History Reviews of New Books · 1995 · 239 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesAfrican American StudiesHistoryAfrican American HistoryCultural HistoryIntellectual HistoryAfrican American Cultural HistoryAfrican American Literary CriticismAfrican American Literary StudiesAfrican American Memory StudiesBlack StudiesAfrican American AutobiographyAfrican American HistoriographyAfrican American Identity FormationAfrican American Narrative TraditionsArtistic ExperienceBlack Historical ConsciousnessBlack MemoryLiterary Memory
As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning - the frame and the substance - of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances