Selected Sources of Critical Works on
African-American Women’s Writing
Awkward, Michael. Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels.
New York: Columbia UP, 1989.
Baker, Houston. Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing. Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 1991.
Bambara, Toni Cade, Ed. The Black Woman: An Anthology. New York: Norton, 1970.
Bell, Roseanne P., Bettye J. Parker, and Beverley Guy-Sheftall, Eds. Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of
Black Women in Literature. New York: Anchor, 1979.
Braxton, Joanne M. And Andree Nicola McLaughlin, Eds. Wild Women in the Whirlwind: AfraAmerican Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP,
1990.
Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist.
New York: Oxford UP, 1987.
---. “White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood.” In The Empire Strikes
Back:
Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York:
Pergamon P, 1985.
---. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. Westport, CT: Greenwood P,
1980.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Dubey, Madhu. Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1994.
duCille, Ann. The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction. New
York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Evans, Mari, Ed. Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Garden City, NY:
Anchor, 1984.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., Ed. Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. New York:
Meridian, 1990.
Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America.
New York: William and Morrow and Co., 1984.
Holloway, Karla F.C. Moorings and Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women’s
Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992.
hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End P, 1981.
---. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End P, 1984
---. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End P, 1989.
Hull, Gloria. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1987.
---, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, Eds. All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But
Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist P, 1982.
Jordan, Sheila M. Broken Silences
Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. Claiming the Heritage: African American Women Novelists and History.
Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1991.
Lerner, Gerda, Ed. Black Women in White America. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
McDowell, Deborah. “The Changing Same”: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and Theory.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.
Minh-Ha, Trinh T. Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1989.
Pryse, Marjorie and Hortense J. Spillers, eds. Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction and Literary Tradition.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
Russell, Sandi. Render Me My song: African-American Women Writers from Slavery to the Present.
New York: St. Martin’s, 1990.
Shockely, Ann Allen, Ed. Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical
Guide. New York: New American Library, 1989.
Smith, Barbara. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color
Press, 1983.
Smith, Valerie. Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1988.
Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1986.
---. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century. New
York: Oxford UP, 1992.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria. No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women’s Fiction. New
York: Pilgrim, 1984.
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace,
1983.
Wall, Cheryl ed., Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black
Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1989.
Washington, Mary Helen. Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women. Garden City, NY: Anchor,
1987.
Wilentz, Gay. Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1992.
Willis, Susan. Signifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience. Madison: U of Wisconsin
P, 1987.