Depictions of Home in African American Literature

(Hardback)

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In Depictions of Home in African American Literature, Trudier Harris analyzes fictional homespaces in African American literature from those set in the time of slavery to modern urban configurations of the homespace. She argues that African American writers often inadvertently create and follow a tradition of portraying dysfunctional and physically or emotionally violent homespaces. Harris explores the roles race and religion play in the creation of homespaces and how geography, space, and character all influence these spaces. Although many characters in African American literature crave safe, happy homespaces and frequently carry such images with them through their mental or physical migrations, few characters experience the formation of healthy homespaces by the end of their journeys. Harris studies the historical, cultural, and literary portrayals of the home in works from well-known authors such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and August Wilson as well as lesser-studied authors such as Daniel Black, A.J. Verdelle, Margaret Walker, and Dorothy West.

Reviews

Trudier Harris's Depictions of Home in African American Literature is destined to have an impact on the shaping of literary and cultural discourses and on the teaching of African American literature in the future. Harris makes a nuanced, persuasive case for re-examining the tension between idealized notions of home and the actual use of the concept in the production of literary genres. Analyzing works by well-known and lesser-known writers, Harris illuminates how history, race, power, and economics influence the understanding of home as space and place. Thus, the book makes an important contribution to scholarship and pedagogy.

-- Jerry W. Ward Jr., author of The Katrina Papers: A Journal of Trauma and Recovery

Has the field of African American literary studies ever produced a more thoughtful, prolific reader-scholar than Trudier Harris Article after article, book after book, decade after decade, she has consistently pursued a fantastic quest to illuminate the underpinnings of black artistic writing. In Depictions of Home in African American Literature, the newest phase of her journey, she charts explorations of homespaces in works by James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Toni Morrison, Suzan-Lori Parks, A. J. Verdelle, Margaret Walker, and several others. Harris demonstrates that home, a complex and in many cases unsettling place in the literature, offers wonderous creative opportunities for black writers.

-- Howard Rambsy II, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and author of Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers

Depictions of Home in African American Literature is a moving literary experienceabout home in black life and culture. Trudier Harris, in what amounts to a corporatetestimony, rhetorically shouts out that since enslaved Africans arrived in America, homehas not been a hospitable environment or haven of shelter, of happiness or love; rather ithas been the site of a topography of pain. It has been a constant reminder of blackpeople's degraded condition: containment, confinement, control. This situation impedes theindividual from attaining maturity at all levels. Instead of the mythologized Americandream, home is a reminder of the American nightmare.

-- Dolan Hubbard, Morgan State University

Author Bio

Trudier Harris is University Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alabama.