to novels, the authors include a chapter on Life Stories—diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies—since African American literature was born of these forms, which share many appeals with fiction and continue to play an important role in literary tradition. Each chapter is further organized by subgenre and theme. Title-author and subject indexes provide additional access. A list of resources for information on African American authors is posted on the Libraries Unlimited Web site as a supplement to the book. In all, more than 700 titles are categorized and described. Award-winning titles are noted. In addition, keywords, and subject lists accompany each entry. A brief history of the evolution of African American literature, guidelines for collection development and research, and tips for the readers' advisor makes this a complete resource for readers' advisors, reference librarians, and collection development specialists in public and academic libraries. It will also have great appeal to high school libraries, and will be a useful resource for college-level courses on African American literature. Young adult and adult. Grades 10 and up.

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The years between the collapse of Reconstruction and the end of World War I mark a pivotal moment in African American cultural production. Christened the "Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem" era by the novelist Charles Chesnutt, these years look back to the antislavery movement and forward to the artistic flowering and racial self-consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance.

Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem offers fresh perspectives on the literary and cultural achievements of African American men and women during this critically neglected, though vitally important, period of our nation's past. Using a wide range of disciplinary approaches, the sixteen scholars gathered here offer both a reappraisal and celebration of African American cultural production during these influential decades. Alongside discussions of political and artistic icons such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and James Weldon Johnson are essays revaluing figures such as the writers Paul and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the New England painter Edward Mitchell Bannister, and Georgia-based activists Lucy Craft Laney and Emmanuel King Love.

Contributors explore an array of forms from fine art to anti-lynching drama, from sermons to ragtime and blues, and from dialect pieces and early black musical theater to serious fiction.

Contributors include: Frances Smith Foster, Carla L. Peterson, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Audrey Thomas McCluskey, Barbara Ryan, Robert M. Dowling, Barbara A. Baker, Paula Bernat Bennett, PhilipJ. Kowalski, Nikki L. Brown, Koritha A. Mitchell, Margaret Crumpton Winter, Rhonda Reymond, and Andrew J. Scheiber.

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In this book, Shelly Eversley historicizes the demand for racial authenticity - what Zora Neale Hurston called 'the real Negro' - in twentieth-century American literature. Eversley argues that the modern emergence of the interest in 'the real Negro' transforms the question of what race an author belongs into a question of what it takes to belongto that race. Consequently, Paul Laurence Dunbar's Negro dialect poems were prized in the first part of the century because - written by a black man - they were not 'imitation' black, while the dialect performances by Zora Neale Hurston were celebrated because, written by a 'real' black, they were not 'imitation' white. The second half of the century, in its dismissal of material segregation, sanctions a notion of black racial meaning as internal and psychological and thus promotes a version of black racial 'truth' as invisible and interior, yet fixed within a stable conception of difference.The Real Negro foregrounds how investments in black racial specificity illuminate the dynamic terms that define what makes a text and a person 'black', while it also reveals how 'blackness', spoken and authentic, guards a more fragile, because unspoken, commitment to the purity and primacy of 'whiteness' as a stable, uncontested ideal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Lit lover
This book is a true testament to thought in reference to "the place" of the black writer. The issues raised bv the author can be piercing in their clarity. It is a must for any university Lit program or library collection, where real discussion is placed on African-American Literature, thereby American Literature.

The most important book
This really complicated book--with highly informed theoretical concepts--makes a controversial and solid arugment about the making of race in the United States.It should be a mandatory read for anyone interested in twentieth century American and African American literature. ... Read more

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Through a reading of periodicals, memoirs, speeches, and fiction from the antebellum period to the Harlem Renaissance, this study re-examines various myths about a U.S. progressive history and about an African American counter history in terms of race, democracy, and citizenship. Reframing 19^th century and early 20^th-century African-American cultural history from the borderlands of the U.S. empire where many African Americans lived, worked and sought refuge, Knadler argues that these writers developed a complicated and layered transnational and creolized political consciousness that challenged dominant ideas of the nation and citizenship. Writing from multicultural contact zones, these writers forged a "new black politics"—one that anticipated the current debate about national identity and citizenship in a twenty-first century global society. As Knadler argues, they defined, created, and deployed an alternative political language to re-imagine U.S. citizenship and its related ideas of national belonging, patriotism, natural rights, and democratic agency.

Customer Reviews (3)

African American Literature - High School Loved It
This book is excellent stand alone and in conjunction with other literature concurrent in time. It dovetails well with 'The Great Gatsby' because of the selections from the Harlem Renaissance in Unit Five. Other periods can supplement this text; and it can be used in Social Studies as well (Unit One - Three touches on ancient Egypt,African Proverbs and exerpts from Olaudah Equiano,Benjamin Banneker.Units Six - Eleven cover writings to the Eighties.I have used this book for years, the students keep asking for more.

Teacher's lifesaver
Let me just tell you this book kept 8th graders loving literature like no other literature could. There is violence, love, jealousy, family, struggle... in practically every story. Lots of great nonfiction, too. A wonderful wonderful item for read aloud even.

Teacher's lifesaver
Let me just tell you this book kept 8th graders loving literature like no other literature could. There is violence, love, jealousy, family, struggle... in practically every story. Lots of great nonfiction, too. A wonderful wonderful item for read aloud even. ... Read more

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During and after the Harlem Renaissance, two intellectual forces --nationalism and Marxism--clashed and changed the future of African American writing. Current literary thinking says that writers with nationalist leanings wrote the most relevant fiction, poetry, and prose of the day.

Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box challenges that notion. It boldly proposes that such writers as A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright, who often saw the world in terms of class struggle, did more to advance the anti-racist politics of African American letters than writers such as Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey, who remained enmeshed in nationalist and racialist discourse.

Evaluating the great impact of Marxism and nationalism on black authors from the Harlem Renaissance and the Depression era, Anthony Dawahare argues that the spread of nationalist ideologies and movements between the world wars did guide legitimate political desires of black writers for a world without racism. But the nationalist channels of political and cultural resistance did not address the capitalist foundation of modern racial discrimination.

During the period known as the "Red Decade" (1929-1941), black writers developed some of the sharpest critiques of the capitalist world and thus anticipated contemporary scholarship on the intellectual and political hazards of nationalism for the working class.

As it examines the progression of the Great Depression, the book focuses on the shift of black writers to the Communist Left, including analyses of the Communists' position on the "Negro Question," the radical poetry of Langston Hughes, and the writings of Richard Wright.

Anthony Dawahare is an associate professor of English at California State University, Northridge. He has been published in African American Review, MELUS, Twentieth-Century Literature, and Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature, and the Arts. ... Read more

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In January of 1861, on the eve of both the Civil War and the rebirth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Christian Recorder, John Mifflin Brown wrote to the paper praising its editor Elisha Weaver: "It takes our Western boys to lead off."

Weaver's story, though, like many of the contributions of early black literature outside of the urban Northeast, has almost vanished. Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature recovers the work of early African American authors and editors such as Weaver who have been left off maps drawn by historians and literary critics. Individual chapters restore to consideration black literary locations in antebellum St. Louis, antebellum Indiana, Reconstruction-era San Francisco, and several sites tied to the Philadelphia-based Recorder during and after the Civil War.

In conversation with both archival sources and contemporary scholarship, Unexpected Places calls for a large-scale rethinking of the nineteenth-century African American literary landscape. In addition to revisiting such better-known writers as William Wells Brown, Maria Stewart, and Hannah Crafts, Unexpected Places offers the first critical considerations of important figures including William Jay Greenly, Jennie Carter, Polly Wash, and Lizzie Hart. The book's discussion of physical locations leads naturally to careful study of how region is tied to genre, authorship, publication circumstances, the black press, domestic and nascent black nationalist ideologies, and black mobility in the nineteenth century. ... Read more

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Teaching the Harlem Renaissance: Course Design and Classroom Strategies addresses the practical and theoretical needs of college and high school instructors offering a unit or a full course on the Harlem Renaissance. In this collection many of the field's leading scholars address a wide range of issues and primary materials: the role of slave narrative in shaping individual and collective identity; the long-recognized centrality of women writers, editors, and critics within the "New Negro" movement; the role of the visual arts and "popular" forms in the dialogue about race and cultural expression; and tried-and-true methods for bringing students into contact with the movement's poetry, prose, and visual art. Teaching the Harlem Renaissance is meant to be an ongoing resource for scholars and teachers as they devise a syllabus, prepare a lecture or lesson plan, or simply learn more about a particular Harlem Renaissance writer or text. ... Read more

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Jean Toomer's Cane was advertised as "a book about Negroes by a Negro," despite his request not to promote the book along such racial lines. Nella Larsen switched the title of her second novel from Nig to Passing, because an editor felt the original title "might be too inflammatory." In order to publish his first novel as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection Richard Wright deleted a scene in Native Son depicting Bigger Thomas masturbating. Toni Morrison changed the last word of Beloved at her editor's request and switched the title of Paradise from War to allay her publisher's marketing concerns.

Although many editors place demands on their authors, these examples invite special scholarly attention given the power imbalance between white editors and publishers and African American authors. Black Writers, White Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century African American Literature examines the complex negotiations behind the production of African American literature.

In chapters on Larsen's Passing, Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Gwendolyn Brooks's Children Coming Home, Morrison's "Oprah's Book Club" selections, and Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, John K. Young presents the first book-length application of editorial theory to African American literature. Focusing on the manuscripts, drafts, book covers, colophons, and advertisements that trace book production, Young expands upon the concept of socialized authorship and demonstrates how the study of publishing history and practice and African American literary criticism enrich each other. ... Read more