Originally published in 1995, The Music of African American Fiction is a historical analysis of the tradition of representing music in African American fiction. The book examines the impact of evolving musical styles and innovative musicians on black culture as is manifested in the literature. The analysis begins with the slave narratives and the emergence of the first black fiction of the antebellum years and moves through the Reconstruction. This is followed by analyses of definitive fictional representations of African American music from the turn-of-the-century through Harlem Renaissance, the Depression and World War II eras through the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement. The representation of black music shapes a lineage that extends from the initial chronicles written in response to sub-human bondage to the declarations of an autonomous "black aesthetic" and dramatically influences the evolution of an African American literary tradition.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first comprehensive historical analysis of how black music and musicians have been represented in the fiction of African American writers. It also examines how music and musicians in fiction have exemplified the sensibilities of African Americans and provided paradigms for an African American literary tradition.
The fictional representation of African American music by black authors is traced from the nineteenth century (William Wells Brown, Martin Delany, Pauline E. Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar) through the early twentieth century and the Harlem Renaissance (James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston) to the 1940s and 50s (Richard Wright, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison) and the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement (Margaret Walker, William Melvin Kelley, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas). In the century between Brown and Baraka, the representation of music in black fiction went through a dramatic metamorphosis. Music occupied a representative role in African American culture from which writers drew ideas and inspiration. The music provided a way out of a limited situation by offering a viable option to the strictures of racism. Individuals who overcome these limitations then become role models in the struggle toward equality. African American musical forms-for both artist and audience-also offerd a way of looking at the world, survival, and resistance. The black musician became a ritual leader. This study delineates how black writers have captured the spirit of the music that played such a pivotal role in African American culture. (Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1993; revised with new prefaceand index)

Originally published in 1995, The Music of African American Fiction is a historical analysis of the tradition of representing music in African American fiction. The book examines the impact of evolving musical styles and innovative musicians on black culture as is manifested in the literature. The analysis begins with the slave narratives and the emergence of the first black fiction of the antebellum years and moves through the Reconstruction. This is followed by analyses of definitive fictional representations of African American music from the turn-of-the-century through Harlem Renaissance, the Depression and World War II eras through the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement. The representation of black music shapes a lineage that extends from the initial chronicles written in response to sub-human bondage to the declarations of an autonomous "black aesthetic" and dramatically influences the evolution of an African American literary tradition.

Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance comprehensively explores the contours and content of the Black Chicago Renaissance, a creative movement that emerged from the crucible of rigid segregation in Chicago's "Black Belt" from the 1930s through the 1960s. Heavily influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago Renaissance of white writers, its participants were invested in political activism and social change as much as literature, art, and aesthetics. The revolutionary writing of this era produced some of the first great accolades for African American literature and set up much of the important writing that came to fruition in the Black Arts Movement. The volume covers a vast collection of subjects, including many important writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry as well as cultural products such as black newspapers, music, and theater. The book includes individual entries by experts on each subject; a discography and filmography that highlight important writers, musicians, films, and cultural presentations; and an introduction that relates the Harlem Renaissance, the White Chicago Renaissance, the Black Chicago Renaissance, and the Black Arts Movement. Contributors are Robert Butler, Robert H. Cataliotti, Maryemma Graham, James C. Hall, James L. Hill, Michael Hill, Lovalerie King, Lawrence Jackson, Angelene Jamison-Hall, Keith Leonard, Lisbeth Lipari, Bill V. Mullen, Patrick Naick, William R. Nash, Charlene Regester, Kimberly Ruffin, Elizabeth Schultz, Joyce Hope Scott, James Smethurst, Kimberly M. Stanley, Kathryn Waddell Takara, Steven C. Tracy, Zoe Trodd, Alan Wald, Jamal Eric Watson, Donyel Hobbs Williams, Stephen Caldwell Wright, and Richard Yarborough.