Afro-Caribbean Women’s Writing and Early American Literature

Afro-Caribbean Women's Writing and Early American Literature is both pedagogical and critical. The text begins by re-evaluating the poetry of Wheatley for its political commentary, demonstrates how Hurston bridges several literary genres and geographies, and introduces Black women writers of the Caribbean to some American audiences.

Afro-Caribbean Women's Writing and Early American Literature is both pedagogical and critical. The text begins by re-evaluating the poetry of Wheatley for its political commentary, demonstrates how Hurston bridges several literary genres and geographies, and introduces Black women writers of the Caribbean to some American audiences. It sheds light on lesser-discussed Black women playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance and re-evaluates the turn-of-the century concept, Noble Womanhood in light of the Cult of Domesticity.

Preface: The Work of Black Women Writing Communities

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Continued Relevance of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers

LaToya Jefferson-James

Chapter One: Doing the Work of ‘Nobler Womanhood:’ Ida B. Wells-Barnett, N.F. Mossell, and Victoria Earle Matthews

LaToya Jefferson-James

Chapter Two: Yours for Humanity: An Examination of the Life and Work of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1856-1930)

Verner Mitchell

Chapter Three: Plagiarizing Blackness: Racial Performances and Passing in Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted

Tajanae Barnes

Chapter Four: New Nation, New Migration and New Negro: A Reading of Aftermath, Rachel, and Environment

Shubhanku Kochar

Chapter Five: When Madness Makes Sense in Early Black Women’s Drama

Regis Fox

Chapter Six: Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road as Literacy Narrative

LaToya Jefferson-James

Chapter Seven: Karen Lord: Situating the Caribbean Female Space

Jacinth Howard

Chapter Eight: A Retrospective on the Literary Influence of Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey

Alison D. Ligon

Chapter Nine: A Laying on of Hands: Healing the Diasporic Body in Colonized Spaces in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John

Joyce White

Chapter Ten: Authorizing Discourse: Black Feminist Theorizing in Michelle Cliff’s Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise

Alexandria Smith

Chapter Eleven: So Eager to Bloom: Reframing Images of Adolescent Protagonists in Edwidge Danticat’s Behind the Mountains and Untwine

Alison D. Ligon

Conclusion: Beginning at the Beginning: Teaching Morrison through Stewart and Hurston through Marson and Conde

About the Contributors