Karla F. Holloway - Moorings and Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Womens Literature

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Holloway, Karla F. C.
Moorings and metaphors: figures of culture and gender in Black women's litera
ture / Karla F. C. Holloway.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8 135-1745-1 (cloth) ISBN o-8 35- 1746-X (pbk.)
1. American literatureAfro-American authorsHistory and criticism. 2. West
African literature (English)Women authors-History and criticism. 3. Litera
ture, ComparativeAmerican and West African (English) 4. Literature, Compar
ativeWest African (English) and American. 5. Women and literatureUnited
StatesHistory20th century. 6. American literatureWomen authorsHistory
and criticism. 7. Women and literatureAfrica, WestHistory20th century.
8. American literature20th centuryHistory and criticism. 9. Afro-American
women in literature. 10. Women, Black, in literature. 11. Sex role in litera
ture. 12. Myth in literature. 13. Metaphor. 1. Title.
PS153.N5H651992
8 10.919287-dc2091 - 16803
CIP

British Cataloging-in-Publication information available

Copyright 1992 by Karla F. C. Holloway
All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

I wish to thank the Rockefeller Foundation and the 1988-89 Rockefeller Humanist-in-Residence Fellowships sponsored through the Center for Research on Women at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for providing fellowship support during the research and writing of this book.

The specific support and encouragement of John Bassett, Stephanie Demetrakopoulos, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at the beginning of this project assured its completion. The collegial and sisterly support of Lois Rita Helmbold and Wendy Luttrell enriched the time we spent as Rockefeller Humanists, shuttling between the Duke and Chapel Hill offices of the Center for Research on Women. The model of their own scholarly persistence is certainly reflected in the publication of this work. I thank as well Abena Busia and Shari Benstock for their careful reading of this manuscript at critical stages in its evolution.

I am grateful for the wise counsel of colleagues who generously read portions of this manuscript through its various configurations and who encouraged both the idea and my development of it. My gratitude and indebtedness are extended

in great measure to two colleagues, Joyce Pettis and Gay Wilentz, not only for their keen critical and scholarly insight, but for their nurturing friendship.

This book benefits from the companionship and support I received from two groups of women: The Friday Night WomenIda Campbell, Sandra Campbell, Millicent Fauntleroy, Hortense Francis, Faithia Henderson, Anita Miles, Gracie Miller, Barbara Montford, Joyce Pettis, Linda Smith, and Marilyn Welchwhose love of the literature that is the subject of this book and whose joyous Friday night gatherings to talk about these works, in our own especially "serious and sustained" manner, continue to be a major blessing in my life; and the Wintergreen Writers' Collective, whose seasonal gatherings (despite hurricanes and snowstorms) have nurtured many of the thoughts in this text.