African American Women Writers' Historical Fiction

by Nunes, Ana

• ISBN13: 9780230112537
• ISBN10: 0230112536
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume explores African American historical fiction written by women in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Comprehensive in scope, this book refers to over thirty authors whose work has contributed to the tradition Margaret Walker to Sherley Anne Williams to Toni Morrison. Ana Nunes's approach to the text emphasizes the narrative and thematic achievements of individual novels against the backdrop of the main trends and developments of the contemporary African American historical novel.

Author Biography

Ana Nunes is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of American Studies at the University of Coimbra. She is the coeditor, with Carolina Amador-Moreno, of The Representation of the Spoken Mode in Fiction: How Authors Write How People Talk.

Table of Contents

 “While there is no dearth of scholarship on the work of contemporary African American women writers, Nunes emphasizes intertextuality, making unlikely connections to encourage her readers to think differently about both the individual works and the tradition itself.  African American Women Writers’ Historical Fiction is thoughtfully researched, articulate, straightforward in structure, and surprising in places.  Nunes articulates a rich context for each work she examines and concludes by exploring the theme of social responsibility each author has embraced in crafting a historical novel that, as Nunes quotes James Baldwin, ‘makes the present coherent.’”--Elizabeth Beaulieu, Dean, Core Division, Champlain College

“Nunes’s sensitive and detailed reading of each novel—Jubilee, Corregidora, Dessa Rose, Beloved, and Stigmata­—points out the writers’ female perspective of African American history, specifically the experience of slavery, and the innovative narrative strategies rehearsed in their texts. The latter defy a hegemonic tradition, rescuing silenced voices and attempting to represent the unrepresentable.  African American Women Writers’ Historical Fiction will make an important contribution to the fields of American and African American studies, Women studies, and cultural studies. “--Isabel Caldeira, University of Coimbra

“This study will add greatly to our understanding of African American women’s writing, of African American writing in general, of the American novel, and of the novel itself.”--Ron Callan, Lecturer, University College Dublin