African American Literature in Transition, 1990-2000: Volume 16

The 1990s as a decade when African American literature and the study thereof become part of public and popular discourse.

The 1990s in African American literature points the way to aesthetic and market trends that have become part of everyday life. This book is for scholars and teachers eager to gain a historical perspective on a decade of profound racial transformation.The book contains eleven chapters of original research whose objects of study span the fields of literary and cultural production, from novels, poetry, and plays to music, television, and film. This multimedia context is essential for understanding the development of African American literature in the 1990s, and each chapter provides an ample bibliography of primary and secondary sources for interdisciplinary study of the decade. The book's conceptual coherence is enhanced by dividing the eleven chapters into three thematic clusters: 'Culture, Commerce, and Criticism,' 'Gender, Genre, and Generations,' and 'Poetry, Performance, and Parody.' These clusters draw connections not only between their constituent chapters but also across media and bibliographies, bringing literary, historical, discursive, and cultural analysis to bear on the Black 1990s. The book's rationale and structure are clearly described in the introduction, which doubles as an outline of each chapter's argument and place within the volume.