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Explores the metafictional strategies of contemporary African novels rather than characterizing them primarily as a response to colonialism. [Evan_Maina_Mwangi]_Africa_Writes_Back_to_Self_Me_bookos-z1.org_

In Honoring the Ancestors, Donald H. Matthews affirms once and for all the African foundation of African-American religious practice. His analysis of the methods employed by historians, social scientists, and literary critics in the study of African-American religion and the Negro spiritual leads him to develop a methodology that encompasses contemporary scholarship without compromising the integrity of African-American religion and culture. Exploring the works of such seminal black scholars as W. E. B. DuBois, Melville Herskovits, and Zora Neale Hurston, Matthews traces the early development of the African-centered approach to the interpretation of African-American religion. [Donald_H._Matthews]_Honoring_the_Ancestors_An_Af_bookos-z1.org_

The Black Mind was first published in 1974. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The comprehensive account of the development of African literature from its beginnings in oral tradition to its contemporary expression in the writings of Africans in various African and European languages provides insight, both broad and deep, into the Black intellect. Professor Dathorne examines the literature of Africans as spoken or written in their local languages and in Latin, French, Portuguese, and English. This extensive survey and interpretation gives the reader a remarkable pathway to an understanding of the Black imagination and its relevance to thought and creativity throughout the world. The author himself lived in Africa for ten years, and his view in not that of an outsider, since it is as a Black man that he speaks about Black people. Throughout the book, a major theme is the demonstration that, despite slavery and colonialism, Africans remained very close to their own cultures. Professor Dathorne shows that African writers may be, like some Afro-American writers, "marginal men," but that they are Black men and it is as Black men that they feel the nostalgia of their past and the corrosive influences of their present. The chapters are divided into sections: Tradition; Heritage; The Presence of Europe; and Crosscurrents. In the final chapters the author extends the thread of continuity to the New World—Africa as present in the work of Black writers in the United States and in the Caribbean. [O.R._Dathorne]_Black_Mind_bookos-z1.org_

Africanism and Authenticity traces the continuing influence of West African women's traditions and societies on late-twentieth-century literature by African-American women. The first half of the book focuses on how these influences permeate both theme and imagery in novels by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Gloria Naylor. The second half focuses on recent neo-slave narratives as works that sprang from the African experience rather than works that merely parallel the original slave narratives. Levin is one of the first writers to discuss Toni Morrison's Paradise and Gloria Naylor's Men of Brewster Place. Amy Levin's study is the first to focus so explicitly on the importance of West African women's traditions in contemporary writing by African-American women. Levin challenges feminist studies of these writings by revealing the extent to which those studies remain Eurocentric, even as they question Afrocentric readings that draw only on African male traditions as if they were the same as women's practices. In addressing these issues, Africanism and Authenticity helps to refine the current discussion of literary authenticity and documents a distinctive tradition that will be helpful to all future studies of African-American women's writing. [AMY_K._LEVIN]_Africanism_and_Authenticity_in_Afri_bookos-z1.org_

Providing a useful overview of the current state of black British writing and pointing towards future developments in the field, this edited collection examines the formation of a black British Canon including writers, dramatists, filmmakers and artists. The essays included discuss the textual, political and cultural history of black British and the term "black British" itself. [Gail_Low__Marion_Wynne-Davies]_A_Black_British_Ca_bookos-z1.org_