Includes bibliographical references and index.

Humor in Alice Walker's The color purple -- Slanting the truth : homosexuality, manhood, and race in James Baldwin's Giovanni's room -- New invisible man : revisiting a nightmare in the 1990s (Brent Wade's Company man and Ralph Ellison's Invisible man) -- Zapping the editor, or, how to tell censors to kiss off without really trying : Zora Neale Hurston's fights with authority figures in Dust tracks on a road -- Architecture as destiny? Women and survival strategies in Ann Petry's The street -- Chocklit geography : Raymond Andrews's mythical South -- The necessary binding : prison experiences in three August Wilson plays -- Hands beyond the grave : Henry Dumas's influence on Toni Morrison -- Salting the land but not the imagination : William Melvin Kelley's A different drummer -- Transformations of the land in Randall Kenan's "The foundations of the earth" -- Expectations too great : the failure of racial calling in Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth -- Ugly legacies of the Harlem Renaissance and earlier : Soul food and new Negroes.