Ebook283 pages8 hours
Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism
By Madhu Dubey
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
()
About this ebook
Signs and Cities is the first book to consider what it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African-American literature. Dubey argues that for African-American studies, postmodernity best names a period, beginning in the early 1970s, marked by acute disenchantment with the promises of urban modernity and of print literacy.
Dubey shows how black novelists from the last three decades have reconsidered the modern urban legacy and thus articulated a distinctly African-American strain of postmodernism. She argues that novelists such as Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, and John Edgar Wideman probe the disillusionment of urban modernity through repeated recourse to tropes of the book and scenes of reading and writing. Ultimately, she demonstrates that these writers view the book with profound ambivalence, construing it as an urban medium that cannot recapture the face-to-face communities assumed by oral and folk forms of expression.
Dubey shows how black novelists from the last three decades have reconsidered the modern urban legacy and thus articulated a distinctly African-American strain of postmodernism. She argues that novelists such as Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, and John Edgar Wideman probe the disillusionment of urban modernity through repeated recourse to tropes of the book and scenes of reading and writing. Ultimately, she demonstrates that these writers view the book with profound ambivalence, construing it as an urban medium that cannot recapture the face-to-face communities assumed by oral and folk forms of expression.
Related to Signs and Cities
Related ebooks
Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Professor's Daughter: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThinking While Black: Translating the Politics and Popular Culture of a Rebel Generation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American Essay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnderstanding John Edgar Wideman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Afterlives of Kathleen Collins: A Black Woman Filmmaker's Search for New Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTransnational Black Dialogues: Re-Imagining Slavery in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamer Nation: Immigration, Activism, and Neoliberalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Pauline Hopkins and the African American Response to Naturalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlobalizing American Studies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeminism, the Left, and Postwar Literary Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Noir: Race, Identity, and Diaspora in Black Suburbia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Histories: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870-1940 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBurnin' Down the House: Home in African American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNational Healing: Race, State, and the Teaching of Composition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Teju Cole's "Open City" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLand of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Bad Feminist: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Signs and Cities
Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
2 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Signs and Cities - Madhu Dubey
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1