The Coming-of-Age of the Contemporary African American Novel: Olympia Vernon¿s Eden, Logic, and A Killing in This TownĦ.Ěnother Night, Another Story: The Frame Narrative in Toni Morrison¿s Paradise and Alf Laylah Wa Laylah ħ.Ě Stranger on the Bus: Reginald McKnight¿s I Get on the Bus as Complex JourneyĨ. The Politics of Addiction and Adaptation: Dis/ease Transmission in Octavia E. Healing in Edwidge Danticat¿s Breath, Eyes, MemoryĤ. Ideological Tension: Cultural Nationalism and Multiculturalism in the Novels of Ishmael Reedģ. Gaines and Recent Critical Approaches to the Study of African American FictionĢ. Theoretical Influences and Experimental Resemblances: Ernest J. Butler, Olympia Vernon, Toni Morrison, and Reginald McKnight, among others.ġ. Gaines, Ishmael Reed, Edwidge Danticat, Octavia E. How does African American fiction represent the changing times in America and the world? How are these changes reflected in narrative strategies or in narrative content? How do contemporary fictionists engage diasporic Africanisms, or how do they renegotiate Americanism? What is the impact of cultural production, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity on this fiction? How does contemporary African American fiction reconstruct or rewrite earlier “classic” African American, American, or world literature? Authors under study include Ernest J. They investigate many of the key inquiries which inform discussions about the condition of contemporary African American fiction. Williams, eight contributors examine trends and ideas which characterize African American fiction since 1970. In Contemporary African American Fiction: New Critical Essays, edited by Dana A.

I Get on the Bus by Reginald McKnight