Joanne M. Braxton

This new "most complete" edition of the collected poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the virtual father of black American poetry, includes sixty poems not included in the previous―and now out of print―Complete Poems. Sixteen of these were found in manuscript form. Paul Laurence Dunbar's work achieved wide recognition in the first part of the twentieth century. The author of six volumes of poetry, as well as novels, librettos, songs, and essays, he was nationally known and accepted by black and white readers alike. As Joanne M. Braxton points out in her substantive introduction to this edition, a reconsideration of Dunbar's work and influence is long "We reclaim, in Paul Laurence Dunbar, a significant American author whose career transcends race and locality even while he makes use of racialized and regional cultural materials to create an African-American aesthetic and a unique black poetic diction."

With the continued expansion of the literary canon, multicultural works of modern literary fiction and autobiography have assumed an increasing importance for students and scholars of American literature. This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray.Perhaps more than any other single text, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helped to establish the "mainstream" status of the renaissance in black women's writing. This casebook presents a variety of critical approaches to this classic autobiography, along with an exclusive interview with Angelou conducted specially for this volume and a unique drawing of her childhood surroundings in Stamps, Arkansas, drawn by Angelou herself.

In this illuminating study Joanne Braxton shows the continuity and tradition in the writing of Afro-American women. An important work for teachers and students of literature, history, and women's studies. —Gerda Lerner

Poems by Joanne M. Braxton (as Jodi Braxton), and some Afro-American folk poetry.

Fine Paperback London and New Brunswick, New Jersey, Serpent's Tail and Rutger's University Press , 1990. Published 1990. Twenty contributors discuss black women writers' influence upon modern literature. Bluegreen softcover, with white and gold lettering and cover illustration, 441 pages. The book is in fine condition, looks and feels new, with sound text block, clean pages with no name or other markings. . Soft Cover. Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.