Just Us Girls

Just Us Girls: The Contemporary African American Young Adult Novel is a welcome addition to the literary criticism in a field that deserves more critical study African American children's and young adult literature. This book is a close-reading textual study of major issues and themes in contemporary (i.e., post-Civil Rights era) young adult novels written by both well-known and lesser-known African American women writers, written primarily from an African American perspective and primarily, but not exclusively, for an African American female audience. Representative works by Candy Dawson Boyd, Rita Williams-Garcia, Deborah Gregory, Rosa Guy, Virginia Hamilton, Mildred Pitts Walter, and Jacqueline Woodson are analyzed. Each chapter investigates cultural, social, and/or psychological issues examined by the writers that are prevalent in the actual lives of African American girls.

Autorentext

The Author: Wendy Rountree is Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. Her expertise is in twentieth-century American literature, twentieth-century ethnic American literature with an emphasis in African American literature, and twentieth-century ethnic American drama. She has published both scholarly articles as well as a young adult novel, Lost Soul (2003). Dr. Rountree is a native of Kinston, North Carolina and is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill (B.S.), East Carolina University (B.A., M.A.), and the University of Cincinnati (Ph.D.).

Klappentext

Just Us Girls: The Contemporary African American Young Adult Novel is a welcome addition to the literary criticism in a field that deserves more critical study - African American children's and young adult literature. This book is a close-reading textual study of major issues and themes in contemporary (i.e., post-Civil Rights era) young adult novels written by both well-known and lesser-known African American women writers, written primarily from an African American perspective and primarily, but not exclusively, for an African American female audience. Representative works by Candy Dawson Boyd, Rita Williams-Garcia, Deborah Gregory, Rosa Guy, Virginia Hamilton, Mildred Pitts Walter, and Jacqueline Woodson are analyzed. Each chapter investigates cultural, social, and/or psychological issues examined by the writers that are prevalent in the actual lives of African American girls.