Includes bibliographical references and index.

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles Chesnutt, and the Hampton Folklore Society : constructing a black folk aesthetic through folklore and memory / Shirley C. Moody -- Blues narratology and the African American novel / Andrew Scheiber -- " --and I might even be said to possess a mind" : hibernation, psychoanalysis, and schizophrenia in Invisible man / James Sterling King -- "A different kind of experiment" : Clarence Major's Dirty bird blues and the music of visibility / William R. Nash -- Dreaming and waking in Wonderland : Faith and the good thing and Charles Johnson's fairy tale fictions / Gena E. Chandler -- Dancing minds and plays in the dark : intersections of fiction and critical texts in Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Toni Cade Bambara's The salt eaters, and Toni Morrison's Paradise / Dana A. Williams -- Railroading the novel : Gayl Jones's Mosquito / Sarah Jane Cervenak -- Reaping what she sows : the evolution of African American female Bildung and the journey to self from Zora Neale Hurston's Their eyes were watching God to Octavia Butler's Parable of the sower / Brenda R. Smith -- Seeking space to save humanity : spatial realignments as a structuring motif in Octavia E. Butler's Clay's ark / Mildred R. Mickle -- Specters of public massacre : violence and the collective in Toni Morrison's Paradise / Shreerekha Subramanian -- The literate pimp : Robert Beck, Iceberg Slim, and pimping the African American novel / Candice Love Jackson -- Edward Christopher Williams and the other Washington novel / Jeffrey Charis-Carlson -- Stomping the blues no more? : hip hop aesthetics and contemporary African American literature / Richard Schur -- The rise of Colson Whitehead : hi-tech narratives and literary ascent / Howard Rambsy II -- "Nothin' but a man" : racial identity and musical production in John Henry Days / Michael New.