Politics and Affect in Black Women's Fiction

Exploring literary possibilities, Politics and Affect reads black women's text-in particular Frances Harper's "The Two Offers" (1859), Julia Collins's The Curse of Caste (1865), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928), and Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998)-as richly creative documents saturated with sociopolitical value. Interested in how African American women writers from the nineteenth century to the present have mined the politics of affect and emotion to document love, shame, and suffering in environments shaped by race, Kathy Glass gives sustained attention to the impact of racist affect on the black body, and examines how black women writers deploy emotional states to engender sociopolitical change.

Kathy Glass is associate professor of English at Duquesne University.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Love-Driven Politics in Frances Harper's "The Two Offers"
Chapter Two: "Do Unto Others": De-Racializing the Golden Rule in Julia Collins's The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride
Chapter Three: Nella Larsen's Spiritual Strivings
Chapter Four: On Blackness and Longing in Danzy Senna's Caucasia
Conclusion
Bibliography