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2. Interstitial voices: The poetics of difference in Afrodiasporic women's literature
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Sullivan,Mecca J. (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 320 p., Examines the place of difference in black women's writing of the African diaspora. The works of well-known and canonical writers Toni Morrison, Buchi Emecheta, Jamaica Kincaid, and Audre Lorde illustrate key functions of the poetics of difference. The author reads these writers alongside important but underexplored figures, including Ghanaian-born poet Ama Ata Aidoo, Cuban-born novelist Achy Obejas, Trinidadian-born writer Dionne Brand, and South African/Botswanan writer Bessie Head, as well as younger writers such as U.S.-born playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, Nigerian-born fiction writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and St. Thomas-born writer Tiphanie Yanique. These writers reframe identity around radical models of difference by: (1) developing and naming hybrid genres; and (2) destabilizing formal conventions of recognizable genres through multiplicities of voice. By highlighting difference as a core component of black female identity, these writers make crucial interventions in several areas, including Afrodiasporic cultural, feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity, as well as feminist, Afrodiasporic cultural, formalist, and narratological conceptions of voice.
3. Passages to (Be) Longing: Contemporary Black Novels of Diaspora and Dislocation
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Valkeakari,Tuire Maritta (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- Connecticut: Yale University
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 369 p., Looks at contemporary novels of the anglophone African diaspora through the lens of movement, migration, and dislocation, with particular attention to how the selected authors depict black diasporic identity formation, and how they contribute to it through their writings. Thematically, this dissertation examines literary representations of the social, cultural, and psychological consequences that involuntary and voluntary migrations have had for black communities and individuals in North America, the Caribbean, and Britain. It explores the juncture of history, memory, geography, and diasporic identity, as represented by eight contemporary novelists of African and African-Caribbean descent: Charles Johnson ( Middle Passage ), Lawrence Hill ( The Book of Negroes ), Toni Morrison (Sula and Tar Baby ), George Lamming (The Emigrants ), Caryl Phillips (The Final Passage, A State of Independence, and Crossing the River ), Andrea Levy (Small Island ), Cecil Foster (Sleep on, Beloved ), and Edwidge Danticat ( Breath, Eyes, Memory ).
4. Reinventing epistolarity: Contemporary Africana women's fiction, citizenship, and human rights
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Walker,Carrie J. (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- Nebraska: The University of Nebraska - Lincoln
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 232 p., Calls attention to the renewed popularity of the epistolary novel among Africana contemporary women writers. This work investigates why, since the late nineteen-seventies, there has been a resurgence of this classic form among women writers across the Black Atlantic. The adoption of this genre among women writers in post-colonial contexts is especially significant because the classic epistolary novel was a medium that often endorsed notions of female submission and imperialist ambition. At the same time, the epistolary tradition connotes a revolutionary history. With this idea in mind, the author argues that an examination of how contemporary women revise the epistolary novel offers a crucial perspective regarding the struggles of women throughout various geographic locations and social strata in relation to nation, citizenship, and selfhood. This project focuses on how Sindiwe Magona, Nozipo Maraire, and Paulette Ramsay "reinvent epistolarity," using the epistolary genre to make interventions in the public sphere by depicting Africana women's experiences of education, marriage, inheritance, and health.