How to read African American literature : post-Civil Rights fiction and the task of interpretation / Aida Levy-Hussen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levy-Hussen, Aida, 1981- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American fiction.

American fiction--African American authors.

African Americans in literature.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

African American arts--Influence.

African American arts.

Race awareness in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xi, 211 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2016]

Summary:

How to Read African American Literature offers a series of provocations to unsettle the pre-dominant assumptions readers make when encountering post-Civil Rights black fiction. Foregrounding the large body of literature and criticism chat grapples with legacies of the slave past, Aida Levy-Hussen's argument develops on two levels: as a textual analysis of black historical fiction and as a critical examination of the reading practices that characterize the scholarship of our time. Drawing on psychoanalysis, memory studies, and feminist and queer theory, Levy-Hussen examines how works by Toni Morrison, David Bradley, Octavia Butler, Charles Johnson, and others represent and mediate social injury and collective grief. In the criticism chat surrounds these novels, she identifies two major interpretive approaches: "therapeutic reading' (premised on the assurance that literary confrontations with historical trauma will enable psychic healing in the present) and "prohibitive reading" (anchored in the belief that fictions of returning to the past are dangerous and to be avoided). Levy-Hussen argues that these norms have become overly restrictive, standing in the way of a more supple method of interpretation that recognizes and attends to the indirect, unexpected, inconsistent, and opaque workings of historical fantasy and desire. Moving beyond the question of whether literature must heal or abandon historical wounds, Levy-Hussen proposes new ways to read African American literature now. Book jacket.

Contents:

Against prohibitive reading (on trauma)

For contradiction (on masochism)

The missing archive (on depression)

Reading African American literature now.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-203) and index.

ISBN:

9781479890941

1479890944

9781479884711

1479884715

OCLC:

946161293