The Contemporary African-American Novel: Multiple Cities, Multiple Subjectivities, and Discursive Practices of Whiteness in Everyday Urban Encounters

“Lâle Demirtürk’s critical study of the African American “neo-urban novel” draws together an impressive array of postmodern theory and criticism. This in-depth analysis of novels by six contemporary American writers convincingly demonstrates how these novelists ultimately subvert the discursive power of normative whiteness. The study’s interpretative framework is aptly applied to a range of texts, from Walter Mosley’s popular detective fiction to Percival Everett’s and John Edgar Wideman’s arguably more literary works. The internationalist perspective of the book provides an intriguing angle on how these cutting-edge writers re-imagine the everyday realities of the American urban landscape. Theoretically assured and richly detailed, Demirtürk’s study will prove a rewarding read for serious students of African American literature.” –Bonnie Tusmith, co-editor of Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics

“Lâle Demirtürk’s new text importantly demonstrates how black people contest urban spaces as tropes of black criminality and savagery in need of white control and how, through such acts of contestation, black bodies are able to re-signify such urban spaces as sites of agential identity formation in relationship to white hegemony. Demirtürk’s text, which makes a significant contribution to African American literature, whiteness studies, and the dynamics of racialized urban space, is as much an intelligent and splendid analysis of “the African American neo-urban novel” as it is a text that infuses her own identity as an ally of black people.” –George Yancy, professor of philosophy, Emory University