African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
200 p., This book extends our understanding of the black Atlantic, a term coined by Paul Gilroy to describe the political, cultural and creative interrelations among blacks living in Africa, the Americas and Europe. Focuses on pre-colonial English literary constructions and their effects on post-Independence Caribbean literature.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
111 p, Examines the ways Guadeloupean women writers Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Myriam Warner-Vieyra demystify the theme of the return to Africa as opposed to the masculinist version by Negritude male writers from the 1930s to 1960s. Negritude, a cultural and literary movement, drew much of its strength from the idea of a mythical or cultural reconnection with the African past allegorized as a mother figure. In contrast these women writers, of the post-colonial era who are to large extent heirs of Negritude, differ sharply from their male counterparts in their representation of Africa. In their novels, the continent is not represented as a propitious mother figure but a disappointing father figure.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
209 p., Explores the limits and prospects of Afro-Caribbean Francophone writers in reshaping or producing action-oriented literature. Part One explores the origins of Afro-Caribbean Francophone literature and what the author terms griotism-- a shared heritage of awareness of biological differences, a sense of the black hero as black messiah and black people as chosen, and the promise of a common racial history.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
259 p., Explores the many aspects of Negritude - both as a concept and as a movement. Provides an account of its historical origins and examines the sociological and ideological background of themes that have preoccupied French-speaking black writers and intellectuals.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
434 p., Establishes that in African, African American and Caribbean literature certain primordial and mythic patterns recur sufficiently to be recognizable as familiar elements in our literary experience. Each chapter identifies and discusses an archetypal image in relationship to a specific work or set of works.
