Through the lens of a feminist psychoanalytic framework, Re-Envisioning the Freudian Mother in Southern Literature re-evaluates the mother-child dynamic as one far more complicated than what is present in typical psychoanalytic readings.Under this framework, Jill Goad explores the figure of the mother through Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, William Faulkner's Light in August, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, Eudor...

Marginalized Women and Work in 20th- and 21st-Century British and American Literature and Media examines the intricate relationship between marginalized women and work through critical essays about representations of women’s work in non-canonical literary writings, mass media, and popular culture. Covering a broad range of texts including Paule Marshall’s fiction, Natasha Trethewey’s poetry, and the Netflix series Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, among others, this col...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner"[Morrison] boldly...reimagines and remaps the possibility of America."—Chicago TribuneMorrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a bl...

Winner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association 2018Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association 2018Winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Honor 2018Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction 2018Winner of the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay StudiesThe story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first...

The Young Adult novel is ordinarily characterized as a coming-of-age story, in which the narrative revolves around the individual growth and maturation of a character, but Roberta Trites expands this notion by chronicling the dynamics of power and repression that weave their way through YA books. Characters in these novels must learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they function, including family, church, government, and school.

This compelling study explores the inextricable links between the Nobel laureate’s aesthetic practice and her political vision, through an analysis of the key texts as well as her lesser-studied works, books for children, and most recent novels.Offers provocative new insights and a refreshingly original contribution to the scholarship of one of the most important contemporary American writersAnalyzes the celebrated fiction of Morrison in relation to her critical wri...

Essays exploring contemporary black fiction and examining important issues in current African American literary studies.In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join w...

As part of the contemporary reassessment of trauma that goes beyond Freudian psychoanalysis, Laurie Vickroy theorizes trauma in the context of psychological, literary, and cultural criticism. Focusing on novels by Margaret Atwood, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, and Chuck Palahniuk, she shows how these writers try to enlarge our understanding of the relationship between individual traumas and the social forces of injustice, oppression, and objectification. Further, she...

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is one of the most widely studied of contemporary American authors. Her novels, particularly Beloved, have had a dramatic impact on the American canon and attracted considerable critical commentary. This 2007 Companion introduces and examines her oeuvre as a whole, the first evaluation to include not only her famous novels, but also her other literary works (short story, drama, musical, and opera), her social and literary criticism, and her career as an editor ...

Toni Morrison has written some of the most significant and demanding fiction of the modern age. Her dazzling depictions of African-American experience are studied in high schools and colleges, debated in the media and analyzed by scholars at an astounding rate. This Introduction offers readers a guide to the world of Morrison in all its complexity, from her status as a key player on the global intellectual stage to her unique perspective on American history and her innovative narrative tec...

What effect has the black literary imagination attempted to have on, in Toni Morrison's words, "a race of readers that understands itself to be 'universal' or race-free"? How has black literature challenged the notion that reading is a race-neutral act? Race and the Literary Encounter takes as its focus several modern and contemporary African American narratives that not only narrate scenes of reading but also attempt to intervene in them. The texts interrupt, manage, and manipulate, emplo...

This book examines how African-American writers and visual artists interweave icon and inscription in order to re-present the black female body, traditionally rendered alien and inarticulate within Western discursive and visual systems. Brown considers how the writings of Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, Andrea Lee, Gloria Naylor, and Martha Southgate are bound to such contemporary, postmodern visual artists as Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, K...