In this Book

summary

Herman Beavers offers a richly nuanced study of Ernes J. Gaines, James Alan McPherson, and Ralph Ellison as writers who have found ways to invest circumstances that might otherwise be seen as sites of squalor or despair with a sense of cultural vitality. He examines the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looks at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers.

For Beavers, the fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson are peopled by characters who value acts of storytelling and whose stories frame a fuller, more complex, and more inclusive version of American identity than those the dominant white culture has allowed.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page, copyright
  2. pp. i-iv
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. vii-x
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xi-xii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-8
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part I: Innovations of Kin
  1. Chapter 1. Relative Politics: The Literary Triumverate of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Ernest J. Gaines, and James Alan McPherson
  2. pp. 11-38
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 2. The Possible in Things Unwritten: Kinship and Innovation in the Fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson
  2. pp. 39-64
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part II: Trueblood Echoing
  1. Chapter 3. Tilling the Soil to Find Ourselves: Conversion, Labor, and [Re]membering in Gaines's Of Love and Dust and In My Father's House
  2. pp. 67-103
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 4. "If It's Going To Be Any Good, It's Your Story": Legibility, [Un]speakability, and Historical Performance in McPherson's "A Solo Song: For Doc"
  2. pp. 104-124
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part III: The Lower Frequencies
  1. Chapter 5. Voices from the Underground: Conspiracy, Intimacy, and Voice in Gaines's Fictions
  2. pp. 127-180
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Chapter 6. "The Life of the Law Is Thus a Life of Art": Antagonism and Persuasion in McPherson's Legal Fiction Trilogy
  2. pp. 181-228
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Conclusion
  2. pp. 229-234
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 235-256
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 257-266
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 267-276
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Colophon
  2. p. 277
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.