African American Review articles from December 2001

African American Review archives from December 2001

Teddy Harris's work.(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... Teddy Harris's work is the modernism of everyday perception and rationale. He makes works from vouchsafes and unrealized dreams, lies and advertisements for nowhere. That is, he takes scraps of America North and threads them through his...

Nella Larsen and the Intertextual Geography of Quicksand.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... Toward the middle of her 1928 novel Quicksand, Nella Larsen thematizes her authorial relation to the literary past in a scene that uncannily adumbrates the future demise of her career. Larsen's protagonist, Helga Crane, pores over the writing...

Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial, and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There (1859) is considered to be the first novel published by an African American woman. Set in a...

The Negro Artist and the Racial Manor: Infants of the Spring and the Conundrum of Publicity.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... Somehow, somewhere, black writers and creators had lost control of their subjects and, with them, some of the Harlem Renaissance. (Mumford 155) In a recent essay on the critical reception of Jennie Livingston's acclaimed documentary Paris...

"The porch couldn't talk for looking": Voice and Vision in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.'(Zora Neale Hurston)(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... "So 'tain't no use in me telling you somethin' unless Ah give you de understandin' to go 'long wid it. Unless you see do fur, a mink skin ain't no different from a coon hide." (Hurston, Their Eyes 7) When Janie explains to her friend...

Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Case of Angelo Herndon.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... The judge interrupted me angrily. "All right," said he, "that's enough, I want no speeches from you. What I want to know is whether you'll work if you'll get a job?" "Yes, your honor, if you have a job to give me I'll surely work."...

Furrowing all the Brows: Interpretation and the transcendent in Toni Morrison's Paradise.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... Whether the motto on the Oven is "Beware the Furrow of His Brow," "Be the Furrow of His Brow," or even "We Are the Furrow of His Brow" or Her Brow, God's brow is not the only one that is furrowed in Toni Morrison's seventh novel, Paradise. The...

Buzzard.(Short Story)
December 22, 2001... Cecil Pettaway had many lovers. Each one had something he coveted, something perfect to him: the right-shaped nose; the smooth skin; the thin, muscular calves; the cute accent; the sexy laugh. And each one had something, gave him something,...

Exodus!: Religion, race, and nation in early nineteenth century Black America.
December 22, 2001... Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early NineteenthCentury Black America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. 216 pp. $42.00. In her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston describes the posture of the...

Up from Bondage: The literatures of Russian and African American Soul.
December 22, 2001... Dale E. Peterson. Up From Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American Soul. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. 249 pp. $18.95. In Up from Bondage, Dale E. Peterson explores numerous parallels between the works of Russian and African...

The Power of Political Art: The 1930s left reconsidered.
December 22, 2001... African American Review, Volume 35, Number 4 [C]2001 James Smethurst Robert Shulman. The Power of Political Art: The 1930s Left Reconsidered. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. 340 pp. $49.95. Those of us who write about...

Souls grown deep: African American vernacular art of the South; Vol. 1.
December 22, 2001... William Arnett, ed. Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South: Vol. 1. Atlanta, GA: Tinwood Books with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, 2000. 568 pp. $100.00. Souls Grown...

Recollections of my slavery days.
December 22, 2001... William Henry Singleton. Recollections of My Slavery Days. Intro. Katherine Mellen Charron and David S. Ceceiski. Raleigh, NC: Department of Cultural Resources, 1999. 123 pp. $16.00. William Henry Singleton grew up as a slave in North...

An African's life: The life and times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1799.
December 22, 2001... James Walvin. An African's Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1799. New York: Continuum, 2000. 220 pp. $19.95. The dean of the study of the politics and institutions of the British slave trade and British antislavery has...

Nat Turner before the bar of judgment: Fictional treatments of the Southampton Slave Insurrection.
December 22, 2001... Mary Kemp Davis. Nat Turner Before the Bar of Judgment: Fictional Treatments of the Southampton Slave Insurrection. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1999. 272 pp. $30.00. Mary Kemp Davis's Nat Turner Before the Bar of Judgment is a...

Zora Neale Hurston's their eyes were watching God: A casebook.
December 22, 2001... Cheryl A. Wall, ed. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Casebook. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 191 pp. $32.00. Oxford University Press has recently published another in its casebook series, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes...

Re-Viewing James Baldwin: Things not seen.
December 22, 2001... D. Quentin Miller, ed. Re-Viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2000. 256 pp. $69.50 cloth/$22.95 paper. Seldom does one find an anthology of essays on a major author thoroughly enlightening and consistently...

Quiet as it's kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison.
December 22, 2001... J. Brooks Bouson. Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Albany: SUNY P, 2000. 276 pp. $21.95. In Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison, J. Brooks Bouson employs...

The critical response to Ralph Ellison.
December 22, 2001... Robert J. Butler, ed. The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison. Westport: Greenwood P, 2000. 296 pp. $79.50. This is the ninth collection of critical writings devoted primarily if not exclusively to Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), which the...

August Wilson: A Casebook.
December 22, 2001... Marilyn Elkins, ed. August Wilson: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 2000. 228 pp. $26.95. It would seem, following the success of his 1984 Broadway production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, that August Wilson's declared assignation to write a...

Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries.
December 22, 2001... Yusef Komunyakaa. Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2000. 165 pp. $15.95. Yusef Komunyakaa's exquisite poetry is the sound of him ticking. The best analysis to date of what makes him tick is Blue...

Bruised Hibiscus.
December 22, 2001... Elizabeth Nunez. Bruised Hibiscus. Seattle: Seal P, 2000. 286 pp. $24.95 cloth/$13.95 paper. With the publication of Bruised Hibiscus, Elizabeth Nunez has greatly enriched the rapidly developing field of African diaspora literature. In...

Jazz from the Haiku King.
December 22, 2001... James A. Emanuel. Jazz from the Haiku King. Detroit: Broadside P, 1999. 138 pp. $8.50. While haiku is a traditional Japanese poetic form, jazz has its origin in African American music. Despite technical differences in composition, haiku...

Natural Birth.(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... Toi Derricotte. Natural Birth. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 2000. 86 pp. $10.95. "I wrote Natural Birth when my son was sixteen years old.... I had told no one of the story of my son's birth in a home for unwed mothers, not even my best...

Fifth Season: Poems.
December 22, 2001... Anthony Butts. Fifth Season: Poems. Chelsea, MI: New Issues P, 1997. 52 pp. $12.00. Anthony Butts dedicates this first collection of poetry to "the imaginary gods," many of whom seem to live in this book as silent yet towering indications...