Transcendence and the Africana Literary Enterprise

Christel N. Temple

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498545099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Africana literary critic and cultural theory scholar, Christel N. Temple, whose groundbreaking books, Literary Pan-Africanism: History, Contexts, and Criticism (2005) and Literary Spaces: Introduction to Comparative Black Literature (2007),have been some of the most influential models of contemporary Africana Studies-based literary criticism, responds to the demand for a core disciplinary source that comprehensively defines and models literary praxis from the vantage point of Africana Studies. This highly anticipated seminal study finally institutionalizes the discipline's literary enterprise. Framing the concept of transcendence, she covers over a dozen traditional African American works in an original and thought-provoking analysis that places canonical approaches in enlightened discourse with Africana studies reader-response priorities.

This study makes traditional literature come alive in conversation with topics of masculinity, womanism, Black Lives Matter, humor, Pan-Africanism, transnationalism, worldview, the subject place of Africa, cultural mythology, hero dynamics, Black psychology, demographics, history, Black liberation theology, eulogy, cultural memory, Afro-futurism, the Kemetic principle of Maat, social justice, rap and hip hop, Diaspora, and performance.Scholars now have a focused Africana Studies text—for both introductory and advanced literature courses—to capture the power of the African American literary canon while modeling the most dynamic practical applications of humanities-to-social science practices.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Canon and the Africana Worldview
• 1 Literary Africology
• 2 Twentieth Century Black Lives Mattered: Reading Male Mortality in The Souls of Black Folk and The Living Is Easy
• 3 “Can’t the Race Stand a Joke?”: Humor and Pan-African Folk Negotiation in Banjo
• 4 Africana Literary Methods and the Bibliographic Shift in Iola Leroy and The Street
• 5 Autobiography and Documentary Forms of Here I Stand as Black Cultural Mythology
• 6 A Raisin In The Sun and the Tradition of Literary Pan-Africanism
• 7 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the Demographic Literary Standard
• 8 Parable of the Sower’s Earthseed as Black Liberation Theology
• 9 Self-Eulogy as Prophetic Afrofuturism in Narratives of John Henrik Clarke and Malcolm X
• 10 Maat and the Psychology of Justice in the Morrisonesque Community of Perfect Peace
• 11 Beyoncé? No. Lauryn Hill? Yes: Interludes of Womanist Hip-Hop and the Traditional Activist Genre
• 12 Broadway as Text: Africana History on Stage in Hamilton and Aida
• 13 Image and Verse, Music and Media: Diasporic Performance of Cultural Memory
• Conclusion: An Atmosphere of Freedom
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author