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2. Making dead and barren: Black women writers on the Civil Rights Movement and the problem of the American dream
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Bolton,Philathia R. (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- Indiana: Purdue University
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- Examines death and barrenness images prevalent in literature produced by black women during the 1970s and 1980s, taking for study the novels Bluest Eye (1970), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Corregidora (1975), and Mama Day (1988). Argues that images in these narratives represent contemporary manifestations of social death that directly relate to what belief in the American dream, and that these images symbolize the ways in which decisions made had a deadening effect on black communities, primarily experienced as a loss of social sensibility and vitality of relationships.
3. Flight as improvisational solo in jazz and blues fiction
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Kosse,Jeffrey P. (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- Lincoln, Nebraska: The University of Nebraska
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 204 p., This dissertation examines the roles played by jazz and blues in African American fiction of the post-World War II era. The author contends that scholars of jazz and blues fiction generally discuss the authors' treatment of the music in terms of how it shows up, is alluded to, or is played; however, few address performative elements that are central to much African American literature. Their performances, whether as narratives or geosocial movements, often draw upon forms of flight as defining actions that send them into new territories and necessitate acts of improvisation. Forms of flight manifest themselves as improvised solos in numerous ways, including in this dissertation the path of Ellison's narrator going north and ultimately underground in Invisible Man , brothers leaving their Harlem pasts and coming together while on ever-divergent paths in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," Milkman Dead discovering the secret of literal flight by improvising through a journey to his familial past in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon , or the members of Macon Street's "flesh-and-blood triangle" choosing the expatriate route of Paris instead of America in Paule Marshall's The Fisher King.