In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments xi
4. Introduction. Voices Within the Circle: A Historical Overview of African American Literary Criticism 1
5. I The Harlem Renaissance
6. The New Negro 21
7. The Negro in American Literature 32
8. The Gift of Laughter 45
9. The Negro-Art Hokum 51
10. The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain 55
11. Criteria of Negro Art 60
12. Our Literary Audience 69
13. Characteristics of Negro Expression 79
14. II Humanistic/Ethical Criticism and the Protest Tradition
15. Blueprint for Negro Writing 97
16. American Negro Literature 107
17. What White Publishers Won't Print 117
18. New Poets 122
19. Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity 134
20. Everybody's Protest Novel 149
21. Integration and Race Literature 156
22. III The Black Arts Movement
23. The Myth of a "Negro Literature" 165
24. Ethnic Impact in American Literature: Reflections on a Course 172
25. The Black Arts Movement 184
26. Towards A Black Aesthetic 199
27. Cultural Strangulation: Black Literature and the White Aesthetic 207
28. Toward a Definition: Black Poetry of the Sixties (After LeRoi Jones) 213
29. Tripping with Black Writing 224
30. IV Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and the African American Critic
31. Preface to Blackness: Text and Pretext 235
32. I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives 256
33. Generational Shifts and the Recent Criticism of Afro-American Literature 282
34. Literary Production: A Silence in Afro-American Critical Practice 329
35. The Race for Theory 348
36. Appropriative Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism 360
37. Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature 368
38. V Gender, Theory, and African American Feminist Criticism
39. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens 401
40. Toward a Black Feminist Criticism 410
41. New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism 428
42. "The Darkened Eye Restored:" Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women 442
43. Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: An American Grammar Book 454
44. Gender and Afro-Americanist Literary Theory and Criticism 482
45. But What Do We Think We're Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism(s) or My Version of a Little Bit of History 499
46. Some Implications of Womanist Theory 515
47. Useful Sources for Related Reading 523
48. Acknowledgment of Copyrights 526
49. About the Critics 528
50. Index of Selected Names 531