Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic

Madhu Dubey (Author)

9780253208552

Paperback / softback, published 22 May 1994

208 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.1 cm, 0.34 kg

"A clear and uncluttered writer, Dubey helps us understand these ideological and literary complexities." —Virginia Quarterly Review
" . . . an important contribution to the study of African-American women's fiction. Not only does it provide a compelling introductory account of the nationalist aesthetic, but it provides a detailed documentation of the way in which each of these novels was received in the critical climate of the seventies." —College Literature
" . . . essential reading for anyone intrigued by the narrative craft and social impact of the novels of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Gayl Jones." —Claudia Tate
"Dubey forcefully articulates the connection between political and personal mediation in these novels with subtlety, depth, and complexity and without obscuring their textuality." —Signs
Drawing upon Black feminist theory, Madhu Dubey shows how writers such as Morrison, Walker, and Jones challenged traditional models of Black female identity and generated their own visions of identity, community, and historical change.

Introduction: Black Feminist Criticism
I. I Am New Man: Black Nationalism and the Black Aesthetic
II. What Did We Lack?: Uses of the Grotesque Mode in The Bluest Eye
III. No Bottom and No Top: Oppositions in Sula
IV. A New World Song: The Blues Form of Corregidora
V. Don't You Explain Me: The Unreadability of Eva's Man
VI. To Survive Whole: The Integrative Aims of Womanism in The Third Life of Grange Copeland
VII. A Crazy Quilt: The Multivalent Pattern of Meridian
Conclusion: Black Women's Fiction in the 1970s
Notes
Index