Self-discovery and authority in Afro-American narrativeIt is by telling the stories of their lives that black writers--from the authors of nineteenth-century slave narratives to contemporary novelists--affirm and legitimize their psychological autonomy. So Valerie Smith argues in this perceptive exploration of the relationship between autobiography and fiction in Afro-American writing. Smith sees the processes of plot construction and characterization as providing these narrators with a measure of authority unknown in their lives. Focusing on autobiographies by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs and the fiction of James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, she demonstrates the ways in which the act of narrating constitutes an act of self-fashioning that must be understood in the context of the Afro-American experience. Hers is a fertile investigation, attuned to the differences in male and female sensibilities, and attentive to the importance of oral traditions. |
Відгуки відвідувачів - Написати рецензію
Не знайдено жодних рецензій.
Інші видання - Показати все
Self-discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative Valerie Smith Обмежений попередній перегляд - 1987 |
Загальні терміни та фрази
achievement Afro-American alienation American American Hunger argues articulate assumptions authority autobiography begins believe Bigger Black Song Black Women Bledsoe Bledsoe's Bluest Eye Brotherhood chapter characters child Claudia complex confront critical cultural demonstrates denies describes Douglass Douglass's Narrative dream episode Equiano escape ex-colored man's example experience father fear feel fiction figure freedom genre Guitar Henry Louis Gates identity ideology invisible Jacobs Jacobs's Johnson's kill language literary Literature lives Macon master meaning ment Milkman Moreover Morrison mother murder narrator never Norton novel Olaudah Equiano oppression past Pecola's story Pilate Pilate's plot political protagonist provides race racial Ralph Ellison reader realizes relationship remarks response reveals rhetoric Richard Wright sense sexual Shadow and Act Slave Narrative slavery social Song of Solomon structures Subsequent references suggests Sula Sula's tell tion tive Toni Morrison Trueblood University Press values voice woman words writing York young Richard