Moorings & metaphors
Subtitle: figures of culture and gender in Black women's literature
By: Karla F.C. Holloway.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 218
Subjects: American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism; West African literature (English) -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Literature, Comparative -- American and West African (English); Literature, Comparative -- West African (English) and American; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries; Women -- Africa, West -- Intellectual life; Women and literature -- Africa, West; African American women in literature; Women, Black, in literature; Sex role in literature; Myth in literature; Metaphor; Africa, West -- Intellectual life; Africa, West -- In literature
Other titles: Moorings and metaphors.
Description: Moorings and Metaphors is one of the first studies to examine the ways that cultural tradition is reflected in the language and figures of black women's writing. In a discussion that includes the works of Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ntozake Shange, Buchi Emecheta, Octavia Butler, Efua Sutherland, and Gayl Jones, and with a particular focus on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Flora Nwapa's Efuru, Holloway follows the narrative structures, language, and figurative metaphors of West African goddesses and African-American ancestors as they weave through the pages of these writers' fiction. She explores what she would call the cultural and gendered essence of contemporary literature that has grown out of the African diaspora. Proceeding from a consideration of the imaginative textual languages of contemporary African-American and West African writers, Holloway asserts the intertextuality of black women's literature across two continents. She argues the subtext of culture as the source of metaphor and language, analyzes narrative structures and linguistic processes, and develops a combined theoretical/critical apparatus and vocabulary for interpreting these writers' works. The cultural sources and spiritual considerations that inhere in these textual languages are discussed within the framework Holloway employs of patterns of revision, (re)membrance, and recursion--all of which are vehicles for expressive modes inscribed at the narrative level. Her critical reading of contemporary black women's writing in the United States and West Africa is unique, radical, and sure to be controversial.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-207) and index.