Recently added articles from African American Review:
Out of St. Louie into the world unbound: an interview with Colleen J. McElroy.(Interview)
Jun 22, 2008; ... JLH: First, Dr. McElroy, let me thank you for agreeing to grant this interview. Please know that I truly appreciate your time and the opportunity to talk with you. May I begin by asking you what motivated you to become a writer? CJM: During the '60s, when there was a certain ...
Ophelia speaks: resurrecting still lives in Natasha Trethewey's Bellocq's Ophelia.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] In Bellocqs Ophelia, Natasha Trethewey gives voice to the African American sex workers living in New Orleans' Storyville, a legalized red-light district, in the early 1900s. This volume of poetry is based on photographs by Ernest J. Bellocq, a commercial ...
Black crisis shuffle: fiction, race, and simulation.(Darius James's Negrophobia: An Urban Parable and Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle)(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Over the past two decades, a sense of impending calamity has held sway in African American literary and cultural studies. Cornel West frames this period as one of "postmodern crisis" and laments the "decline in [black] popular mobilization and the decline of political participation and the ...
This Jamaican family: the word, and dreams.(Essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... But now, whether or not you accept it, you understand that this is finally the message, delivered by them in shouting silences and stiffened backs whenever you summon the bravery to refer, even obliquely, to that: the message, simply, that that, as far as they are concerned, doesn't exist ...
"Manumission and marriage?": freedom, family, and identity in Charles Johnson's Oxherding Tale.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... My knowledge, my clothes, my language, even, were shamefully second-hand, made by, and perhaps for, other men. I was living a lie, that was the heart of it. My argument was: whatever my origin, I would be wholly responsible for the shape I gave myself in the future, for shirting myself ...
Alternatives to the "talking cure": black music as traumatic testimony in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... In her critical inquiry Bread Out of Stone, Caribbean Canadian author Dionne Brand gestures to the implicit correlation between Freudian psychoanalysis and black music: <Pre>Someone asks when did blues piano develop ... "beyond thetwelve-bar blues." She replies, ...
Lost theaters of African American internationalism: diplomacy and Henry Francis Downing in Luanda and London.(Report)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Recent critical approaches to the global travels and connections made by African American writers and texts have revealed much regarding black internationalism's relation to artistic innovation, U. S. imperialism, and the formation of black transnational consciousnesses. At the forefront ...
Black "like me": (mis) recognition, the racial gothic, and the post-1967 mixed-race movement in Danzy Senna's Symptomatic.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Symptomatic, Danzy Senna's second novel, is a dense and disturbing satire of the post-1967 mixed-race movement. Tersely written, "hard-edged and kind of minimalist," as Senna describes it in an interview with Rebecca Weber, it invokes the thrillers and film noir of Roman Polanski, Alfred ...
"What would be on the other side?": spectrality and spirit work in Toni Morrison's Paradise.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... In a 1983 interview, Toni Morrison told Nellie McKay: "I am very happy to hear that my books haunt. That is what I work very hard for, and for me it is an achievement when they haunt readers, as you say" (146). In her seventh novel, Paradise, Morrison returns to this thematic thread of ...
In memoriam Pinkie Gordon Lane.(In memoriam)
Jun 22, 2008; ... When Pinkie Gordon Lane passed away on December 3, 2008, Louisiana and the nation lost a gifted lyric poet, whose long and distinguished career as an educator, administrator, community leader, and racial pathbreaker culminated in her appointment as the first African American Poet Laureate ...
San Quentin, 1900.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> San Quentin, 1900 His life wasn't worth much,even less on the streetwhere he lookedbut never found work. He was the first childof former slaves,born free, he was told,though he never sawthe proof. There was gold in ...
Tituba.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> Tituba Did she whisper the devil'ssecret name to young girlsgathered in a circleby the winter fireplace? Or did she tell them aboutthe island where she was born,the mambo priestesswho healed with palm oil,a dance for the mountain ...
Coltrane's Naima Narrative Transmigrated by Himself.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> Coltrane's Naima Narrative Transmigrated by Himself tra-la-de-dahdaaa tra-de-dab tra-tra-de-daaahda-de-daaahh formerly of Philly via Hamlet, North Carolina onhis way to brighter in sound good all around(formerly a hard-shell case known ...
Fallout.(Short story)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Twenty-four biscuits steam like cow pats on the cookie sheet. When they are cool, Delphine will top each one with a generous splodge of marshmallow Fluff and squash them into sandwiches. Twelve in all: enough for ten children, one for Hank when he gets home from work, and an extra one for ...
Color struck.(Short story)
Jun 22, 2008; ... She sneezed over the soda. Alveeta saw it clearly from where she stood, beside stools that were empty but not available to her. Mrs. Davis had the full cup in her hand when she threw back her head and brought it down in a loud, wet, sneeze. She dabbed her nose with a handkerchief, then ...
Cornetta's roominghouse.(Short story)
Jun 22, 2008; ... "I know you ain't lost your mind so far as to think vaseline is floorwax." Uninvited, Cornetta avoided the slickened wood floor and stepped direct onto the rag rug. Forbidding she stood, looking down at Mrs. Larry Simmons, her first-floor boarder, trembling and hunched over the ...
Then There Is Nothing.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> Then There Is Nothing I can smell the dust here.Maybe that is whyI keep coming back.Today the sunis close to the window.I push my hand againstthe glass. Cold. Outsideblue sky, clouds move softly.Leaves in masses whirllike crowds ...
Thread.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> ThreadAs I remember it every thread is in red. As I remember it is not how it was. Sometimes words can go through the body just to come back, a few hours later, sometimes years, sometimes seconds. When you are a child.(I am a ...
Mulatto.(Poem)
Jun 22, 2008; ... <Pre> Mulatto Grew up in Texas the only one in schoolThe only mule in Round Rock not in Round RockAs much in Austin as in Round Rock butNot in between the only mule at the school Across the street but there was one black girlAnd one black boy much older boy ...
Knocking on doors.(Short story)
Jun 22, 2008; ... "Open the door, Taco!" Taco and Chu-Chu are in the room at Number Four, Alley Nine, and Section Two, of the American compound. Have been there all night. Sleeping. Taco's friend, Jesu, told me that they were indeed in there only after I threatened to knock on every damned door ...