African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

This new critique of contemporary African-American fiction explores its intersections with and critiques of the Gothic genre. Wester reveals the myriad ways writers manipulate the genre to critique the gothic's traditional racial ideologies and the mechanisms that were appropriated and re-articulated as a useful vehicle for the enunciation of the peculiar terrors and complexities of black existence in America. Re-reading major African American literary texts such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Of One Blood, Cane, Invisible Man, and Corregidora African American Gothic investigates texts from each major era in African American Culture to show how the gothic has consistently circulated throughout the African American literary canon. Front Matter....Pages i-vii Introduction: The Gothic—Old and New, White and Black....Pages 1-32 Front Matter....Pages 33-33 Haunted Lands and Gothic Voices: Slave Narrative Rewritings of Gothic Motifs....Pages 35-66 Babo Speaks Back: White Violence and Black Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Black Fiction....Pages 67-99 “The Dark Sunshine Aboveground”: Questions of Progress and Migration in Toomer and Ellison....Pages 101-146 Front Matter....Pages 147-147 “What, After All, Am I”: The Terrors of (Collective) Identity....Pages 149-183 “Murdered by Piece-Meal”: The Destruction of African American Family in Beloved ....Pages 185-214 The Lost Voices of Tims Creek: Narrative Reinscription in A Visitation of Spirits and “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead”....Pages 215-251 Conclusion: African American Gothic—Uncovering a (Not So) New Tradition....Pages 253-257 Back Matter....Pages 259-285 "African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places is a new study of African American literary interventions into the gothic genre. The book investigates how African American authors have utilized the genre since its very beginnings in America to represent the real horrors of Black life in country haunted by racism. Re-reading major African American literary texts--such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Of One Blood, Cane, Invisible Man, and Corregidora--African American Gothic investigates texts from each major era in African American Culture to show how the gothic has consistently circulated throughout the African American literary canon"-- Provided by publisher This book offers a new critique of contemporary African-American fiction and its intersections with and critiques of the Gothic genre. Wester reveals the myriad ways writers manipulate the genre to critique the gothic's traditional racial ideologies and the mechanisms that were appropriated and re-articulated as a useful vehicle for the enunciation of the peculiar terrors and complexities of black existence in America