The Changing Same": Black Women's Literature, Criticism, and Theory - Paperback

by Deborah E. McDowell (Author)

"The Changing Same" examines defining moments in African American women's fiction and its reception: the "Women's Era" of the 1890s, the Harlem Renaissance, and the "New Black Renaissance" of the 1970s and 1980s. Deborah McDowell maps this history in readings of Emma Dunham Kelley, Frances E. W. Harper, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Sherley Anne Williams. She examines representations of slavery, sexuality, and homoeroticism; the reception of African American women's fiction in the 1980s; and African American feminist writing in the "Age of Theory."

Back Jacket

McDowell's vibrant scholarship combines close textual analysis with attention to broad social, political, and cultural contexts. In this volume, she also critiques her own earlier positions, reconfiguring and contributing to the evolution of a new black feminist criticism.

Author Biography

DEBORAH E. MCDOWELL, Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is co-editor (with Arnold Rampersad) of Slavery and the Literary Imagination and author of numerous articles and essays on African American texts.