New Essays on the African American Novel: From Hurston and Ellison to Morrison and Whitehead

Front Matter....Pages i-ix
Introduction....Pages 1-12
Anna Julia Cooper, Charles Chesnutt, and The Hampton Folklore Society—Constructing a Black Folk Aesthetic through Folklore and Memory....Pages 13-32
Blues Narratology and the African American Novel....Pages 33-49
“—And I Might Even Be Said to Possess a Mind”: Hibernation, Psychoanalysis, and Schizophrenia in Invisible Man....Pages 51-63
“A Different Kind of Experiment”: Clarence Major’s Dirty Bird Blues and the Music of Visibility....Pages 65-74
Dreaming and Waking in Wonderland: Faith and the Good Thing and Charles Johnson’s Fairy Tale Fictions....Pages 75-91
Dancing Minds and Plays in the Dark: Intersections of Fiction and Critical Texts in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, and Toni Morrison’s Paradise....Pages 93-106
Railroading the Novel: Gayl Jones’s Mosquito....Pages 107-122
Reaping What She Sows: The Evolution of African American Female Bildung and the Journey to Self from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower....Pages 123-139
Seeking Space to Save Humanity: Spatial Realignments as a Structuring Motif in Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark....Pages 141-151
Specters of Public Massacre: Violence and the Collective in Toni Morrison’s Paradise....Pages 153-165
The Literate Pimp: Robert Beck, Iceberg Slim, and Pimping the African American Novel....Pages 167-183
Edward Christopher Williams and the Other Washington Novel....Pages 185-199
Stomping the Blues No More? Hip Hop Aesthetics and Contemporary African American Literature....Pages 201-220
The Rise of Colson Whitehead: Hi-Tech Narratives and Literary Ascent....Pages 221-240
“Nothing But A Man”: Racial Identity and Musical Production in John Henry Days....Pages 241-258
Back Matter....Pages 259-281