{"title":"African American \u0026 Black","description":"\u003cp\u003eAfrican American \u0026amp; Black literary criticism examines the themes, styles, and historical contexts that shape Black literature and its critical reception. This category focuses on scholarship addressing the narratives and voices within African American and Black communities, analyzing their literary traditions, cultural identities, and responses to social issues. It differs from general literary criticism by centering Black writers' contributions and the specific cultural frameworks that inform their work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReaders can approach this subject to investigate how African American \u0026amp; Black writers engage with literary forms and societal change, or to compare theoretical approaches unique to this field. To narrow your research, consider exploring works organized by particular movements, periods, or cultural influences, or by analyzing criticism devoted to a specific author or set of texts within the African American \u0026amp; Black tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"book-american-negro-poetry-revised-edition-9780156135399-new","title":"The Book of American Negro Poetry: Revised Edition","description":"A landmark anthology of forty poets that brought serious attention to writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. The poetry, the prefaces, and Johnson's critical notes have made this book a classic. 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Walker, Dark Symphony contains ninety-one selections of writings from the nineteenth and twentieth century.","brand":"FREE PR","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":50167259627810,"sku":"9780029095409-new","price":25.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780029095409.jpg?v=1753563908"},{"product_id":"practical-virtues-readings-sermons-prayers-hymns-african-american-family-9780060090616-new","title":"Practical Virtues: Readings, Sermons, Prayers, and Hymns for the African American Family","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs pastors of one of New York City's largest churches, Reverend Floyd Flake and his wife, Reverend M. Elaine McCollins Flake, are frequently sought after by those in need of guidance. Throughout their ministry, the Flakes have drawn from a distinguished array of stories, letters, hymns, narratives, and poems -- from James Baldwin and Maya Angelou to Arthur Ashe and Colin Powell -- to inspire families to live ethically in an often unethical world. Now, with Practical Virtues, they've gathered their favorites into a single, indispensable collection, paired with spiritual exercises for the soul.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HARPER PAPERBACKS","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":50167259824418,"sku":"9780060090616-new","price":17.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780060090616.jpg?v=1753563910"},{"product_id":"beyond-emancipation-maroon-freedoms-us-literature-1850-1862-9798855802580-new","title":"Beyond Emancipation: Maroon Freedoms in US Literature, 1850-1862","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eExplores how African American literary representations of maroons in the decade leading up to the Civil War complicate conventional narratives and geographies of slavery and freedom in the United States.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeyond Emancipation\u003c\/i\u003e revisits classic works of nineteenth-century American literature, especially by Black writers, to uncover a hidden history of maroons-enslaved people who ran away but remained hidden in the South. Sean Gerrity argues that literary depictions of \"small acts\" of marronage reveal an expanded sense of what freedom might look like and where and when it might occur. While taking care not to romanticize historical realities, Gerrity vividly shows how works by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Martin Delany gesture toward possibilities for Black freedom-making beyond legal emancipation, liberalism, and the white abolitionist literary tradition passed down from Harriet Beecher Stowe. While \u003ci\u003eBeyond Emancipation\u003c\/i\u003e focuses on texts produced during the brief period between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Civil War, the book's range of reference and implications are broad, unsettling still dominant ideas and engaging pressing questions in literary criticism, history, geography, and Black studies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ST UNIV OF NEW YORK PR","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51543358964002,"sku":"9798855802580-new","price":127.35,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9798855802580.jpg?v=1776377234"},{"product_id":"i-know-why-caged-bird-sings-9780812980028-new","title":"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings","description":"\u003cb\u003eMaya Angelou's memoir is a modern American classic, capturing the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings\u003c\/i\u003e liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.\"--James Baldwin\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local \"powhitetrash.\" At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and must live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love towards herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (\"I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare\") will allow her to be free rather than imprisoned. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoetic and powerful, \u003ci\u003eI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings\u003c\/i\u003e will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.","brand":"RANDOM HOUSE","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51578394804514,"sku":"9780812980028-new","price":17.1,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780812980028.jpg?v=1777405094"},{"product_id":"morrison-9780593732915-new","title":"On Morrison","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER - NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR BY \u003ci\u003eTHE NEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTHE NEW YORKER, VULTURE, ESQUIRE, THE GUARDIAN, BOOK RIOT \u003c\/i\u003eAND \u003ci\u003eLIT HUB\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor--\"a revelatory encounter with the Nobel laureate's oeuvre\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, \u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"A landmark appraisal of the great novelist's work . . . I have waited years for this book.\"--Laila Lalami, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Thrilling . . . ingenious.\"--Wesley Morris, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"In this lavish yet clear-eyed study, Serpell shows how Morrison breathed new life into the novel. This is literary criticism at its finest.\"--\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Revelatory . . . will captivate everyone from newcomers to [Morrison's] most devoted fans.\"\u003ci\u003e--Vulture\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Invigorating . . . an informed, accessible literary analysis.\"\u003ci\u003e--The Wall Street Journal \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Resplendent . . . fresh and smart . . . [a] work of swaggering genius.\"\u003ci\u003e--Bookforum\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"As gripping as it is intellectually brilliant . . . a classic.\"--Cathy Park Hong\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, \"she is our only truly canonical black female writer--and her work is highly complex.\" In \u003ci\u003eOn Morrison, \u003c\/i\u003e Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre--her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry--with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, \u003ci\u003eOn Morrison\u003c\/i\u003e is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.","brand":"HOGARTH PR","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51578637484322,"sku":"9780593732915-new","price":25.14,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780593732915.jpg?v=1777410493"},{"product_id":"language-as-liberation-reflections-american-canon-9780593802748-new","title":"Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon","description":"\u003cb\u003eNobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eBeloved \u003c\/i\u003eToni Morrison investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation's collective unconscious.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America's most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country's canonical white writers imagined in their work. Morrison sees these fictions as a form of creation and projection, arguing that they helped manufacture American racial identity--these \"Africanist\" presences are \"the shadow that makes light possible,\" as Morrison writes, and the reflections of their authors' own deepest fears, insecurities, and longings. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith profound erudition and wit, Morrison breaks wide open the American conception of race with energetic, enlivening readings of the nation's canon, revealing that our liberation from these diminishing notions comes through language. \"How,\" Morrison wonders, \"could one speak of profit, of economy, of labor, or progress, of suffragism, or Christianity, of the frontier, of the formation of new states, the acquisition of new lands . . . of practically anything a new nation concerns itself with--without having as a referent, at the heart of the discourse or defining its edges, the presence of Africans and\/or their descendants?\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo read these lectures, collected here for the first time, is to encounter Morrison, not just the writer but also the teacher, in the most penetrating and subversive way yet. With a foreword by her son Ford Morrison and an introduction by her Princeton comparative literature colleague Claudia Brodsky, \u003ci\u003eLanguage as Liberation\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelatory collection that promises to redefine the American canon.","brand":"KNOPF","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51578645250338,"sku":"9780593802748-new","price":25.13,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780593802748.jpg?v=1777410731"},{"product_id":"roots-african-american-drama-anthology-early-plays-1858-1938-9780814321423-new","title":"Roots of African American Drama: An Anthology of Early Plays, 1858-1938","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhile many historically significant or interesting plays by white playwrights are easily found in anthologies, few by early African American writers are equally accessible. Indeed until the 1970s, almost none of these early plays could be locatedoutside of a library.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Roots of African American Drama fills this gap. Five of the thirteen scripts included here have never been in print, and only three others are presently available anywhere. The plays represent a variety of styles--allegory, naturalism, realism, melodrama, musical comedy, and opera. Four are full length, eight are one-acts, and one is a skit. Their subjects include slavery, share-cropping, World War I, vaudeville, religion, and legend and mythology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In making their selections, the editors used a variety of criteria to insure each play is dramatically sound and historically important. They also searched for those scripts that were unjustly consigned to obscurity. Each selection begins with headnotes that place it in its historical and cultural context. 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Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.","brand":"PENGUIN GROUP","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":52605446947106,"sku":"9780140189988-new","price":13.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9780140189988.jpg?v=1790040908"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.albakireads.com\/collections\/literary-criticism-african-american-black.oembed","provider":"AlbakiReads","version":"1.0","type":"link"}