Reconsidering Contemporary African-American Identity

This book offers a fresh perspective on the Post- Soul aesthetic and its role in re-writing African- American identity-- by focusing explicitly on three contemporary authors: Spike Lee, Touré, and Suzan- Lori Parks. My premise is that Post-Soul art is a direct result of the sweeping changes brought by the post-Civil Rights era in the African-American mentality, which inaugurated a new age in African- American art. Thus, the Post-Soul generation represents blackness as diverse, free to define itself in its own terms; they promote a critical take on black nationalism, and new perspectives on slavery. Most of the Post-Soul artists consider themselves "cultural mulattos," people able to navigate equally in the white and the black worlds, artists who programmatically explore the boundaries of blackness, and use non-traditional black cultural influences in their art works. Determined to (re) Signify on both black and white cultural references, Post-Soul artists challenge both stereotypical images of African-American promoted by mainstream culture and, the sometimes, sentimentalized iconic figureheads of their own community.

Autorentext

Letitia Guran, 2005 Ph. D. in comparative literature from the University of Georgia, USA, with a dissertation about the functions of the aesthetic in 20th century. Now working on a project devoted to multicultural American identity. Fulbright Scholar in 1998 and since 2008 is President of the Romanian Studies Association of America.