Playing with Expectations

Preston Park Cooper received his PhD in literature from Kent State University. He currently teaches English at Austin Community College. He wrote two chapters in Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature: West Meets East (2011), one of which he presented as a paper at the 2007 MLA conference: «‘A Beautiful Black Butterfly’: Eastern Aesthetics and Postmodernism in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring.» He has also written book reviews for the African American Review.

Contents: Lyotard and Metanarratives – Reed, Johnson, Morrison, Whitehead, and Metanarratives – African American Literature, Culture, and Metanarratives – Teun A. van Dijk’s Elite Discourse and Racism – Discourse and Racist Metanarratives – Lyotard and The Postmodern Condition – Postmodern Theory, Postmodern Strategies – Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, and Experiments with Style – Mumbo Jumbo and Expectations of Time and Genre – Fiction vs. Nonfiction, Fiction vs. Reality – Japanese by Spring – Defiance of Expectations in Japanese by Spring and Yellow-Back Radio Broke Down – Flight to Canada’s Postmodern Exposure of Slavery – Issues of African American Identity in Regard to Writing and Rewriting – Middle Passage’s Postmodern Play with Modes of Discourse – Race, Literature, and Johnson – Dreamer: A Novel – Doubling and the Constructedness of Narratives – Appropriation of Authorial Identity, Including Johnson’s Own – Toni Morrison: Beloved, Paradise, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Jazz – Colson Whitehead: The Intuitionist’s Mysterious Narration – Vagary as the Author’s Tool – A New Metaphor for Inhumanity – Intuitionism, Sight, and Invisibility – The Perfect Elevator/Novel – John Henry Days – The Atypical Vignettes – Whitehead and Comic Books – John Henry Days and the Power of Pop – Whitehead and Recursive America.