{"product_id":"9780814252925","title":"Changing the Subject: Writing Women across the African Diaspora","description":"In \u003ci\u003eChanging the Subject: Writing Women across the African Diaspora,\u003c\/i\u003e K. Merinda Simmons argues that, in first-person narratives about women of color, contexts of migration illuminate constructions of gender and labor. These constructions and migrations suggest that the oft-employed notion of \"authenticity\" is not as useful a classification as many feminist and postcolonial scholars have assumed. Instead of relying on so-called authentic feminist journeys and heroines for her analysis, Simmons calls for a self-reflexive scholarship that takes seriously the scholar's own role in constructing the subject. \u003cp\u003eThe starting point for this study is the nineteenth-century Caribbean narrative \u003ci\u003eThe History of Mary Prince\u003c\/i\u003e (1831). Simmons puts Prince's narrative in conversation with three twentieth-century novels: Zora Neale Hurston's \u003ci\u003eTheir Eyes Were Watching God,\u003c\/i\u003e Gloria Naylor's \u003ci\u003eMama Day,\u003c\/i\u003e and Maryse Condé's \u003ci\u003eI, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.\u003c\/i\u003e She incorporates autobiography theory to shift the critical focus from the object of study-slave histories-to the ways people talk about those histories and to the guiding interests of such discourses. In its reframing of women's migration narratives, Simmons's study unsettles theoretical certainties and disturbs the very notion of a cohesive diaspora.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eK. Merinda Simmons\u003c\/b\u003e is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ohio State University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47030617866480,"sku":"9780814252925","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780814252925_p0.jpg?v=1763750944","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780814252925","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}