African American Review articles from September 2000

African American Review archives from September 2000

Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... "[On the slaveships, some Igbos] wished to die on the idea that they should then get back to their own country. The captain in order to obviate this idea, thought of an expedient viz. to cut off the heads of those who died intimating to them...

Haiti and Black Transnationalism: Remapping the Migrant Geography of Home to Harlem.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... Why did Occupation & Uplift come in? As a capitalistic empire, we needed surplus markets; and Haiti lay at our side entrance. Moreover, it fell within the allotted sphere of influence of the National City Bank of New York. The history of Haiti...

W. E. B. Du Bois vs. "the Sons of the Fathers" [1]: A Reading of The Souls of Black Folk in the Context of American Nationalism.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... In his discussion of W. E. B. Du Bois's essay "On Alexander Crummell," the twelfth chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, Eric Sundquist implicates Du Bois in a patrilineal descent of African American political thought: One of Crummell's...

In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's "Everyday Use".(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... Perhaps the most resonant quality of quiltmaking is the promise of creating unity amongst disparate elements, of establishing connections in the midst of fragmentation. (Kelley 176) Walker's peculiar sound, the specific mode through which...

Neither Fish, flesh, Nor Fowl: Race and Region in the Writings of Charles W. Chesnutt.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... The Supreme Court's decision in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case is notorious for having sewn racial segregation into the fabric of American society. One of the decision's less obvious results was that it gave official sanction to the...

Sugarcane as History in Paule Marshall's "To Da-Duh, in Memoriam".(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... There might not be a region of the world that reflects the history of colonialism in its various phases in a more direct way than does the Caribbean. Its very population is a direct result of the African slave trade, European migration, and...

"The Kindergarten of New Consciousness": Gwendolyn Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... We watch strange moods fill our children, and our hearts swell with pain. The streets, with their noise and flaring lights, the taverns, the automobiles, and the poolrooms claim them, and no voice of ours can call them back.... We cannot keep...

The Map and the Territory: An Interview with Michael S. Harper.(Interview)
September 22, 2000... The interview that follows was produced in a three-part process. The initial question-and-answer sessions took place in Providence, Rhode Island, during June 1997 and August 1998. Audio recordings of these meetings were made in Harper's loft,...

A Coltrane Poem: 9 23 98.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... On any highway in "Autumn Leaves," with Miles on mute Cannonball's date you are in maple groves in the high registers of song ensembles spread in "sheets of sounds" critics parsed in paltry vocables as you went on to...

Meditation for Inese.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... Peacocks three of them under the birdfeeder cardinals hunting and pecking the gray, his brother white with spots, two cats on the chase about to be neutered no longer interested in prey or their...

Portrait (Jay Saunders Redding at Sayles Hall): 5 26 97.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... That night as I lay in bed in the little town of Gabriel, a thousand miles from all that had meant refuge, I felt at home and at peace, even with all that lay ahead of unending struggle (for I was not blind to this) and remaking in the faintly...

An Umbrella of Maple Leaves.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... Oct.'94, Plainfield, MA We park up off Lincoln St; men are working on the road, we can plainly see, right after the mailbox marked "Ellison"; this is not a commodious alley, or a gainly street, but it has...

The Writer's Desk.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... For a human being who is an artist the life is one of twenty-four hours and beneath the threshold comes hence as a song in deep sleep be it day or night You are a poet all the time (even when not...

Identity.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... The wind is silent Rivers have no reflections Tell me who I am John the Baptist East of the river Eating locusts and honey Calling me to swim Middle Passage Black cargoes floating Over pungent new world...

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Ira Berlin. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. 497 pp. $29.95. At the dawn of yet a new century, Americans are still mired in racism and still searching for solutions. When...

Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Patricia Hill Collins. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998. 335 pp. $47.95 cloth/$18.95 paper. With Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, sociologist and social...

Race Men.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Hazel V. Carby. Race Men. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. 228 pp. $24.00. In Race Men, feminist critic Hazel V. Carby produces a text that contains generally unsympathetic renderings of the cultural productions of black male intellectuals and...

Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Seth Forman. Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism. New York: New York UP, 1998. 274 pp. $35.00. Although Seth Forman's Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism delves extensively into both African and Jewish American...

The Harlem and Irish Renaissances: Language, Identity, and Representation.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Tracy Mishkin. The Harlem and Irish Renaissances: Language, Identity, and Representation. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1997. 127 pp. $49.95. Scholars have long commented on the importance of the Irish Renaissance of the late nineteenth and...

Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Maryemma Graham, Sharon Pineault-Burke, and Marianna White Davis, eds. Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 1998. 254 pp. $65.00 cloth/$18.99 paper. In thinking about the academic revolution in...

Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Lawrence R. Rodgers. Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997. 250 pp. $29.95 cloth/$14.95 paper. Lawrence R. Rodgers's Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel is an important...

Reclaiming Community in Contemporary African American Fiction.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Phillip Page. Reclaiming Community in Contemporary African American Fiction. Oxford: UP of Mississippi, 1999. 256 pp. $18.00. Phillip Page's book focuses sharply on a theme which has acquired increased importance in late-twentieth-century...

A Documentary History of the African Theater.(Review)
September 22, 2000... George A. Thompson, Jr. A Documentary History of the African Theater. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1998. 267 pp. $54.95. For more than 100 years theatre folk have known of the existence in New York City of the African Theatre established by...

Strange Fruit Plays on Lynching by American Women.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Kathy A. Perkins and Judith L. Stephens, eds. Strange Fruit Plays on Lynching by American Women. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998. 423 pp. $39.95 cloth/$24.95 paper. Taking its title from Billie Holiday's famous song and Lillian Smith's...

Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Kathleen A. Hauke. Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998. 342 pp. $29.95. Ted Poston's life was the stuff of adventure, of historic significance, of motion picture proportion, and of remarkable drama. The...

Blacks in Eden: The African American Novel's First Century.(Review)
September 22, 2000... J. Lee Greene. Blacks in Eden: The African American Novel's First Century. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1996. 306 pp. $19.50. Is the white American's heaven the black American's hell, as African American folklore teaches and J. Lee...

Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Rose Parkman Davis. Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood P. 1997. 210 pp. $65.00. Just as Zora Neale Hurston remained prolific during her careers as a fiction writer, folklorist, essayist,...

Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Julius E. Thompson. Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995. Jefferson: McFarland, 1999. 344 pp. $55.00. Back in those days, it was a point of pride to be impatient. We listened to Max Roach's...

Toni Morrison: L'esthdtique de la survie.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Claudine Raynaud. Toni Morrison: L'esthdtique de la survie. Paris: Belin, 1996. 128 pp. $10.00. This study of Toni Morrison is part of a French series on "American Voices" edited by Marc Chenetier. In seven extremely dense and insightful...

Conversations with John Edgar Wideman.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Bonnie TuSmith, ed. Conversations with John Edgar Wideman. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. 224 pp. $17.00. There are two places in this collection of interviews at which John Edgar Wideman defines what he means by career. In the first, he...

Conversations with Albert Murray.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Roberta S. Maguire, ed. Conversations with Albert Murray. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997. 167 pp. $17.00. In recent years, it has become quite customary to refer to Albert Murray with any number of superlatives, such as African American...

Conversations with Maryse Conde.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Francoise Pfaff, ed. Conversations with Maryse Conde. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1996. 194 pp. $35.00 cloth/$15.00 paper. Improbable as it may seem, given Maryse Conde's international stature as a creative writer and provocative...

"I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done": August Wilson's Process of Playwriting.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Joan Herrington. "I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done": August Wilson's Process of Playwriting. New York: Limelight, 1998. 180 pp. $15.00. One of America's most acclaimed playwrights, August Wilson has won two Pulitzer Prizes, two Tonys, and...

Beyond the Limbo Silence.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Elizabeth Nunez. Beyond the Limbo Silence. Seattle: Seal P, 1998. 320 pp. $24.00. Elizabeth Nunez's first novel, When Rocks Dance (New York: Putnam, 1986), explored the ways in which a synthesis of African, Indian, and Caribbean cultures...

Bathwater Wine.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Wanda Coleman. Bathwater Wine. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow P, 1998. 288 pp. $27.50 cloth/$15.00 paper. "I have three wings," observes the persona of one of the sonnets in Coleman's new collection Bathwater Wine, only to ask "with whom do i...

Whatsaid Serif.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Nathaniel Mackey. Whatsaid Serif. San Francisco: City Lights, 1998, 112 pp. $12.95. Whatsaid Serif Nathaniel Mackey's third full-length volume of poetry, presents us with twenty-one new installments of the innovative, ongoing serial poem...

Muscular Music.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Terrance Hayes. Muscular Music. Chicago: Tia Chucha P, 1999. 80 pp. $10.95. Terrance Hayes's first book of poetry is a typical, if not all-too-typical, collection of well-written mainstream poems, covering subjects as diverse and...

Conjure Blues.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Jaki Shelton Green. Conjure Blues. Durham: Carolina Wren P, 1996. 93 pp. $10.95. In his poem "Wise I" Amiri Baraka mentions the problems one can have if someone bans your "omwn bomm ba boom." Someone ban "your own boom ba boom you in deep...

Dancing with Strangers: A Memoir.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Mel Watkins. Dancing with Strangers: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. 320 pp. $24.00. Laid up in the college infirmary with a basketball injury for several weeks of his senior year, Mel Watkins ruminates on the news that a...