A Choice Outstanding Academic Title

The literature often considered the most American is rooted not only in European and Western culture but also in African and American Creole cultures. Keith Cartwright places the literary texts of such noted authors as George Washington Cable, W.E.B. DuBois, Alex Haley, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Joel Chandler Harris, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, and many others in the context of the history, spiritual traditions, folklore, music, linguistics, and politics out of which they were written.

Cartwright grounds his study of American writings in texts from the Senegambian/Old Mali region of Africa. Reading epics, fables, and gothic tales from the crossroads of this region and the American South, he reveals that America’s foundational African presence, along with a complex set of reactions to it, is an integral but unacknowledged source of the national culture, identity, and literature.

Keith Cartwright, assistant professor of English at Roanoke College in Roanoke, Virginia, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal.

Reviews:

"No matter how obvious the political demand to acknowledge the unacknowledged is, we need the research, the scholarly guidance, and the close, comparative readings that Cartwright offers in order to make acknowledgement more than a half-informed political gesture, to make it fully appreciative."-Zoltan Abadi-Nagy, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies

"Cartwright's purpose is simple-to show the importance of African culture in United States literature, and he succeeds in fulfilling the essential goal. In so doing, his insights are often surprising and almost invariably interesting."--College Literature

“Perceptive. . . . Cartwright invites a reexamination of the origins of American literature, calling attention to Africa and the plantation South.”--Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas
“An important work which broadens our concept of American culture and literature beyond an almost purely Anglo focus to include the vital African ingredients in our national genius.”--Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

“Cartwright offers a potentially pathbreaking approach to American and African American literature as well as fascinating and provocative readings of canonical and noncanonical texts.”--John Gruesser

“Essential in all academic libraries, this book will be valuable in the search for historical truth in American culture.”--Choice