Women And Race In Contemporary U.S. Writing

by Kelly Lynch Reames

Overview

This study looks to novels and autobiographies to discover how contemporary writers have imagined possibilities for relationships between African American and white women that overcome the stereotypical patterns of racism, focusing on works by William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, Audre Lorde, Kaye Gibbons, Elizabeth Cox, Sherley Anne Williams, and Toni Morrison.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230260429
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	01/09/2007
Series:	American Literature Readings in the 21st Century Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	264 KB

About the Author

Kelly Lynch Reames is Assistant Professor of English at Western Kentucky University, where she teaches courses on American literature. She has published works on William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and other U.S. writers. She is currently working on a project on Lillian Hellman.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
"Sisters in Sin": Discourse, Discipline, and Difference in Requiem for a Nun     29
"The Image of You, True or False, Last[s] a Lifetime": Lillian Hellman's Memories of Black Women     49
"The Very House of Difference": Audre Lorde's Autobiographies     73
"Just This Side of Colored": Ellen Foster and Night Talk     91
"Who Can You Friend With, Love With Like That?": Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose     113
"A Girl from a Whole Other Race": Toni Morrison's "Recitatif," Beloved, and Paradise     131
Coda. Getting Past White Women's Fantasies: Living Out Loud     157
Notes     161
Works Cited     177
Index     185

Editorial Reviews

'This is a solid study of 'the complexities of interracial friendship' among black and white women in a variety of American literary texts. Reames presents a sobering argument about the lasting legacies of racial antagonism as well as the ways in which a range of American women writers work to critique and reimagine ideas and practices of racial difference.' - Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University

'In this important new work, Reames presents cogent analysis of relationships between African American and white women, both in and through American literature.By examining an impressiverange of texts, Reames demonstrates how the tensions between black women and white women cannot begin tobesolved until white women work to become more aware of their whiteness.By interrogating literary depictions of relationships between black and white women, she exploreshow thoughtful readers - especially white feminists - can learn to raise their consciousnesses as they read works by and about black women and thus seek to prevent a reinscription of racist hegemony.While engaging her predecessors, Reames's original perspectives provide a needed addition to scholarship on race and gender dynamics in American literature.' - Kristine Yohe, Associate Professor of English, Northern Kentucky University

From the Publisher