Burnin' Down the House: Home in African American Literature

Valerie Sweeney Prince

Published by Columbia University Press 2004

Burnin' Down the House

Home in African American Literature

Valerie Sweeney Prince

https://doi.org/10.7312/prin13440

Overview
Contents

About this book

Home is a powerful metaphor guiding the literature of African Americans throughout the twentieth century. This book creates new and sophisticated possibilities for a critical engagement with African American literature by presenting a careful examination of the place of home in five classic novels: Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and Corregidora by Gayl Jones.

Home is a powerful metaphor guiding the literature of African Americans throughout the twentieth century. While scholars have given considerable attention to the Great Migration and the role of the northern city as well as to the place of the South in African American literature, few have given specific notice to the site of "home." And in the twenty years since Houston A. Baker Jr.'s Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature appeared, no one has offered a substantial challenge to his reading of the blues matrix.

Burnin' Down the House creates new and sophisticated possibilities for a critical engagement with African American literature by presenting both a meaningful critique of the blues matrix and a careful examination of the place of home in five classic novels: Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and Corregidora by Gayl Jones.

Author / Editor information

Valerie Sweeney Prince is an assistant professor of English at Hampton University. She lives in Hampton, Virginia.

Reviews

Adam Gussow:
This is fertile and exciting theoretical ground... We'll hear from Prince again, and will be dazzled and provoked.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction: A House Is Not a Home Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xii
1. Living (Just Enough) for the City: Native Son Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
2. Keep on Moving Don’t Stop: Invisible Man Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
3. Get in the Kitchen and Rattle Them Pots and Pans: The Bluest Eye Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
4. She’s a Brick House: Corregidora Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
5. God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own: Song of Solomon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 160

eBook

Published: December 29, 2004
ISBN: 9780231508797