Includes bibliographical references and index.

Literary theory and the Black tradition -- Phillis Wheatley and the Nature of the Negro -- Binary oppositions in chapter one of Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. Written by himself -- Frederick Douglass and the language of the self -- Parallel discursive universes : fictions of the self in Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig -- Dis and dat : dialect and the descent -- The same difference : reading Jean Toomer, 1923- 1983 -- Song of a racial self : on Sterling A. Brown -- The blackness of Blackness.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2009. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.