Post-Colonial and African-American Women's Writing: A critical introduction

For those interested in reading or studying post-colonial and African American women's writing, this book will provide a unique introduction to the enormous range and breadth of the work of women writers across the world in the twentieth century. There have been collections of post-colonial and African American women's writing, as well as collections of critical essays, but no other book concentrates on the range and richness of writing by women, informed by critical and contextual introductions. This book provides a valuable gender and and culture inflected critical introduction to well-established women writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Bessie Head and many others from the USA, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Britain, Australia, Canada and South Africa, including both black and white writers. There is also discussion of the work of British performance poet Jean 'Binta' Breeze, of Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta, of Aboriginal writers Sally Morgan and Kath Walker, and New Zealanders Janet Frame and Keri Hulme. Uniquely, the post-colonial is further explored to discuss 'emergent' writing by women from Cyprus, South-East Asia and Oceania. The book engages with and clarifies contested critical areas of feminism and the post-colonial; explores historical background and cultural context, economic, political and psychoanalytical influences on gendered experience; and recognises the broad influence of African American women's creative and critical writing. The book provides a cohesive discussion of key issues such as cultural and gendered identity, motherhood, mothertongue, language, relationships, women's economic constraints, sexual politics and women's lives as expressed in a rich variety of women's writing.