A Spy in the Enemy's Country: The Emergence of Modern Black Literature

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University of Iowa Press, 1989 - African Americans - 287 pages
In Part One I examine the literary, historical, and social contexts within which the emerging Black literature took root. Conditions encouraged certain qualities in the literature, qualities which have persisted as racism has persisted: 1) a collective point of view; 2) the mimetic mode; 3) a sensitivity to the play of power; 4) a consciousness of the fragility of the self; 5) a predilection for the moral imperative; and 6) a recurrence of the tactic of masking. The preoccupation with identity and the self, among the writers considered in Part Two, grows out of the pressures explored in Part One. - p. x.

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Contents

Taste the Perception of Difference and White Images
10
The Day Had Passed Forever When I Could Be a Slave
48
Masking in Black
69
Copyright

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