A representação do sujeito diaspórico em O livro dos negros, de Lawrence Hill

As neonarrativas de escravidão surgiram no cenário literário norte-americano com a publicação de Jubilee, de Margaret Walker (1966), porém só tiveram efetivo reconhecimento nos anos oitenta, com o lançamento de Beloved, de Toni Morrison (1987). Concebidas como “romances contemporâneos que assumem a forma, as convenções e a voz narrativa em primeira pessoa das narrativas de escravos produzidas antes da Guerra Civil” (RUSHDY, 1997), foram, aos poucos, se distanciando desse modelo e hoje podem ser consideradas transnacionais e globais, bem como dialógicas, polifônicas e transgenéricas, segundo Judith Misrahi-Barak (2014). Nessa perspectiva e com o suporte teórico dos Estudos Culturais e do conceito pós-moderno de metaficção historiográfica, este trabalho propõe a análise da representação do sujeito diaspórico em O livro dos negros, do canadense Lawrence Hill (2014), que tem por temática a trajetória de escravos durante a vigência do sistema escravagista. Ao deslocar a voz narrativa para o oprimido, Hill desafia o discurso da História, escovando-a a contrapelo.

Poetics of the Enclave

This chapter examines the previously neglected role of the sonnet in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Leading theorists of the movement denounced the sonnet as a paradigmatic “white” form that constrained black self-expression and had to be excluded from the black nation. The demand for an oral, authentic, collective poetry led poets to dismantle the traditional sonnet structure and adapt the form to cultural nationalist demands. The chapter reviews the role of traditional poetic forms in the black aesthetic and discusses strategies of camouflaging or demarcating the sonnet in the work of June Jordan, Joe Mitchell, Conrad Kent Rivers, Quincy Troupe, and Margaret Walker. These strategies confirm the view in recent scholarship that the Black Arts movement exerted both a confining and a creative influence on poets of the time.

For My People

When Margaret Walker founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People in 1968, she stood at the forefront of a nascent Black studies movement. At the time, she had served on the faculty at Jackson State College since 1949. In both a racist and a sexist society, she used her scholarship and art as vehicles for activism. Today, the Margaret Walker Center, named for its founder, continues to lift up her legacy as a museum and special collections archive dedicated to Black experience in America.