San Antonio College Library

The Oxford Companion to African American Literature provides the first comprehensive one-volume reference work devoted to this rich tradition, surveying the length and breadth of black literary history, focusing in particular on the lives and careers of more than 400 writers. Here, too, are general articles on the traditional literary genres, such as poetry, fiction, and drama; on genres of special import in African American letters, such as autobiography,...

"Eric Walrond (1898-1966), author of Tropic Death (1926), remains a seminal but elusive figure in Harlem Renaissance and Caribbean diasporic literature. Although this collection remains his only major text, Walrond was in fact quite prolific, penning several more fictions and journalistic writings. Born in British Guiana (Guyana), he endured a peripatetic existence, beleaguered at every turn by those colonial crises and conflicts that constitute the...

"In this work, Patrice D. Rankine asserts that the classics need not be a mark of Eurocentrism, as they have long been considered. Instead, the classical tradition can be part of a self-conscious, prideful approach to African American culture, esthetics, and identity. Ulysses in Black demonstrates that, similar to their white counterparts, African American authors have been students of classical languages, literature, and mythologies by such writers...

Examining the resonance and ambiguities of black culture, Ostendorf rejects the idea that black literature warrants criticism merely in formalistic and structural terms. He argues that if there is a 'high style' of black literature, there is also a 'low' or colloquial style, rooted in the folk seculars of the 1830s, that has evolved through the blues poetry of Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown into the "orature" of Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and...

Davis explores the literary culture of black authors, including how they perceive white people, identifying ways in which blacks interpret whites' perception of black culture, and discussing African-American literary themes from historical and contemporary perspectives. Understanding the white image in the black mind is paramount. Overall she seeks to answer the question: What is a white person? Why does it matter?

The central concern of James Tuttleton's new collection of literary essays is the work of black writers and the representation of the black experience in America. Mr. Tuttleton approaches the subject with caution, but with his usual clear-eyed judgment, seeking to restore objective criticism to its proper role in the treatment of "minority" writings.

"For the serious student of black writers and black writing, this book is provocative and challenging, not to mention original. If one's appetite for black literature is large, this book will be a continuous source of nourishment."--Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Argues that Black literature cannot be characterized strictly as social realism, and offers a textual analysis of works by eighteenth- to twentieth-century Black writers.