CONTENTS

List of contributors
Chronology of major works and events, 1645–2000
Introduction
Maryemma Graham
Part I: The long journey: the African American novel and history
1 Freeing the voice, creating the self: the novel and slavery
Christopher Mulvey
2 Reconstructing the race: the novel after slavery
M. Giulia Fabi
3 The novel of the Negro Renaissance
George Hutchinson
4 Caribbean migration, ex-isles, and the New World novel
Giselle Liza Anatol
Part II: Search for a form: the New American novel
5 The neo-slave narrative
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
6 Coming of age in the African American novel
Claudine Raynaud
7 The blues novel
Steven C. Tracy
8 From modernism to postmodernism: black literature at the crossroads
Fritz Gysin
9 The African American novel and popular culture
Susanne B. Dietzel
Part III: African American voices: from margin to center
10 Everybody’s protest novel: the era of Richard Wright
Jerry W. Ward Jr.
11 Finding common ground: Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin
Herman Beavers
12 American Neo-HooDooism: the novels of Ishmael Reed
Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
13 Spaces for readers: the novels of Toni Morrison
Marilyn Mobley McKenzie
14 African American womanism: from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Walker
Lovalerie King
15 Vernacular modernism in the novels of John Edgar Wideman and Leon Forrest
Keith Byerman
Bibliography
Index