"These essays bring together in a wonderfully synoptic fashion the themes and urgencies that defined Barbara Christian's work for the entirety of her thirty-year career." --Deborah E. McDowell, Alice Griffin Professor of English, University of Virginia

• Contents Acknowledgments IntroductionGloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene R. Keizer I. Defining Black Feminist Criticism IntroductionArlene R. Keizer 1. But What Do We Think We're Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism(s) or My Version of a Little Bit of History (1989) 2. What Celie Knows That You Should Know (1990) 3. Fixing Methodologies: Beloved (1993) 4. The Race for Theory (1987) 5. Does Theory Play Well in the Classroom? (1996) II. Reading Black Women Writers IntroductionM. Giulia Fabi 6. Introduction to The Hazeley Family by Mrs. A. E. Johnson (1988) 7. "Somebody Forgot to Tell Somebody Something": African- American Women's Historical Novels (1990) 8. Gloria Naylor's Geography: Community, Class, and Patriarchy in The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills (1990) 9. Being the Subject and the Object: Reading African- American Women's Novels (1993) 10. Layered Rhythms: Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison (1994) 11. There It Is: The Poetry of Jayne Cortez (1986) 12. Conversations with the Universe (1989) 13. Epic Achievement (1991) 14. A Checkered Career (1992) 15. Remembering Audre Lorde (1993) III. Black Feminist Criticism in the Academy IntroductionGloria Bowles 16. Being "The Subjected Subject of Discourse" (1990) 17. Whose Canon Is It Anyway? (1994) 18. A Rough Terrain: The Case of Shaping an Anthology of Caribbean Women Writers (1995) 19. Diminishing Returns: Can Black Feminism(s) Survive the Academy? (1994) 20. Camouflaging Race and Gender (1996) AfterwordNajuma Henderson Notes Selected Bibliography of Works by Barbara Christian Index