Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-40
Author(s):  
Eden Wales Freedman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Testimonial Literature ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Criticism

The introduction explicates theories of dual-witnessing and Venn liminality and introduces the reader to the terminology the author developed to address readerly engagement of (African) American traumatic and testimonial literature. The introduction also explains how the author’s modes of reading trauma intersect with American literature, critical race theory, and gender criticism and unpacks what (and how) this Venn conversation contributes to the fields of trauma, race, gender, and reception studies and (African) American literature.

scholarly journals RACISM TOWARDS AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY AS REFLECTED IN MAYA ANGELOU’S I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS: BLACK AESTHETIC CRITICISM

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Gisa Maya Saputri
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Black Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Interest Convergence

The study of the African American community always circulates among the issues of race, racism, discrimination, slavery, and oppression. All these issues become the grand themes of African American literature. These literary works could be studied and covered under the scope of Black Aesthetic criticism. One of the prominent works of African American literature is an autobiography of Maya Angelou entitled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). This autobiography portrays Angelou’s childhood experiences which brings up the issues of race, racism, and oppression. This paper aims to analyze the kinds of racism experienced by the African American community and their struggle against it as depicted in the book. To provide a thorough discussion of the matter, critical race theory was employed as the method of analysis. The result is drawn based on the basic tenets of critical race theory proposed by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2001); everyday racism, interest convergence, the social construction of race, differential realization, intersectionality, and voice of Color. The findings show the struggle of African American community against racism which are expressed through the act of ignorance, promoting intelligence, communal efforts, resistance, promoting social movement, and stepping forward to voice their experience through African American literature.

“To Be Free to Say So”

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-76
Author(s):  
Eden Wales Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Reception Theory ◽  
Testimonial Literature ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender

This chapter examines Afra-American emancipatory narratives as fundamentally testimonial literature, foundational to ensuing readings of trauma, blackness, and womanhood. Specifically, the chapter analyzes Sojourner Truth’s Narrative (1850), Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes (1868) to consider how black and female speakers witness through nineteenth-century emancipatory narratives. The chapter also considers an Afra-American narrator’s (in)ability to testify to her personal experience of the prevalence of sexual abuse in American slavery and the misogynoir it reflects; how the intrusion of an amanuensis, editor, or pseudonym into a narrative affects its witnessing potential; and how gender and race work together and against each other to help and hinder witnessing. Finally, the chapter considers how contemporary readers may respond to these narratives, laying a foundation for succeeding readings of trauma and reception theory and race and gender studies in (African) American literature.

scholarly journals Critical Race Theory and Caring as Channels for Transcending Borders between an African American Professor and Her Latina/o Students

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline B. Koonce
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Effective Teaching ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Reflective Essay

This reflective essay uncovers ways in which critical race theory and caring are key to crossing racial, cultural, and linguistic borders between professors and their students. Many scholars have noted how critical reflection relates to effective teaching, especially when taking into account student learning. Reflecting upon archival data and participant observation, the author describes, through various stories, how she uses critical race theory and caring to connect with her students in spite of their differences. The author also provides examples of how her students reciprocate her care in extravagant ways.

Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eden Wales Freedman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Testimonial Literature ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Sojourner Truth ◽  
Elizabeth Keckley ◽  
Critical Conversation ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
And Gender

Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma: Confronting Race, Gender, and Violence in American Literature treats reader response to traumatic and testimonial literature written by and about African American women. Theorists emphasize the necessity of writing about—or “witnessing”—trauma to overcome it. To this critical conversation, Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma adds insight into the engagement of testimonial literature, articulating a theory of reading (or “dual-witnessing”) that explores how narrators and readers can witness trauma together. The book then places its original theories of traumatic reception in conversation with the African American literary tradition to speak to the histories, cultures, and traumas of African Americans, particularly the repercussions of slavery, as witnessed in American literature. This book also considers intersections of race and gender and how narrators and readers can cross such constructs to witness collectively. Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma’s innovative examinations of raced-gendered intersections open and speak with those works that promote dual-witnessing through the fraught (literary) histories of race and gender relations in America. To explicate how dual-witnessing converses with American literature, race theory, and gender criticism, the book analyzes emancipatory narratives by Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Keckley and novels by William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, and Jesmyn Ward.

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