Description
Book SynopsisAfter Kenneth W. Warren's What Was African American Literature?, Margo N. Crawford delivers What is African American Literature? The idea of African American literature may be much more than literature written by authors who identify as Black. What is African American Literature? focuses on feeling as form in order to show that African American literature is an archive of feelings, a tradition of the tension between uncontainable black affect and rigid historical structure. Margo N. Crawford argues that textual production of affect (such as blush, vibration, shiver, twitch, and wink) reveals that African American literature keeps reimagining a black collective nervous system. Crawford foregrounds the idea of African American literature and uncovers the black feeling world co-created by writers and readers. Rejecting the notion that there are no formal lines separating African American literature and a broader American literary tradition, Crawford contends that the distinguishing fea
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Affective Atmosphere of African American Literature 1
1 The Textual Production of Black Affect: The Blush of Toni Morrison’s Last Novel 25
2 Mood Books 55
3 The Vibrations of African American Literature 73
4 Shiver: The Diasporic Shock of Elsewhere 103
5 Twitch or Wink: The Literary Afterlife of the Afterlife of Slavery 135
CODA 175
Index 179
