Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing (Black Literature and Culture) - Softcover

Houston A. Baker Jr.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226035239 ISBN 13: 9780226035239

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Synopsis

Turning 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

About this title

From the Back Cover

Houston Baker's new study engages two highly charged topics in literary scholarship: black women's writing and the place of theory in Afro-American literary criticism. The outpouring of novels, poems, and essays by black women writers in recent years has fruitfully complicated relations between feminist and Afro-American literary criticism. Turning 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 account of the persistently theoretical character of Afro-American intellectual history.

About the Author

Houston A. Baker, Jr., is professor of English and the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also directs the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0226035239
• ISBN 13: 9780226035239
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255