Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature

Yoshinobu Hakutani is aProfessor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at Kent State University.

• Part I:  Essays on Poetry * Richard Wright's Haiku, Zen, and the African - Yoshinobu Hakutani * Richard Wright's Haiku, Japanese Poetics, and Classical Chinese Poetry - Jianqing Zheng * Wordsworthian Nature Poetry, Ashanti Culture, and Richard Wright's Haiku: This Other World - Peter Landino * Cross-Cultural Poetics: Sonia Sanchez's Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums - Yoshinobu Hakutani * Jean Toomer Revisited in James Emanuel's Post-Modernist Jazz Haiku - Whatley Smith * Part II:  Essays on Ideology * The Western and Eastern Thoughts of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - Yoshinobu Hakutani * West, East, Africa: Richard Wright's Native Son and Classic Movie Monsters - Mera Moore * Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo through Confucianism - Yupei Zhou * "A Beautiful Black Butterfly": Eastern Aesthetics and Postmodernism in Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring - Preston Park Cooper * "All Narratives Are Lies, Man, an Illusion": Buddhism and Postmodernism versus Racism in Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Dreamer - Preston Park Cooper

" Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature: West Meets East is a fresh approach to an important, though little studied, aspect of African American literature. It examines how Eastern philosophy and literary assumptions have affected the work of a number of important black American writers, including Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Sonia Sanchez, James Emanuel, Ishmael Reed, and Charles Johnson." - Robert Butler, author of Contemporary African American Fiction: The Open Journey