Brenda Cooper examines the work of the new generation of African writers who have placed migration as central to their writing

Literature remains one of the few disciplines that reflect the experiences, sensibility, worldview, and living realities of its people. Contemporary African literature captures the African experience in history and politics in a multiplicity of ways. Politics itself has come to intersect and impact on most, if not all, aspects of the African reality. This relationship of literature with African people’s lives and condition forms the setting of this study. Tanure Ojaide’s Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking belongs with a well-established tradition of personal reflections on literature by African creative writer-critics. Ojaide’s contribution brings to the table the perspective of what is now recognized as a “second generation” writer, a poet, and a concerned citizen of Nigeria’s Niger Delta area.

Standing at the crossroads of American literature and the current African American renaissance, Giant Steps presents a vibrant and wonderfully diverse collection of young black writing. Through generous selections of award-winning poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by writers born after 1960, this groundbreaking anthology welcomes readers into the future of African American writing. Taking its spirit and title from the John Coltrane composition released in 1960, Giant Steps offers an extraordinary window into post-civil rights literature. From Edwidge Danticat and Colson Whitehead to Rebecca Walker and Hilton Als, these authors are not "emerging" but have already arrived. They are National Book Award finalists and winners of the National Poetry Series and the Pushcart Prize. They have been featured in The New Yorker, Time, and Newsweek as our brightest stars; they have been heard through National Public Radio, Rhino Records, and Oprah's Book Club. Previously unpublished works by Danzy Senna, Philippe Wamba, and Elizabeth Alexander run alongside contemporary classics. They are popular and prophetic, literary and experimental. Together with a useful bibliography of current writing and a discography of influential music from soul to jazz to hip-hop, Giant Steps celebrates the complexities of race while paying tribute to the personal and collective histories that are forging this new generation. The writers found in Giant Steps are not "emerging" but have already arrived. From Best American Poetry and O. Henry Award winners to National Book Award finalists and Oprah's Book Club members, the thirty-five authors selected here are some of the best and the brightest writing today. The book features the full diversity of the African American experience, discussing everything from slavery to sexuality, growing up poor, gay, biracial, or all three. There are stories about the American Revolution, slave insurrections, and the year 1979; there are poems about loss and Sam Cooke; essays about sharecropping and the New South. New and unpublished writing by Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, and Darieck Scott is collected alongside work by such favorites as Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Powell, Hilton Als, and Randall Keenan. The writers in Giant Steps are at the heart of what's happening in contemporary culture, and this anthology welcomes readers to the future and powerful present of African American writing.The writers found in Giant Steps are not "emerging" but have already arrived. From Best American Poetry and O. Henry Award winners to National Book Award finalists and Oprah's Book Club members, the thirty-five authors selected here are some of the best and the brightest writing today. The book features the full diversity of the African American experience, discussing everything from slavery to sexuality, growing up poor, gay, biracial, or all three. There are stories about the American Revolution, slave insurrections, and the year 1979; there are poems about loss and Sam Cooke; essays about sharecropping and the New South. New and unpublished writing by Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, and Darieck Scott is collected alongside work by such favorites as Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Powell, Hilton Als, and Randall Keenan. The writers in Giant Steps are at the heart of what's happening in contemporary culture, and this anthology welcomes readers to the future and powerful present of African American writing.

As a young journalist covering black life at large, author Ytasha L. Womack was caught unaware when she found herself straddling black culture's rarely acknowledged generation gaps and cultural divides. Traditional images show blacks unified culturally, politically, and socially, united by race at venues such as churches and community meetings. But in the “post black” era, even though individuals define themselves first as black, they do not necessarily define themselves by tradition as much as by personal interests, points of view, and lifestyle. In Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity, Womack takes a fresh look at dynamics shaping the lives of contemporary African Americans. Although grateful to generations that have paved the way, many cannot relate to the rhetoric of pundits who speak as ambassadors of black life any more than they see themselves in exaggerated hip-hop images. Combining interviews, opinions of experts, and extensive research, Post Black will open the eyes of some, validate the lives of others, and provide a realistic picture of the expanding community.

Features educational strategies that help African American adolescent boys use writing as a tool for learning and personal development.

The first book-length study on the relationship between African literature and new media.

"Among the contributors are a new generation of young African writers whose studies include the works of a number of established and emerging African Writers about whom there is little criticism now in existence."--BOOK JACKET.