239745 African American Women Writers (BS) (WiSe 2012/2013)

Although Phillis Wheatley was the first published black author in the US, it would take nearly 200 years for African American women writers to gain major recognition. While this course will consider the reasons for this, both literary and socio-political, as part of our background information, our main task will involve an intergenerational inquiry into selected African American women’s literature. Using the tools of contemporary cultural criticism, feminist literary analysis and post-colonial theory, we will engage in an intergenerational and intertextual dialogue of six writers (1 poet, and 5 prose writers) whose historical, special and cultural imperatives differ widely. The method will be necessarily comparative since we will be looking at more than a half century of black women’s writing. The books we will read and a preliminary study question for each follow:

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God
Discussion question: Why does the traditional folk novel seem appropriate for Hurston’s period and theme?

Alice Walker, Meridian
Discussion question: How does Walker use personal transformation to map social change?

Audre Lorde, Zami
How are Lorde’s choices influenced by gender and sexual identity?

Toni Morrison, Beloved
Discussion Question: How does Morrison revise and challenge the conventions of the slave narrative?

Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah
Discussion Question: How is narrative history reconfigured in a feminine poetic voice?

Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
Discussion Question: What questions does Danticat pose for the female immigrant experience?