Lois Mailou Jones, Initiation, Liberia

"Ain't I a Woman?"

Slavery and Freedom Literature

(Part B)

INDEX

Part A:  Abolitionist and Slavery Literature

Part B:  Neo-Slave / Freedom Literature   

• Harlem Renaissance Writers

Part C: Resources: History,Theory,Topics 

Neo-Slave and Freedom Literature

Lois Mailou Jones, Ethiopia Climbing

James Baldwin

• Sonny's Blues--e-text.
• Class Lecture on 'Sonny's Blues'--helpful background and comments.
  
  
• "Simply a menaced boy": Analogizing Color, Undoing Dominance in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room --scholarly article.
• "Payin' one's dues": Expatriation as Personal Experience and Paradigm in the Works of James Baldwin--scholarly article.
• Beneath the Black Aesthetic: James Baldwin's Primer of Black American Masculinity--scholarly article.
• "I'm not the boy you want": Sexuality, "Race," and Thwarted Revolution in Baldwin's 'Another Country'--scholarly article
• "No Justice, No Peace": The Figure of Emmett Till in African American Literature--scholarly article covering Baldwin and other writers.
• The 'Maw of Western Culture': James Baldwin and the Anxieties of Influence --scholarly article.

Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones)

• Biography/Historical Contexts
• Online Poems --6 poems.
• Baraka links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.


• LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and the Limits of Open Form --scholarly article.
• Baraka's Billie Holiday as a Blues Poet of Black Longing --scholarly article.
• "Pat your foot and turn the corner": Amiri Baraka, the Black Arts Movement, and the Poetics of a Popular Avant-garde --scholarly article.
• On the Sound of Water: Amiri Baraka's "Black Art" --scholarly article.
• The Logic of Retribution: Amiri Baraka's Dutchman --scholarly article.
• Baraka's Bohemian Blues --scholarly article.
• LeRoi Jones, Larry Neal, and The Cricket: Jazz and Poets' Black Fire --scholarly article.
• Politics, Process & Performance: Amiri Baraka's 'It's Nation Time' --scholarly article.
• Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller --scholarly article.

Gwendolyn Brooks

• Brooks' Life and Career. Another Brooks biography.
• Brooks biography/many poems.


• Scholarly excerpts--approaches to her poems; very helpful.
• Killing John Cabot and Publishing Black: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot --scholarly article.
• A Prophet Overheard: A Juxtapositional Reading of Gwendolyn Brooks's "In the Mecca" --scholarly article.
• Reflecting Violence in the Warpland: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot --scholarly article.
• The Kindergarten of New Consciousness: Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood--Flynn's scholarly article.
• Public Subjects: Race and the Critical Reception of Gwendolyn Brooks, Erica Hunt, and Harryette Mullen --scholarly article.
• The Love Song of Satin-Legs Smith: Gwendolyn Brooks Revisits Prufrock's Hell --scholarly article.

Charles Chesnutt

• See Chesnutt Resources at my "Realist Period" web page.

Michelle Cliff

• See my Cliff Resources at my "Post-Colonial Literature" web page.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

• See Dunbar Resources at my "Realist Period" web page.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Page--links to many, many poems.

Ralph Ellison

• Biography/commentary

Study Aids: Invisible Man

• Holographic Tropes in Invisible Man--dream imagery
• Ralph Ellison--good overview of major themes and techniques in Invisible Man.
• Annotated Excerpt from Invisible Man--informative links to Plato, Dante, music, etc. Browse the entire site.
• Jazz Music & Lyrics --listen to "What Did I Do (To be So Black and Blue)," referred to in Ellison's Prologue. Lyrics and commentary included.
• Tricksters--many links

Novels: Reviews, Scholarly Articles

• Saul Bellow's Review of Invisible Man.
• Irving Howe's Review of Invisible Man.
• Ellison's Second Act, Visible at Last--Lightfoot's review of Juneteenth.
• Schaub's American Fiction in the Cold War--excerpt.
• Corry's "White View of Ralph Ellison"--excerpt.
• Kaiser's "A Critical Look at Ellison's Fiction"--excerpt.


• Knucklebones and Knocking-bones: The Accidental Trickster in Ellison's Invisible Man --scholarly article.
• Invisible Man and African American Radicalism in World War II --scholarly article.
• Ellison's Hemingways--scholarly article.
• Rhetoric of Anti-Communism in Invisible Man--scholarly article.
• "Ambivalent Man": Ellison's Rejection of Communism --Wolfe's scholarly article.
• Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Case of Angelo Herndon--Griffiths' scholarly article on Invisible Man.
• The Art of John Coltrane and Ralph Ellison--Wright's interesting essay on jazz and literature; particularly good on the meaning of jazz.
• Plunging (Outside of) History: Naming and Self-possession in Invisible Man--scholarly article.
• Masquerade, Magic, and Carnival in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man--scholarly article.
• "1 + 1 = 3" and Other Dilemmas: Reading Vertigo in Invisible Man, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Song of Solomon--Thomas' scholarly article.
• Ralph Ellison as Proletarian Journalist--Foley's scholarly article on Ellison's earlier non-fiction writings.
• A Slightly Different Sense of Time": Palimpsestic Time in Invisible Man --scholarly article.
• Eloquence and Invisible Man --scholarly article.
• Invisible Desires: Homoerotic Racism and its Homophobic Critique in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man --scholarly article.
• Reading Ralph Ellison Synthesizing the CP and NAACP: Sympathetic Narrative Strategy, Sympathetic Bodies --scholarly article.
• Embracing Chaos in Narrative Form: The Bebop Aesthetic in Ellison's Invisible Man --scholarly article.
• History in Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth --scholarly article.
• Jazz Beginnings: Ralph Ellison and Charlie Christian in Oklahoma City --scholarly article.
• Aesthetic Modes in Afro-American Fiction: Alice Walker and Ralph Ellison --scholarly article.
• The "art and protest" in Ralph Ellison's "anticommunist rhetoric" --scholarly article.
• Naming Invisible Authority: Toni Morrison's Covert Letter to Ralph Ellison --scholarly article.

Short Stories and Essays

• Heath Study Guide for "King of the Bingo Game"--issues, themes, strategies.
• "King of the Bingo Game" Study Questions
• Flying Home and Other Stories --review of Ellison's short story collection.
• Writer on the Left: Class and Race in Ellison's Early Fiction --scholarly article.

Harlem Renaissance Writers

• Many links on my Jazz Age Writers web page.

Robert Hayden

• Hayden biography
• Biography/8 poems
• Monet's Waterlilies--includes some commentary on the poem.
• "Monet's Waterlilies"--3 images of the paintings on which Hayden's poem is based.
• "Middle Passage"--e-text.
• Moyo Okediji, "The Dutchman"--contemporary Yoruban painting inspired by Hayden's "Middle Passage."
• "Frederick Douglass"--poem
• El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)--poem.
• "Those Winter Sundays"--poem
• Close Reading of "Those Winter Sundays"
• "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home"--poem
• On "O Daedalus"--scholarly commentary
• Locked in with Loss--excellent study guide; texts of 7 poems.


• Scholarly Commentary--excerpts commenting on "Middle Passage," "Runagate, Runagate," and other poems.
• Answering "The Waste Land": Robert Hayden and the Rise of the African American Poetic Sequence--Coniff's scholarly article.
• "Something patterned, wild, and free": Robert Hayden's Angles of Descent and the Democratic Unconscious--Pavlic's scholarly article.

Pauline Hopkins

• See Hopkins' Resources at "Realist Period" web page.

Langston Hughes

• See Hughes' Resources at my "Jazz Age Culture/Literature" web page.

Zora Neale Hurston

• Zora Neale Hurston Page--biography and many links
• Hurston biography--with links.
• See Hurston Resources at my "Jazz Age Literature" web page.

Short Stories

• Sweat--e-text.
• Gilded Six-bits--e-text.
• Harlem Renaissance: Zora Neale Hurston ['Spunk']--e-text.
• Hurston's 'Spunk' and Hamlet-- scholarly article.
• Black Death--e-text.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Finding the Pulpit, Finding Voice--article on Nanny's role in Their Eyes.
• Conjured into Being--excellent thesis discussing the storytelling methods used in Their Eyes. See especially "Signifying" and "Conjuring."


• "The Porch Couldn't Talk for Looking": Voice and Vision in 'Their Eyes'--Clarke's scholarly article.
• The Minstrel Show Goes to the Great War: Hurston's Mass Cultural Other--Trombold's scholarly article.
• "The World in a Jug and the Stopper in (her) Hand": 'Their Eyes' as Blues Performance--Johnson's scholarly article.
• Rootwork: Arthur Flowers, Zora Neale Hurston, and the "Literary Hoodoo" Tradition --scholarly article.
• "The hierarchy itself": Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Sacrifice of Narrative Authority--scholarly article.
• 'Ah said Ah'd save de text for you': Recontextualizing the Sermon to Tell Story in Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' --scholarly article.
• 'Papa Legba, ouvrier barriere por moi passer': Esu in Their Eyes & Zora Neale Hurston's Diasporic Modernism --scholarly article.
• Predators in the 'Glades: A Signifying Animal Tale in Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God --scholarly article.
• Should their Eyes Have Been Watching God? Hurston's Use of Religious Experience and Gothic Horror --scholarly article.
• Voice and Interiority in Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' --scholarly article.
• 'Why don't he like my hair?': Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's 'Song of Solomon' and Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' --scholarly article.
• 'Your heard her, you ain't blind': Seeing What's Said in Their Eyes Were Watching God --scholarly article.
• Somebody Else's Foremother: David Haynes and Zora Neale Hurston--scholarly article.
• Biblical Trees, Biblical Deliverance: Literary Landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison --scholarly article.
• From "spy-glass" to "horizon": Tracking the Anthropological Gaze in Zora Neale Hurston --scholarly article.

Other

• Folktales of Zora Neale Hurston--helpful lesson plan for teaching the folktales collected in Hurston's Mules and Men.
• Migrant Labor, Folklore, and Resistance in Hurston's Polk County: Reframing Mules and Men--Nicholls' scholarly article.
• The Post-modern Self in 'Dust Tracks on a Road'--Walker's scholarly article.
• Mule Bone: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Dream Deferred of an African-American Theatre of the Black Word--Manuel's scholarly article.
• Waste and Whiteness: Hurston and the Politics of Eugenics --Jackson's scholarly article, primarily on Seraph on the Suwanee, with some references to several short stories.
• The Worm Against the Word: The Hermeneutical Challenge in Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine--Ciuba's scholarly article.
• Possessing the Self: Caribbean Identities in Zora Neale Hurston's 'Tell My Horse' --scholarly article.

Charles Johnson

• Johnson biography.
• Study Questions for Middle Passage--links at bottom of page.
• Okediji's The Dutchman--artwork
• Equiano's Autobiography, Chapter Two (The Slave Ship)--read an actual "middle passage" account.
• The Paradox of Slave Mutiny in Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, and Frederick Douglass --scholarly article.
• paradox of slave mutiny in Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, and Frederick Douglass
• Isadora at Sea: Misogyny as Comic Capital in Charles Johnson's 'Middle Passage' --scholarly article.
• Reading Rigor Mortis: Offstage Violence and Excluded Middles 'in' Johnson's 'Middle Passage' and Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Passages from the Middle: Coloniality and Postcoloniality in Charles Johnson's 'Middle Passage' --scholarly article.
• Interrogating Identity: Appropriation and Transformation in 'Middle Passage' --scholarly article.
• The African Sacrificial Kingship Ritual and Johnson's 'Middle Passage' --scholarly article.
• "Nothing Was Lost in the Masquerade": The Protean Performance of Genre and Identity in Charles Johnson's Oxherding Tale--Retman's scholarly article.
• Master-Slave Dialectics in Charles Johnson's 'The Education of Mingo' --scholarly article.
• Charles Johnson's Quest for Black Freedom in 'Oxherding Tale' --scholarly article.

Audre Lorde

• Lorde Poems--go to my "Women's Poetry" web page

Clarence Major

• Reading the Painterly Text: Clarence Major's "The Slave Trade: View from the Middle Passage"--scholarly article.
• Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and the African American Narrative: Major's Reflex, Morrison's Jazz, and Reed's Mumbo Jumbo --scholarly article.

Paule Marshall

• Embodying Cultural Memory in Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow--scholarly article.
• Sugarcane as History in Paule Marshall's "To Da-Duh, in Memoriam"--scholarly article.
• Paule Marshall's 'Brown Girl, Brownstones': Reconciling Ethnicity and Individualism--scholarly article.
• "Yesterday Comes Like Today": Communitas in Paule Marshall's "The Chosen Place, the Timeless People"--scholarly article.
• Yearning for the Homeland --Billingslea-Brown's scholarly article on Black artists Bettie Saar and Faith Ringgold and writers Morrison and Marshall's Praisesong. See my web pages for more on Saar and Ringgold.

Toni Morrison

• Morrison biography; Morrison biography 2 with some commentary on the novels.

Beloved

• Review of Beloved--book and film
• The Pain of Being Black--Morrison interview
• The Garners: A Note on Margaret and Sethe in and out of History, and Morrison's Beloved--interesting article.


• An abiku-ogbanje Atlas: a pre-text for rereading Soyinka's Ake and Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• Golden gray and the talking book: identity as a site of artful construction in Toni Morrison's Jazz --scholarly article.
• Truth in timbre: Morrison's extension of slave narrative song in Beloved --scholarly article.
• The named and the nameless: Morrison's 124 and Naylor's "the other place" as semiotic chorae --scholarly article.
• Biblical trees, biblical deliverance: literary landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison --scholarly article.
• The mother-daughter Aje relationship in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• Hiding fire and brimstone in lacy groves: the twinned trees of Beloved --scholarly article.
• The soul has bandaged moments": reading the African American gothic in Wright's "big boy leaves home," Morrison's beloved, and Gomez's Gilda --scholarly article.
• Object written, written object: slavery, scarring, and complications of authorship in Beloved --scholarly article.
• An end of Southern history: the down-home quests of Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead --scholarly article.
• Beyond silence and realism: Trauma and the Function of ghosts in Absalom, Absalom! and Beloved --scholarly article.
• Black feminism and the canon: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Morrison's Beloved as Gothic Romances --scholarly article.
• Sethe's Choice: 'Beloved' and the Ethics of Reading --Phelan's scholarly article.
• Representation, Race, and the "Language" of the Ineffable--Khayati's scholarly article on Bluest Eye and Beloved.
• Violence, Home, and Community in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved.'--Jesser's scholarly article.
• Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Beloved--Carden's scholarly article.
• A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's Beloved--Parker's scholarly article.
• "Postmodern Blackness": Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the End of History--Davis' scholarly article.
• Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction--Ryan's scholarly article on Beloved and other novels.
• Looking into the Self That Is No Self: ...Subjectivity in Beloved--Holden-Kirwan's scholarly article.
• Ideologies in Conflict, Improvised Subjects--Keiser's scholarly article.
• The Story Must Go On and On: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Jazz and Beloved--Cutter's scholarly article.
• Slave Narrative Retentions in African-American Women's Writings about Madness--influence on Morrison's Beloved and other contemporary women writers.
• Transforming the Chain into Story: The Making of Communal Meaning in Toni Morrison's Beloved--Cowan-Barbetti's scholarly article.
• Notes on Beloved as an Embodiment of Slavery and Social Death--scholarly article.
• To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need-Bridges to Understanding in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• The Unspeakable Stories of 'Shoah' and 'Beloved' --scholarly articles.
• Inscriptions in the Dust: [Gaines'] A Gathering of Old Men and Beloved as Ancestral Requiems--scholarly article
• Postcolonial Experience in a Domestic Context: Commodified Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved--scholarly article.
• "To be Loved and Cry Shame": A Psychological Reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved--scholarly article
• An Abiku-ogbanje Atlas: A Pre-text for Rereading Soyinka's Ake and Morrison's Beloved--scholarly article.
• Revisioning History through Literary Characters: Louise Erdrich's Pauline and Toni Morrison's Beloved--scholarly article.
• "Signifyin(g)" upon Huck Finn: Morrison's Beloved as Cultual Artifact--Fukase's scholarly article.
• Utopia Limited: Post-Sixties and Postmodern American Fiction --DeKoven's scholarly article on Morrison and Doctorow.
• To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need-Bridges to Understanding in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• 'The soul has bandaged moments': Reading the African American Gothic in Wright's 'Big Boy Leaves Home,' Morrison's 'Beloved,' and Gomez's 'Gilda' --scholarly article.
• Biblical Trees, Biblical Deliverance: Literary Landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison --scholarly article.
• The Mother-Daughter Aje Relationship in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• The Named and the Nameless: Morrison's 1 2 4 and Naylor's "The Other Place" as Semiotic Chorae --scholarly article.
• Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved --scholarly article.
• 'From the Seen to the Told': The Construction of Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• Reading Rigor Mortis: Offstage Violence and Excluded Middles 'in' Johnson's 'Middle Passage' and Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Insignificant Monkeys: Preaching Black English in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved --scholarly article.
• Spitting out the seed: Ownership of mother, child, breasts, milk, and voice in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• Is Morrison Also among the Prophets?: "Psychoanalytic" Strategies in 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• 'Sula' and 'Beloved': Images of Cain in the Novels of Toni Morrison --scholarly article.
• "To take the sin out of slicing trees ...": The Law of the Tree in 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Reading at the Cultural Interface: The Corn Symbolism of 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• "From the Seen to the Told": The Construction of Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• 'Beloved' and the Problem of Mourning --scholarly article.
• Narrative and Community Crisis in 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Trauma and the Specters of Enslavement in Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Beyond the "Literary Habit": Oral Tradition and Jazz in 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Function or Frill: The Quilt as Storyteller in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• A Love Supreme: Jazzthetic Strategies in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Mater of 'Ancient Properties' --scholarly article.
• Is Morrison Also among the Prophets?: "Psychoanalytic" Strategies in 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Myth, Metaphor, and Memory in Toni Morrison's Reconstructed South --scholarly article.
• Missing Peace in Toni Morrison's 'Sula' and 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• "Ten minutes" for Seven Letters": Song as Key to Narrative Revision in Toni Morrison's Belov --scholarly article.
• Southern Landscape as Psychic Landscape in Toni Morrison's Fiction --scholarly article.
• Southern Ethos / Black Ethics in Toni Morrison's Fiction --scholarly article.
• Imagining Slavery: Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson --scholarly article.
• Reader, Text, and Subjectivity: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' as Lacan's Gaze qua Object --scholarly article.
• Spitting out the Seed: Ownership of Mother, Child, Breasts, Milk, and Voice in Toni Morrison's Beloved --scholarly article.
• "I been worried sick about you, too, Macon": Toni Morrison, the South, and the Oral Tradition --scholarly article.
• Hiding Fire and Brimstone in Lacy Groves: The Twinned Trees of Beloved --scholarly article.
• Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South --book review.

The Bluest Eye

• Study Guide for The Bluest Eye--helpful
• Teaching The Bluest Eye--article
• North American Fiction and Film: The Bluest Eye--good commentary on the novel
• Geneology of Rejection in Bluest Eye--good essay
• Ownership and the Loss of Communal Ties in The Bluest Eye--student article
• Representation, Race, and the "Language" of the Ineffable in Toni Morrison's Narrative--Khayati's scholarly article on Bluest Eye and Beloved
• The Blues Aesthetic in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye--Moses' scholarly article.
• The Fourth Face: The Image of God in The Bluest Eye --Alexander's scholarly article.
• Periodizing Toni Morrison's Work from 'The Bluest Eye' to 'Jazz': The Importance of 'Tar Baby" --scholarly study.
• Focusing on the Wrong Front: Historical Displacement, the Maginot Line, and The Bluest Eye --scholarly study.
• 'The Bluest Eye': Notes on History, Community, and Black Female Subjectivity --scholarly study.
• Insignificant Monkeys: Preaching Black English in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved --scholarly study.
• Toni Morrison and the Burden of the Passing Narrative --scholarly study.
• The Politics of Abuse: The Traumatized Child in Toni Morrison and Marguerite Duras --scholarly study.
• Naming Invisible Authority: Toni Morrison's Covert Letter to Ralph Ellison --scholarly article.

Sula

• A critical divination: reading Sula as ogbanje-abiku --scholarly article.
• Heath Study Guide for Sula
• Study Questions: Sula--links to short answers
• Gender-Voice-Vernacular--helpful review of a scholarly book on the development of the female voice in novels by Hurston, Morrison, and Walker.
• Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction--Ryan's scholarly article on Beloved and other novels.
• The Lilith Figure in Morrison's Sula and Walker's Color Purple--Seidel's essay
• Lilith--see my Goddess web page.
• black voice and the language of the text: Toni Morrison's Sula --Ryan's scholarly
• Something Other Than a Family Quarrel: The Beautiful Boys in Morrison's Sula --scholarly article.
• War and Peace: Transfigured Categories and the Politics of 'Sula' --scholarly article.
• New World Woman: Toni Morrison's 'Sula' --scholarly article.
• Toni Morrison's 'Sula': A Satire on Binary Thinking --scholarly article.
• Missing Peace in Toni Morrison's 'Sula' and 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• 'Sula' and 'Beloved': Images of Cain in the Novels of Toni Morrison --scholarly study.
• The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Mater of 'Ancient Properties' --scholarly article.

Tar Baby

• Study Guide: Tar Baby--helpful.
• Struggling with a History of Capitalism in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby --student essay.
• The Inauthentic Tar Baby --student essay.
• Periodizing Toni Morrison's Work from 'The Bluest Eye' to 'Jazz': The Importance of 'Tar Baby" --scholarly study.
• Tar Baby and Womanist Theology --scholarly article.
• Yearning for the Homeland --Billingslea-Brown's scholarly article on Black artists Bettie Saar and Faith Ringgold and writers Morrison and Marshall. See my web pages for more on Saar and Ringgold.
• Foreign Exotic or Domestic Drudge? The African American Woman in "Quicksand" and "Tar Baby"--Rayson's scholarly article.
• Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby--version of the old folktale.
• Being and "truth": 'Tar Baby's' Signifying on Sylvia Plath's Bee Poems --scholarly article.
• The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Mater of 'Ancient Properties' --scholarly article.

Song of Solomon

• Dead letter office: conspiracy, trauma, and Song of Solomon's posthumous communication --scholarly article.
• An end of Southern history: the down-home quests of Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead --scholarly article.
• Alternatives to the "talking cure": black music as traumatic testimony in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon --scholarly article.
• Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction--Ryan's scholarly article; Song of Solomon discussed in long section at the end.
• The Fathers May Soar: Folklore and Blues in Song of Solomon--thesis
• The Icarus Myth in Song of Solomon--student review.
• Memory and the Quest for Family History in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Song of Solomon--Vega-Gonzalez' scholarly article.
• Lecture on Song of Solomon--raises a number of important issues.
• Song of Solomon--version found in Bible; here is a good alternate source.
• Keys to the Song of Solomon--biblical interpretations.
• "1 + 1 = 3" and Other Dilemmas: Reading Vertigo in Invisible Man, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Song of Solomon--Thomas' scholarly article.
• Beyond Realism: The Fictions of Toni Morrison --excerpt from a scholarly article.
• Like an Eagle in the Air: Toni Morrison --excerpt from a scholarly article comparing Song of Solomon and Invisible Man.
• The Dilemma of "Double-Consciousness": Toni Morrison's Novels --excerpt from a scholarly book.
• The Postmodernist Rag: Political Identity and the Vernacular in Song of Solomon --excerpt from a scholarly article.
• From Orality to Literacy: Oral Memory in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon --excerpt from a scholarly article.
• Call and Response: Voice, Community and Dialogic Structures in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon --excerpt from a scholarly article.
• The Voices of Toni Morrison --excerpt from a scholarly book.
• Introduction --excerpt from a scholarly collection.
• The South in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomo: Initiation, Healing, and Home --scholarly article.
• Southern Landscape as Psychic Landscape in Toni Morrison's Fiction --scholarly article.
• 'Why don't he like my hair?': Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's 'Song of Solomon' and Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' --scholarly article.
• 'Anaconda love': Parental Enmeshment in Toni Morrison's 'Song of Solomon' --scholarly article.
• Dead Letter Office: Conspiracy, Trauma, and Song of Solomon's Posthumous Communication --scholarly article.
• 'Every Goodbye Ain't Gone': The Semiotics of Death, Mourning, and Closural Practice in Toni Morrison's 'Song of Solomon' --scholarly article.
• William Faulkner Reprised: Isolation in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon --scholarly article.
• To Cheer the Weary Traveler: Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and History --scholarly article.
• Southern Ethos / Black Ethics in Toni Morrison's Fiction --scholarly article.
• "I been worried sick about you, too, Macon": Toni Morrison, the South, and the Oral Tradition --scholarly article.
• Dead Letter Office: Conspiracy, Trauma, and Song of Solomon's Posthumous Communication --scholarly article.

Jazz

• Domestic violence in the Harlem Renaissance: remaking the record in Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's Jazz --scholarly article.
• Chronology of Morrison's Jazz--study aid
• Jazz: Readng Notes--study aid.
• ClassicNotes on Jazz--study aid.
• Women's Classic Blues in Jazz--Sherard's scholarly article
• Toni Morrison's Jazz and the City--Paquet-Deyris' scholarly article.
• The Story Must Go On and On: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Jazz and Beloved--Cutter's scholarly article.
• Recreating the Black Self: The Hidden Text in Toni Morrison's Jazz--Soo Ping's article
• Singing the Blues/Reclaiming Jazz: Toni Morrison and Cultural Mourning--scholarly essay.
• Trading Meanings: The Breath of Music in Toni Morrison's Jazz--Pici's scholarly article
• Golden Gray and the Talking Book: Identity as a Site of Artful Construction in Toni Morrison's Jazz--Brown's scholarly article.
• From Faulkner to Morrison: "Jazzing Up" the American Nobel Prize Heritage--scholarly article.
• Kinds of Blue: Toni Morrison, Hans Janowitz, and the Jazz Aesthetic --scholarly article.
• Following the Traces of Female Desire in Toni Morrison's 'Jazz' --scholarly article.
• Domestic Violence in the Harlem Renaissance: Remaking the Record in Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's Jazz --scholarly article.
• Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and the African American Narrative: Major's Reflex, Morrison's Jazz, and Reed's Mumbo Jumbo --scholarly article.
• Answer Jazz's Call: Experiencing Toni Morrison's 'Jazz' --scholarly article.
• A Love Supreme: Jazzthetic Strategies in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
• Traces of Derrida in Toni Morrison's 'Jazz' --scholarly article.
• 'Sth, I know that woman': History, gender, and the South in Toni Morrison's 'Jazz' --scholarly article.
• The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Mater of 'Ancient Properties' --scholarly article.
• Jazz ... on 'The Site of Memory' --scholarly article.
• Figuring in, Figuring out: Narration and Negotiation in Toni Morrison's Jazz --scholarly article.

Paradise

• Passing on" death: stealing life in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• The Other side of paradise: Toni Morrison's making of mythic history --scholarly article.
• As if word magic had anything to do with the courage it took to be a man": black masculinity in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Literary free jazz? Mumbo Jumbo and Paradise: language and meaning --scholarly article.
• What would be on the other side?": spectrality and spirit work in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Paradise--study guide.
• Everything About Her Had Two Sides to It": The Foreigner's Home in Toni Morrison's "Paradise" --scholarly article.
• Paradise Lost: A Black Community Tears Itself Apart--Turner's book review
• Book Review by Shockley.
• Book Review by Whitten
• Utopia Lost and Found--book review
• Conversation: Toni Morrison--PBS interview
• The Salon Interview: Toni Morrison by Zia Jaffrey--Morrison talks about her novel Paradise, her marriage, and O.J. Simpson.
• Paradise Found: A Talk with Toni Morrison--interview.
• Furrowing all the Brows: Interpretation and the Transcendent in Toni Morrison's Paradise--Page's scholarly article.
• The One All-Black Town Worth the Pain: (African) American Exceptionalism, Historical Narration, and the Critique of Nationhood in Toni Morrison's Paradise--Dalsgard's scholarly article.
• Racial stock and 8-rocks: Communal Historiography in Toni Morrison's 'Paradise'--scholarly article.
• Reading and insight in Toni Morrison's Paradise--scholarly article
• 'As if word magic had anything to do with the courage it took to be a man': Black Masculinity in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• The Other Side of Paradise: Toni Morrison's Making of Mythic History --scholarly article.
• Creating the Beloved Community: Religion, Race, and Nation in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• 'Passing on' Death: Stealing Life in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Hybridizing the 'City upon a Hill' in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Re-imagining Agency: Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Playing on the "Darky": Blackface Minstrelsy, Identity Construction, and the Deconstruction of Race in Toni Morrison's Paradise --scholarly article.
• Literary Free Jazz? Mumbo Jumbo and Paradise: Language and Meaning --scholarly article.
• The Religious Overtones of Ethnic Identity-Builiding in Toni Morrison's Paradise--scholarly article.

Other

• Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination --book review.
• (Review) Playing in the Dark.
• The New Face of America: On the Backs of Blacks--Time article by Morrison on racism and immigration, and Huck Finn's Pap.
• Burden of the Passing Narrative --Bennett's scholarly article--covers a number of Morrison novels.
• Toni Morrison and the American Tradition: A Rhetorical Reading--Lewis' book review.
• The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and Postmodern Blackness--interesting review of Duvall's scholarly book; covers a number of Morrison's novels.

Gloria Naylor

• Suicide or Messianic Self-Sacrifice?: Exhuming Willa's Body in Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills--scholarly article.
• The Ethnographer's Story: Mama Day and the Specter of Relativism--Blyn's scholarly article.
• The Named and the Nameless: Morrison's 124 and Naylor's "The Other Place" as Semiotic Chorae --scholarly article.
• Gloria Naylor's Mama Day: Bridging Roots and Routes --scholarly article.

Ishmael Reed

• Postmodernism, Ethnicity and Underground Revisionism in Ishmael Reed--Mikics' scholarly article (endnotes on a separate page).
• Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and the African American Narrative: Major's Reflex, Morrison's Jazz, and Reed's Mumbo Jumbo --scholarly article.
• Racial Discourse and Black-Japanese Dynamics in Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring --scholarly article.
• Campus Xenophobia and the Multicultural Project: Ethical Criticism and Ishmael Reed's 'Japanese by Spring' --scholarly article.
• Crossing Western Space, or the HooDoo Detective on the Boundary in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo --scholarly article.
• Nation, Race, and Postmodern Gestures in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada --scholarly article.
• Ishmael Reed's Inductive Narratology of Detection--scholarly article.
• Laughter and Identity in Ishmael Reed's 'Mumbo Jumbo' --scholarly article.
• Monkey Kings and Mojo: Postmodern Ethnic Humor in Kingston, Reed, and Vizenor --scholarly article.
• Images of subversion: Ishmael Reed and the Hoodoo Trickster --scholarly article.

Ntozake Shange

• Shange Poems--go to my "Women's Poetry" page.

Alice Walker

• Walker biography
• Living by Grace--excellent site with 5-part biography.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

• Our Mothers' Gardens--short but good summary of Walker's thesis

Short Stories

• Fight vs. Flight: a re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" --scholarly article.
• Personal Names and Heritage: "Everyday Use"--Hoel's article on African names and the quilt metaphor.
• In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" --Whitsitt's scholarly article.
• Faith Ringgold's Quilt Art --go to my Art Tours page to see this contemporary artist's quilt images of black history/culture; links also to 19th-century tradition of black women's quilts.
• "Not my mother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standing …": Alice Walker's "The Child Who Favored Daughter" as Neo-Slave Narrative --scholarly article.

Female Genital Mutilation

• Archetypal Symbolism in Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy--Moore's scholarly article.
• Review of Warrior Marks (video)
• Female Genital Mutilation--more links here.

The Color Purple

• Gender-Voice-Vernacular--helpful review of a scholarly book on the development of the female voice in novels by Hurston, Morrison, and Walker.
• Multi-disciplinary Approaches to The Color Purple--excellent site (presented at NCTE) and excellent links.
• The Lilith Figure in Morrison's Sula and Walker's Color Purple--Seidel's essay
• Philomela Speaks: Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple--Cutter's scholarly article.
• Aesthetic Modes in Afro-American Fiction: Alice Walker and Ralph Ellison --scholarly article.

Other

• Walker on Flannery O'Connor--article on an early influence on Walker
• A Wind through the Heart--Walker interview on Loving Kindness in a Painful World.
• Who Touches This Touches a Woman--good article referring to a number of Walker's literary works, including her poetry.
• Sexual Healing--Scheckner's review of By the Light of my Father's Smile.
• Stripping Bark: Walker's Poetry in Confronting the Taboo--short essay
• 3 poems and 2 poems

Richard Wright

• Wright biography; Wright biography 2 with many links to historical names and Wright's own comments.
• Richard Wright--Black Boy--more information on the film and on Wright's life and works.

Native Son

• Slouching toward Beastliness: Richard Wright's Anatomy of Thomas Dixon --scholarly article.
• The Loeb and Leopold Case: a neglected source for Richard Wright's native son --scholarly article.
• Black Boys and Native Sons--Howe's review of Wright, Ellison, Baldwin.
• To Blot It All Out: The Politics of Realism in Richard Wright's 'Native Son'--Decoste's scholarly article.
• Invented by Horror: The Gothic and African American Literary Ideology in Native Son--Smethurst scholarly article.
• From No Man's Land to Mother-land: Emasculation and Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels--Dawahare's scholarly article on Lawd Today and Native Son.
• The Power of Blackness: Richard Wright Re-Writes Moby-Dick--Schultz's scholarly article.
• Slouching toward Beastliness: Richard Wright's Anatomy of Thomas Dixon--Eby's scholarly article.
• "A (b)igger's place": Lynching and Specularity in Richard Wright's "Fire and Cloud" and Native Son--scholarly article.
• The Horror of Bigger Thomas: The Perception of Form without Face in Richard Wright's 'Native Son' --scholarly article.
• Farrell's Ethnic Neighborhood and Wright's Urban Ghetto: Two Visions of Chicago's South Side --scholarly article.

Other

• The soul has bandaged moments": reading the African American gothic in Wright's "big boy leaves home," Morrison's beloved, and Gomez's Gilda --scholarly article.
• The uses and hazards of expatriation": Richard Wright's cosmopolitanism in process --scholarly article.
• Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices and World War II-era civic nationalism --scholarly article.
• Richard Wright's long journey from Gorky to Dostoevsky --scholarly article.
• The Man Who Was Almost a Man --etext. Here is copy 2 of "Almost a Man."
• Heath Study Guide for "Almost a Man"--themes, strategies, issues.
• Black Boy: Teacher's Guide--helpful ideas/strategies
• The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness: Richard Wright's Rite of Passage --scholarly article.
• Unmaking the Male Body: The Politics of Masculinity in 'The Long Dream' -- Geiger's scholarly article.
• Mapping the Terrain of Whiteness: Richard Wright's Savage Holiday--Demirtuk's scholarly article.
• Wright's Unpublished Haiku: A World Elsewhere--Ogburn's scholarly article.
• Phenomenology and Textual Power in Richard Wright's "The Man Who Lived Underground"--scholarly article.
• Black Orpheus: Richard Wright's "The Man Who Lived Underground" --scholarly article
• 'The soul has bandaged moments': Reading the African American Gothic in Wright's 'Big Boy Leaves Home,' Morrison's 'Beloved,' and Gomez's 'Gilda' --scholarly article.
• Richard Wright's 'Lawd Today!' And the political Uses of Modernism --scholarly article.
• From No Man's Land to Mother-land: Emasculation and Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels --scholarly article.

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