Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's WritingTurning on inspired interpretations of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange, Workings of the Spirit weighs current critical approaches to black women's writing against Baker's own explanation of the founding, theoretical state of Afro-American intellectual history. "Brilliant, and tenderly riveted to gratitude as an indispensable facet of analysis, Houston Baker arrives, yet again, bearing the loveliest flowers of his devotion and delight: thank God he's here!"—June Jordan |
Contents
The Daughters Departure Theory History and LateNineteenthCentury Black Womens Writing | 1 |
Theoretical Returns | 42 |
Workings of the Spirit Conjure and the Space of Black Womens Creativity | 73 |
On Knowing Our Place | 104 |
The Changing Instant | 166 |
Toward the Iterability of ONE | 206 |
AFTERWORD | 213 |
NOTES | 219 |
| 234 | |
| 235 | |
Other editions - View all
Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing Houston A. Baker, Jr. No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
12 Million Black aesthetic African Afro Afro-American women's Afro-American women's expressivity Afro-American women's writing American women's autobiographical Bachelard Bessie Bessie Smith Bigger Black Studies black women blackmale blues Brent called Chapter citations refer classical concubinage conjure woman consciousness critical critique Cypress and Indigo daughters departure Derrida différance discourse domestic dream Ellison essay expressive cultural feminist gender girls Harlem Renaissance hereafter marked hole Hurston's imagistic instant Iola Leroy Kitty Brown Knowing Our Place literary living male Mary metalevels Million Black Voices Morrison's mother move mulatto Mules mythomania narrative narrator Negro novel numbers in parentheses Phallus phenomenology poetic image poetics of Afro-American production resonant Richard Wright Sassafrass seems sexual Shadrack Shange's signifier slave slavery South southern space spirit story suggest Sula Sula's tell theory tion tive Toni Morrison traditional vernacular voodoo women's creativity words Wright York Zora Neale Hurston