Fingering the Jagged Grain

Library Journal

While black writers in the mid-1960s emphasized specific political and social goals, recent black fiction has concentrated on literary techniques. Byerman's book argues that this new fiction uses black folk culture both as content and as the basis for aesthetic form. For example, the folk culture encouraged inventive wordplay, and black writers frequently employ such liberated language as a challenge to those who would use fixed language as an analog to a fixed social order. Black folk culture often incorporated a repetitive call-and-response pattern. Recent black fiction displays a similar pattern: Plots move not to the resolution of a conflict but to its repetition in another version. Byerman provides detailed analyses of works by Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, etc. Albert E. Wilhelm, English Dept., Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville