African American Literature Beyond Race

Fiction by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Octavia E. Butler, and others that isn't focused on racewith original introductions by leading scholars.

It is widely accepted that the canon of African American literature has racial realism at its core: African American protagonists, social settings, cultural symbols, and racial-political discourse. As a result, writings that are not preoccupied with race have long been invisibleunpublished, out of print, absent from libraries, rarely discussed among scholars, and omitted from anthologies.

However, some of our most celebrated African American authorsfrom Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright to James Baldwin and Toni Morrisonhave resisted this canonical rule, even at the cost of critical dismissal and commercial failure. African American Literature Beyond Race revives this remarkable literary corpus, presenting sixteen short stories, novelettes, and excerpts of novelsfrom the postbellum nineteenth century to the late twentieth centurythat demonstrate this act of literary defiance. Each selection is paired with an original introduction by one of today's leading scholars of African American literature.

By casting African Americans in minor roles and marking the protagonists as racially white, neutral, or ambiguous, these works of fiction explore the thematic complexities of human identity, relations, and culture. At the same time, they force us to confront the basic question, "What is African American literature?"

Includes fiction by: James Baldwin Octavia E. Butler Samuel R. Delany Paul Laurence Dunbar Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Chester B. Himes Zora Neale Hurston Nella Larsen Toni Morrison Ann Petry Wallace Thurman Jean Toomer Frank J. Webb Richard Wright and Frank Yerby

Critical Introductions by: Hazel V. Carby John Charles Gerald Early Hazel Arnett Ervin Matthew Guterl Mae G. Henderson George B. Hutchinson Gene Jarrett Carla L. Peterson Amritjit Singh Werner Sollors and Jeffrey Allen Tucker

"[The] essays are succinct, interesting, [and] informative." Journal of African American Studies

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