Black Feminist Literary Criticism: Past and Present

Description

Since its inception, black feminist literary criticism has produced a number of sophisticated theoretical works that have challenged traditional approaches to (black) literature. This collection of essays explores past and current productions of black feminist theorizing, attempting to trace the trajectories in black feminist criticism that have emerged in American scholarship since the 1990s. Taking black feminist literary criticism as the subject of inquiry, the book focuses on the field’s recent theoretical contributions to literary productions and their impact on other fields. The volume contains an introduction by Cheryl A. Wall, and essays by Karla Kovalova, Heike Raphael-Hernandez, and Nagueyalti Warren. Cover Table of Contents Preface (Karla Kovalova) The Writer as Critic in the Emergence of Black Feminism (Cheryl A. Wall) Home Girls and Sister Outsider: The Roots of Black Feminist Literary Criticism (Nagueyalti Warren) New Directions and Contradictory Impulses: The Development of Black Feminist Literary Theory (Karla Kovalova) Literary Tradition and Black Aesthetics Revisited: Black Feminist Approaches to African American Literature in the Twenty-First Century (Karla Kovalova) From White Gaze to Black Female Resistance: Street Lit and Popular Cultural Productions in Black Feminist Theorizing (Heike Raphael-Hernandez) Blackness and Whiteness Within and Without the U.S. Context: Pushing the (National) Boundaries of Black Feminist Literary Criticism (Karla Kovalova) Afterword (Karla Kovalova) Note on Contributors Select Bibliography Index