{"product_id":"9781572336155","title":"A Spirit of Dialogue: Incarnations of Ogbanje the Born-to-Die, in African American Literature","description":"\u003cbr\u003eA groundbreaking study, \u003ci\u003eA Spirit of Dialogue\u003c\/i\u003e examines through extensive, interdisciplinary research, theory, and close reading the intricate reconstructions, extensions, and resonances of the West African myth of spirit children, the “Born-to-Die,” in contemporary African American neo-slave narratives. Arguing that the myth, called “Ogbañje” in Igbo language and “àbíkú” in Yoruba, has had over thirty years of uncharted presence in African American literature, Okonkwo advances a compelling case absent in extant scholarship. He traces Ogbañje\/the Born-to-Die's appearance in African American texts to a convergence of factors. They include but are not limited to: the impact of Chinua Achebe's \u003ci\u003eThings Fall Apart;\u003c\/i\u003e the 1960s emergence of the contemporary neo-slave narrative; the 1960s and 1970s black consciousness\/Black Power movement and the cultural agenda, gendered politics, and centripetal philosophy of the Black Arts movement's nationalist aesthetic; African American identity questions of the post-civil rights and the multicultural eras; and the thematic shifts, as well as the African diaspora orientation of African American fiction of the post-nationalist aesthetic period.\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e A Spirit of Dialogue \u003c\/i\u003efocuses on the sometimes neglected and understudied works of four canonical African American writers: Octavia E. Butler's \u003ci\u003eWild Seed\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMind of My Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, Tananarive Due's \u003ci\u003eThe Between\u003c\/i\u003e, John Edgar Wideman's \u003ci\u003eThe Cattle Killing\u003c\/i\u003e, and Toni Morrison's \u003ci\u003eSula \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Beloved\u003c\/i\u003e. Okonkwo demonstrates persuasively how the mythic spirit child informs the content and form of these novels, offering Butler, Due, Wideman, and Morrison a non-occidental “code” by which to engage collectively with the various issues integral to the history experience of African-descended people. The paradigm functions, then, as the nexus of a life-affirmative dialogue among the six novels, as well as between them and other works of African religious and literary imagination, particularly T\u003ci\u003ehings Fall Apart \u003c\/i\u003eand Ben Okri's\u003ci\u003e The Famished Road.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Tennessee Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47050340008176,"sku":"9781572336155","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781572336155_p0.jpg?v=1763794453","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781572336155","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}