The racial unfamiliar : illegibility in Black literature and culture / John Brooks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, John, 1989- author.

Series:

Literature now.

Literature now

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race in literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2022]

Summary:

John Brooks examines a range of abstractionist, experimental, and genre-defying works by Black writers and artists that challenge how audiences perceive and imagine race. He argues that literature and visual art that exceed the confines of familiar conceptions of Black identity can upend received ideas about race and difference.

Contents:

Introduction: Encountering Illegibility: The Enactment of Critical Blackness

Part I. Vision

1. Picturing Blackness in the Photography of Roy DeCarava

2. A Muse for Blackness: Kara Walker's "Outlaw Rebel" Vision

Part II. Genre

3. Antiessentialist Form: The Bebop Effect of Percival Everett's Erasure

4. Beyond Satire: The Humor of Incongruity in Paul Beatty's The Sellout

Part III. History

5. The Politics of Inertia: Temporal Distortion in Suzan-Lori Parks's 100 Plays for the First Hundred Days

6. Heretical Poetics in Robin Coste Lewis's The Voyage of the Sable Venus

Afterword: Critical Blackness in Contexts.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Brooks, John The Racial Unfamiliar

ISBN:

0-231-55580-6

OCLC:

1336403230