What is African American Literature?

After Kenneth W. Warren'sWhat Was African American Literature?, Margo N. Crawford deliversWhat is African American Literature?

The idea of African American literature may be much more than literature written by authors who identify as "Black".What is African American Literature? focuses on feeling as form in order to show that African American literature is an archive of feelings, a tradition of the tension between uncontainable black affect and rigid historical structure. Margo N. Crawford argues that textual production of affect (such as blush, vibration, shiver, twitch, and wink) reveals that African American literature keeps reimagining a black collective nervous system.

Crawford foregrounds the "idea" of African American literature and uncovers the "black feeling world" co-created by writers and readers. Rejecting the notion that there are no formal lines separating African American literature and a broader American literary tradition, Crawford contends that the distinguishing feature of African American literature is a "moodscape" that is as stable as electricity. Presenting a fresh perspective on the affective atmosphere of African American literature, this compelling text frames central questions around the "idea" of African American literature, shows the limits of historicism in explaining the mood of African American literature and addresses textual production in the creation of the African American literary tradition.

Part of the acclaimedWiley Blackwell Manifestos series,What is African American Literature? is a significant addition to scholarship in the field. Professors and students of American literature, African American literature, and Black Studies will find this book an invaluable source of fresh perspectives and new insights on America's black literary tradition.

Margo N. Crawford is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence and Director of the Center for Africana Studies. She is the author ofBlack Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics andDilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus. She is co-editor ofGlobal Black Consciousness andNew Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement.

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: The Affective Atmosphere of African American Literature 1

1 The Textual Production of Black Affect: The Blush of Toni Morrisons Last Novel 25

2 Mood Books 55

3 The Vibrations of African American Literature 73

4Shiver: The Diasporic Shock of Elsewhere 103

5 Twitchor Wink: The LiteraryAfterlife of the Afterlife of Slavery 135

CODA 175

Index 179