African American Review articles from September 1997

African American Review archives from September 1997

"Runnin' space": the continuing legacy of Sterling Allen Brown.
September 22, 1997... During a stark winter, an old farmer dreams of planting his spring garden in Sterling Brown's pastoral "After Winter": The lean months are done with, The fat to come. His hopes, winter wanderers, Hasten home. At home, eight years after the...

Sterling A. Brown and the Afro-modern moment.
September 22, 1997... When Robert Penn Warren wrote his highly ironic line "Nigger, your breed ain't metaphysical" (321), he compressed into five deceptively economic feet nearly a half-millennium of white hegemonic philosophy, both its rhetorical strategies and...

Two writers sharing: Sterling A. Brown, Robert Frost, and "In Dives' Dive."
September 22, 1997... It is late at night and still I am losing, But still I am steady and unaccusing. As long as the Declaration guards My right to be equal in number of cards, It is nothing to me who runs the Dive. Let's have a look at another five. (Robert...

Authenticity and elevation: Sterling Brown's theory of the blues.
September 22, 1997... Every poet must confront a serious problem: how to reconcile one's private preoccupations with the need to make poetry that is both accessible and useful to others. A failure in this area does not, of course, prevent the production of poems....

Sterling Brown: an ethnographic perspective.
September 22, 1997... I would like to propose a method for reading the poetry of Sterling A. Brown in light of Brown's complete oeuvre. My proposed method is informed by interdisciplinary inquiry, including recent ethnographic theory and qualitative research...

Sterling Brown's poetic voice: a living legacy.
September 22, 1997... When I first heard Sterling Brown reciting "Long Gone," I knew that I was in the presence of a large and vibrant soul. The deep resonance of his voice, with its rumbling bass, brought me willingly into his world of stoic heroes and Southern...

Memories of Sterling Brown.
September 22, 1997... Nearly fifty years ago, Sterling Brown lived a short distance across the street from the home of my uncle, Dr. James (Jim) Roberts, at 1209 Kearney Street, N.E., in the area called Brookland out beyond Catholic University. Jim Roberts had come...

Sterling Brown: maker of community in academia.
September 22, 1997... Discovery is manna from heaven for the researcher, and any little tidbit simply increases the appetite for more. Remember, God had to tell the Israelites not to take more than they could eat. But He didn't say that to me, at least not about this,...

Sterling A. Brown's "Literary Chronicles."
September 22, 1997... When the judges of Opportunity's first literary contest awarded Sterling A. Brown Second Prize for his essay "Roland Hayes" (first prize went to E. Franklin Frazier for "Social Equality and the Negro"), they clearly did the right thing. The...

And I owe it all to Sterling Brown: the theory and practice of Black literary studies.
September 22, 1997... In March 1989, the African Literature Association was meeting in Dakar, Senegal. The sessions had ended for the day, and several of us were sitting in the lobby bar of the Novotel talking as we waited for our drinks. Conversation turned to some...

Up. (Short story)
September 22, 1997... (contains samples of program music, "Gangsta's Paradise," and The Baptism) Every night when the blues around a last quarter are stirring up another death rain and the white lady from the government is through giving away generic cheeses, some...

The horror of Bigger Thomas: the perception of form without face in Richard Wright's 'Native Son.'
September 22, 1997... Richard Wright's depiction of Bigger Thomas, a young African American whose social environment moves him to murder and rape, is meant to be both sympathetic and shocking. We, as readers, are to feel compassion for Bigger as he is caught up in...

Afrocentrism and World Politics: Towards a New Paradigm.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Molefi Kete Asante Temple University Errol Anthony Henderson has written a remarkable book. It is a book that purports to advance a new paradigm in the discourse on world politics as he seeks to "critique and contribute to the...

The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Peter Erickson Clark Art Institute It is no accident that Paul Gilroy's 1993 book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness cites both Adrienne Rich and Stuart Hall. These two writers can be seen as emblematic of...

Black London: Life Before Emancipation.(Brief Article)
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Anthony G. Barthelemy University of Miami Black London undertakes to dispel the falsehood that England did not become a multiethnic society until the twentieth century. Gerzina musters abundant, incontrovertible evidence to prove...

Borders, Boundaries, and Frames: Cultural Studies and Cultural Criticism.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Cheryl A. Wall Rutgers University "Disco Dancing in Bulgaria"? The title jumped out at me as I read the table of contents of Borders, Boundaries, and Frames. With some uneasiness, I wondered how much in this volume would claim...

Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Robert McColley University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This is an excellent book in many ways, and will assuredly be a permanently valuable part of the growing library that defines and dissects the complex society of Virginia...

Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Dwight N. Hopkins The Divinity School of the University of Chicago Throughout the history of black religion - from its origin during slavery, through the post-bellum proliferation of black churches, to today's...

The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Claudia Tate Princeton University The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, by George Hutchinson, is a book of monumental scope. It documents the development of a segment of African American literary tradition, generally known...

Radical Revisions: Rereading 1930s Culture.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by James Smethurst Harvard University Though the careers of many of the authors who are considered foundational to modern African American literature - Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph...

Masters of the Drum: Black Lit/oratures Across the Continuum.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure University of Northern Iowa Robert Elliot Fox's book Masters of the Drum: Black Lit/eratures Across the Continuum is a groundbreaking work and an important contribution to the study of African, African...

Literary Influence and African American Writers: Collected Essays.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by George Hutchinson University of Tennessee, Knoxville According to Tracy Mishkin's introduction, this volume aims to recuperate the value of literary "influence study" from its negative connotations - the notion that it is...

Black Atlantic Writers of the 18th Century: Living the New Exodus in England and the Americas.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Anthony G. Barthelemy University of Miami Gathered in this volume are autobiographical narratives by Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, John Marrant, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano. Gronniosaw's Narrative of the Most Remarkable...

African-American Proverbs in Context.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Daryl Cumber Dance University of Richmond Growing up in Hanover, Virginia, "surrounded by people who cast the world in vibrant and poetic colors," Sw. Anand Prahlad "fell in love with proverbs at an early age" (ix). This...

The Politics of Color in the fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Jennifer DeVere Brody University of California, Riverside Jacquelyn McClendon's book The Politics of Color in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen examines the categories of race and color and begins to lay the...

Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Donald B. Gibson Rutgers University Though Arnold Rampersad's biography of Langston Hughes is not under scrutiny here, it must certainly be considered when reviewing any subsequent work on that author. Rampersad taught us how to...

Conversations with Ralph Ellison.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Bill Lyne Western Washington University As we await the possible publication of that elusive second novel, this collection of interviews arrives as an important contribution to Ralph Ellison's body of work. Like Henry James,...

Toni Morrison.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Susan L. Blake Lafayette College One of five current or forthcoming titles on American authors in the Modern Novelists series published jointly by Macmillan of London and St. Martin's, this succinct study offers a synthesis of...

Special Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Nicole R. King University of Maryland The death of C.L.R. James in 1989 and the increased availability of his writings have contributed to the current and welcome boom in James Studies, but the frequent marginalization of...

Rethinking C.L.R. James.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Nicole R. King University of Maryland The death of C.L.R. James in 1989 and the increased availability of his writings have contributed to the current and welcome boom in James Studies, but the frequent marginalization of...

Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Nell Irvin Painter Princeton University Not exactly a biography, Kent Anderson Leslie's thoughtful and thoroughly researched treatment of Amanda America Dickson follows the life and times of the "wealthiest colored woman in the...

Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance, Dance and Other Contexts.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by James V. Hatch City University of New York In the opening of her book, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, a professor in dance at Temple University, undertakes a large and very important task: "to reach underground and excavate the...

The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United States.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Christopher Brooks Virginia Commonwealth University After several "false" starts (i.e., picking this book up, reflecting on Floyd's thesis, and wondering if I agreed or not), I began this review in earnest. The argument that...

Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Lovalerie King University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar chart the origin, development, and realization of the 1993 film project bearing the same name as their book. A unique and practical...

Letters to My Children.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Gerald B. Jordan University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and The Philadelphia Inquirer From time to time pollsters, campaign strategists, candidates, and pundits emerge from their conventional wisdom in search of that rarest of...

Why Are the Heroes Always White?
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Gerald B. Jordan University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and The Philadelphia Inquirer From time to time pollsters, campaign strategists, candidates, and pundits emerge from their conventional wisdom in search of that rarest of...

But I Am Too a Black Cartoonist! .... Really!
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Gerald B. Jordan University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and The Philadelphia Inquirer From time to time pollsters, campaign strategists, candidates, and pundits emerge from their conventional wisdom in search of that rarest of...

The Rooster's Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Adrien Katherine Wing University of Iowa College of Law When a Jamaican is born of a black woman and some English or Scotsman, the black mother is literally and figuratively kept out of sight as far as possible. . . . You get the...

Live from Death Row.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Bruce Jackson State University of New York, Buffalo This is a collection of short essays about death row, prison, American criminal justice, and being black in late twentieth-century America by Mumia Abu-Jamal, a prize-winning...

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Evelyn E. Shockley Duke University All memoirs are autobiographical, but not all autobiographies are memoirs. That bell hooks's Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood falls into both categories is clear from its first pages. As a...

The Price of a Child.
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Jan Furman University of Michigan-Flint When Virginia Pryor, a slave and mother of three, finds herself waiting out the afternoon in a Philadelphia hotel before taking a ferry with her master to New York, she realizes that the...

Neeny Coming, Neeny Going.(Children's Review)
September 22, 1997... Reviewed by Dianne Johnson-Feelings University of South Carolina The note to the reader in the book's front matter is problematic. Describing the setting of the story, the author writes that Daufuskie Island, off the coast of South Carolina,...