Overview
Masterplots II: African American Literature offers essays on individual titles by great novelists, playwrights, memoirists, historians, and critics as well as the bodies of work of major poets, short-story writers, essayists, and orators. Students, librarians, and teachers can explore the rich literary canon of African American writings, from colonial America to the twenty-first century.The set includes new and revised essays, along with complete updates on existing material. The addition of 101 new essays brings the total number of essays to 367. New essays include memoirs by Maya Angelou, Jamaica Kincaid, and Audre Lorde; novels by Toni Cade Bambara, Octavia E. Butler, Bebe Moore Campbell, Edwidge Danticat, Ralph Ellison, Percival Everett, Edward P. Jones, Terry McMillan, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Walter Mosley; poetry by Cornelius Eady; criticism by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bell Hooks, and Cornel West; plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, and George C. Wolfe; and young adult literature by Gwendolyn Brooks, Walter Dean Myers, Mildred D. Taylor, and Jacqueline Woodson.