Category: african american literature

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Refuting Europe in “Rosa, or American Genius and Education”

Over the past few class sessions, we have looked at Rosa, or American Genius and Education (1810). Published anonymously, the satirical novel presents an interesting examination and discussion for my early American literature survey course. There is a lot that can be looked at in regards to this novel; however, today, I want to focus specifically on the Peruvian Sol who enters the narrative mid-way through … Read More Refuting Europe in “Rosa, or American Genius and Education”

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Literacy in Octavia Butler’s “Kindred”

Note: For this post, I will use Duffy and Jennings’ adaptation of Butler’s Kindred. I have read Butler’s novel, but it has a been a few years. The adaptation closely follows the novel. On Tuesday, I wrote about the ways that Damian Duffy’s illustrations convey just as much emotion to the reader as Octavia Butler and John Jennings’ words in the graphic novel adaptation of … Read More Literacy in Octavia Butler’s “Kindred”

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Conveying Emotion in Duffy and Jennings’ Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Kindred”

One of the key aspects of reading comics and graphic novels is paying attention not just to the words but also to the visual images that accompany them. Both the words and the images work together to create an experience that, to me, resembles a melding of a printed text and movie. When I read the March trilogy and The Silence of Our Friends, … Read More Conveying Emotion in Duffy and Jennings’ Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Kindred”

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Frank Yerby’s “Health Card” and Gender

Before he started writing “costume novels,” Frank Yerby penned protest literature in the form of short stories and poems. The stories are in the vein of Richard Wright and other African American writers of the period. After failing to get his first novel length manuscript published, a protest novel, Yerby turned to what he called “costume novels,” historical narratives that subvert the plantation tradition. … Read More Frank Yerby’s “Health Card” and Gender

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Racial Signification in Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow”

In “Reconstructions of Racial Perception: Margaret Mitchell’s and Frank Yerby’s Plantation Romances,” Mark C. Jerng argues that Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow “engages with the specific techniques of deploying racial signification in [Gone With the Wind], in particular by when race appears in the background and when it is foregrounded.” Jerng looks at the ways that Yerby challenges and reverses the racial associations … Read More Racial Signification in Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow”