From the prolific Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Spunk’ and ‘Sweat’ are thought-provoking short stories set in the heart of African-American communities following the civil war. ‘Spunk’, first published in 1925, is set in an all-Black community in rural America and poses the question of whether moral strength is more powerful than physical strength. Spunk Banks is described as a ‘giant’. He is unafraid of anything or anyone, but when he openly flaunts his affair with Lena Kanty, Joe Kanty’s wife, could it be his superstition rather than a physical weakness that is his downfall? ‘Sweat’, first published in 1926, is an early feminist story, presenting the contrasting lives of a married couple: the sweat and toil of Delia and the leisure and privilege of her abusive husband, Sykes. When it becomes apparent that both want their relationship to end, Sykes appears to be willing to go to horrific measures to ensure Delia is out of his life for good. Zora Neale Hurston explores themes of fortitude, integrity, and early intersectional feminism. Portraying contemporary issues in the everyday lives of Black people, Hurston was an important literary figure in the Harlem Renaissance. This collection has been published together with an introductory essay on the Harlem Renaissance and would make a wonderful addition to the bookshelves of Zora Neale Hurston fans.

Drawing on diverse theories and methods, this collective volume emphasizes the multi-ethnic and transnational aspects of southern literature over a four hundred-year period.

This volume confronts black problems rooted in historical and material realities of oppression, colonialism, slavery, corruption, and subjugation in a world deaf to the cries, voices, and visions of heralds of an imminent black revolution. Some Unsung Black Revolutionary Voices and Visions gives readers new insights into the centrality of counter forces of the abovementioned material realities. The work is more of an ideal source for the editors sustained interest in these issues as well as any other historical shackle that chains and leaves the black man worldwide as a lesser man. This outstanding collection of essays explores the uniqueness and universality of Black Revolutionary Voices and Visions from the 19th Century to the 21st century. This engaging and incisive volume offering a high interest in historical and literary revolution of African and African Diasporic revolutionaries explores the voices and visions of Martin Delany, Sutton E. Griggs, Harriet Jacobs, Gebreyessus Hailu, Zora Neale Hurston, Okot pBtek, Fodba Keta, Walter Rodney, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, American Virgin Island Youths, Black Cultural Organizations, and Francis B. Nyamnjoh. The book is a gentle reminder of black pride that brings and connects in a coherent form the main struggles against which black creative thinkers, artists, activists, and historians fight to set the world free of pain, hurt, and corruption.

Esteemed critic Blanche Gelfant's brilliant companion gathers together lucid essays on major writers and themes by some of the best literary critics in the United States. Part 1 is comprised of articles on stories that share a particular theme, such as "Working Class Stories" or "Gay and Lesbian Stories." The heart of the book, however, lies in Part 2, which contains more than one hundred pieces on individual writers and their work, including Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Andre Debus, Zora Neal Hurston, Anne Beattie, Bharati Mukherjee, J. D. Salinger, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as engaging pieces on the promising new writers to come on the scene.

"Hapke's book, remarkable in scope and inclusiveness, offers those concerned with American working people a mine of information about and analysis of the 'rich lived history of American laborers' as that has been represented in fictions of every kind. She provides an invaluable foundation for understanding the dirtiest of America's dirty big secrets: the pervasivness of class differences, class discrimination, indeed of class conflict in this, the wealthiest nation in history. Hers is an indispensable guided tour through more than a century and a half of literary representations of 'hands' at their looms, pikets on the line, agitators on their soapboxes, ordinary working women, men, and children in kitchens, parks, factories, and fields across America." --Paul Lauter, A.K. & G.M. Smith Professor of Literature, Trinity College "Labor's Text sets over 150 years of the multi-ethnic literature of work in the context of the history that informed it--the history of labor organizing, of industrial change, of social transformations, and of shifting political alignments. Any scholar of American literature or American history cannot help but be enlightened by this boldly ambitious and illuminating book." -- Shelly Fisher Fishkin, professor of American studies, University of Texas, Austin "Labor's Text traverses nearly two centuries of the U.S. literary response in fiction to workers and the work experience. Casting her net more broadly than any of her predecessors, Hapke's revision of the genre includes many recent writing not usually recognized as part of the tradition. Coming at a moment when there is a steady increase in interest about 'class' from color- and gender-inflected perspectives, this is a work of committed scholarship that may well prove to be a crucial compass to reorient the thinking and scholarship of a new generation." -- Alan Wald, author of Writing from the Left "A stunning work of scholarship. . . . It is an extraordinary achievement and an immense contribution to working-class studies." --Janet Zandy, author of Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings Laura Hapke is a professor of English at Pace University. The winner of two Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Book awards, she is the author of Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the American 1930s and other books on labor fiction and working-class studies.

Much more than a period study, "The Coupling Convention" spans the years from 1853 to 1948 and addresses the vital questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the marriage tradition in black women's fiction.

The early 1890s through the late 1920s saw an explosion in serious long fiction by women in the United States. Considering a wide range of authors--African American, Asian American, white American, and Native American--this book looks at the work of seventeen writers from that period: Frances Ellen Harper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, Mary Austin, Sui Sin Far, Willa Cather, Humishuma, Jessie Fauset, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Anzia Yezierska, Edith Summers Kelley, and Nella Larsen. The discussion focuses on the differences in their work and the similarities that unite them, particularly their determination to experiment with narrative form as they explored and voiced issues of power for women. Analyzing the historical context that both enabled and limited American women writers at the turn of the century, Ammons provides detailed readings of many texts and offers extensive commentary on the interaction between race and gender. This book joins the deepening discussion of modern women writers' creation of themselves as artists and raises fundamental questions about the shape of American literary history as it has been constructed in the academy.