How to Read African American Literature: Post-Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of Interpretation by Aida Levy-Hussen (review)

How should we read African American literature? Or more precisely, how might we productively read literature about the past of slavery today? Levy-Hussen contends that neoslave narratives demand more than a therapeutic or prohibitive reading, terms that are unpacked with precision throughout this monograph. Rather, these rewritings of the past offer complicated ideas about identification with their historical contexts and protagonists, by recognizing the myriad reasons why identification may be desirable yet elusive. Levy-Hussen brings together an impressive array of black writers, including Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Gayl Jones, and Alice Randall, and puts forth a theoretical apparatus that presents new ways of reading African American literature.