RUcore Resource Object
RUcore Resource Object
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TitleSharp bones
NamePrater, Tzarina Tavielle (author), Wall, Cheryl (chair), McClure, John (internal member), Davidson, Harriet (internal member), Edwards, Brent (outside member), Rutgers University, Graduate School - New Brunswick,
Degree Date2009-10
Date Created2009
SubjectEnglish,
Heroes in literature,
American literature--African American authors--History and criticism
DescriptionThere has never been a successful revolution without "heroes." This dissertation argues that despite the inherent racist implications of classical and modern formulations of the heroic, the hero remains a site of struggle and resistance for writers of and in the African Diaspora. This project considers a genealogy of writers beginning with Ralph Ellison whose novel, Invisible Man and short story, "Flying Home," engage with classic and then contemporary forms of the heroic and seek to carve out a space for the African American heroic. I then consider novels and short stories produced by the next generation of writers, specifically the work of Charles Johnson and Toni Cade Bambara, who inherit Ellison's legacy of engagement with aesthetic and political implications of social and popular cultural movements and history. These writers, I argue, come to very different conclusions as to the efficacy of the "hero." I conclude the dissertation with the work of Michelle Cliff and Patricia Powell, whose work take us to the Anglo Caribbean and enables me to think through the movement of this figure through conduits of colonial and global capital and the resiliency of contemporary struggles, political and aesthetic, with this figure as a site of resistance and revolution.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references (p. 306-317)
Noteby Tzarina Tavielle Prater
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttp://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.000051939
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.