African American Women Writers' Historical Fiction

African American historical fiction combines historical research with imaginary elements in order to recreate the past. This body of literature privileges the lives of the socially marginalized, the people, as Audre Lorde put it, 'who do not speak ...who do not have a voice because they/we were so t [...]
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African American historical fiction combines historical research with imaginary elements in order to recreate the past. This body of literature privileges the lives of the socially marginalized, the people, as Audre Lorde put it, 'who do not speak ...who do not have a voice because they/we were so terrified.' Here, analyzing the main trends and developments of the African American historical fiction written by women in the twentieth century, Ana Nunes addresses the relationship between history and literature. This vibrant study reworks the historical record from the point of view of the silenced female to give origin to an unprecedented narrative of the American experience. Focusing on Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966), Gayl Jones's Corregidora (1975), Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Phyllis Perry's Stigmata (1998), this book extricates the selected novels from the literary vacuum in which they are traditionally read and places them as central in the consolidation of the African American literary tradition.