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.
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