Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women's Writing : Race and Narrative Innovation / edited by Sheldon George and Jean Wyatt.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

George, Sheldon, editor.

Wyatt, Jean, editor.

Series:

Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women's Writing.

Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women's Writing

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Fiction--Black authors--History and criticism.

Group identity in literature.

Race in literature.

Black people in literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Essays.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (281 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), 2024.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file HTML

Summary:

In what innovative ways do novels by diasporic Black women writers experiment with the representation of Black subjectivity? This collection explores the inventiveness of contemporary Black women writers - Black British, African, Caribbean, African American - who remake traditional understandings of blackness. As the title word "experimental" signals, these essays foreground the narrative form and stylistic innovations of the black-authored novels they analyze. They also show how these experiments with form mirror the novels' convention-breaking experiments with reimagining Black female subjectivities. While each novel, of course, represents the complexities of diasporic experiences differently, some issues emerge that are broadly shared not just within a regional group, but across geographical borders. One feature of the collection is a comparative look at such linking themes across borders, under the rubrics: a return to precolonial systems of belief, reinventions of mothering, relational subjectivities, memory, history and haunting, and posthumanist revaluations. These themes take different shapes across the multitude of diverse cultures studied in this book. But together they establish a pan-global imaginative practice.

Contents:

Introduction: Experimentation and Subjectivity in Black Diasporic Women's Novels Jean Wyatt, Occidental College, and Sheldon George, Simmons University Section I: Contemporary African American Women Writers 1. "Would it be all right to go ahead and feel?": Constructing Black Women's Interiorities in Toni Morrison's Beloved, Angelyn Mitchell, Associate Professor, Georgetown University, USA 2. Writing (against) Abjection in Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), Claudine Raynaud, Professor Emerita, Université Paul-Valéry, France 3. Reproductive Exploitation and Maternal Subjectivity in Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild", Naomi Morgenstern, Professor of English and American Literature, University Of Toronto, Canada 4. "'Are you now so deluded you think you exist outside the category of everything?': Black Motherhood beyond Cisgenderism in Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts", Milo Obourn, Associate Professor, College At Brockport, State University Of New York, USA 5. Narration and Desire in Toni Morrison's Paradise and Home, Sheldon George, Professor of English, Simmons University, USA Section II: Contemporary African Women Writers 6. essai aí não sou eu' / 'this one here is not me' - losing oneself and finding one's sisters. Alienation and sorority in Paulina Chiziane's Niketche, Dorothe´e Boulanger, Junior Research Fellow in Modern Languages, Jesus College, University Of Oxford, UK 7. Zimbabwean Decolonization, Unhu and Education in Tsitsi Dangarembga's The Book of Not, Brendon Nicholls, Associate Professor of Postcolonial African Studies, University Of Leeds, UK 8. Subjectivity "at the border" in Akwaeke Emezi and Toni Morrison, Pelagia Goulimari, Research Fellow, University Of Oxford, UK Section III: Contemporary Caribbean Women Writers 9. Bodies and belongings beyond the colonial imagination Alison Donnell, Professor in Modern Languages, University of East Anglia, UK 10. Intransitive subjectivities, Intransitive fiction: the question of modes, form and pattern in Alecia McKenzie's Sweetheart, Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika, Associate Professor, Université Paris 8, France 11. "Speculating on a Past/Future Self: Tan-Tan in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber" Rhonda Frederick, Associate Professor of English And African & African Diaspora Studies, Boston College, USA 12. Authoring the Self: textual strategies for self-making in Jamaica Kincaid, Dionne Brand and Diana Evans, Denise Decaires Narain, Reader in Postcolonial Literatures, University of Sussex, UK Section IV: Contemporary Black British Women Writers 13. Welcoming Familiars in Bernardine Evaristo's Fiction, Jennifer Gustar, Associat Professor, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada 14. 'An unexpected turn': Coincidence and responsibility in Aminatta Forna's Happiness Helen Cousins, Reader in Postcolonial Literature, Newman University, UK 15. "There are things you don't need to be told. You suckle them at your mother's teat": Dynamic Subjectivity, Breastfeeding, and Storycrafting in The First Woman (2021) by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Jenni Ramone, Associate Professor, Nottingham Trent University, UK 16. Black British Women Writers' Historical Fiction Dierdre Osborne, Reader in English Literature and Drama, Goldsmiths, UK 17. Bicultural Twins: Yoruba and British Tales of Twins in Diana Evans's 26a Jean Wyatt, Professor Emerita, Occidental College, USA Bibliography Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-350-38349-X

1-350-38350-3

1-350-38348-1

OCLC:

1436832372