Combining scholarship covering one hundred fifty years of novel writing in the U.S., newly commissioned essays examine eighty African American novels. They include well-known works as well as writings recently recovered or acknowledged. The collection features essays on the slave narrative, coming of age, vernacular modernism, and the post-colonial novel to help readers gain a better appreciation of the African American novel's diversity and complexity.
This Companion presents new essays covering the 150 year history of the African American novel.
Notes on contributors; Chronology; Introduction Maryemma Graham; Part I. The Long Journey: The African American Novel and History: 1. Freeing the voice, creating the self: the novel and slavery Chris Mulvey; 2. Reconstructing the race: the novel after slavery M. Guilia Fabi; 3. The novel of the New Negro Renaissance George Hutchinson; 4. Caribbean migration, ex-isles, and the New World novel Giselle Liza Anatol; Part II. Search for a Form: The New American Novel: 5. The neo slave narrative Ashraf H. A. Rushdy; 6. Coming of age in the African American novel Claudine Raynaud; 7. The blues novel Steven Tracy; 8. From modernism to post modernism: black culture at the crossroads Fritz Gysin; 9. The African American novel and popular culture Susanne Dietzel; Part III: African American Voices: From Margin to Center: 10. Everybody's protest novel: the era of Richard Wright Jerry W. Ward, Jr.; 11. Finding common ground: Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin Herman Beavers; 12. American neo-hoodooism: the novels of Ishmael Reed Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure; 13. Spaces for readers: the novels of Toni Morrison Marilyn Mobley Mckenzie; 14. African American womanism: from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Walker Lovalerie King; 15. Vernacular modernism in the novels of John Edgar Wideman and Leon Forrest Keith Byerman.