The Geographies of African American Short Fiction
Perhaps the brevity of short fiction accounts for the relatively scant attention devoted to it by scholars, who have historically concentrated on longer prose narratives. The Geographies of African American Short Fiction seeks to fill this gap by analyzing the ways African American short story writers plotted a diverse range of characters across multiple locations—small towns, a famous metropolis, city sidewalks, a rural wooded area, apartment buildings, a pond, a general store, a prison, and more. In the process, these writers highlighted the extents to which places and spaces shaped or situated racial representations. Presenting African American short story writers as cultural cartographers, author Kenton Rambsy documents the variety of geographical references within their short stories to show how these authors make cultural spaces integral to their artwork and inscribe their stories with layered and resonant social histories.

The history of these short stories also documents the circulation of compositions across dozens of literary collections for nearly a century. Anthology editors solidified the significance of a core group of short story authors including James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Using quantitative information and an extensive literary dataset, The Geographies of African American Short Fiction explores how editorial practices shaped the canon of African American short fiction.
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The Geographies of African American Short Fiction
Perhaps the brevity of short fiction accounts for the relatively scant attention devoted to it by scholars, who have historically concentrated on longer prose narratives. The Geographies of African American Short Fiction seeks to fill this gap by analyzing the ways African American short story writers plotted a diverse range of characters across multiple locations—small towns, a famous metropolis, city sidewalks, a rural wooded area, apartment buildings, a pond, a general store, a prison, and more. In the process, these writers highlighted the extents to which places and spaces shaped or situated racial representations. Presenting African American short story writers as cultural cartographers, author Kenton Rambsy documents the variety of geographical references within their short stories to show how these authors make cultural spaces integral to their artwork and inscribe their stories with layered and resonant social histories.

The history of these short stories also documents the circulation of compositions across dozens of literary collections for nearly a century. Anthology editors solidified the significance of a core group of short story authors including James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Using quantitative information and an extensive literary dataset, The Geographies of African American Short Fiction explores how editorial practices shaped the canon of African American short fiction.
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The Geographies of African American Short Fiction

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction

by Kenton Rambsy
The Geographies of African American Short Fiction

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction

by Kenton Rambsy

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Overview

Perhaps the brevity of short fiction accounts for the relatively scant attention devoted to it by scholars, who have historically concentrated on longer prose narratives. The Geographies of African American Short Fiction seeks to fill this gap by analyzing the ways African American short story writers plotted a diverse range of characters across multiple locations—small towns, a famous metropolis, city sidewalks, a rural wooded area, apartment buildings, a pond, a general store, a prison, and more. In the process, these writers highlighted the extents to which places and spaces shaped or situated racial representations. Presenting African American short story writers as cultural cartographers, author Kenton Rambsy documents the variety of geographical references within their short stories to show how these authors make cultural spaces integral to their artwork and inscribe their stories with layered and resonant social histories.

The history of these short stories also documents the circulation of compositions across dozens of literary collections for nearly a century. Anthology editors solidified the significance of a core group of short story authors including James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Using quantitative information and an extensive literary dataset, The Geographies of African American Short Fiction explores how editorial practices shaped the canon of African American short fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496838742
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Publication date: 03/25/2022
Series: Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 182
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Kenton Rambsy is assistant professor of English and digital humanities at University of Texas at Arlington. His ongoing digital humanities projects use quantitative and qualitative datasets to illuminate the significance of recurring trends and thematic shifts as they relate to African American literature and history.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 Locating the Big 7: One Hundred Anthologies and the Most Frequently Anthologized Black Short Stories 19

Chapter 2 Writing the South: Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright 40

Chapter 3 The Paradox of Homegrown Outsiders: Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker 63

Chapter 4 New York Cityscapes: James Baldwin and Toni Cade Bambara 86

Chapter 5 Up South: Geo-Tagging DC and Edward P. Jones's Homegrown Characters 106

Conclusion 128

Acknowledgments 137

Notes 139

Selected Bibliography 153

Index 165

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