Between the Lines

Literary Transnationalism and African American Poetics
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-974306-3
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 467 g

Reihe: Imagining the Americas

Between the Lines examines the role of women poets of African descent in shaping the history of the Americas. Focusing on three women whose poetry wrestled with the sociopolitical predicaments of the late nineteenth century, Between the Lines ventures a broader definition of African American literature by placing it in a hemispheric context. These poets wrote about slavery and its impact on conceptions of free people and free nations; about an existential
struggle against boundaries informed by race, nation, and gender; about the power of words to correct, compose, and constitute identities. For these writers, the poem was a dynamic space where the history of slavery met a need for new concepts of individual and collective freedoms. In their work we encounter
the poem as a site of cross-cultural exchange, a literary space in which the boundaries of nation can be re-imagined. Between the Lines situates national poetics in a global economy of identities, histories and languages. It looks to poetry to more fully demonstrate how we use language to conceptualize history, how we daily translate from one cultural or linguistic arena to another, how we constantly write identity into existence through a poetic use of language. Sometimes language fails.
Inevitably it traps us in the very boundaries that we try to escape. Between the Lines traces this cycle as it informs the poetry of the Americas as it draws and erases national and transnational lines.

Zielgruppe

Readers of journals like MELUS, Callaloo, Comparative Literature, African American Review; scholars with an interest in the poetry of Frances Harper, Auta de Souza , and Cristina Ayala.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Callahan, Monique-Adelle

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction: What is Between the Lines(?)
1: Translations of Transnational Black Icons in the Poetics of Frances Harper
2: Signs of Blood: Redemption Songs and American Poetry Beyond Borders
3: Write the Vision: Gender and Nation Beyond Emancipation
4: Prison Breaks: Modes of Escape in Auta de Souza's Poetics of Freedom
Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?: the Implications of Textual Migrations
Epilogue: Afrodescendente History as/and Transnational Poetics
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Callahan, Monique-Adelle
Monique-Adelle Callahan, Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Harvard University

Monique-Adelle Callahan is a lecturer in the Comparative Literature Department at Harvard University.