Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition is a compilation of literary and cultural works that originated from call and response patterns in African and African American cultural traditions. The 1997 anthology includes works representing the centuries-long emergence of this distinctly Black literary and cultural aesthetic in fiction, poetry, drama, essays, sermons, speeches, criticism, journals, and song lyrics from spirituals to rap. Writings ranging from Queen Latifah to Phyllis Wheatley and LeRoi Jones are included within this volume.
The anthology, published by the Houghton Mifflin Company, organizes its selections around three themes: the pattern of call and response, the journey toward freedom, and major historical events in the African American experience. The anthology editors have woven together selections, critical analysis of the texts, historical background, and biographies into a scholarly, unified, and chronological approach to African American literature and culture. Dr. Patricia Liggins Hill of the University of San Francisco served as general editor of the anthology.
Famous quotes containing the words call and, literary tradition, call, riverside, anthology, african, american, literary and/or tradition:
“We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still;
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill;
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call;
The strange white solitude of peace that settles over all.”
—Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905)
“Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty—the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Latin America is very fond of the word “hope.” We like to be called the “continent of hope.” Candidates for deputy, senator, president, call themselves “candidates of hope.” This hope is really something like a promise of heaven, an IOU whose payment is always being put off. It is put off until the next legislative campaign, until next year, until the next century.”
—Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)
“Upset at the young wife’s
first loss of virtue
in a riverside thicket,
a flock of birds
flies up,
mourning the loss
with their wings.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Mighty few young black women are doin’ domestic work. And I’m glad. That’s why I want my kids to go to school. This one lady told me, “All you people are gettin’ like that.” I said, “I’m glad.” There’s no more gettin’ on their knees.”
—Maggie Holmes, African American domestic worker. As quoted in Working, book 3, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“At its best, [Japanese cooking] is inextricably meshed with aesthetics, with religion, with tradition and history. It is evocative of seasonal changes, or of one’s childhood, or of a storm at sea ...”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)