Book contents
- A History of African American Autobiography
- A History of African American Autobiography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- A Chronology of African American Life Writing
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Crafting a Credible Black Self in African American Life Writing
- Part I Origins and Histories
- Part II Individuals and Communities
- Chapter 12 Spiritual Autobiography, Past and Present
- Chapter 13 Life Writings of Contemporary African American Women
- Chapter 14 The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a Transitional Black Arts Text
- Chapter 15 Black Queer Life Writing
- Chapter 16 African American Celebrity Auto/Biographies
- Chapter 17 Mixed-Race Autobiographical Narratives
- Chapter 18 Black Biography, Past and Present
- Chapter 19 Black Lives in Contemporary Persona Poems
- Chapter 20 Depicting African American Life in Graphics and Visual Cultures
- Chapter 21 Life Writing for Black Children and Youth
- Chapter 22 Black Life Writing for Young Readers
- Chapter 23 Can Cups Be Books? Or, Other Ways to Recognize African American Autobiography
- Index
Chapter 20 - Depicting African American Life in Graphics and Visual Cultures
from Part II - Individuals and Communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2021
- A History of African American Autobiography
- A History of African American Autobiography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- A Chronology of African American Life Writing
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Crafting a Credible Black Self in African American Life Writing
- Part I Origins and Histories
- Part II Individuals and Communities
- Chapter 12 Spiritual Autobiography, Past and Present
- Chapter 13 Life Writings of Contemporary African American Women
- Chapter 14 The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a Transitional Black Arts Text
- Chapter 15 Black Queer Life Writing
- Chapter 16 African American Celebrity Auto/Biographies
- Chapter 17 Mixed-Race Autobiographical Narratives
- Chapter 18 Black Biography, Past and Present
- Chapter 19 Black Lives in Contemporary Persona Poems
- Chapter 20 Depicting African American Life in Graphics and Visual Cultures
- Chapter 21 Life Writing for Black Children and Youth
- Chapter 22 Black Life Writing for Young Readers
- Chapter 23 Can Cups Be Books? Or, Other Ways to Recognize African American Autobiography
- Index
Summary
Chaney investigates the "changing same" of visual self-presentation in African American autobiography, history, biography, and fiction, paying attention to two forms: frontispieces and illustrations of the nineteenth-century ex-fugitive and comics from twenty-first-century African American artists and writers. The bridge between these two zones of history is not to be erected or traversed in the name of a naïve comparison, nor is it to be drawn from the coincidence of similarity arising from the fact that all the texts involved are partly visual. Rather, the gulf separating Frederick Douglass and Matt Johnson, for example, and their time periods is itself an assumption that the graphic works discussed in this chapter all seek to dismantle. Insofar as the traumatic Black subject is nearly always also a historical one in contemporary entertainments, African American graphic novels reclaim the past in the name of the present: through a style, voice, or look that is unavoidably "presentist" in its approach — since even a comic designed to resemble antebellum illustrations always does so in a manner that contrarily flaunts what is more contemporary than historical about the text.
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- A History of African American Autobiography , pp. 327 - 343Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021