Bernard W. Bell

In 1987 Bernard W. Bell published The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, a comprehensive interpretive history of more than 150 novels written by African Americans from 1853 to 1983. The book won the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the College Language Association and was reprinted five times. Now Bell has produced a new volume that serves as a sequel and companion to the earlier work, expanding the coverage to 2001. Bell also refines and extends his interpretive model for reading texts by African American writers, a model based on the vernacular forms of expression of his childhood, the literary theories of Ralph Ellison, and the writings on double-consciousness of W. E. B. Du Bois. T he book begins with a personal essay in which Bell traces the evolution of his thinking about sociohistorical and sociocultural approaches to literature. He goes on to apply these approaches to the work of hundreds of black novelists whose work has been published since 1853. His primary focus, however, is on some forty novels and romances published between 1983 and 2001, including works by Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Albert Murray, Gloria Naylor, Al Young, David Bradley, Leon Forrest, and Charles Johnson, as well as the neo-Black Aesthetic novelists Nathaniel Mackey, Trey Ellis, Percival L. Everett, and Colson Whitehead. In acknowledging the diversity of the tradition of the novel, Bell also examines the science fiction of Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, the gay novels of E. Lynn Harris, Larry Duplechan, and Randall Kenan, and the detective narratives of Barbara Neely and Walter Mosley. The result is a book of impressive scope and accomplishment - an essential work for any serious student of African American literature.

Interpreting Du Bois' thoughts on race and culture in a broadly philosophical sense, this volume assembles original essays by some of today's leading scholars in a critical dialogue on different important theoretical and practical issues that concerned him throughout his long career: the conundrum of race, the issue of gender equality, and the perplexities of pan-Africanism.

Library Journal writes: Civil rights advances in the last 25 years have included an awareness that the traditional canon of American literature excluded important minority authors. This study is a strong addition to the growing body of scholarly analysis examining the Afro-American contribution. Proceeding chronologically from William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853) to experimental novels of the 1980s, Bell comments on more than 150 works, with close readings of 41 novelists. His remarks are framed by an inquiry into the distinctive elements of Afro-American fiction. Bell's conclusions may provoke varied discussion, for the book is broadly accessible and will appeal to general readers and undergraduates as well as to literary scholars. Recommended.