African American Review articles from March 1997

African American Review archives from March 1997

New tracks on 'Dust Tracks': toward a reassessment of the life of Zora Neale Hurston.
March 22, 1997... Zora Neale Hurston identified a central concern in the representational character of women's autobiography when she wrote, "Now women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The...

Self-delusion and self-sacrifice in Nella Larsen's 'Quicksand.'
March 22, 1997... Nella Larsen's portrait of Helga Crane in Quicksand (1928) criticizes the ways in which white racist constructions of black women's allegedly inherent lasciviousness have cut black women off from experiencing their legitimate sexual desires....

"To take the sin out of slicing trees ...": the law of the tree in 'Beloved.'
March 22, 1997... When Baby Suggs, Beloved's ancestor figure and moral beacon, expresses her view of what seems to be the novel's central transgression, the murder of a child at the hands of her own mother, she sums up what the whole work tends to demonstrate...

Epistrophies: poems celebrating Thelonius Monk and his music.
March 22, 1997... In the movie Straight, No Chaser, Thelonious Monk enters a recording studio for Columbia Records, where he is greeted by producer Ted Macero, who bobs and weaves with the excitement of having Monk's quartet ready to play. To make conversation,...

Thelonious. (poem)
March 22, 1997... It's as if you are given the sky to carry, lift it on your shoulders and take it to lunch, sit in McDonald's with it weighing you down, this business of being black, of staying black until the darkness of some eternity...

The doves. (poem)
March 22, 1997... On the dashboard there is a panel of disappointment. Buttons don't turn as they should. Switches don't summon the pleasures they used to make manifest, like the heat. Cars rattle and move along like the ancient things metal ...

The poets. (poem)
March 22, 1997... In the gymnasium the balls spun from their fingers like spiders' silk, fine and unconquerable. Legs woven in threads of hope, they jumped, came down on silent sneakers, dashing any hopes we had of winning. They...

Only the yellow. (poem)
March 22, 1997... A child cannot be like a poem. My mother assures me of this. She says that you cannot throw a child away like a word in a poem. Like "dark," though my grandmother did this to my mother. Grandma looked at my...

The light brigade. (poem)
March 22, 1997... In college, we used to call them the "light brigade," that cluster of girls with skin no darker than sandpaper. There were four of them: The fat one who looked at my dark mother, her English professor, as if Mama had...

Suasive Tuesday. (poem)
March 22, 1997... Someone told me soft endings lead nowhere Very particular, Lead more to palace like spaces where dogs bark Unheard than to a hut Set amidst the fields where folks still do chores, Keeping quiet, knowing the arc ...

A'she (so be it). (poem)
March 22, 1997... A thing or work of art that has ashe transcends ordinary questions about its makeup and confinements: it is divine force incarnate! (Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit) The Capture She is called Theit, The Ancient ...

Token. (poem)
March 22, 1997... lyn nching h hi tech ly lynching ch lynching hi tech hi hing hi te hing ly ren e claren cle claren ncle claren larence cla cle uncle rence cla uncle ...

The 'Negro in Art Week': defining the 'New Negro' through art exhibition.
March 22, 1997...... just as utopia signifies "no place," so does "New Negro" signify a "black person who lives at no place," and at no time. It is a bold and audacious act of language, signifying the will to power, to dare to recreate a race by renaming it,...

Incest and intertextuality in Carolivia Herron's 'Thereafter Johnnie.'
March 22, 1997... How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies ?... Did she put on his knowledge with...

MIA: African American autobiography of the Vietnam War.
March 22, 1997... In a recent article in War, Literature, and the Arts, Perry D. Luckett took to task several critics writing for a special edition of Vietnam Generation that was dedicated to analyzing the representations of African Americans in the literature...

Race, Culture, and the City: A Pedagogy for Black Urban Struggle.
March 22, 1997... Stephen Nathan Haymes. Race, Culture, and the City: A Pedagogy for Black Urban Struggle. Albany: SU of New York P, 1995. 167 pp. $12.95. Scholarly literature on the United States city is not hard to come by. The corpus includes Jane Jacobs'...

Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
March 22, 1997... John Egerton. Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York: Knopf, 1994. 704 pp. $35.00. John Egerton's Speak Now Against the Day is for readers who have time for only one book on its...

Framing the Margins: The Social Logic of Postmodern Culture.
March 22, 1997... Phillip Brian Harper. Framing the Margins: The Social Logic of Postmodern Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 233 pp. $16.95. The title of Phillip Harper's book, echoing titles of works by Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson, indicates its area...

Black African Cinema.
March 22, 1997... Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike. Black African Cinema. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 401 pp. $45.00 cloth/$17.00 paper. Black African Cinema is a rich, welcome addition to the small but growing number of scholarly works on African cinema....

Black Writers in Britain: 1760-1890.
March 22, 1997... Paul Edwards and David Dabydeen, eds. Black Writers in Britain, 1760-1890. New York: Edinburg UP/Columbia UP, 1993. 256 pp. $25.00 Sensitive to gender, forced and voluntary migration, and generic diversity, this valuable volume contains...

The African American Short Story 1970 to 1990: A Collection of Critical Essays.
March 22, 1997... Wolfgang Karrer and Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz, eds. The African American Short Story 1970 to 1990: A Collection of Critical Essays. Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner, 1993. 226 pp. $23.50. Who would have thought it? Enterprising critical predecessors...

Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823.
March 22, 1997... Emilia Viotti da Costa. Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 400 pp. $17.95. Historians of the Caribbean have long been familiar with the general contours of the 1823 slave revolt...

Letters of Ignatius Sancho.
March 22, 1997... Edwards, Paul, and Polly Rewt, eds. Letters of Ignatius Sancho. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1994. 304 pp. $60.00. The passing in 1992 of Paul Edwards, late professor of English and African Literature at the University of Edinburgh, marked the...

We Lives in a Little Cabin in the Yard.
March 22, 1997... Belinda Hurmence, ed. We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1994. 103 pp. $7.95. For more than half a century, the WPA ex-slave narratives collection from the late 1930s Federal Writers' Project has remained...

W.E.B. Du Bois: Of Cultural and Racial Identity.
March 22, 1997... Robert Gooding-Williams, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois: Of Cultural and Racial Identity. Massachusetts Review 35.2 (1994). 166 pp. $6.00. In his otherwise sagely perceptive To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (1992), Eric...

Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays.
March 22, 1997... Arnold Rampersad, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1994.211 pp. $12.95. Arnold Rampersad, biographer of Langston Hughes and editor of the two-volume Library of America edition of the works of...

"May All Your Fences Have Gates": Essays on the Drama of August Wilson.
March 22, 1997... Alan Nadel, ed. "May All Your Fences Have Gates": Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1994. 270 pp. $34.95 cloth/$15.95 paper. It is fair to say that by now August Wilson has become America's preeminent...

The Culture of Fiction in the Works of Manuel Zapata Olivella.
March 22, 1997... Yvonne Captain-Hidalgo. The Culture of Fiction in the Works of Manuel Zapata Olivella. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1993. 193 pp. $34.95. This wide-ranging yet tightly focused volume brings a rich array of critical perspectives to bear on the...

King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era.
March 22, 1997... Edward A. Berlin. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 347 pp. $25.00. It is oddly fitting that, as Edward Berlin remarks, an "out-of-focus, botched photograph... is the last image" (189) of Scott Joplin...

New Essays on Song of Solomon.
March 22, 1997... Valerie Smith, ed. New Essays on Song of Solomon. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. 128 pp. $10.95. New Essays on Song of Solomon sustains a shift in the scholarship of Toni Morrison from readings that focus on thematic concerns of race,...

Conversations with Toni Morrison.
March 22, 1997... Danille Taylor-Guthrie. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1994. 312 pp. $39.50 cloth/$15.95 paper. When I write on or teach Toni Morrison's novels, I am accustomed to pulling out my file folder of rather...

Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics.
March 22, 1997... Samuel R. Delany. Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics. Hanover: Wesleyan UP/UP of New England, 1994. 322 pp. $45.00 cloth/ $17.95 paper. Although he writes in a genre vigorously pursued by relatively...

Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood.
March 22, 1997... Gerald Early. Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1994. 234 pp. $17.00. Near the end of this slender, moving memoir, Gerald Early engages the central themes of American male literature. Reflecting on Richard...

Darktown Strutters.
March 22, 1997... Wesley Brown. Darktown Strutters. New York: Cane Hill P, 1994. 224 pp. $1195. Anybody who thinks an historical novel about blackface minstrel days is "merely" historical hasn't been paying attention to Jim Carrey's The Mask, TV's In Living...

Crossing the River.
March 22, 1997... Caryl Phillips. Crossing the River. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1994. 237 pp. $22.00. I find it interesting to speculate: Did Caryl Phillips start four separate novels, change his mind, and end up saving the best parts, finally bringing them...

Crossing the Mangrove.
March 22, 1997... Maryse Conde. Crossing the Mangrove. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1995. 208 pp. $10.95. Francisco Alvarez-Sanchez, a.k.a. Francis Sancher, the protagonist of Maryse Conde's novel Crossing the Mangrove, is a true...

And All Our Wounds Forgiven.
March 22, 1997... Lester, Julius. And All Our Wounds Forgiven. New York: Arcade, 1994. 228 pp. $19.95. Julius Lester is a well-known African American writer of seventeen published works, including collections of folktales, children's stories, critical...

Ethiopian Stories.
March 22, 1997... George S. Schuyler. Ethiopian Stories. Ed. Robert A. Hill. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1994, 240 pp. $42.50. Often reviled as an anti-black agitator during the height of his distinguished career as satirist, journalist, and critic, George...