Changing the Subject

Description:

"The starting point for this study is the nineteenth-century Caribbean narrative The History of Mary Prince (1831). Simmons puts Prince's narrative in conversation with three twentieth-century novels: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, and Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. She incorporates autobiography theory to shift the critical focus from the object of study--slave histories--to the ways people talk about those histories and to the guiding interests of such discourses. In its reframing of women's migration narratives, Simmons's study unsettles theoretical certainties and disturbs the very notion of a cohesive diaspora." -- Publisher's description.

subjects: American literature,  African American authors,  History and criticism,  African American women,  West Indian literature (English),  Women authors,  African American women in literature,  African Americans in literature,  Slave trade in literature,  Collective memory in literature,  Culture in literature,  Women, africa,  African diaspora,  African American women authors