The Signifying Monkey

Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Havard University; Editor-in-Chief, Oxford American Studies Center. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 'Skip' is one of the most powerful academic voices in America. In 1997 Gates was voted one of Time Magazine's '25 Most influential Americans'. He is most recognised for his extensive research of African American history and literature, and for developing and expanding the African American Studies program at Harvard University. The first black to have received a Ph.D. from Cambridge, Gates is the author of many books, articles, essays and reviews, and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Gates who has displayed an endless dedication to bringing African- American culture into the public, has co-authored, co-edited and produced some of the most comprehensive African-American reference materials in the country.

• New Preface ; Introduction ; Part I ; 1. A Myth of Origins:Esu Elegbara and the Signifying Mokey ; 2. The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning ; 3. Figures of Significance ; Part II ; 4. The Trope of the Talking Book ; 5. Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text ; 6. On "The Blackness of Blackness": Ishmael Reed and a Critique of the Sign ; 7. Color Me Zora: Alice Walker's (Re) Writing of the Speakerly Text ; New Afterward ; Notes ; Index

Eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative, challenging ... Gates gives black literature room to breathe, invents interpretive frameworks that enable us to experience black writing rather than label it in terms of theme or ideology. From this perspective his book is a generous, long-awaited gift ... Like great novels that force us to view the world differently, Mr. Gates' compelling study suggests new ways of seeing.