Scarring the Black body : race and representation in African American literature /

Exciting, innovative, scholarly, and creative, this study brings together unique literary and historical research for a common theme. Inspired by the language of the scarred body of a woman in church, a woman who had obviously been brutalized, Henderson (Univ. of Delaware, Newark) argues that women's brutalized corporeal bodies serve as an emblem for conceptualization of national identities and also contextualize social, political, and ethnic identity. Thus, the body of African American women, especially during slavery, can be so identified in the African American literary canon. Henderson looks at Sherley Anne William's Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), Ann Petry's The Street (1946), bringing new insights into the reading and the suppressed voices of women in these novels. Texts by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison serve as illustrative support of the brutalization of male bodies, and Henderson analyzes the fear that lynching and castration imbedded in the psyche of African American males. This book--with its compelling chapter organization and thematic approach--demands close reading. Copious notes and extensive bibliography are excellent. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Collections supporting American literature, women's studies, and American and African American studies; upper-division undergraduate and above. B. Taylor-Thompson Texas Southern University