Description: By offering a critique of current postslavery literary criticism in the Americas as well as exemplary comparative readings of novels by important postslavery writers--including William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Alejo Carpentier, Jean Rhys, Charles Chesnutt, Cirilo Villaverde, Rosario Ferré, and others--Handley seeks to address the major questions raised by this abundance of postslavery literature and finds meaningful correspondences that begin to show the outlines of a larger tradition of postslavery literature in the Americas.
Review Quotes:
George B. Handley's book is a timely and a necessary addition to our tools for teaching American literatures in the new millennium. Each chapter of this fine study pairs books across language traditions and through related preoccupations, obsessions. One can hardly imagine reading them apart from one another now.
--Doris Sommer, Harvard University