Traces the development of the new Black aesthetic criticism, describing the works of writers such as Addison Gayle, Houston Baker, and Amiri Baraka. Points out how, despite many parallels with mainstream White criticism, Black criticism is ignored by the literary establishment. (ARH)

Discusses and appraises the work of Nobel Prize winning black author Toni Morrison. Locates thematic and stylistic antecedents in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ernest Hemingway. Compares and contrasts Morrison's work with Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and discusses the critical reception of black authors. (MJP)

Broadens the space for a discussion of reading based in some degree of theorizing that has already occurred within the community of African-American critics and scholars. Argues that those engaged in reader-oriented approaches to literature need to intervene in the canonical debates and the critical practices of noncanonical literatures through…

Considers the correlation between the role of community in the life of Toni Morrison and her work. Morrison grew up in the close-knit, multiracial, steel mill town of Lorain, Ohio. Her work often evokes a strong sense of place coupled with a need for communal belonging. (MJP)

Discusses problems that arise in teaching Black literature to students who know little of the minority culture out of which the literature comes. Argues that students whose experience is limited will still gain from their contact with such works. (AA)

Describes some of the beneficial effects of studying the heritage embodied in Afro-American Literature. (RB)

One of the Afro-American writers who spoke out clearly during the postreconstruction period was Albery A. Whitman (1851-1902). A romantic poet, Whitman produced seven volumes of poetry. His profound belief in freedom and equality for his race is expressed forcefully in two long narrative poems, "Not a Man and Yet a Man" and "The…

Describes the way that three novels by African-American women--"Browngirl, Brownstones," by Paule Marshall; "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison; and "The Third Life of Grange Copeland," by Alice Walker--captures the shared experiences of Black women. (DB)

Argues that the clarity of Ishmael Reed's later novels is part of a complex and innovative style that is "rhetorical" in the broadest sense. Notes that his narrative strategies are constructed primarily on the way the audience will read and even misread the novel. Explores the rhetorical workings in Reed's novel "Reckless…

Recent Afro-American initiation novels stressing the community as the source of life stand in antithesis to novels by Black and White Americans describing a life of isolation, negation, and alienation. (DD)

Discusses the development of a black aesthetic and illustrates its reflection in contemporary literature and culture. Available from: North American Review, University of Northern Iowa, 1222 W. 27th Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613, $6.00 per year, sc $1.50. (KS)

Black feminist novelists continue to take issue with males who try to theorize about their artistic creations. Male attitudes toward black women's novels have been characterized as either apathetic, chauvinistic, or paternalistic. Black feminist writers should heed the call for collective racial progress and collective theoretical progress. The…

College English teachers today, in responding to black writers' demands for a forum, frequently resemble the old carpetbaggers, in that their teaching of black literature or composition reveals little or no background knowledge of the subject, with the course often being only a smoke screen for an informal study in something else. Such…

Discusses the acute representations of familial and historical relations as depicted in Octavia Butler's novel, "Kindred." Suggests that the novel is best understood as a novel of memory, functioning as a means of reconstructing a sense of place and home. (HB)