"This cutting-edge text not only increases our understanding of African American literature and film, it also enlarges the accessibility and the possibilities of the field of
ecocriticism."YVONNB ATKINSON, Mt. San Jacinto College and president of the Toni Morrison Society
While There is no lack of scholarship on the transatlantic voyage and the Middle Passage as tropes in African diasporic writing, to date there has not been a comprehensive analysis of bodies of
water in African American literature and culture
In Water and African American Memory, Anissa Wardi offers the first sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. Her holistic approach especially highlights
the ways that water acts not only as a metaphorical site of trauma, memory, and healing but also as a material site
Wardi argues that water has been central to the African American literary and historical tradition, beginning with the transatlantic slave trade in which it is estimaited that one-third of the
captives died en route to the Americas and the Caribbean provides the framework wherein connections among water, loss, and migration African American culture can be traced
Using the transatlantic voyage as a starting point and ending with a discussio Hurricane Katrina, this pioneering ecocritical study delves deep into the environmental dimensions of African
American writing. Beyond proposing a new theory map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora, Wardi offers a series of engaging an original close readings of major literary, filmic, and blues
texts, including the works of Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Julie Dash, Henry Dumas, and Kasi Lemmons
