Freud Upside Down: African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780252035661)

This thought-provoking cultural history explores how psychoanalytic theories shaped the works of important African American literary figures. Badia Sahar Ahad details how Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, Ralph Ellison, Adrienne Kennedy, and Danzy Senna employed psychoanalytic terms and conceptual models to challenge notions of race and racism in twentieth-century America. Freud Upside Down explores the relationship between these authors and intellectuals and the psychoanalytic movement emerging in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Examining how psychoanalysis has functioned as a cultural phenomenon within African American literary intellectual communities since the 1920s, Ahad lays out the historiography of the intersections between African American literature and psychoanalysis and considers the creative approaches of African American writers to psychological thought in their work and their personal lives.

Author: Badia Sahar Ahad
ISBN-10: 0252035666
ISBN-13: 9780252035661
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 10/07/2010
Pages: 216
Format: Hardcover

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 11/19/2009 pg. 19
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2011 pg. 235