Spirituality As Ideology In Black Womens Film And Literature

Download Spirituality As Ideology In Black Womens Film And Literature full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Spirituality As Ideology In Black Womens Film And Literature ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature

Author : Judylyn S. Ryan
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813923703
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (237 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature by : Judylyn S. Ryan

Download or read book Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature written by Judylyn S. Ryan and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the ways in which spirituality functions in the work of such Black women writers and filmmakers as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou, Julie Dash, and Euzhan Palcy, Judylyn Ryan proposes in this challenging new study that what these women embrace in their narrative construction and characterization is the role and responsibility of the priestess, bearing and distributing life-force to sustain the community of people who read and view their work. Central to these women's vision of transformation is what Ryan calls a paradigm of growth and an ethos of interconnectedness, which provide interpretive models for examining and teaching a broad range of artistic, cultural, and social texts. The focus on theology provides a new way of viewing the connections among New World African diaspora religious traditions, challenging the widespread and reductive assumption that Afro-Christianity shares no philosophical commonalities with Santeria, Candomble ...

African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction

Author : Elizabeth J. West
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0739179373
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction by : Elizabeth J. West

Download or read book African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction written by Elizabeth J. West and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-12 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being is the nexus to scholarship on manifestations of Africanisms in black art and culture, particularly the scant critical works focusing on African metaphysical retentions. This study examines New World African spirituality as a syncretic dynamic of spiritual retentions and transformations that have played prominently in the literary imagination of black women writers. Beginning with the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction traces applications and transformations of African spirituality in black women's writings that culminate in the conscious and deliberate celebration of Africanity in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The journey from Wheatley's veiled remembrances to Hurston's explicit gaze of continental Africa represents the literary journey of black women writers to represent Africa as not only a very real creative resource but also a liberating one. Hurston's icon of black female autonomy and self realization is woven from the thread work of African spiritual principles that date back to early black women's writings.

The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison

Author : Justine Tally
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139827855
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (398 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison by : Justine Tally

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison written by Justine Tally and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is one of the most widely studied of contemporary American authors. Her novels, particularly Beloved, have had a dramatic impact on the American canon and attracted considerable critical commentary. This 2007 Companion introduces and examines her oeuvre as a whole, the first evaluation to include not only her famous novels, but also her other literary works (short story, drama, musical, and opera), her social and literary criticism, and her career as an editor and teacher. Innovative contributions from internationally recognized critics and academics discuss Morrison's themes, narrative techniques, language and political philosophy, and explain the importance of her work to American studies and world literature. This comprehensive and accessible approach, together with a chronology and guide to further reading, makes this an essential book for students and scholars of African American literature.

Black Women Directors

Author : Christina N. Baker
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 197881335X
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Black Women Directors by : Christina N. Baker

Download or read book Black Women Directors written by Christina N. Baker and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-18 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black women have long recognized the power of film for storytelling. For far too long, however, the cultural and historical narratives about film have not accounted for the contributions of Black women directors. This book remedies this omission by highlighting the trajectory of the culturally significant work of Black women directors in the United States, from the under-examined pioneers of the silent era, to the documentarians who sought to highlight the voices and struggles of Black women, and the contemporary Black women directors in Hollywood. Applying a Black feminist perspective, this book examines the ways that Black women filmmakers have made a way for themselves and their work by resisting the dominant cultural expectations for Black women and for the medium of film, as a whole.

Intersecting Aesthetics

Author : Charlene Regester
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496848861
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Intersecting Aesthetics by : Charlene Regester

Download or read book Intersecting Aesthetics written by Charlene Regester and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2023-12-15 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Cynthia Baron, Elizabeth Binggeli, Kimberly Nichele Brown, Priscilla Layne, Eric Pierson, Charlene Regester, Ellen C. Scott, Tanya L. Shields, and Judith E. Smith Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness illuminates cultural and material trends that shaped Black film adaptations during the twentieth century. Contributors to this collection reveal how Black literary and filmic texts are sites of negotiation between dominant and resistant perspectives. Their work ultimately explores the effects racial perspectives have on film adaptations and how race-inflected cultural norms have influenced studio and independent film depictions. Several chapters analyze how self-censorship and industry censorship affect Black writing and the adaptations of Black stories in early to mid-twentieth-century America. Using archival material, contributors demonstrate the ways commercial obstacles have led Black writers and white-dominated studios to mask Black experiences. Other chapters document instances in which Black writers and directors navigate cultural norms and material realities to realize their visions in literary works, independent films, and studio productions. Through uncovering patterns in Black film adaptations, Intersecting Aesthetics reveals themes, aesthetic strategies, and cultural dynamics that rightfully belong to accounts of film adaptation. The volume considers travelogue and autobiography sources along with the fiction of Black authors H. G. de Lisser, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, and Walter Mosley. Contributors examine independent films The Love Wanga (1936) and The Devil’s Daughter (1939); Melvin Van Peebles's first feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967); and the Senegalese film Karmen Geï (2001). They also explore studio-era films In This Our Life (1942), The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Lydia Bailey (1952), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954) and post-studio films The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft (1971), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).

Zora Neale Hurston

Author : Cynthia Davis
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 0810891530
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Zora Neale Hurston by : Cynthia Davis

Download or read book Zora Neale Hurston written by Cynthia Davis and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), the most prominent of the Harlem Renaissance women writers, was unique because her social and professional connections were not limited to literature but encompassed theatre, dance, film, anthropology, folklore, music, politics, high society, academia, and artistic bohemia. Hurston published four novels, three books of nonfiction, and dozens of short stories, plays, and essays. In addition, she won a long list of fellowships and prizes, including a Guggenheim and a Rosenwald. Yet by the 1950s, Hurston, like most of her Harlem Renaissance peers, had faded into oblivion. An essay by Alice Walker in the 1970s, however, spurred the revival of Hurston’s literary reputation, and her works, including her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, have enjoyed an enduring popularity. Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography of Works and Criticism consists of reviews of critical interpretations of Hurston’s work. In addition to publication information, each selection is carefully crafted to capture the author’s thesis in a short, pithy, analytical framework. Also included are original essays by eminent Hurston scholars that contextualize the bibliographic entries. Meticulously researched but accessible, these essays focus on gaps in Hurston criticism and outline new directions for Hurston scholarship in the twenty-first century. Comprehensive and up-to-date, this volume contains analytical summaries of the most important critical writings on Zora Neale Hurston from the 1970s to the present. In addition, entries from difficult-to-locate sources, such as small academic presses or international journals, can be found here. Although intended as a bibliographic resource for graduate and undergraduate students, this volume is also aimed toward general readers interested in women’s literature, African American literature, American history, and popular culture. The book will also appeal to scholars and teachers studying twentieth-century American literature, as well as those specializing in anthropology, modernism, and African American studies, with a special focus on the women of the Harlem Renaissance.

Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy

Author : Shayne Lee
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1666904228
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (669 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy by : Shayne Lee

Download or read book Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy written by Shayne Lee and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-26 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explicates how many films intersect black suffering and God-talk in ways that instantiate secular limitations to divine efficacy. The book’s concept of a modern God introduces a new method of analysis that reimagines theodical discourses as mechanisms of modern identities and filmmakers as skillful exegetes who recalibrate divine attributes to the sensemaking cadences of their contemporaries. Shayne Lee demonstrates how cinematic theodicy navigates a happy medium between affirming divine benevolence and sidelining supernatural activity and that filmic characters, like their real-world counterparts, are quite clever at triangulating rationality, faith, and tragedy. In addition to positing synergistic links between theodicy and secularity, Lee offers critical insights into cinema’s relevance to the sociology of evil by specifying how films code and narrate malevolent actions and outcomes, demarcate clear lines of distinction between victims and perpetrators, clarify societal dynamics driving inequality and oppression, and transform individual episodes of suffering into collective and memorialized identities of trauma. This book illuminates how filmic treatments of theodicy construct evil and suffering in calculated ways that connect specific acts, effects, and institutions to greater structures of meaning.

Activism and the American Novel

Author : Channette Romero
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813933285
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Activism and the American Novel by : Channette Romero

Download or read book Activism and the American Novel written by Channette Romero and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, many activists and writers have turned from identity politics toward ethnic religious traditions to rediscover and reinvigorate their historic role in resistance to colonialism and oppression. In her examination of contemporary fiction by women of color--including Toni Morrison, Ana Castillo, Toni Cade Bambara, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko--Channette Romero considers the way these novels newly engage with Vodun, Santería, Candomblé, and American Indian traditions. Critical of a widespread disengagement from civic participation and of the contemporary novel's disconnection from politics, this fiction attempts to transform the novel and the practice of reading into a means of political engagement and an inspiration for social change.

The Sacred Act of Reading

Author : Anne Margaret Castro
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813943469
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Sacred Act of Reading by : Anne Margaret Castro

Download or read book The Sacred Act of Reading written by Anne Margaret Castro and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Zora Neale Hurston to Derek Walcott to Toni Morrison, New World black authors have written about African-derived religious traditions and spiritual practices. The Sacred Act of Reading examines religion and sociopolitical power in modern and contemporary texts of a variety of genres from the black Americas. By engaging with spiritual traditions such as Vodou, Kumina, and Protestant Christianity while drawing on canonical Eurocentric literary theory, Anne Margaret Castro presents a novel, nuanced reading of power through the physical and metaphysical relationships portrayed in these great works of New World black literature. Castro examines prophecy in the dramas of Derek Walcott, preaching in the ethnography of Zora Neale Hurston, and liturgy in the novels of Toni Morrison, offering comparative readings alongside the works of Afro-Colombian anthropologist Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jamaican sociologist Erna Brodber, and Canadian fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson. The Sacred Act of Reading is the first book to bring together literary texts, historical and contemporary anthropological studies, theology, and critical theory to show how black authors in the Americas employ spiritual phenomena as theoretical frameworks for thinking within, against, and beyond structures of political dominance, dependence, and power.

Black Cultural Mythology

Author : Christel N. Temple
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438477899
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Black Cultural Mythology by : Christel N. Temple

Download or read book Black Cultural Mythology written by Christel N. Temple and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 CLA Book Award presented by the College Language Association Black Cultural Mythology retrieves the concept of "mythology" from its Black Arts Movement origins and broadens its scope to illuminate the relationship between legacies of heroic survival, cultural memory, and creative production in the African diaspora. Christel N. Temple comprehensively surveys more than two hundred years of figures, moments, ideas, and canonical works by such visionaries as Maria Stewart, Richard Wright, Colson Whitehead, and Edwidge Danticat to map an expansive yet broadly overlooked intellectual tradition of Black cultural mythology and to provide a new conceptual framework for analyzing this tradition. In so doing, she at once reorients and stabilizes the emergent field of Africana cultural memory studies, while also staging a much broader intervention by challenging scholars across disciplines—from literary and cultural studies, history, sociology, and beyond—to embrace a more organic vocabulary to articulate the vitality of the inheritance of survival.

Women and Christianity

Author : Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313082715
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Women and Christianity by : Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Download or read book Women and Christianity written by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-12-22 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explores the impact of Christian women—as scholars and leaders representing the ethnic, national, racial, and denominational diversity of Christianity today—on all aspects of life. Women and Christianity explores the experiences of women and how their daily lives interface with their spirituality and faith. Beginning with a historical overview, the book presents essays grouped under five broad headings: women, family, and environment; socioeconomics, politics, and authority; body, mind, and spirit; sex, power, and vulnerability; and women, world view, and religious practice. These essays focus on multiple aspects of women's experiences and contemporary Christian realities, involving the interrelatedness of faith, thought, and activism across many strata of global society. They wrestle with the daily experiences and challenges women face integrating their lives as women of faith—as they are advocates, experience agency, and work for mutuality. It shows how in all these roles, women must negotiate power, injustice, and the impact of sexism as they work within systemic oppression amid a patriarchal system, nevertheless championing change and refusing to be severely compromised.

Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016

Author : Félix Germain
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496210379
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016 by : Félix Germain

Download or read book Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016 written by Félix Germain and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016 explores how black women in France itself, the French Caribbean, Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis experienced and reacted to French colonialism and how gendered readings of colonization, decolonization, and social movements cast new light on the history of French colonization and of black France. In addition to delineating the powerful contributions of black French women in the struggle for equality, contributors also look at the experiences of African American women in Paris and in so doing integrate into colonial and postcolonial conversations the strategies black women have engaged in negotiating gender and race relations à la française. Drawing on research by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and countries, this collection offers a fresh, multidimensional perspective on race, class, and gender relations in France and its former colonies, exploring how black women have negotiated the boundaries of patriarchy and racism from their emancipation from slavery to the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Manifesting the Primal Imagination

Author : Joshua D. Settles
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666798819
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (667 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Manifesting the Primal Imagination by : Joshua D. Settles

Download or read book Manifesting the Primal Imagination written by Joshua D. Settles and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manifesting the Primal Imagination explores a little known, but important, aspect of Black American Christianity—the primal spirituality of the Black Pentecostal and spiritual church. Set against the backdrop of a Christianity believed by many to be synonymous with White Western culture, Manifesting the Primal Imagination demonstrates how this image of Christianity came to be, and how it is false, through a historical and scriptural examination of Christianity itself. At a time in which the nature of Christian faith is hotly contested, with many rejecting Christianity on the basis of its historical association with White supremacist claims, Settles advocates for a rereading of the history of Black American faith in a way that recognizes the importance of the primal imagination to Christianity itself.

Sacred Femininity and the Politics of Affect in African American Women's Fiction

Author : Vicent Cucarella Ramón
Publisher : Universitat de València
ISBN 13 : 8491343180
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (913 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Sacred Femininity and the Politics of Affect in African American Women's Fiction by : Vicent Cucarella Ramón

Download or read book Sacred Femininity and the Politics of Affect in African American Women's Fiction written by Vicent Cucarella Ramón and published by Universitat de València. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the way in which African American women writers (Hannah Crafts, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison) have followed the spiritual endeavor of black Christianity as created by early nineteenth-century spiritual narratives to construct a sacred reading of the black female self. The sacred femininity that puts the ethics and aesthetics of African American women at the center of a certain mode of (African) Americanness relies on a view of spirituality that joins women ontologically and validates affective modes of representation as an innovative means to obtain social and personal empowerment.

The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou

Author : Linda Wagner-Martin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119629128
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (196 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou by : Linda Wagner-Martin

Download or read book The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou written by Linda Wagner-Martin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-07-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR MAYA ANGELOU DISCOVER THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF MAYA ANGELOU WITH A HIGHLY PERSONAL AND DETAILED ACCOUNT OF HER CHALLENGES AND TRIUMPHS The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou delivers an engaging and thorough retelling of the life and work of the celebrated and accomplished writer, director, and essayist. The book offers readers an engrossing retelling of Maya Angelou’s entire life, from her time as a child in the segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas, to her death in 2014 in Winston-Salem. Written with an emphasis on accessibility, the author avoids critical theory and focuses on Maya Angelou’s growth as a person and writer as well as the ways in which her life influenced her work. This new biography tells the story of a young black woman who overcomes poverty and endemic structural and personal obstacles to lead an accomplished life. Readers will also enjoy: A thorough retelling of the time Maya Angelou spent in Africa and how it shaped her views and work An exploration of the screenplays written by Maya Angelou Discussions of Maya Angelou’s early life as a dancer, singer, and writer Accounts of Maya Angelou’s writing and production of television shows A fulsome treatment of Maya Angelou’s work, including her poems, autobiographies, films, music, and theatre Perfect for undergraduate students in Contemporary Literature courses as well as general readers who love Maya Angelou and her work, The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou will also earn a place in the libraries of biography and literature enthusiasts who seek to improve their understanding of the life and story of Maya Angelou with a highly personal and accessible new book.

African American Women’s Language

Author : Sonja L. Lanehart
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527554767
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis African American Women’s Language by : Sonja L. Lanehart

Download or read book African American Women’s Language written by Sonja L. Lanehart and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity is a groundbreaking collection of research on African American Women’s Language that is long overdue. It brings together a range of research including variationist, autoethnography, phenomenological, ethnographic, and critical. The authors come from a variety of disciplines (e.g., Sociology, African American Studies, Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociophonetics, Sociolinguistics, Anthropology, Literacy, Education, English, Ecological Literature, Film, Hip Hop, Language Variation), scientific paradigms (e.g., critical race theory, narrative, interaction, discursive, variationist, post-structural, and post-positive perspectives), and inquiry methods (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, and multimethod) while addressing a variety of African American female populations (e.g., elementary school, middle school, adults) and activity settings (e.g., classrooms, family, community, church, film). Readers will get a good sense of the language, discourse, identity, community, and grammar of African American women. The essays provide the most current research on African American Women’s Language and expand a literature that has too often only focused on male populations at the expense of letting the sistas speak.

Maya Angelou

Author : Linda Wagner-Martin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501307878
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Maya Angelou by : Linda Wagner-Martin

Download or read book Maya Angelou written by Linda Wagner-Martin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive biographical and critical reading of the works of American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Linda Wagner-Martin covers all six of Angelou's autobiographies, as well as her essay and poetry collections, while also exploring Angelou's life as an African American in the United States, her career as stage and film performer, her thoughtful participation in the Civil Rights actions of the 1960s, and her travels abroad in Egypt, Africa, and Europe. In her discussion of Angelou's methods of writing her stunning autobiography, which began with the 1970 publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Wagner-Martin writes about the influences of the Harlem Writers Group (led by James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and John O. Killens) as well as Angelou's significant friendships with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders from both international and African American United States cultures. Crucial concepts throughout include the role of oral traditions, of song and dance, of the spiritualism of art based on religious belief, of Angelou's voiced rhythms and her polished use of dialogue to convey more abstract "meaning.†? Wagner-Martin shows that, viewing herself as a global citizen, Angelou never lost her spirit of adventure and discovery as well as her ability to overcome.