Contemporary African American Literature

Description

The new face of black writing in America

In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join writers and younger scholars to explore the work of Toni Morrison, Edward P. Jones, Trey Ellis, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Kyle Baker, Danzy Senna, Nikki Turner, and many others. The collection is bracketed by a foreword by novelist and graphic artist Mat Johnson, one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary African American writers, and an afterword by Alice Randall, author of the controversial parody The Wind Done Gone. Together, King and Moody-Turner make the case that diversity, innovation, and canon expansion are essential to maintaining the vitality of African American literary studies.

Foreword
Mat Johnson, University of Houston
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner, Penn State University
I. Politics of Publishing, Pedagogy, and Readership
1. The Point of Entanglement: Modernism, Diaspora, and Toni Morrison's Love
Houston A. Baker, Jr., Vanderbilt University
2. The Historical Burden that Only Oprah Can Bear: African American
Satirists and the State of the Literature
Darryl Dickson-Carr, Southern Methodist University
3. Black is Gold: African American Literature, Literacy, and Pedagogical
Legacies
Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas
4. Hip Hop Fiction (feat. Women Writers); or, Other Things Hip Hop Music Has Taught Black Fiction
Eve Dunbar, Vassar College
5. Street Literature and the Mode of Spectacular Writing: Popular Fiction between Sensationalism, Education, Politics and Entertainment
Kristina Graaff, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin
II. Alternative Genealogies
6. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Slave: Visual Artistry as Agency in the
Contemporary Narrative of Slavery
Evie Shockley, Rutgers University
7. Variations on the Theme: Black Family, Nationhood, Lesbianism and Sadomasochistic Desire in Marci Blackman's Po Man's Child
Carmen Phelps, University of Toledo
8. Bad-Brother-Man: Black Folk Figure Narratives in Comics
James Braxton Peterson, Bucknell University
III. Beyond Authenticity
9. Sampling the Sonics of Sex (Funk) in Paul Beatty's Slumberland
L. H. Stallings, Indiana University
10. Urkel No More? Black Geeks in Contemporary Black Literature
Alexander Weheliye, Northwestern University
11. The Crisis of Authenticity in Contemporary African American Literature
Richard Schur, Drury University
12. Someday We'll All Be Free: Contemporary Fiction and the Post-Oppression Narrative
Martha Southgate, Brooklyn Novelist
IV. Pedagogical Approaches and Implications
13. Untangling History, Dismantling Fear: Teaching Tayari Jones's Leaving Atlanta
Trudier Harris, UNC-Chapel Hill, Emerita
14. Reading Kyle Baker's Nat Turner with a Group of Collegiate Black Men
Howard Rambsy II, Southern Illinois University
15. Toward the Theoretical Practice of Conceptual Liberation: Using An Africana Studies Approach to Reading African American Literary Texts
Greg Carr, Howard University and Dana Williams, Howard University
Afterword
Alice Randall, Vanderbilt Novelist
Annotated Bibliography
Pia Deas, Lincoln University and David Green, St. Johns University
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• Literature
• Criticism
• African American
• American
• Black

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 28 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 11
• EAN13: 9780253006974
• Langue: English

Extrait

BLACKS IN THE DIASPORA
FOUNDING EDITORS Darlene Clark Hine John McCluskey, Jr. David Barry Gaspar
EDITORS Herman L. Bennett Kim D. Butler Judith A. Byfield Tracy Sharpley-Whiting
EDITED BY LOVALERIE KING AND SHIRLEY MOODY-TURNER
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
THE LIVING CANON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47405
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders    800-842-6796 Fax orders    812-855-7931
© 2013 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contemporary African American literature : the living canon / edited by Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner.
  pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00625-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00626-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00697-4 (ebook) 1. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. African Americans—Intellectual life. 3. African Americans in literature. I. King, Lovalerie, editor of compilation. II. Moody-Turner, Shirley, editor of compilation.
PS153.N5C644  2013
810.9'896073—dc23
2013016443
1 2 3 4 5   18 17 16 15 14 13
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO THE ANCESTORS AND TO THOSE SCHOLARS, AUTHORS, AND AUTHOR/SCHOLARS WHO CONTINUE TO CARRY THE TRADITION FORWARD.
CONTENTS
Foreword \ Mat Johnson
Acknowledgments
Introduction \ Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner
Part 1. Politics of Publishing, Pedagogy, and Readership
   1 The Point of Entanglement: Modernism, Diaspora, and Toni Morrison's Love \ Houston A. Baker, Jr.
   2 “The Historical Burden That Only Oprah Can Bear”: African American Satirists and the State of the Literature \ Darryl Dickson-Carr
   3 Black Is Gold: African American Literature, Critical Literacy, and Twenty-First-Century Pedagogies \ Maryemma Graham
   4 Hip Hop (feat. Women Writers): Reimagining Black Women and Agency through Hip Hop Fiction \ Eve Dunbar
   5 Street Literature and the Mode of Spectacular Writing: Popular Fiction between Sensationalism, Education, Politics, and Entertainment \ Kristina Graaff
Part 2. Alternative Genealogies
   6 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Slave: Visual Artistry as Agency in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery \ Evie Shockley
   7 Variations on the Theme: Black Family, Nationhood, Lesbianism, and Sadomasochistic Desire in Marci Blackman's Po Man's Child \ Carmen Phelps
   8 Bad Brother Man: Black Folk Figure Narratives in Comics \ James Braxton Peterson
Part 3. Beyond Authenticity
   9 Sampling the Sonics of Sex (Funk) in Paul Beatty's Slumberland \ L. H. Stallings
10 Post-Integration Blues: Black Geeks and Afro-Diasporic Humanism \ Alexander G. Weheliye
11 The Crisis of Authenticity in Contemporary African American Literature \ Richard Schur
12 Someday We'll All Be Free: Considering Post-Oppression Fiction \ Martha Southgate
Part 4. Pedagogical Approaches and Implications
13 Untangling History, Dismantling Fear: Teaching Tayari Jones's Leaving Atlanta \ Trudier Harris
14 Reading Kyle Baker's Nat Turner with a Group of Collegiate Black Men \ Howard Rambsy II
15 Toward the Theoretical Practice of Conceptual Liberation: Using an Africana Studies Approach to Reading African American Literary Texts \ Greg Carr and Dana A. Williams
Afterword \ Alice Randall
Annotated Bibliography \ Pia Deas and David F. Green, Jr .
Contributors
Index
FOREWORD
MAT JOHNSON
There is a fanpage on the popular networking site Facebook entitled “I Hate Reading.” It's a very succinct title, and there's not much else to the page. If you hate reading, you simply click the button that says “Like,” and you can become a “Fan” and proudly show your unabashed support for illiteracy. As of this writing, the site has over 450,000 members, all of whom presumably overcame the irony of having to read the page in the first place.
As a writer, I am of course disheartened by this lambasting of the written word. But as a human, I understand. Books are hard. My own art, the novel, is among the hardest. Novels are incomplete in their process, forcing the reader to use her or his imagination to bring the text to life. TV shows don't demand that; they do the work for you. Films as well, with millions of dollars spent to bring the creativity to life. People work hard, come home exhausted, they want the release, they want escape, they want someone else to carry the load. It's no wonder every time I write a book someone says to me, “Maybe they'll turn it into a movie.” That knowledge keeps me from attacking them.
So why do novels matter? In this era of visual media, when one film's advertising budget alone can dwarf the incomes of entire publishing houses, what does the novel hope to offer? I ask myself this quite often. I ask it every time I happen upon a beautiful book that's been ignored, or as I struggle myself with the realities of trying to maintain my life as a writer. I'm asked this too, by writing students struggling to understand if the art they're dedicating their lives to still has a place in the world. And I usually answer them with one word. Lolita.
Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece, the story of a wretched pedophile's obsession with stealing the innocence of a little girl. Stunning in its poetry, its hypnotizing view of the world. It pulls the reader in from its first rhythmic lines and yanks them into a narrative twisted and honest and breathtaking. It was a huge hit after it was first published in 1955, and the inevitable need to see it enacted in film resulted in two film versions, one in 1962 and another in 1997. The great tale was visually translated by great and accomplished directors, Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne, respectively, with ample budgets to aid them. And both the cinematic versions failed to live up to the artistic accomplishment of their source material. The visual reality of this forbidden relationship became distasteful when presented in visual form: both movies cast the female role with an older actress out of decency. And it was an impossible task, to take the detailed reality of protagonist Humbert Humbert and fit it into a few hours fare. But there are other reasons besides time that speak to the strength of the novel form. Watching a film is a communal event, the darkened theater is a group occasion. TV, while watched primarily at home, is even more communal, with millions of others joining in the shared experience. But the novel demands a solitary audience. You read, and the words become images within the privacy of your own mind. And within the darkened space of your imagination, anything can be said, any truth can be uttered, with intimacy.
That is what the novel offers, like no other storytelling form: truth. One person's truth. Not one person and a legion of collaborators. Not a truth dictated in part by harsh market concerns and obligations to financial reward. Not just truth the majority of people want to hear. That same money that floods into TV and film also brings with it the need for a mass audience, and for a vision that can sacrifice its intimacy for leaps towards the universal.
This becomes an increasingly difficult dilemma for telling the stories of minorities, who by their nature garner smaller audiences directly familiar with their experiences. In order to combat that shrinkage, commercially viable minority storytelling is often aimed at the lowest level of sophistication, so as not to exclude any of the already small pool. The result, as evidenced in African American TV and film, has been a paucity of sophisticated depictions of Black life. It's not that there are not sophisticated visual storytellers of African descent, it's just that it is extremely difficult for them to get the massive funding they need for their art, and when they do it is usually weighted with the need to receive crossover approval from the majority, White, audience. And that is why African American literature, at this moment, is so important: it offers truth the best chance.
African American literature has always been about telling uncomfortable truths. It began its prose with the slave narrative, transitioned in the nineteenth century into the protest novel, and was often judged by both white and black critics more by how effectively it held a mirror to white oppression than by its artistic merits.
But our world has changed. In the time since Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her masterpiece set in the slave era, Beloved , a new generation of writers has come of age, a group o