Table of Contents:
Introduction
Houston A. Baker, Jr., and Patricia Redmond
1. Canon-Formation, Literary History, and the Afro-American Tradition: From the Seen to the Told
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Response: Barbara E. Johnson
Response: Donald B. Gibson
2. Boundaries: Or Distant Relations and Close Kin
Deborah E. McDowell
Response: Hortense J. Spillers
Response: Michael Awkward
3. Toward a Poetics of Afro-American Autobiography
William L. Andrews
Response: Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Response: Geneviève Fabre
4. The First-Person in Afro-American Fiction
Richard Yarborough
Response: Robert B. Stepto
Response: Eleanor W. Traylor
5. There Is No More Beautiful Way: Theory and the Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing
Houston A. Baker, Jr.
Response: Mae G. Henderson
6. Performing Blackness: Re/Placing Afro-American Poetry
Kimberly W. Benston
Response: Cheryl A. Wall
Response: Stephen E. Henderson
7. Biography and Afro-American Culture
Arnold Rampersad
Response: Michel Fabre
Response: Nellie Y. McKay
Response: Robert G. O'Meally
Afterword
Houston A. Baker, Jr., and Patricia Redmond
List of Contributors
Index