The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction (The Columbia Guides to Literature Since 1945)

By Darryl Dickson-Carr

Book Overview

From Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison to Colson Whitehead and Terry McMillan, Darryl Dickson-Carr offers a definitive guide to contemporary African American literature. This volume-the only reference work devoted exclusively to African American fiction of the last thirty-five years-presents a wealth of factual and interpretive information about the major authors, texts, movements, and ideas that have shaped contemporary African American fiction. In more than 160 concise entries, arranged alphabetically, Dickson-Carr discusses the careers, works, and critical receptions of Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, Leon Forrest, as well as other prominent and lesser-known authors. Each entry presents ways of reading the author's works, identifies key themes and influences, assesses the writer's overarching significance, and includes sources for further research.

Dickson-Carr addresses the influence of a variety of literary movements, critical theories, and publishers of African American work. Topics discussed include the Black Arts Movement, African American postmodernism, feminism, and the influence of hip-hop, the blues, and jazz on African American novelists. In tracing these developments, Dickson-Carr examines the multitude of ways authors have portrayed the diverse experiences of African Americans.

The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction situates African American fiction in the social, political, and cultural contexts of post-Civil Rights era America: the drug epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s and the concomitant "war on drugs," the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for gay rights, feminism, the rise of HIV/AIDS, and racism's continuing effects on African American communities. Dickson-Carr also discusses the debates and controversies regarding the role of literature in African American life. The volume concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography of African American fiction and criticism.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231124724
• ISBN13: 9780231124720
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.3" x 10.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Would have given 10 stars if I could.

This comprehensive and very impressive "encyclopedia" of contemporary Afro American Literature, also contains a bountiful index and copious bibliography that includes journals and reference materials as well as books. Not only does this book examine, and critique, but it also acquaints the reader with various associations, such as the National Association of African American Studies, and also delves into literary movements such as the "Negritude" movement which originated "in 1930's Parisian cafes". It does not overlook Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, which was a major catalyst to the recognition and promotion of contemporary Afro American literature. Although slim, this book is very impressive, and a powerful addition to the discipline and study of Afro American fiction -- presenting authors as well as their works, in an in-depth descriptive and informative manner that introduces the reader to much-lesser known authors whose personalities, as well as whose works, are just as thoroughly covered as are those Afro-American authors whose literary products are much more well-known. This book is a worthy, unique and valuable contribution to the appreciation and research of Afro-American fiction.