Background
Harris, Trudier was born on February 27, 1948 in Mantua, Alabama, United States. Daughter of Terrell Harris Senior and Unareed (Burton) Harris.
( Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African...)
Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature explores the idea of strength as a frequently contradictory and damaging trait for black women characters in major literary works of the 20th century. Looking at work by Hansberry, Morrison, Bambara, West, Gaines, Reed, and others, Trudier Harris shows how writers draw upon popular images of African American women in producing what they believe to be safe literary representations. She argues forcefully that the portrayal of women's character as strong is problematic in African American literature, and this pattern has become so pronounced that it has stifled the literature.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312293038/?tag=2022091-20
( Best-selling novelist Toni Morrison has published five ...)
Best-selling novelist Toni Morrison has published five major works: Beloved (which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988), Tar Baby, Song of Solomon, Sula, and The Bluest Eye. In this provocative study of Morrison's novels, Trudier Harris blends fictive and folkloric approaches to illuminate the depth and complexity of the African-American literary heritage. Morrison stands in a long line of black writers who have grounded their characters, themes, and structures in African-American folk traditions. Typically, students of such grounding have proceeded in two steps—first identifying items of folklore and locating them in previous collections, then interpreting how the items function in the literary text. Thus critics have viewed folklore as merely grafted onto the "real" literature. While Morrison joins her literary predecessors in drawing on folk materials, her "literary" folklore restructures and adapts traditional patterns so creatively that scholars now must reconceptualize the relationship between folklore and literature. Harris identifies Morrison's primary folkloric strategy as reversal—a process that creates an alternative universe where the antithetical is the norm and the incredible is taken for granted. Thus Morrison succeeds in creating worlds where the line between history and fiction, legend and fact, is permanently blurred. Furthermore, in replicating the processes of folk culture, Morrison encourages readers to participate in the creative process itself. The Author: Trudier Harris is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English and Chair of the Curriculum in African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087049791X/?tag=2022091-20
(Among the African-American writers featured in this volum...)
Among the African-American writers featured in this volume are Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Naomi Long Madgett, Ann Petry, Dorothy West and Richard Wright.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810345544/?tag=2022091-20
(A wide-ranging, spirited collection of personal essays ab...)
A wide-ranging, spirited collection of personal essays about growing up black and Southern Like Maya Angelou and bell hooks before her, Trudier Harris explores her complicated identity as a black woman in the American South. By turns amusing and probing, Summer Snow lays out in a series of linked essays the formative experiences that shaped Harris into the writer and intellectual she has become. With passion and eloquence, Harris writes about the creation of her unique first name, how porch-sitting is in fact a creative Southern tradition, and how insecurities over her black hair ("the ubiquitous hair") factored into her self-image. She writes about being a "black nerd" as a child, and how the black church influenced her in her early years. But she also writes about more troubling topics, such as the price blacks have paid for integration, and the "staying power of racism." In one moving piece, Harris remembers a white teenager propositioning her for sex in exchange for five dollars. Unflinching in her assessment of white Southern culture, yet deeply attached to a South many black intellectuals have abandoned, Harris in Summer Snow takes readers on a surprising tour of one woman's life, loves, and lessons. Trudier Harris is the author of numerousbooks, including Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature and Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. She is currently a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Praise for Summer Snow: "Stimulating and provocative, SUMMER SNOW resonates with folkloric energy and vividly evocative prose. Trudier Harris's presence and voice vibrate through this journey, guiding her reader with the sheer force of her rigor, grace, and intelligence as well as a goodly amount of wry humor and wit. A reader's dream-book, reminding us all of the resonant claim of southern spaces." -- Karla Holloway, William Kenan Professor of English at Duke University, author of numerous books, including Passed On. "Trudier Harris speaks of the "cotton-pickin' authority" of those in her childhood who earned respect because of their life-long backbreaking labors in the fields. Harris has translated that authority into one of her own, the authority of her words. Because of this author, we see, feel, understand and celebrate our people, who created--through sheer wit and will--a culture that defeated the dehumanization of slavery by keeping us, body and soul alive. A wonderful book you have to read to believe." --Toi Derricotte, author of The Black Notebooks. "Noon can be as blinding as midnight; snow no less than sun can cause a vision distortion. Like Zora Neale Hurston, another great daughter of the South, Harris lets her vision be tempered by her love. And make no mistake, the South of Black Americans, is a love story. SUMMER SNOW reminds us of that... causes us to remember that... lets us celebrate that." --Nikki Giovanni "SUMMER SNOW is the classic we have been waiting for--the classic that only a "Black daughter of the South" could have written. It has dance and song, color and texture, pathos and humor, analysis and introspection, and a gallery of fascinating women and men we can never forget." --Gloria Wade Gayles, author of PUSHED BACK TO STRENGTH
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807072540/?tag=2022091-20
( By lynching, burning, castrating, raping, and mutilatin...)
By lynching, burning, castrating, raping, and mutilating black people, contends Trudier Harris, white Americans were perfomring a rite of exorcism designed to eradicate the "black beast" from their midst, or, at the very least, to render him powerless and emasculated. Black writers have graphically portrayed such tragic incidents in their writings. In doing so, they seem to be acting out a communal role―a perpetuation of an oral tradition bent on the survival of the race. Exorcising Blackness demonstrates that the closeness and intensity of black people's historical experiences sometimes overshadows, frequently infuses and enhances, and definitely makes richer in texture the art of black writers. By reviewing the historical and literary interconnections of the rituals of exorcism, Harris opens up the hidden psyche―the soul―of black American writers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253319951/?tag=2022091-20
(In African-American literary history, one of the most str...)
In African-American literary history, one of the most striking phenomena has been the tremendous outpouring of poetry since the mid-1950s. Since the first successful boycotts of the Civil Rights movement, young black writers were in the forefront of political activism and social commitment. Poetry became the genre that could immediately connect the familiar oral tradition, including spirituals and sermons of the black church, with both the dynamic sociopolitical activity of the day and the written literary heritage of blacks. The new African-American poets - more than 50 are profiled in this DLB volume-aroused feelings of nationalism in black people throughout the United States, encouraging viewpoints of black pride and 'Black is beautiful.' The entries include: Samuel W. Allen, Jayne Cortez, Margaret Esse Danner, Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, Haki R. Madhubuti, May Miller, Sonia Sanchez, Gil Scott-Heron and Tom Weatherly. For research as well as neighborhood libraries it is a must, and it is recommended to those college, community college, and secondary school libraries collecting the DLB.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810317192/?tag=2022091-20
(Among the African-American authors featured in this volum...)
Among the African-American authors featured in this volume are James Madison Bell, Charles Chestnutt, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson and Harriet E. Adams Wilson.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810317281/?tag=2022091-20
consultant language educator researcher writer
Harris, Trudier was born on February 27, 1948 in Mantua, Alabama, United States. Daughter of Terrell Harris Senior and Unareed (Burton) Harris.
Bachelor, Stillman College, 1969. Master of Arts, Ohio State University, 1972. Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, 1973.
Teaching assistant Ohio State University, Columbus, 1970—1973. Assistant professor English, College William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1973—1979. Associate professor English, University North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1979—1984, professor English, 1984—1988, J. Carlyle Sitterson professor English, 1988—1993, since 1996.
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet professor American literature Emory University, Atlanta, 1993—1996. William Grant Cooper visiting district professor England University Arkansas, Little Rock, 1987. Visiting district professor Ohio State University, 1988.
Member committee Lillian Smith Awards, 1983—1984, 1994—1995. Resident Rockfeller Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, 1994.
( By lynching, burning, castrating, raping, and mutilatin...)
( Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African...)
(A wide-ranging, spirited collection of personal essays ab...)
( Best-selling novelist Toni Morrison has published five ...)
(Among the African-American writers featured in this volum...)
(In African-American literary history, one of the most str...)
(Among the African-American authors featured in this volum...)
(Book by Harris-Lopez, Trudier)
(Book by Harris, Trudier)
Mentor Blue Ribbon Mentor/Advisory Program Chapel Hill/Carrboro School Systems, since 1998. Member of Southeast Women's Studies Association, American Literature Association, Zora Neale Hurston Society, Toni Morrison Society, Richard Wright Circuit, Langston Hughes Society, College Language Association (vice president 1980-1981, creative scholarship award 1987), S. Atlantic Modern Language Association (teaching award 1987), American Folklore Society, Modern Language Association (executive committee division black American literature and culture 1984-1989, committee literature and language of America 1994-1996, delegate assembly 1994-1996, elections committee 2002-2003), George Moses Horton Society Study African American Poetry (founder, president since 1996), St. George Tucker Society (executive council since 1995), Zeta Phi Beta.