African American Review articles from June 1994

African American Review archives from June 1994

Recovering the conjure woman: texts and contexts in Gloria Naylor's 'Mama Day.' (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... "There are just too many sides to the whole story," Cocoa tells George near the conclusion of Gloria Naylor's 1988 novel Mama Day (311). The truth of this remark is reinforced by the structure of the novel itself--by the fact that Cocoa's words...

Giving blood to the scraps, haints, history, and Hosea in 'Beloved.' (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... Let's face it: Toni Morrison's Beloved can only be re-read. But the challenges posed by this novel ought not to be confused with the mere "fascination of what's difficult" that Yeats complains has "dried the sap out of [his] veins." To the...

Ambrosia and pure spring water. (short story) (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... Every summer she and her husband drive down to the country to spend time with her mother and grandmother. She looks forward to these visits, especially now that the children are grown and gone. No alarms, flailing limbs, and roller coaster...

Early black women playwrights and the dual liberation motif. (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... In the introduction to the section of his Black Theater USA anthology entitled "Early Plays by Black Women," James V. Hatch recalls Eldridge Cleaver's observation about the myth of the strong black woman. "He [the white man] turned the...

"These are the facts of the darky's history": thinking history and reading names in four African American texts. (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.... Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead...

Quiet as it's kept. (short story) (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... When Mother got close to talk, I moved away. There wasn't anything wrong with Mother. Not really. She still had a pleasant smell about her--Moonlight Rose, I think. Her body was attractive, for an older woman. Maybe that was my problem. My...

"Ladies first": Queen Latifah's Afrocentric feminist music video. (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... Although they have been featured in a number of newspaper articles, feminist rappers have not received sufficient critical attention. Three recent books on rap (Costello and Wallace; Spencer; and Toop) ignore female rappers, and as recently as...

"Would you really rather die than bear my young?": the construction of gender, race, and species in Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild." (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... "Did you use the rifle to shoot the achti?" "Yes." "And do you mean to use it to shoot me?" I stared at her, outlined in the moonlight--coiled graceful body. "What does Terran blood taste like to you?" She said nothing. ...

Journey into speech - a writer between two worlds: an interview with Michelle Cliff. (Black Women's Culture Issue) (Interview)
June 22, 1994... Among the subjects Jamaican born writer Michelle Cliff explores in her writings are ancestry, the impact of colonization on the Caribbean, the relationships among and interconnection of African people in the diaspora, racism, and the often...

Voice and interiority in Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... Consistent critical attention focuses on Janie's voice because, as Michael Awkward has stated, "Perhaps the dominant image in the recent creative and critical writing of Afro-American women [is] the struggle to make articulate a heretofore...

Orpheus ascending: music,race, and gender in Adrienne Kennedy's 'She Talks to Beethoven.' (Black Women's Culture Issue)
June 22, 1994... A drienne Kennedy's recent play She Talks to Beethoven first appeared in Antaeus in the spring of 1991 and was subsequently included as the first of the Alexander Plays published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1992. Alisa Solomon's...

New Essays on 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.'
June 22, 1994... As the Critical Interpretations series of the 1960s aged with the advent of literary theory and increased attention to race, gender, class, and sexuality, several contenders for its replacement as undergraduate guides/graduate introductions...

Girl at the Window.
June 22, 1994... History, family, and place are very important to the poet, especially if he or she is an African American. Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks are among those who have recorded the truths and half-truths of the people they knew and/or...

Leaning Against the Sun.
June 22, 1994... Precision and effectiveness also characterize the work of Gerald Barrax, whose Leaning Against the Sun is a fine book that displays very well the poet's depth and range. The title of Barrax's book is taken from the last line of Emily...

My Father's Geography.
June 22, 1994... Like Pinkie Gordon Lane and Gerald Barrax, Michael S. Weaver is a good poet. He doesn't have the years of experience practicing his craft, but that isn't a weakness. He is one of the best new voices on the American literary scene. In his second...

Screenplays of the African American Experience.
June 22, 1994... Midway between the recent explosion of New Jack, Hollywood, "home-boy" potboilers such as New Jack City, Hangin' with the Homeboys, and Juice, and the theatrical release of films such as Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust and Charles Lane's...

Ralph Ellison.
June 22, 1994... In recent years, the centrality of Ralph Ellison's place in African American literature has been documented by a number of important studies. Charles Johnson's Being and Race describes Invisible Man as "the Modern Ur-text for black fiction"...