The Cambridge History of the American Novel by
This ambitious literary history traces the American novel from its emergence in the late eighteenth century to its diverse incarnations in the multi-ethnic, multi-media culture of the present day.
To Hell and Back by
How the southern novel works to construct the American concept of race. This study of the construction of race in American culture takes its title from a central story thread in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Abernathy traces this pattern through works by William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Kaye Gibbons, Sara Flanigan, Elizabeth Spencer, Padgett Powell, Ellen Douglas, and Glasgow Phillips. In contrast, African American writers pointedly contest the pattern. Abernathy looks at Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright as exemplars whose works "portray autonomous black characters and white characters who must earn their own salvation, or gain it not at all."
Readings on a "Raisin in the Sun" by
Lorraine Hansberry's play is a psychological study of a working class black family on the south side of Chicago in the 1940s. This collection of essays explores the dominant characters and themes in the play and looks at its representation in various stage and screen adaptations.
Readings on "Black Boy" by 
Shadowing Ralph Ellison by
In Shadowing Ralph Ellison, John Wright traces Ellison's intellectual and aesthetic development and the evolution of his cultural philosophy throughout his long career. The book explores Ellison's published fiction, his criticism and correspondence, and his passionate exchanges with--and impact on--other literary intellectuals during the Cold War 1950s and during the culture wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Wright examines Ellison's body of work through the lens of Ellison's cosmopolitan philosophy of art and culture, which the writer began to construct during the late 1930s.
Heroism and the Black Intellectual by
Before and after writing Invisible Man, novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison fought to secure a place as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. In this sophisticated analysis of Ellison's cultural politics, Jerry Watts examines the ways in which black artists and thinkers attempt to establish creative intellectual spaces for themselves.
The World of Richard Wright by
Richard Wright, the Mississippi-born black writer, saw himself as "an outsider between two cultures," a man searching. In these twelve essays written over the last two decades Michel Fabre, Wright's biographer, follows Wright's search in an investigation of the novelist's life and career. Although the essays were not originally intended as a collection, their organization her underscores Wright's literary and intellectual development.
Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition by
Any review of 20th-century American theatre invariably leads to the term realism. Yet despite the strong tradition of theatrical realism on the American stage, the term is frequently misidentified, and the practices to which it refers are often attacked as monolithically tyrannical, restricting the potential of the American national theatre. This book reconsiders realism on the American stage by addressing the great variety and richness of the plays that form the American theatre canon.
Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright by
After the Second World War Gertrude Stein asked a friend's support in securing a visa for Richard Wright to visit Paris. "I've got to help him, she said. You see, we are both members of a minority group." The brief, little-noted friendship of Stein and Wright began in 1945 with a letter. Over the next fifteen months, the two kept up a lively correspondence which culminated in Wright's visit to Paris in May 1946 and ended with Stein's death a few months later.
Understanding A Raisin in the Sun: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents by 
The City on the Hill from Below by
Within the discipline of American political science And The field of political theory, African American prophetic political critique as a form of political theorizing has been largely neglected.
