Worrying the Line

Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition

By: Cheryl A. Wall

Write A Review

Paperback | 28 February 2005

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

For blues musicians, "worrying the line" is the technique of breaking up a phrase by changing pitch, adding a shout, or repeating words in order to emphasize, clarify, or subvert a moment in a song. Cheryl A. Wall applies this term to fiction and nonfiction writing by African American women in the twentieth century, demonstrating how these writers bring about similar changes in African American and American literary traditions.

Examining the works of Lucille Clifton, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker, Wall highlights ways in which these authors construct family genealogies, filling in the gaps with dreams, rituals, music, or images that forge a connection to family lost through slavery. For the black woman author, Wall contends, this method of revising and extending canonical forms provides the opportunity to comment on the literary past while also calling attention to the lingering historical effects of slavery. For the reader, Wall shows, the images and words combine to create a new kind of text that extends meanings of the line, both as lineage and as literary tradition.

Industry Reviews

"A valuable resource in the effort to define a critical epistemology of literary matrilineage in African American literature."
-- "African American Review"
"Artfully examines the literary genealogy of a prominent and influential group. . . . Offers keen insights into these writers' formal and thematic uses of other less literary sources. . . . Impressive."
-- "Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature"
"Takes its place alongside other powerful essay collections on the subject. . . . Conveys in intelligent and potentially quite rich ways the process at work in summoning memories, eliciting stories, and recasting them for new contexts."
-- "Feminist Teacher"

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.

Defective items

If there is a problem with any of the items received for your order then the Booktopia Customer Care team is ready to assist you.

For more info please visit our Help Centre.

You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Interdisciplinary Studies General Studies Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies Literary Studies from 1900 to Current Society & Culture Social Groups Gender Studies Gender Studies: Women and Girls

Ethnic Studies Black & Asian Studies

Prologue : I looked down the line ...	p. 1
Introduction	p. 5
Reconstructing lineage, revising tradition in Song of Solomon and Zami	p. 25
On the line to Dahomey : charting Generations	p. 59
Recollections of kin : Beloved and The black book	p. 84
Trouble in mind : blues and history in Corregidora	p. 116
Writing beyond the blues : The color purple	p. 140
Extending the line : from Sula to Mama Day	p. 162
Bare bones and silken threads : lineage and literary tradition in Praisesong for the widow	p. 181
In search of our mothers' gardens and our fathers' (real) estates : Alice Walker, essayist	p. 209
Epilogue : moving on down the line ...	p. 235
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Worrying the Line

Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in Literary Studies from 1900 to Current

Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women's Writing

Race and Narrative Innovation

Magic, Literature and Climate Pedagogy in a Time of Ecological Crisis

Environmental Cultures

The Rise of Pacific Literature

Decolonization, Radical Campuses, and Modernism

Translating Milan Kundera

Topics in Translation

Arabesques

A Tale of Double Lives

Making Australian History

Moroccan Other-Archives

History and Citizenship After State Violence

Everything Must Go

The Stories We Tell About The End of the World

On Writing

A Memoir of the Craft

Dublin

A Writer's City

The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume I

A Novel, Volume 1

Authoring Autism

On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

Sylvia Wynter

On Being Human as Praxis

Theatre and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Identity, Resistance and Contested Narratives

Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence and the Culture of Homoerotic Desire

Orientalist Depictions of Arab Sexuality

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance

Blacks in the Diaspora

Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry

Iranian Culture in Bahram Beyzaie's Cinema and Theatre

Paradigms of Being and Belonging (1959-1979)

J.R.R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics

Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing

Border Politics in Novels by European Women in Translation

In Translation

Milan Kundera Known and Unknown

Multidimensional Analysis of Selected Works

Zombie Futures in Literature, Media and Culture

Pandemics, Society and the Evolution of the Undead in the 21st Century

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry

Bloomsbury Handbooks

Wole Soyinka

Tragic Classicism

This product is categorised by