PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-025-6   $22.95

136 pages; 6 x 9 inches

Studies in Black American Literature

by Houston Baker

In seven critical essays, Houston Baker’s Singers of Daybreak refutes the Eurocentric notion that black literature is didactic.  In their intensive exploration of the writings and criticisms of authors such as Ralph Ellison, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frederick Douglass, Jean Toomer, Gwendolyn Brooks, and George Cain, Baker’s critiques emerge as an Afrocentric examination of the black literary tradition, which, the author claims, has for too long been misunderstood and distorted.  What arises from the forge of Baker’s rigorous examination is a definition of who, in his view, the “singers of daybreak” are: “Black men and women who will not allow Anglo-America to control their voices.”

Long considered a major voice in the camp of scholars who insist on a cultural-nationalist viewpoint in the writing, review, and criticism of black literature, Houston Baker provides a compelling introduction to this volume of Singers of Daybreak.  That analysis assesses the unifying aspects of the book and gives readers an opportunity to glimpse his private recollections about how it came into being. 

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