African American author Gayl Jones has a lived a life dedicated to the art of ""verbal authenticity,"" a style of writing both definitive of and stemming directly from her identification with the collective African American heritage. Amid widespread critical praise as well as pointed attacks for her controversial first two novels, Jones has maintained in her writings a constantly evolving cultural consciousness that provides an allegory for African American history and culture.This first single-author study of Gayl Jones recovers the work of an under-examined yet immensely skillful contemporary writer. It offers a thorough examination of her technical innovations as well as her willingness to explore controversial subject matter in order to represent a fuller range of the African American experience. The book addresses crucial themes germane to Jones' work, including questions of Afrocentrism, diasporas, mythopoesis, post-colonialism and globalization. Several chapters offer close readings of the aesthetic and political interchanges within Jones' fiction, drama, poetry, and criticism. Two interviews with Gayl Jones complete this comprehensive study and give historical voice to her poetics of freedom.

This book offers original inroads to understanding the life and works of the celebrated novelist and poet. In ""The Way We Read James Dickey"" editors William B. Thesing and Theda Wrede have assembled an outstanding collection of current critical responses to the works of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and teacher, including essays by Dickey's former colleagues at the University of South Carolina and a piece by his most famous student, novelist Pat Conroy. The volume breaks new ground in the application of innovative critical approaches and restores Dickey to his rightful place in the literary canon as a remarkable writer who crafted some of the best poetry and fiction of the twentieth century. A decade after Dickey's death and thirty-five years after the release of the film version of his famous novel Deliverance, Dickey remains a controversial figure in the American literary landscape. He was an intellectual maverick who was often ahead of his time, and yet he responded intensely, almost obsessively, to his own changing times. Thesing and Wrede argue that, although he appeared to conform to poetic conventions, his writing was a visionary reinterpretation and extension of preexisting traditions. This tension between a poet's intellectual precursors and the radical innovation of his work is the inspiration behind the fresh approaches taken by the contributors in this volume, just as it energized Dickey's own endeavors. The essays offer original insights through emerging scholarly perspectives as well as through established methods of critique. The contributors address a range of themes in Dickey's works, including gender, religion, humanity's relationship to nature, and the writer's cultural context. This landmark reappraisal of Dickey's legacy offers readers a coherent forum that addresses why his writings remain relevant today, thus restoring and revaluing the rising significance of Dickey's literary achievement for twenty-first-century audiences.