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Maya Angelou: the Iconic Self, 2nd Edition by Mary Jane Lupton
Maya Angelou: The Iconic Self examines this iconic artist's work as an autobiographer, offering an up-to-date assessment of Angelou's contributions to American literature and to American and international culture. This is the only book to interpret Angelou's autobiographies as unique experiments in the history of black narrative. It attests to Angelou's creativity in transforming the typical single-volume autobiography into a six-volume personal and cultural adventure that tells the truth but reads like fiction. The narratives cover the years from the Great Depression (1941) to the days following the assassinations of Malcolm X (1965) and Martin Luther King (1968), emphasizing Angelou's roles as mother, daughter, granddaughter, wife, and friend. This revised edition also presents information about Maya Angelou's funeral and her continuing legacy since her death in 2014. The depth and scope of the book's observations regarding Angelou's autobiographies will be of great interest to readers seeking an analysis of the interconnections among Angelou's writings as well as serve students taking courses in women's studies or black culture studies.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2016
Borges and His Fiction: : A Guide to His Mind and Art by Gene H. Bell-Villada
Since its first publication in 1981, Borges and His Fiction has introduced the life and works of this Argentinian master-writer to an entire generation of students, high school and college teachers, and general readers. Responding to a steady demand for an updated edition, Gene H. Bell-Villada has significantly revised and expanded the book to incorporate new information that has become available since Borges' death in 1986. In particular, he offers a more complete look at Borges and Peronism and Borges' personal experiences of love and mysticism, as well as revised interpretations of some of Borges' stories. As before, the book is divided into three sections that examine Borges' life, his stories in Ficciones and El Aleph, and his place in world literature.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2000
Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler by Gregory Jerome Hampton
Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler: Slaves, Aliens, and Vampires is a timely text that critically situates Butler's fiction in several fields of study including American, African-American, gender, and science fiction studies. This book attempts to avoid excluding as many readers as possible by evading esoteric jargon while still engaging the interdisciplinary discourses that respond to Butler's fiction. The study asserts that Butler's fiction transforms the way the body is imagined with reference to race and gender. This text examines how Butler's fiction is able to cross several genre boundaries while simultaneously reshaping the genre of science fiction. This book makes the claim that Butler's fiction is crucial for contemporary and future investigations of identity formation. Discussions of race, class, and sex are reoccurring topic that are inextricable to any understanding of body politics and theory. This book is filled with exciting and insightful discussions that raise questions about what constitutes humanity in Butler's fiction and in the real world. Ultimately, the purpose of the text is to add to the scholarship surrounding Butler and to bring her to the attention of audiences that might otherwise overlook her work. This book is an invitation for readers inside and outside of the academy to discover the fiction of Octavia Butler.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2014
The Postmodern Humanism of Philip K. Dick by Jason P. Vest
In The Postmodern Humanism of Philip K. Dick, Jason Vest examines how Dick adapted the conventions of science fiction and postmodernism to reflect humanist concerns about the difficulties of maintaining identity, agency, and autonomy in the latter half of the 20th century. He also explores literary relationship to Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2009
