MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 04661mam a2200397 a 4500
001 1593732
005 20220608194149.0
008 940512t19951995nju b 001 0 eng
010 $a 94017251
020 $a0838635652 (alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm30543949
035 $9AKJ7347CU
035 $a1593732
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOrLoB$dOrLoB
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aPS169.C57$bC58 1995
082 00 $a810.9/321732$220
245 04 $aThe city in African-American literature /$cedited, and with an introduction by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert Butler.
260 $aMadison :$bFairleigh Dickinson University Press ;$aLondon ;$aCranbury, NJ :$bAssociated University Presses,$c[1995], ©1995.
300 $a265 pages ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 8 $aMore recent African-American literature has also been noteworthy for its largely affirmative vision of urban life. Amiri Baraka's 1981 essay "Black Literature and the Afro-American Nation: The Urban Voice" argues that, from the Harlem Renaissance onward, African-American literature has been "urban shaped," producing a uniquely "black urban consciousness." And Toni Morrison, although stressing that the American city in general has often induced a sense of alienation in many African-American writers, nevertheless adds that modern African-American literature is suffused with an "affection" for "the village within" the city.
520 $aWhile one of the central drives in classic American letters has been a reflexive desire to move away from the complexity and supposed corruption of cities toward such idealized nonurban settings as Cooper's prairies, Thoreau's woods, Melville's seas, Whitman's open road, and Twain's river, nearly the opposite has been true in African-American letters. Indeed the main tradition of African-American literature has been, for the most part, strikingly positive in its vision of the city.
520 8 $aAlthough never hesitant to criticize the negative aspects of city life, classic African-American writers have only rarely suggested that pastoral alternatives exist for African-Americans and have therefore celebrated in a great variety of ways the possibilities of urban living. For Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, the city, despite its many problems, has been a place of deliverance and renewal.
520 8 $aIn the words of Alain Locke, the city provided "a new vision of opportunity" for African-Americans that could enable them to move from an enslaving "medieval" world to a modern world containing the possibility of liberation.
505 0 $aIntroduction / Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert Butler -- 1. The City as Liberating Space in Life and Times of Frederick Douglass / Robert Butler -- 2. The Harlem Renaissance City: Its Multi-Illusionary Dimension / Donald B. Gibson -- 3. The City and Richard Wright's Quest for Freedom / Yoshinobu Hakutani -- 4. "No Street Numbers in Accra": Richard Wright's African Cities / Jack B. Moore -- 5. Stadtluft macht frei!: African-American Writers and Berlin (1892-1932) / Eberhard Bruning -- 6. Richard Wright's Paris / Michel Fabre -- 7. Selves of the City, Selves of the South: The City in the Fiction of William Attaway and Willard Motley / John Conder -- 8. The City as Psychological Frontier in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Charles Johnson's Faith and the Good Thing / Robert Butler -- 9. "But the City Was Real": James Baldwin's Literary Milieu / Fred L. Standley -- 10. If the Street Could Talk: James Baldwin's Search for Love and Understanding / Yoshinobu Hakutani.
505 8 $a11. Metonymy and Synecdoche: The Rhetoric of the City in Toni Morrison's Jazz / Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua -- 12. The Wall and the Mirror in the Promised Land: The City in the Novels of Gloria Naylor / Michael F. Lynch -- 13. The Sensory Assault of the City in Ann Petry's The Street.
650 0 $aAmerican literature$xAfrican American authors$xHistory and criticism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2007100736
650 0 $aCity and town life in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85026256
650 0 $aCities and towns in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85026188
650 0 $aAfrican Americans in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85002009
700 1 $aHakutani, Yoshinobu,$d1935-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79063046
700 1 $aButler, Robert.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n99007266
852 00 $bglx$hPS169.C57$iC58 1995