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)

Argues that the exclusion of the literature of women, of black, ethnic, and working-class writers from the established literary canon has less to do with valuations of literary quality than with the social distribution of power. (SRT)

Considers three areas of recent American criticism of "Native Son." (JM)

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)

"Dust Tracks on a Road," author Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, is not a typical black autobiography. Hurston is a complex woman and author who addresses both black and white audiences, shifting the cadences of her voice to invoke a readership that can hear the textures of many voices and respond to an underlying call to a world…

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)

Explores the evolution of Ernest Gaines's vision through his four works of fiction, a movement from a personal and racial history toward history sensed as the rebirth of a people--their liberation. (JM)

Paper presented at Annual Convention of National Council of Teachers of English (Milwaukee, Wis., November 28-30, 1968).

The essay defines and illustrates ways in which the anxiety of separation and the fantasy of dirt play a key role in shaping the response of readers to texts loosely defined as "racial." The work of Wheatley, Wright, and Baldwin, as well as that of some of the new black poets, is examined in relation to the psychoanalytic theories which…

Demonstrates that midway through the decade of the 1970s, Gwendolyn Brooks continues to be inspired by the same subjects; militancy and communal unity, the celebration of blackness, black heroes, love, religion, and the role of the poet, were the burden of her poems in earlier periods. (MB)

Examines the parallels between Ellison's "Invisible Man" and Hamilton's works. States that Hamilton is strong in elucidating the experience of growing up simultaneously black and American and that it is a continuing condemnation of our times when she must reiterate Ellison's words concerning the duality of nonwhite literature. (CRH)

Describes two approaches to the study of the book "Black-Eyed Susans," which presents characters reflecting the qualities of complexity, diversity, and a depth, thus showing the unique and competent way in which black women writers have handled their major preoccupation--the black woman. (JM)

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)