When Brer Rabbit meets Coyote : African-Native American literature / edited by Jonathan Brennan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brennan, Jonathan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature--Indian authors--History and criticism.

American literature--Indian authors.

Comparative literature--African American and Indian.

Comparative literature.

Comparative literature--Indian and African American.

Indians of North America--Intellectual life.

Indians of North America.

Literature and folklore--United States.

Literature and folklore.

Indians of North America--Folklore.

African Americans in literature.

African Americans--Folklore.

African Americans.

Folklore in literature.

Indians in literature.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvii, 307 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2003]

Summary:

An exploration of the literature, history, and culture of people of mixed African American and Native American descent, When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote is the first book to theorize an African-Native American literary tradition. In doing so, it prompts a reconsideration of interracial relations in American history and literature. Jonathan Brennan, in a sweeping historical and analytical introduction to this collection of essays, surveys several centuries of literature in the context of the historical and cultural exchange and development of distinct African-Native American traditions. Positing a new African-Native American literary theory, he illuminates the roles subjectivity, situational identities, and strategic discourse play in defining African-Native American literatures. Brennan provides a thorough background to the literary tradition and a valuable overview of topics discussed in the essays. He examines African-Native American political and historical texts, travel narratives, and the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, suggesting that this evolving oral tradition parallels the development of numerous Black Indian literary traditions in the United States and Latin America. The essays cover a range of literatures from African-Native American mythology among the Seminoles and mixed folktales among the Cherokee to autobiography, fiction, poetry, and captivity narratives. Contributors discuss, among other topics, the Brer Rabbit tales, shifting identities in African-Native American communities, the "creolization" of African American and Native American mythologies and religions, and Mardi Gras Indian performance. Also considered are Alice Walker's development of an African-Native American identity in her fiction and essays and African-Native American subjectivity in the works of Toni Morrison and Sherman Alexie.

Contents:

On the interaction of traditions / David Elton Gay

Brer Rabbit and his Cherokee cousin / Sandra K. Baringer

Briton Hammon, the Indian captivity narrative and the African American slave narrative / John Sekora

Recapturing John Marant / Benilde Montgomery

Speaking across boundaries / Jonathan Brennan

In search of the Mardi Gras Indians / Jason Berry, Jonathan Foose, and Tad Jones

Mardi Gras Indians, carnival and counter-narrative in Black New Orleans / George Lipsitz

Wrapped in the serpent's tail, Alice Walker's African-native American subjectivity / Patricia Riley

If you know I have a history, you will respect me / Sharon P. Holland

African-Native American subjectivity and the blues voice in the writings of Toni Morrison and Sherman Alexie / Paul Pasquaretta.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0252028198

OCLC:

50606375