Depictions of Home in African American Literature

Trudier Harris is University Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alabama.

• Introduction: Home in African American Literature: Difficult to Define, Challenging to ClaimChapter 1: Movement, Migration, and HomelessnessMargaret Walker’s Jubilee (1966) Chapter 2: Where I Live is Not HomeJames Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953); Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970); Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (2001)Chapter 3: Lonely Place, Unwelcoming SpaceA. J. Verdelle’s The Good Negress (1995)Chapter 4: A Mother’s Desire, A Son’s HellDaniel Black’s Perfect Peace (2010)Chapter 5: A Mother’s Domination, A Family’s SubmissionDorothy West’s The Living Is Easy (1940)Chapter 6: Wrapped in Imagination and DesireCountee Cullen, “Heritage”; Ann Petry, “Mother Africa”; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959); Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973); Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977); Phyllis Alesia Perry, Stigmata (1998); Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (2016); James Weldon Johnson; Sterling A. BrownConclusion: While We’re in This Place . . .

Harris has made a long, distinguished career of taking on topics within African American literature that seem simple enough until she unpacks the messy complexities and reveals them to be much more difficult and engaging. This latest work examines the notion of home in African American literature, and Harris quickly demonstrates that home is often not where the heart is but a dysfunctional space, riven with violence and pain. It is also filled with memory and belief systems that sustain one and it is portable in ways that go beyond the traditional definitions of “homespaces” one often relies on. Here home also becomes a space of imagination and migration. Harris reveals the fraught, complicated rendering that creates these spaces in works by such writers as Margaret Walker, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, A. J. Verdelle, Dorothy West, Countee Cullen, and Yaa Gyasi, crossing time periods and genres to catalog distinct variations while revealing the racial and religious structures that shape people's views. Harris provides an important corrective to views of home, and her work will particularly interest scholars of American literature and Black studies. Essential. Upper-division Undergraduates, Graduate Students, Researchers/Faculty.