Description: Combining scholarship covering one hundred fifty years of novel writing in the U.S., newly commissioned essays examine eighty African American novels. They include well-known works as well as writings recently recovered or acknowledged. The collection features essays on the slave narrative, coming of age, vernacular modernism, and the post-colonial novel to help readers gain a better appreciation of the African American novel's diversity and complexity.
Review Quotes: "Considered separately, the essays in this book are significant works of criticism examining a broad range of the issues implicated in African American literary history. Viewed as a whole, they engage in the kind of open reading 'companion' editor Maryemma Graham cautions is our best approach to the African American novel--one that does not flinch at the vastness of the project." North Dakota Quarterly, Lisa Trochmann, University of Minnesota