In twentieth-century African American fiction, music has been elevated to the level of religion primarily because of its Orphic, magical power to unsettle oppressive realities, to liberate the soul and to create, at least temporarily, a medium of freedom. This collection explores literary invocations of music from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison.
Author(s): Saadi A. Simawe
Edition: 1
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 294
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Series Editor's Foreword......Page 12
Introduction: The Agency of Sound in African American Fiction......Page 20
Singing the Unsayable: Theorizing Music in Dessa Rose......Page 30
Claude McKay: Music, Sexuality, and Literary Cosmopolitanism......Page 70
Black Moves, White Ways, Every Body's Blues: Orphic Power in Langston Hughes's The Ways of White Folks......Page 94
Black and Blue: The Female Body of Blues Writing in Jean Toomer, Toni Morrison, and Gayl Jones......Page 120
That Old Black Magic? Gender and Music in Ann Petry's Fiction......Page 148
~It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing~: Jazz's Many Uses for Toni Morrison......Page 182
Shange and Her Three Sisters ~Sing a Liberation Song~: Variations on the Orphic Theme......Page 210
Nathaniel Mackey's Unit Structures......Page 234
Shamans of Song: Music and the Politics of Culture in Alice Walker's Early Fiction......Page 260
Contributors......Page 298
Index of Names......Page 302
