Water and African American Memory
Water and African American Memory
An Ecocritical Perspective
“This cutting-edge text not only increases our understanding of African American literature and film; it also enlarges the accessibility and the possibilities of the field of ecocriticism.”—Yvonne Atkinson, Mt. San Jacinto College and president of the Toni Morrison Society
While there is no lack of scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage and the Middle Passage as tropes in African diasporic writing, to date there has not been a comprehensive analysis of bodies of water in African American literature and culture.
In Water and African American Memory, Anissa Wardi offers the first sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. Her holistic approach especially highlights the ways that water acts not only as a metaphorical site of trauma, memory, and healing but also as a material site.
Using the trans-Atlantic voyage as a starting point and ending with a discussion of Hurricane Katrina, this pioneering ecocritical study delves deeply into the environmental dimension of African American writing. Beyond proposing a new theoretical map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora, Wardi offers a series of engaging and original close readings of major literary, filmic, and blues texts, including the works of Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Julie Dash, Henry Dumas, and Kasi Lemmon.
Ahead of the curve. . . . Wardi’s work helps us see clearly and deeply the infinite interconnections and parallels that make this relationship such a complex planetary, human, and cultural concern.’—Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
Anissa Wardi’s stimulating study addresses a crucial motif in African American expressive tradition, examining the trope of water, and bodies of water, in terms of its cultural, spiritual, historical, and political contexts and meanings.’—Modern Language Review
Ambitious and well-researched. . . . Wardi undertakes this investigation through an examination of several twentieth-century cultural texts by writers Ntozake Shange, Toni Morrison, Henry Dumas, and Richard Wright; filmmakers Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons; and blues singers Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith.’—Callaloo
Shows that in addition to the Atlantic Ocean of the Middle Passage, sites of African American memory include all forms of water—rivers, swamps, lakes, fog, and hurricanes. . . . This is a worthy eco-critical perspective.’—CHOICE
Anissa Janine Wardi, author of Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature, is associate professor of English and director of cultural studies and African American studies at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
