Bearing witness to African American literature : validating and valorizing its authority, authenticity, and agency / Bernard W. Bell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Bernard W., author.

Series:

African American life series.

African American Life Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

African Americans.

African Americans in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (354 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Detroit, Michigan : Wayne State University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

An interdisciplinary, code-switching, critical collection by revisionist African American scholar and activist Bernard W. Bell.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Preface

Every Tongue Got to Confess

Introduction

Memoir: On Becoming an African American Scholar Activist

1. Double Consciousness as the Sign of African American Difference

I. The African American Jeremiad and Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July 1852 Speech

African American Double Consciousness

The Sacred and Secular Origins of the American Jeremiad

The African American Jeremiad

That Most Foul and Fiendish of All Human Decrees

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Notes

II. Genealogical Shifts in Du Bois's Discourse on Double Consciousness as the Sign of African American Difference

III. Booker T. and W. E. B.: The Authority, Authenticity, and Agency of African American Double Consciousness

2. The Roots and Branches of the African American Literary Tradition

I. The African American Literary Tradition

II. African American Writers

1

2

3

III. The Image of Africa in the Afro-American Novel

White Images of Africa in Western Culture

Early Images of Africa in the Afro-American Novel

Images of Africa in the Pre-World War II Novel

Images of Africa in the Post-World War II Novel

IV. Jean Toomer's "Blue Meridian": The Poet as Prophet of a New Order of Man

V. The Legacy of James Baldwin: The Artist as Redemptive Lover and Righteous Witness

Manchild of the Promised Land

Artist of Redemptive Love

Modern Black Writer as Righteous Witness

3. Modern and Contemporary African American Vernacular and Literary Voices

I. The Blues Voices in John Edgar Wideman's Two Cities

II. Clarence Major's Homecoming Voice in Such Was the Season

III. Charles Johnson's Philosophical Fiction: Slave Revolt in the Quest for Unity of Being in Middle Passage

The Narrative of Slave Revolt.

Slavery's Impact on Culture and Character

IV. Trey Ellis's Voice of the New Black Aesthetic in Platitudes

4. Womanist African American Vernacular and Literary Voices

I. Ann Petry's Demythologizing of American Culture and Afro-American Character

II. Nails, Snails, and Puppy-Dog Tails: Black Male Stereotypes in the Fiction of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Terry McMillan

III. The Liberating Literary and African American Vernacular Voices of Gayl Jones

IV. Toni Morrison's Blues People in a Jazz World

V. Beloved: A Womanist Neo-Slave Narrative

or, Multivocal Remembrances of Things Past

5. Bearing Witness to the Changing Same: Representations of Black American Identity in American and African American Literature

I. Three Vernacular Theories for Teaching African American Literature for the Twenty-First Century

II. Mark Twain's "Nigger" Jim: The Tragic Face behind the Minstrel Mask

Twain's Socialization in the Ethics of Jim Crow

Twain's Relationship to His Audience, Huck, and Jim

III. "The Negro" as Metonym, Metaphor, and Marginal Man in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

IV. William Styron's Nat Turner: A White Southerner's Meditation on a Legendary Slave Revolt

V. Deconstructing the American Melting Pot and Literary Mainstream: Validating and Valorizing African American Literature in the College Curriculum

Works Cited

Index

BackCover.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780814337158

0814337155

OCLC:

830023757