Reflections on reading and teaching contemporary african american prose

The aim of this essay is to present an overview of shifting paradigms in Black Studies. I will critically look back on my own research on African American women writers of the so-called Second American Renaissance in an effort to determine to what extent theory can alter interpretation, and how theoretical position can ‘rewrite’ or ‘transform’ the books we read and analyze. I will show that my engagement with diasporic and postcolonial theories has enabled me a more polemical formulation of contemporary Afro-American women’s prose. I will also analyze how my experience with applying different literary and cultural theories and criticism impacted on my teaching of black American literature and literature in general.