Employing close reading of a kind usually associated with the study of lyric poetry, this book offers a general framework for reading African-American (and American) literature.

Introduction
Frederick Douglass and the Philosophy of Slavery
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Redemption of the Body
The Mephistophelean Skepticism of Stephen Crane
Charles Chesnutt: Nowhere to Turn
Richard Wright: Exile as Native Son
Peasant Dreams: Reading On the Road
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography