Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-180) and index.
Contents
Introduction: Bearing witness: reading the narrative of the African American body -- The call: -- Imag(in)ing the body wounded: bodily inscriptions and initiation rites in America's social discourse -- Whip-scarred and branded: the ancestors speak on the slave condition -- The response: -- Bodies of texts: literal and figurative visions of history in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose -- Dis-membered to re-member: bodies, scars, and ritual in Toni Morrison's Beloved -- "Walking wounded": the urban experience in Ann Petry's The street -- Fingering the fissures of the black male psyche: Wright and Ellison revisited -- Awakenings: a personal odyssey.
