Women and Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing

This study discovers how contemporary writers have imagined possible relationships between African American and white women that overcome the stereotypical patterns of racism, using novels and autobiographies and focusing on works by William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, Audre Lorde, Kaye Gibbons, Elizabeth Cox, Sherley Anne Wiliams, and Toni Morrison

'This is a solid study of 'the complexities of interracial friendship' among black and white women in a variety of American literary texts. Reames presents a sobering argument about the lasting legacies of racial antagonism as well as the ways in which a range of American women writers work to critique and reimagine ideas and practices of racial difference.' - Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University

'In this important new work, Reames presents cogent analysis of relationships between African American and white women, both in and through American literature.By examining an impressiverange of texts, Reames demonstrates how the tensions between black women and white women cannot begin tobesolved until white women work to become more aware of their whiteness.By interrogating literary depictions of relationships between black and white women, she exploreshow thoughtful readers - especially white feminists - can learn to raise their consciousnesses as they read works by and about black women and thus seek to prevent a reinscription of racist hegemony.While engaging her predecessors, Reames's original perspectives provide a needed addition to scholarship on race and gender dynamics in American literature.' - Kristine Yohe, Associate Professor of English, Northern Kentucky University

KELLY LYNCH REAMES is Assistant Professor, Western Kentucky University, USA.