The Cambridge history of African American literature / Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward Jr.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 746-806) and index.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction Maryemma Graham and Jerry Ward; Part I. African American Literature from Its Origins to the Twentieth Century: 1. Sounds of a tradition: the souls of Black folk F. Abiola Irele; 2. Early print literature of Africans in America Philip Gould; 3. The emergence of an African American literary canon, 1760-1820 Vincent Carretta; 4. Dividing a nation, uniting a people: African American literature and the Abolitionist Movement Stefan Wheelock; 5. African American literature and the slave narrative genre John Ernest; 6. Writing freedom: race, religion, and revolution, 1820-1840 Kimberly Blockett; 7. 'We wish to plead our own cause': independent Antebellum African American literature, 1840-1865 Joycelyn Moody; 8. Racial ideologies in theory and practice: political and cultural nationalism, 1865-1910 Warren Carson; 9. The 'fictions' of race Keith Byerman and Hanna Wallinger; 10. 'We wear the mask': the making of a poet Keith Leonard; 11. Toward a modernist poetics Mark Sanders; Part II. African American Literature Since the Twentieth Century: 12. Foundations of African American modernism, 1910-1950 Craig Werner and Sandra Shannon; 13. The New Negro Movement and the politics of art Emily Bernard; 14. African American literature and the Great Depression Darryl Dickson-Carr; 15. Weaving jagged words: the Black Left, 1930s-1940s Nicole Walingora-Davis; 16. Writing the American story, 1945-1952 John Lowe; 17. Geographies of the modern: writing beyond borders and boundaries Sabine Broeck; 18. African American literature by writers of Caribbean descent Daryl Cumber Dance; 19. Reform and revolution, 1965-1976: the Black aesthetic at work James Smethurst and Howard Ramsby; 20. History as fact and fiction Trudier Harris; 21. Redefining the art of poetry Opal Moore; 22. Cultural resistance and avant-garde aesthetics: African American poetry from 1970 to the present Tony Bolden; 23. New frontiers, cross-currents and convergencies: emerging cultural paradigms Madhu Dubey and Elizabeth Goldberg; Part III. African American Literature as Academic and Cultural Capital: 24. Children's and young adult literatures Giselle L. Anatol; 25. From writer to reader: Black popular fiction Candice Love Jackson; 26. Cultural capital and the presence of Africa: Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson and the power of Black theatre Harry Elam; 27. African American literature: foundational scholarship, criticism and theory Lawrence P. Jackson; 28. African American literatures and new world cultures Kenneth Warren; Bibliography; Suggested further reading.

"The first major twenty-first century history of four hundred years of black writing, The Cambridge History of African American Literature presents a comprehensive overview of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States. Expert contributors, drawn from the United States and beyond, emphasise the dual nature of each text discussed as a work of art created by an individual and as a response to unfolding events in American cultural, political, and social history"-- Provided by publisher.