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Article: Cheryl A. Wall. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition.(Book review)
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- June 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cheryl A. Wall. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2005. 288 pp. $19.95.
Worrying the line, as a trope of repetition with a difference, expands upon Henry Louis Gates's definition of Signifyin(g). Gates places a particular value in employing this trope to highlight how black writers, at least those who read and critique other black texts, reference each other in an act of rhetorical self-definition or what he calls a "black form of intertextuality." He details these relationships of influence in The Sighting Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticms: "[M]uch of the ...