Description
Book SynopsisThis book covers several distinctive moments of the post-civil rights era; the black power period, the affirmative action period, and the neoliberal period. It inspects representative texts and critical approaches associated with each period, covering a variety of authors and genres from Toni Morrison’s mythic fiction to Wahida Clark’s street lit.
Trade ReviewBragg’s new study offers support for those wishing to re-examine the incorporation of popular fiction in their classrooms or scholarship. This new analysis of popular fiction places popular fiction alongside historical writing movements, offers feminist approaches to understanding the goals of black women authors’ fiction, and gives scholars a new foundation to build upon. Popular fiction is needed in the classroom and the canon, and would be a welcome addition to scholarly studies. Those interested and working with, or even considering, popular fiction should pick this study up as a framework for analysis. * English: Journal of the English Association *
Beauty Bragg offers a concise, wonderfully readable, and persuasively argued black feminist study that forces us to reexamine our understandings of high and low in African American literature and culture. -- T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Vanderbilt University
Reading Contemporary African American Literature does the much-needed work required to help scholars and students alike understand the ways popular fiction speaks to many of the same discourses serious literature explores. The unparalleled popularity of books like Push and Coldest Winter Ever nudged us all to acquire an expanded understanding of the work popular fiction authored by African American women writers could do and in unprecedented ways—from building new audiences to offering uncompromising critiques of systemic forces that enable poverty and abuse, to celebrating the beauty of African American life in all of its iterations. Here, Bragg takes an important first step in helping us tear down imagined barriers between differing communities of readers who appreciate the ways African American women writers render the full range of these communities' experiences in narrative. -- Dana Williams, Howard University
Table of ContentsTable of Contents Introduction: Locating an African American Literary Tradition Chapter 1: The Reconstructionist Canon, Black Feminist Literary Perspectives, and Popular Potential Chapter 2: Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and the Problem of Classification Chapter 3: Girlfriend Fiction: Black Women Writers and Readers Negotiating Post-Civil Rights Womanhood Chapter 4: Feminism and the Streets: Urban Fiction and the Quest for Female Independence in the Era of Transactional Sexuality Chapter 5: Hip Hop Tell-All Memoirs and Modes of Self-Construction Conclusion: From Critical Practice to Classroom Practice Bibliography Index About the Author
