Contemporary African American Literature

Foreword / Mat Johnson, University of Houston; Acknowledgments Introduction / Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner, Penn State University I. Politics of Publishing, Pedagogy, and Readership 1. The Point of Entanglement: Modernism, Diaspora, and Toni Morrison's Love / Houston A. Baker, Jr., Vanderbilt University; 2. The Historical Burden that Only Oprah Can Bear: African American Satirists and the State of the Literature / Darryl Dickson-Carr, Southern Methodist University; 3. Black is Gold: African American Literature, Literacy, and Pedagogical Legacies / Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas; 4. Hip Hop Fiction (feat. Women Writers); or, Other Things Hip Hop Music Has Taught Black Fiction / Eve Dunbar, Vassar College; 5. Street Literature and the Mode of Spectacular Writing: Popular Fiction between Sensationalism, Education, Politics and Entertainment / Kristina Graaff, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin II. Alternative Genealogies 6. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Slave: Visual Artistry as Agency in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery / Evie Shockley, Rutgers University; 7. Variations on the Theme: Black Family, Nationhood, Lesbianism and Sadomasochistic Desire in Marci Blackman's Po Man's Child / Carmen Phelps, University of Toledo; 8. Bad-Brother-Man: Black Folk Figure Narratives in Comics / James Braxton Peterson, Bucknell University III. Beyond Authenticity 9. Sampling the Sonics of Sex (Funk) in Paul Beatty's Slumberland / L. H. Stallings, Indiana University; 10. Urkel No More? Black Geeks in Contemporary Black Literature / Alexander Weheliye, Northwestern University; 11. The Crisis of Authenticity in Contemporary African American Literature / Richard Schur, Drury University; 12. Someday We'll All Be Free: Contemporary Fiction and the Post-Oppression Narrative / Martha Southgate, Brooklyn Novelist IV. Pedagogical Approaches and Implications 13. Untangling History, Dismantling Fear: Teaching Tayari Jones's Leaving Atlanta / Trudier Harris, UNC-Chapel Hill, Emerita; 14. Reading Kyle Baker's Nat Turner with a Group of Collegiate Black Men / Howard Rambsy II, Southern Illinois University; 15. Toward the Theoretical Practice of Conceptual Liberation: Using An Africana Studies Approach to Reading African American Literary Texts / Greg Carr, Howard University and Dana Williams, Howard University Afterword / Alice Randall, Vanderbilt Novelist Annotated Bibliography / Pia Deas, Lincoln University and David Green, St. Johns University; Index