Title: American body politics
First published: 1998
Description: Body politics have played a decisive role in American literature, especially in the work of African Americans, whose sensitivity to the tradition of misrepresenting black bodies in American culture has left indelible traces.

In American Body Politics Felipe Smith tracks the emergence of particular gender images in association with specific social, political, and economic pressures and explores the impact of interrelated discourses on race, gender, and nation on the development of African American literature from the turn of the century to the early modern period.

Smith focuses on gender images such as the white witch, black madonna, mammy, and white lady and examines the broad utility of body images in the discourse of black national belonging.

In response to literary criticism that brackets and politics of representation into the category "extraliterary concerns," Smith articulates a theoretical approach that investigates the "extraliterary" as the source of some of the most powerful and enduring figurative and mythical constructs in the black writing tradition.
Subjects: History, African Americans in literature, Race relations, Intellectual life, History and criticism, American literature, Racism, Sexism, African American authors, Body language, African Americans, Sex customs, Sex role, United states, race relations
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: E185.61 .S628 1998