African American Review articles from September 1993

African American Review archives from September 1993

Reading Mammy: the subject of relation in Sherley Anne Williams' 'Dessa Rose.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... She was looking in my mouth and I knowed no matter what words come to my mind the song'd be her'n jes as well as it be mine. --Sherley Anne Williams Discussing the "communicative interactions" amongst the black population of St....

Speaking of the body's pain: Harriet Wilson's 'Our Nig.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... "I know That care has iron crowns for many brows; That Calvaries are everywhere, whereon Virtue is crucified, and nails and spears Draw guiltless blood, that sorrow sits and drinks At sweetest hearts, till all their life is dry; That gentle...

"The whole picture" in Gloria Naylor's 'Mama Day.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... In Mama Day Naylor narrates the love story of two black people from strikingly different background--George, orphaned in the urban North, has grown up in an institution run by whites; and Cocoa, doted on by two black mother figures, has been...

'The Bluest Eye': notes on history, community, and black female subjectivity. (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the Breedloves' storefront apartment is graced overhead by the home of three magnificent whores, each a tribute to Morrison's confidence in the efficacy of the obvious. The novel's unhappy convergence of...

The triple duty of a black woman filmmaker: an interview with Carmen Coustaut. (Women's Culture Issue) (Interview)
September 22, 1993... More than ten years before Rodney King was beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department, Carmen Coustaut was in the midst of writing, producing directing, and editing her first film as a student in cinema production at the University...

War and peace: transfigured categories and the politics of 'Sula.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... In the beginning was not only the word but the contradiction of the word In this lies the novel's flexibility and its ability to transcends the bounds of class and nation, its endless possibilities of mutation. (Ellison, "Society" 243) I...

Reactions of a "highly-strung girl": psychology and dramatic representation in Angelina W. Grimke's 'Rachel.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... Grimke's Rachel is a play that is frequently credited with historical significance but which has rarely, since its first performances and publication, been the subject of extensive or individual critical analysis. With few exceptions, the more...

Color struck. (poem) (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... Color struck him like lightning and he went down with a thud, blinded to her blackness. The heat of her tar blistered his vision. (He was color struck.) The lightning of her darkness scorched his albinoed desires to fragments of forgetfulness....

I been fractured. (poem) (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... I been many things to many people but mostly I been fractured. I been a mother to my lover, but mostly I been fractured. I been a sister to my mister, but mostly I been fractured. I been a friend to my men, but mostly I been fractured while...

Sciatica. (poem) (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... The shade pull grazed liniment bottles on the window ledge. Moonflowers blossomed on the porch. I massaged Mother's back Between dusk and dawn, pain stretched from the small of her back around her hips and down her thighs until her every move...

Talking to Wendy at my mother's funeral. (poem) (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... Let's start on the day I learn it's not a joke not some childish desire fulfilled not the day of the phone call my father's whispered tones and ladder-length pauses obscured by the metallic moan of file cabinets the slap of shoes on government...

"Damballah is the first law of thermodynamics": modes of access to Toni Cade Bambara's 'The Salt Eaters.' (Women's Culture Issue)
September 22, 1993... Choices were being tossed into the street like dice, like shells, like kola nuts, like jackstones. (Salt Eaters 294) We know how that societies are immensely complex systems involving a potentially enormous number of bifurcations...

Intersecting Boundaries: The Theater of Adrienne Kennedy.
September 22, 1993... Shocking, convulsive, and enigmatic, Adrienne Kennedy's intense, one-act, surrealist psychodramas of the 1960s continue to hold a cult-like fascination among connoisseurs of American experimental theater. Kennedy's works have been performed...

The Hottest Water in Chicago.
September 22, 1993... A work of jazz-prose, Gayle Pemberton's The Hottest Water in Chicago eclectically ruminates on family history and personalities, American history, race, pop culture (especially the movies and television), and gender as shapers of the writer's...