The Critical Response to Gloria Naylor: : Critical Responses in Arts and Letters Sharon Felton Greenwood

The Critical Response to Gloria Naylor

Description

As the author of The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, and Bailey's Cafe, Gloria Naylor is widely respected as one of the most important contemporary African American women writers. This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the critical response to her works. The book is divided into sections devoted to each of Naylor's novels. Within each section, seminal articles and book chapters comment on her writing. Special attention is given to African American and feminist perspectives on her canon. In addition, many of the essays discuss the relationship of Naylor's novels to the works of classical authors such as Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and to significant modern writers; thus, the volume charts her sources and influence. While some of the essays have appeared previously and are among the most important responses to her writings, the book also includes several original pieces. An exclusive interview with Naylor, an insightful introduction, and a substantial bibliography are special features of this reference work.

A balance of new and previously published material provides a thoughtful overview of the reception of her works. A thorough introductory essay discusses Naylor's place in American literature and the themes she treats throughout her novels. A chronology summarizes the principal events in her life and career, and a substantial bibliography lists works for further reading. A special feature is an exclusive interview with Naylor, in which she discusses such topics as the role of the politics of gender in her writings, her treatment of women, the relationship between art and morality, her views on race relations, her thoughts on the future of literature and on her most recent projects, and the manner in which she works and writes.

Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse
Chronology
Introduction by Sharon Felton and Michelle C. Loris
The Women of Brewster Place
Beyond the Myth of Confrontation: A Comparative Study of African and African-American Female Protagonists by Ebele Eko
A Womanist Way of Speaking: An Analysis of Language in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, and Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place by Cheryl Lynn Johnson
Black Feminism and Media Criticism: The Women of Brewster Place by Jacqueline Bobo and Ellen Seiter
The Fathomless Dream: Gloria Naylor's Use of the Descent Motif in The Women of Brewster Place by Maxine L. Montgomery
From the Hypocrisy of the Reverend Woods to Mama Day's Faith of the Spirit by James Robert Saunders
Linden Hills
The View from the Outside: Black Novels of Manners by Mary F. Sisney
Dominion and Proprietorship in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day and Linden Hills by Nellie Boyd
Narrative Structure in Linden Hills by Grace E. Collins
The Confluence of Food and Identity in Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills: "What We Eat Is Who We Is" by Charles P. Toombs
'giving sound to the bruised places in their hearts': Gloria Naylor and Walt Whitman by Christine G. Berg
Mama Day
'The Whole Picture' in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day by Susan Meisenhelder
The Magic Circle: Fictions of the Good Mother in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day by Suzanne Juhasz
Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day by Lindsey Tucker
Reconstructing American History: Land and Genealogy in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day by Hélène Christol
'The Only Voice is Your Own': Gloria Naylor's Revision of The Tempest by Gary Storhoff
Gloria Naylor's Mama Day as Magic Realism by Elizabeth T. Hayes
Bailey's Cafe
Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe by Maxine L. Montgomery
Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe: A Panic Reading of Bailey's Narrative by Angela diPace
Ripe Plums and Pine Trees: Using Metaphor to Tell Stories of Violence in the Works of Gloria Naylor and Charles Chesnutt by Karah Stokes
The Dream Defined: Bailey's Cafe and the Reconstruction of American Cultural Identities by William R. Nash
Living with the Abyss in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe by Philip Page
'Two Warring Ideals in One Dark Body': Universalism and Nationalism in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe by Rebecca S. Wood
Interview: The Human Spirit Is a Kick-Ass Thing" by Michelle C. Loris and Sharon Felton
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published	Sep 23 1997
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	296
ISBN	9780313300264
Imprint	Greenwood
Dimensions	9 x 6 inches
Series	Critical Responses in Arts and Letters
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing