Canaan bound : the African-American great migration novel / Lawrence R. Rodgers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rodgers, Lawrence R. (Lawrence Richard), 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--African American authors--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--African American authors.

African Americans in literature.

Rural-urban migration in literature.

Migration, Internal, in literature.

City and town life in literature.

Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

United States.

History.

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Physical Description:

xv, 235 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Illinois Press, [1997]

Summary:

Drawing on a wide range of major literary voices, including Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, as well as lesser-known writers such as William Attaway (Blood on the Forge) and Dorothy West (The Living Is Easy), Rodgers conducts a kind of literary archaeology of the Great Migration. He mines the writers' biographical connections to migration and teases apart the ways in which individual novels relate to one another, to the historical situation of black America, and to African-American literature as a whole. In reading migration novels in relation to African-American literary texts such as slave narratives, folk tales, and urban fiction, Rodgers affirms the southern folk roots of African-American culture and argues for a need to stem the erosion of southern memory.

Contents:

Introduction : The great migration novel form

The early migration novel

Migration and the Harlem Renaissance

The fugitive migrant novel's critique of ascent

The communal migrant's recuperation of immersion

Epilogue : Post-Ellison migration novels.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [205]-223) and index.

ISBN:

0252023048

0252066057

OCLC:

34933442