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Workings of the Spirit

The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing

With a Phototext by Elizabeth Alexander and Patricia Redmond

Workings of the Spirit

The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing

With a Phototext by Elizabeth Alexander and Patricia Redmond
Turning on inspired interpretations of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange, Workings of the Spirit weighs current critical approaches to black women’s writing against Baker’s own explanation of the founding, theoretical state of Afro-American intellectual history.

"Brilliant, and tenderly riveted to gratitude as an indispensable facet of analysis, Houston Baker arrives, yet again, bearing the loveliest flowers of his devotion and delight: thank God he’s here!"—June Jordan

256 pages | 40 halftones, frontispiece | 6 x 9 | © 1990

Black Literature and Culture

Black Studies

Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Daughter’s Departure: Theory, History, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Writing
1. Theoretical Returns
2. Workings of the Spirit: Conjure and the Space of Black Women’s Creativity
3. On Knowing Our Place
4. The Changing Instant
Conclusion
Toward the Iterability of ONE
Afterword
Notes
Illustration Sources
Index

Awards

Chicago Women in Publishing: Chicago Women in Publishing Annual Awards
Honorable Mention

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