African American Studies Black Women Writers in the United States
by
Selamawit D. Terrefe
  • LAST MODIFIED: 28 June 2016
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0025

Introduction

The following texts provide a comprehensive overview of the vast body of work comprising African American women’s literature. Named after the slave ship The Phillis, which transported her to America from Africa on 11 July 1761, Phillis Wheatley published the first book in America written by an African American woman. Wheatley’s remarkable talent for elegiac and epic poetry gained her notoriety in addition to intense scrutiny as her first works, penned prior to the onset of the American Revolution, raised doubts indicative of the racial discourse at the turn of the century that equated reason with racial hierarchy. Upon passing an oral examination from a tribunal consisting of eighteen examiners, Wheatley’s literary prowess was authenticated and, upon attestation of her talent, her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was authorized for publication. With the advent of the fugitive slave narrative, such as Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, racial and sexual violence became central themes for black women writers. Prior to Reconstruction, African American women’s literary texts had already engaged in the use of intertextuality, such as within Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, a novel with stylistic references to the slave narrative. Post-Reconstruction, African Americans attempted to carve out the black subject within the afterlife of slavery in a wide variety of literary styles—realism, naturalism, investigative reporting, the sentimental novel, elegy, and folk tales, among others. Black women continued to articulate political concerns within their literary expressions in the wake of the Great Migration, World War I, and race riots across the country. White patronage, a burgeoning black press establishment, and the popularity of blues, jazz, and ragtime were reflected in the increasing diversity of political and artistic ideologies, as well as in maintaining or defying genre conventions within the Harlem Renaissance. Later in the 20th century, the staunchly anti-assimilationist works of Black Arts movement writers depicted the psychological, political, and social states reflected in the climate of liberation struggle Whether through subtle critiques of black nationalism, representations of intraracial violence as both political and ontological, or via leveling critiques of a stable black racial identity, late-20th-century African American women writers offered their own political and aesthetic interventions that critically assessed the rhetoric of previous movements through myriad complex lenses. Reflected in the massive output of innovative and award-winning literary, critical, and theoretical production, the contemporary period continues to evince an array of African American women’s creativity.

General Overviews

Outlining the historical conditions in which African American women’s writing developed in the United States proves crucial in understanding an intellectual and literary tradition forged in erasure. Christian 1980 provides the first study of the origins of black women’s writing, arguing, for instance, that black women writers of the Harlem Renaissance formed a distinct literary tradition from the work produced by black men during the same period. However, Wall 1995 situates African American women writers of the same period within multiple traditions, including those of African Americans and Americans writ large. DuCille 1993 challenges common interpretations that black women’s novels of the late 19th through mid-20th century were just as committed to the dominant values concerning sex and marriage espoused by white readers. Similarly catalyzed by dominant representations of domesticity, Carby 1987 contests contemporary literary criticism and feminist historiography, providing a materialist account of the development of the tradition of black women’s writing alongside the construction of gender, race, and class in the United States. Christian 1985 and Evans 1984 offer comprehensive biographical and bibliographic information on a range of writers, establishing an archive of interest to not only novices, but also researchers in the field. Tate 1983 extends the overview of the literary tradition carved out by African American women by providing interviews with a range of black women writers that illumine their perspectives on writing, their influences, and subjectivity. The politics of the tradition prove more salient for Hull, et al. 1982, a landmark text discussing the political ramifications of the literary and theoretical production and dissemination of black women’s intellectual traditions.

  • Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Excellent analysis of the work of 19th- and 20th-century black women writers, marked by original insights regarding the historical, social, and political backdrops to which these works were produced.

    Find this resource:

  • Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The first full-length study of the novels by black women, providing a comprehensive analysis of black women writers forging a literary tradition.

    Find this resource:

  • Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York: Pergamon, 1985.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A collection of essays that discusses black women’s poetry, biographies, and the role of black women in American literature.

    Find this resource:

  • DuCille, Ann. The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women’s Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Outlines the history of black women’s novels and investigates the systematic erasure of black women’s literary and cultural contributions.

    Find this resource:

  • Evans, Mari. Black Women Writers, 1950–1980: A Critical Evaluation. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Forty-three essays on the work of fifteen African American women writers, including detailed biographical and bibliographical data.

    Find this resource:

  • Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Compilation of political and literary essays discussing black feminism, black studies, the politics of black women’s studies, and black women’s contributions to popular culture.

    Find this resource:

  • Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Interviews with fourteen distinguished black women writers, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams. The authors speak about their careers, literary influences, and personal lives.

    Find this resource:

  • Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Extensive study deploying black feminist archival work, theory, and criticism to illustrate the range of black women’s intellectual history produced during the Harlem Renaissance. The author discusses figures such as Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker alongside prominent and lesser-known African American women writers of the period.

    Find this resource:

Anthologies

Compendia published within the latter half of the 20th century illustrate the commitment African American women writers and scholars maintained for the preservation and advancement of black women’s literary and intellectual production. Washington 1988 addresses the erasure and marginalization of black women’s works in an anthology that offers comprehensive analyses, critical headnotes, and bibliographies for further reference. Chronicling the origin of the tradition of black women’s theorizing in the United States to 1803, Guy-Sheftall 1995 archives never-before published work from writers such as Lorraine Hansberry. Bell, et al. 1979 considers visuality, newly crafted writing, and seminal texts in the field. Bambara 1970 establishes the first anthology of African American women’s writing, while Washington 1990 combines the landmark 1975 collection Black-Eyed Susans with a follow-up anthology.

  • Bambara, Toni C. The Black Woman: An Anthology. New York: New American Library, 1970.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Anthology of early work from critically acclaimed black women writers addressing issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, and more. Includes original work published for the anthology as well as previously written work.

    Find this resource:

  • Bell, Roseann P., Bettye J. Parker, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1979.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The first anthology of black women’s literature compiled in three sections: “The Analytical Vision,” “The Conversational Vision,” and “The Creative Vision.”

    Find this resource:

  • Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New Press, 1995.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The first anthology that traces black feminist thought back to the 1800s. Includes work from Ida B. Wells, bell hooks, and Michele Wallace.

    Find this resource:

  • Washington, Mary Helen, ed. Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women, 1860–1960. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Anthology and critical study tracing black women’s literary tradition from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries. Includes excerpts from a wide range of authors along with extended introductions, critical headnotes, and bibliographic essays on each writer.

    Find this resource:

  • Washington, Mary Helen, ed. Black-Eyed Susans/Midnight Birds: Stories by and about Black Women. New York: Anchor, 1990.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Combines one of the first anthologies of African American women’s short fiction with a later collection edited by the author. Illustrative in its inclusion of an introduction that discusses the literary renaissance created by the publication and reception of the work of the black women writers represented in the anthologies.

    Find this resource:

Primary Sources

Primary texts published during the era of racial slavery and its aftermath reflect the complexity of African American women’s experiences embattled within political and domestic spheres. The sources range from lectures, essays, and the forged traditions of slave narrative and contemporary neo-slave narrative to more traditional literary forms such as poetry, fiction, and drama. Some of the most noteworthy examples of firsts in African American literary production include Wilson 2011 (cited under Slavery and Reconstruction), the first novel published by an African American writer in the United States, in 1859; Wheatley 1773 (under Slavery and Reconstruction), the first book of poetry written by a black author, and Parks 2001 (under Contemporary African American Women’s Literature), by the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Some prominent examples include Harper 1988 and Hopkins 1991 (both under Slavery and Reconstruction), which present classic cases of how women who survived slavery and Reconstruction utilized the novel form to depict the subjectivities and imaginations of black people in the United States. Works by Harlem Renaissance writers (e.g., Fauset 1999, Larsen 1986, cited under Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement) and Black Arts writers (e.g., Giovanni 1970 and Kennedy 1969 (also under Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement) demonstrate a continued tradition of crafting literary forms that reflect the economic, social, and political interests of black women cultural producers. A range of contemporary works are also listed, spanning the Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama Nottage 2009 (under Contemporary African American Women’s Literature), the brilliant poetry of Rita Dove (Dove 1986, under Contemporary African American Women’s Literature), and the ground-clearing science fiction of Octavia Butler (Butler 1995, under Contemporary African American Women’s Literature). Inclusion of classic texts such as Jacobs 1987 (under Autobiography), detailing Harriet Jacobs’s escape from slavery alongside the work of a Black Liberation Army member (Shakur 1987, under Autobiography), reflect the comprehensive structure of the list of included works.

Slavery and Reconstruction

Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa and enslaved in the United States, and Wheatley 1773 is the earliest work listed, alongside Hopkins 1991, which is argued to be the first example of African American science fiction. Wilson 2011 and Harper 1988 provide examples of the earliest fictional texts published by African American women, and Cooper 1988 is argued to be groundbreaking in its exposition of intersectional theory over a century prior to its formalization.

  • Cooper, Anna J. A Voice from the South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Lectures and essays theorizing the intersections of race and gender. Originally published in 1892, the text also includes passages that address the relationship between Christianity, racism, gender, and oppression.

    Find this resource:

  • Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins. Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A novel deploying sentimentalism alongside the cult of true womanhood, the trope of the “tragic mulatta,” and a protagonist that could have lived a life passing for white but chooses to embrace her black ancestry to support the cause of racial uplift. Originally published in 1893.

    Find this resource:

  • Hopkins, Pauline Elizabeth. Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Originally published in 1900, the novel elaborates the story of a medical student, Reuel Briggs, who travels to Ethiopia in hopes of finding treasure. Hopkins’s text was the first African American novel to spotlight African characters and an African country as the backdrop.

    Find this resource:

  • Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London: A. Bell, 1773.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    First African American author to publish a book of poetry. The collection includes the controversial “On Being Brought from Africa” which received much criticism during the Black Power and Black Arts movements for its romanticization of slavery and description of Africa as savage and pagan.

    Find this resource:

  • Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig; Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. New York: Vintage, 2011.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The first novel published by a black writer in the United States, originally published in 1859. The text addresses racial oppression by illuminating and critiquing the domiciliary racism of the North.

    Find this resource:

The Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement

This list spans the eras of the Harlem Renaissance, with works such as Fauset 1999, Johnson 1922, and Larsen 1986, through modernism, realism, and the civil rights movement with the path-breaking Hansberry 1959 and Brooks 1971 (first published in 1949). Brooks was the first black woman in the United States to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Petry 1991 (first published in 1946) presents a canonical example of African American urban realism, while Giovanni 1970 and Kennedy 1969 incorporate the synergism between black radical politics and aesthetics prior to the contemporary period.

  • Brooks, Gwendolyn. Annie Allen. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Originally published in 1949, this three-part book of poetry about a young woman’s journey through womanhood made Brooks the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

    Find this resource:

  • Fauset, Jessie Redmon. Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral. Boston: Beacon, 1999.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    This Harlem Renaissance novel traces the relationship between race, gender, class, and structural power vis-a-vis its treatment of marriage and interpersonal relationships. Originally published in 1928.

    Find this resource:

  • Giovanni, Nikki. Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement. New York: William Morrow, 1970.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The author’s first collection of poetry reflects the cultural, philosophical, and political climate of the Black Power and Black Arts movements, highlighting the specificity of the black experience in the United States.

    Find this resource:

  • Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun: A Drama in Three Acts. New York: Random House, 1959.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    An award-winning three-act play about the life of a black working-class family living on the Southside of Chicago, illuminating the struggles that impact them along the way.

    Find this resource:

  • Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Bronze: A Book of Verse. Introduction by W. E. B. Du Bois. Boston: B. J. Brimmer, 1922.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Johnson’s second collection of poems traces the struggle black women endured in the 1920s. Narrating black women’s experiences with pain and suffering, this collection marks the author’s most trenchant critiques of racism in her poetry of the Harlem Renaissance.

    Find this resource:

  • Kennedy, Adrienne. Funnyhouse of a Negro: A Play in One Act. New York: Samuel French, 1969.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A one-act play from a prominent member of the Black Arts movement is treated primarily as an exploration of a search for identity. The protagonist is a mixed-race woman whose four fractured selves manifest as Queen Victoria, Patrice Lumumba, the Duchess of Hapsburg, and Jesus Christ.

    Find this resource:

  • Larsen, Nella. Quicksand and Passing. Edited by Deborah E. McDowell. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Quicksand and Passing, published in 1928 and 1929, respectively, both deal with issues of sexual repression and fulfillment, social respectability, race mixture, and liberation. There is debate among scholars of African American literature concerning whether or not the author complicates or reifies the trope of the “tragic mulata” within these classic texts of the Harlem Renaissance.

    Find this resource:

  • Petry, Ann. The Street. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Originally published in 1946, the first novel by an African American woman to sell over a million copies. The text focuses on the tribulations of a working-class black mother in Harlem, highlighting the impact of community and environment on individual lives.

    Find this resource:

Contemporary African American Women’s Literature

These works reflect the intertextuality of African American women’s literary production, with Dove 1986 contemplating the historical conditions of the Great Migration that influenced the author’s family history, and Morrison 1987 reflecting back on both the tradition of the slave narrative and the life of Margaret Garner. Clifton 1987 and Mullen 2002 demonstrate the range of poetic forms employed by black women poets, just as Parks 2001, Nottage 2009, Bambara 1980, and Butler 1995 illustrate how African American women in the contemporary period have crafted their drama and fiction to capture worlds from the most quotidian of spaces in the United States, Africa, or invented worlds.

  • Bambara, Toni C. The Salt Eaters. New York: Random House, 1980.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Bambara shapes the story of a community set in Claybourne, Georgia, in 1970, while addressing issues of mental and physical health, activism, and community history.

    Find this resource:

  • Butler, Octavia E. Bloodchild: and Other Stories. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A collection of science fiction stories and essays by one of the premiere authors of African American science fiction.

    Find this resource:

  • Clifton, Lucille. Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980. American Poets Continuum Series 14. Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A collection of work previously published by one of the most poignant black women writers of the 20th century.

    Find this resource:

  • Dove, Rita. Thomas and Beulah: Poems. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1986.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Book of poems illustrating the semifictional story of the author’s maternal grandparents. The story’s historical backdrop spans the time from the beginning of the Great Migration in the early 1900s to the 1960s.

    Find this resource:

  • Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Inspired by the life of Margaret Garner and set after the American Civil War, the neo-slave narrative for which the author won a Pulitzer Prize elaborates the interpersonal effects of the psychic aftermath of chattel slavery.

    Find this resource:

  • Mullen, Harryette. Sleeping with the Dictionary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Poetry tracing the experience of marginalization, inclusion, and exclusion through the use of textual play that references the author’s engagement with Roget’s Thesaurus and the American Heritage Dictionary.

    Find this resource:

  • Nottage, Lynn. Ruined: [a Play]. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    This play about the lives of women living in a mining town in a civil-war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo won Nottage the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009.

    Find this resource:

  • Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/Underdog. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A play depicting the story of two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, as they navigate racism, poverty, and love made Parks the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

    Find this resource:

Autobiography

These autobiographies begin with Jacobs 1987, which deploys tropes of Christian conversion narratives and sentimental conventions, fashioning them to critique the violence of slavery. Lee 1849 carves an explicitly black feminist theology, while Hurston 2010 weaves African American folklore in innovative ways that open doors for subsequent African American authors to embrace African American vernacular traditions. Angelou 1969 and Shakur 1987 explore the violence black women endure within both the domestic and political realms, whether embattled against the family or the state.

  • Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The coming-of-age story of author and poet Maya Angelou, tracing the author’s reflections on childhood, race, sexuality, and sexual violence.

    Find this resource:

  • Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    An autobiography, originally published in 1942, which illuminates the life of seminal writer Zora Neale Hurston.

    Find this resource:

  • Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Edited by L. Marie Child and Jean F. Yellin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Originally published in 1852, the autobiography details the author’s life in slavery and her subsequent escape. Important text for its elaboration of the sexual violence black women suffered under slavery, as well as the abuse and sacrifices black women endured to remain or reunite with their children.

    Find this resource:

  • Lee, Jarena. Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel. Philadelphia, 1849.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    First published as The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee in 1836, and later revised and expanded as Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee in 1849. The author outlines an early form of black feminist theology through argumentation for a women’s right to preach.

    Find this resource:

  • Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. Chicago: L. Hill, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    An autobiography recounting the experiences that led a Black Liberation Army member, Assata Shakur, to a life of political activism.

    Find this resource:

Criticism and Theory

African American women’s writing traverses the literary forms heretofore articulated, contributing sophisticated and insightful analyses and innovations in theoretical discourses concerning race, gender, class, epistemology, historiography, ontology, legal scholarship, and queer theory, among others. Categorized under a broad, yet not exhaustive, list of theoretical and critical paradigms circulated within the academy, as well as activist and legal circles, Davis 1983 (cited under Critical Theory), Walker 2004 (under Black Feminist Criticism and Theory), and Lorde 2007 (under Black Lesbians and African American Women’s Writing), and Crenshaw 1991 (under Critical Theory) articulate theories of black women’s subjectivities that continue to be circulated in contemporary scholarship and praxis. Additionally, Smith 1979 and Smith 1997 (under Black Lesbians and African American Women’s Writing) provide some of the first comprehensive analyses of black feminist theory and black queer theory, which is arguably the most poignant contribution to feminist studies in the United States.

Critical Theory

African American women’s critical theory continues to grapple with the afterlife of slavery. Davis 1983, Williams 1991, and Crenshaw 1991 outline the ongoing effects of antiblack racism and its effects on black women, in particular, as it is institutionalized within rights, entitlements, and the distribution of wealth and power. Spillers 1987 and Hartman 1997 devise revisionist scholarship on the symbolic integrity of the maternal and notions of subjection and freedom, forging groundbreaking scholarship useful for generations of scholars working in multiple fields.

  • Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–1299.

    DOI: 10.2307/1229039Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Essay crafts and deploys innovative theory of political intersectionality to examine structural oppression faced by black women. Reviews feminist work on anti-rape laws, anti-racist organizing, housing discrimination, and lack of access to medical care to highlight the inadequacy of identity politics in addressing racial and gendered violence against black women.

    Find this resource:

  • Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage, 1983.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Analysis of the relationship between the struggle for women’s suffrage and the US antislavery campaign, wherein the author elucidates the inherent racism of the women’s suffrage movement.

    Find this resource:

  • Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Illumines the violence and terror of racial subjugation during chattel slavery and postbellum America. Impressive scholarship on primary and secondary sources is employed in positing a revisionist historical analysis through the lens of the enslaved and their descendants.

    Find this resource:

  • Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” diacritics (1987): 65–81.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A groundbreaking text in African American literary theory and critical theory. Examining the role of African captivity in the historical formation of the New World, the author presents a critique of feminist studies’ conceptions of gender and the Moynihan Report’s depiction of black matriarchy.

    Find this resource:

  • Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Text blends legal scholarship, critical literary theory, and memoir. The author deploys the metaphor of alchemy to reflect on how the law operates as a mythological text in the construction and discourses of race and racism.

    Find this resource:

Literary Criticism and Theory

Although African American women’s contributions to the fields of literary criticism and theory are expansive and diverse, they share similar goals and methods of interrogating and intervening within Eurocentric frameworks that marginalize black women’s theoretical and literary mediations. Spillers 2003 and Dubey 1994 are impressive in their comprehensiveness, while Griffin 1995, Foster 1993, Willis 1987, and Henderson 1993 present innovative theories and critiques central to scholars in the fields of literary studies, feminist studies, historiography, and popular culture.

  • Dubey, Madhu. Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Presents a black feminist perspective to examine how black feminist writers challenge hegemonic notions of African American women’s identity.

    Find this resource:

  • Foster, Frances Smith. Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746–1892. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Includes a varied array of oft-cited and lesser-known works of African American women writers, arguing that their discourse offers a subversive and illuminating perspective on what it means to be American, woman, and raced in the United States.

    Find this resource:

  • Griffin, Farah Jasmine. “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195088960.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Using popular culture and literature to think through the migration of black people from the South to the North during the 20th century, the text is the first sustained study of migration as it has been represented in African American literature and culture writ large.

    Find this resource:

  • Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition.” In Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Edited by Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 119–138. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Posits a theory of interpretation of black women writers’ work based on a “simultaneity of discourse” that accounts for how both race and gender structure critiques and reception of the work.

    Find this resource:

  • Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A collection of Spiller’s seminal work in literary criticism and theory that spans thirty years of her career and various theoretical turns from post-structuralism to cultural studies.

    Find this resource:

  • Willis, Susan. Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Discusses the centrality of history to the work of many 20th-century African American women writers. Argues the extent to which these novelists become historians themselves who document the essential aspects of problems such as capitalist industrial society, and the movement from past to future and from girlhood to womanhood.

    Find this resource:

Black Feminist Criticism and Theory

Inarguably, the theoretical contributions of African American women in the field of feminist criticism and feminist studies writ large are unparalleled. From Walker 2004, a collection proffering a theory of womanism first published in 1967, to Jordan 1985, a collection of political essays, black feminist scholarship continues to be central to the expanding literature on how race, gender, class, and sexuality inflect the experiences of all African Americans. Higginbotham 1992 and McDowell 1995 offer analyses of how these intersecting positions influence epistemological and historical categories deployed at micro as well as macro levels, from the interpersonal machinations of the social to the political operations of the university.

  • Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs 17.2 (1992): 251–274.

    DOI: 10.1086/494730Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Argues for integrating both race and gender in analyses of power to counter the omission of race in analyses of black women’s particularized experiences of racial violence. Outlines how race operates as a “metalanguage,” revealing the operations of other socially and materially constructed categories such as gender, class, and sexuality.

    Find this resource:

  • Jordan, June. On Call: Political Essays. Boston: South End Press, 1985.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Collection of political essays wherein the author theorizes about black life, racism, and language through a black feminist lens.

    Find this resource:

  • McDowell, Deborah E. “The Changing Same”: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Essays engage in dialogue with both the author’s earlier writings on the subject of black feminist theorizing and criticism, and with the continuing perspectives offered by other prominent theorists. Argues against the academy’s theory-practice dichotomy by collapsing this distinction.

    Find this resource:

  • Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. Orlando: Harcourt, 2004.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Notable work for presenting and advancing womanist theory. Collection of essays, literary criticism, and personal testimony. First published 1967.

    Find this resource:

Black Lesbians and African American Women’s Writing

The construction, discussion, and depiction of black women’s sexuality is a central theme in the history of African American women’s literary and intellectual inquiry. The late 20th century illustrates a burgeoning period wherein black women wrote and theorized explicitly about same-gender loving experiences, paving the way for other marginalized communities to theorize and craft similar tracts. Lorde 2007 remains a seminal text in the fields of queer, literary, black, and feminist studies, while Shockley 1979, Smith 1979, and Smith 1997 provide the foundation for ongoing inquiry.

  • Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Originally published in 1984, this seminal text now includes a new foreword by Lorde scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke. Collection of fifteen essays and speeches wherein the author examines racism, the erotic, sexism, homophobia, and class.

    Find this resource:

  • Shockley, Ann Allen. “The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview.” Conditions: Five 2 (Autumn 1979): 133–142.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    One of the first overviews of black lesbian authors and representations of black lesbians in African American women’s literature.

    Find this resource:

  • Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2.2 (1979): 183–194.

    DOI: 10.1016/S0148-0685(79)91780-9Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Regarded as the first theoretical publication on black feminist criticism, the essay argues that such a mode of analysis would explore how “both sexual and racial politics and black and female identity are inextricable elements in black women’s writing.”

    Find this resource:

  • Smith, Barbara. “The Truth That Never Hurts: Black Lesbians in Fiction in the 1980s.” In Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Rev. ed. Edited by Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl, 784–806. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

    Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Focuses on the treatment of black lesbianism in African American women’s literature, with discussion spanning concepts such as verisimilitude, a writer’s’ consciousness about lesbianism and feminism, and representations of authentic black lesbian experience.

    Find this resource:

back to top

Article

Up

Down