Book review that critically analyzes an influential African American novel
For African Americans, literature is an integral part of understanding their racial, social and political experience in the United States. Literature is also a central part of the African American intellectual tradition. Often, racial prejudice prohibited black citizens from actively including their voices in the public forum, and literary forms provided a means of engaging the public with the realities of black life in the nation. Consequently, literature is an important part of the lived African American experience. Interrogating black literature entails placing it within its historical period, and measuring its themes and messages by other literary themes. This is where you come in.
For your final assignment you are going to write a book review that critically analyzes an influential African American novel applying AT LEAST ONE theory of literary criticisms we will explore in our last unit. This approach to reviewing literature is a part of a broader practice of analysis called literary historicism, which works to connect literature to its historical period and the cultural and political movements shaping that specific era. In this way, literary historicism requires a deep reading of texts.
As you write this essay, you will apply literary historicism to your chosen novel by considering the relationship between the themes, characters, dialogue and main ideas and the time in which the book was written. Additionally, you will complicate traditional readings of the book by thinking about how black literary theory can be applied to its narrative. Keep in mind that a book review is meant to give just enough summary, analysis, and critique to encourage your reader to pick up the book on his/her own, so you do not need to retell every detail from its pages. The average book review is 3-4 pages long, but because you are placing a book within its historical context and utilizing a literary criticism, you will need at least 1-2 pages extra to fully develop your original analysis. Use the guide below to help you organize your paper.
Novel List
Jean Toomer Cane (1923)
Wallace Thurman The Blacker the Berry (1929) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God(1937)
Richard Wright Native Son (1940)
Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man (1952)
Paule Marshall Brown Girl Brownstones (1959) Chinua Achebe Arrow of God (1964)
John A. Williams The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) Paule Marshal The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969)
Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye (1970)
James Baldwin If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) Gale Jones Corregidora (1975)
Ntozake Shang For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enough (1975)
Earnest Gaines A Gathering of Old Men (1983) Ernest Gaines A Lesson Before Dying (1993) Etwidge Danticat Breadth, Eyes, Memory (1994) Juno Diaz The Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) Zadie Smith Swing Time (2016)
Jesmyn Ward Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
Every book review has a basic format. Please follow the steps below to guide you in the process of writing your essay.
a) Book title, author, number of pages, place of publication, Publication Company and cost.
Your title should follow the format provided below.
Ex: BELOVED By Toni Morrison. 275 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
b) Begin your review with a very concise summary. This should be no longer than one page. Discuss only
the most important aspects of the narrative and tie them together to convey a sense of what the book is about and how it progresses.
Introduction to African American and African Studies II (Final Exam) Due Date: Dec. 17 @ 11:59 pm
c) You should then move into historical context. Place your book in context, and take at least one page to do so, keeping in mind that you should draw on this context throughout your analysis.
Here is where you talk about what was happening in the United States when the book was being
written and when it was published – paying particular attention to African American life.
d) After establishing your historical context, you should begin analyzing your book. Here you want to focus specifically on the major themes, imagery, and ideas that emerge from the book you have chosen. This should be no shorter than two or three pages.
Dig deep here. Think about the things your author is detailing most often throughout the text. What
stands out? What is the writer doing with this story and why? Why are these specific ideas/images/themes important to the progression of the story? What message(s) is the author trying to convey through the story/characters/setting? Remember that this is the foundation for building your critique. In short, think carefully about the overall tone of the book so that you can apply a theory that works best for the novel you have selected.
- e) Within your analysis section you must begin connecting the things you highlight about your story to the literary critique you believe works best to understand your book. This will be challenging, but work through it completely. Focus on balancing your discussion of the important themes in the text you choose with a discussion about where the audience can see your selected theory at work.
- Remember that one of the most important elements of this assignment is for you to tell your reader how the book reflects the literary theory of Toni Morrison or Henry Louis Gates. Keep in mind that this is a portion of the essay that needs to be written with an intentionally persuasive tone. You’reproving a point here. Use evidence from the text and show how it fits into the theoretical frame you chose.
- For instance, if you argue that Henry Louis Gates’s theory of signifyin[g] is applicable to your novel, work to illustrate how it is applicable. Find places in your text where the audience can see the author using language with dual intention. Highlight phrases or character dialogue that illustrates how your author is attempting to signal their own black identity through the story. Again, this is not something you can do in a night. Really take your time here, read your novel closely, and fully explain each argument that you make in your essay.
- f) After you have worked through the hardest parts of the paper, conclude it. End the essay with some discussion about how this book speaks to the larger African/Afro-American/Afro-
latinx/Afro- Caribbean/Afro-European experience, or how it informs public understanding of diasporic black cultures.
Keep this section concise – 1-2 paragraphs should suffice to offer a powerful conclusion. DO NOT
RESTATE ALL THAT YOU WROTE BEFORE THE CONCLUSION. Instead, focus on discussing the things that make this book helpful and useful for understanding the African American experience.
After fulfilling each of these requirements, your five pages will be complete. Please remember that your review must be 1500-2000 words (approximately 5-7 pages), typed in Times New Roman font and double spaced. Please submit your paper by 11:59 pm on December 17th. Since the semester will be over at this point, I cannot accept late papers. Begin working on this as early as possible and talk with me about any issues you are having as you move along.
Solution Preview
Summary
The Invisible Man, a novel by Ralph Ellison was published by Random House in 1952. This is one of the few novels that totally altered the shape of American literature and this, we can tell from the novel’s immediate recognition and fame as a masterpiece, which won the author the coveted National Book Award in 1953. The novel is a subtle narration of the ordeal of a nameless young black man and his dilemma concerning the position he holds in the world (Ellison, 2016). The protagonist lives in a room underground whose lighting is stolen from a nearby street electricity grid, the narrator tells of how he has been faced with social invisibility and takes us back on a life journey to his adolescent years. Upon High School graduation, the narrator earns a scholarship to an exclusively black college but in order to earn it, he had to take part in a brutal fight in front of white spectators just for their entertainment.
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