Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women's Literature

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Family Matters 1 1 A Wide Confraternity: Diaspora and Family in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow 17 2 Sins of the Mother? Ambivalence, Agency, and the Family Romance in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John 45 3 Daughters of This Land: Genealogies of Resistance in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory 74 4 The Language of Family: Talking Back to Narratives of Black Pathology in Sapphire’s Push 103 Epilogue 135 Notes 141 Works Cited 161 Index 173 ...