Native Sons in No Man's Land Rewriting Afro-American Manhood in the Novels of Baldwin, Walker, Wideman, and Gaines

With the study of selected novels by Baldwin, Walker, Wideman, and Gaines,Native Sons in No Man's Landexamines the discursive politics involved in the rewriting of such powerless, inarticulate versions of black manhood as that codified by Richard Wright inNativeSons' Bigger Thomas. The novels treated in this study present their writers sharing a desire to transcend the language barriers that control mainstream definitions of (Black) manhood. A close critical reading of these texts reveals a great deal about the American and, specifically, Afro-American aspiration to manly identity, about the relationship between one's sense of "manhood" and one's control of discourse, and about the power of language to shape identity.Auger, Philip is the author of 'Native Sons in No Man's Land Rewriting Afro-American Manhood in the Novels of Baldwin, Walker, Wideman, and Gaines' with ISBN 9780815330608 and ISBN 081533060X.