Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic by
"A clear and uncluttered writer, Dubey helps us understand these ideological and literary complexities." --Virginia Quarterly Review " . . . an important contribution to the study of African-American women's fiction. Not only does it provide a compelling introductory account of the nationalist aesthetic, but it provides a detailed documentation of the way in which each of these novels was received in the critical climate of the seventies." --College Literature " . . . essential reading for anyone intrigued by the narrative craft and social impact of the novels of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Gayl Jones." --Claudia Tate "Dubey forcefully articulates the connection between political and personal mediation in these novels with subtlety, depth, and complexity and without obscuring their textuality." --Signs Drawing upon Black feminist theory, Madhu Dubey shows how writers such as Morrison, Walker, and Jones challenged traditional models of Black female identity and generated their own visions of identity, community, and historical change.
Octavia E. Butler by
"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.
Searching for Sycorax: Black women's hauntings of contemporary horror by
Searching for Sycorax highlights the unique position of Black women in horror as both characters and creators. Kinitra D. Brooks creates a racially gendered critical analysis of African diasporic women, challenging the horror genre's historic themes and interrogating forms of literature that have often been ignored by Black feminist theory. Brooks examines the works of women across the African diaspora, from Haiti, Trinidad, and Jamaica, to England and the United States, looking at new and canonized horror texts by Nalo Hopkinson, NK Jemisin, Gloria Naylor, and Chesya Burke. These Black women fiction writers take advantage of horror's ability to highlight U.S. white dominant cultural anxieties by using Africana folklore to revise horror's semiotics within their own imaginary.
Typical Girls : The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips by
Winner, 2022 Charles Hatfield Award from the Comics Studies Society In the years following 1975, a group of female-created comic strips came to national attention in a traditionally male-dominated medium. Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips uncovers the understudied and developing history of these strips, defining and exploring the ramifications of this expression of women's roles at a time of great change in history and in comic art. This impressive, engaging, and timely study illustrates how these comics express the complexities of women's experiences, especially as such experiences were shaped by shifting and often competing notions of womanhood and feminism. Including the comics of Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Nicole Hollander (Sylvia), Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook's Comeek), Barbara Brandon-Croft (Where I'm Coming From), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Jan Eliot (Stone Soup), Typical Girls is an important history of the representation of womanhood and women's rights in popular comic strips.