The post-civil rights era of the 1970s offered African Americans an all-too-familiar paradox. Material and symbolic gains contended with setbacks fueled by resentment and reaction. African American artists responded with black approaches to expression that made history in their own time and continue to exercise an enormous influence on contemporary culture and politics.

This collection's fascinating spectrum of topics begins with the literary and cinematic representations of slavery from the 1970s to the present. Other authors delve into visual culture from Blaxploitation to the art of Betye Saar to stage works like A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White as well as groundbreaking literary works like Corregidora and Captain Blackman. A pair of concluding essays concentrate on institutional change by looking at the Seventies surge of black publishing and by analyzing Ntozake Shange's for colored girls. . . in the context of current controversies surrounding sexual violence. Throughout, the writers reveal how Seventies black cultural production anchors important contemporary debates in black feminism and other issues while spurring the black imagination to thrive amidst abject social and political conditions.

Contributors: Courtney R. Baker, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Madhu Dubey, Nadine Knight, Monica White Ndounou, Kinohi Nishikawa, Samantha Pinto, Jermaine Singleton, Terrion L. Williamson, and Lisa Woolfork

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Dreams Reimagined: Political Possibilities and the Black Cultural Imagination 1. Freedom Now: Black Power and the Literature of Slaver 2. Generations: Slavery and the Post–Civil Rights Literary Imagination 3. Slavery Now: 1970s Influence Post–20th-Century Films on American Slavery 4. Movin' on Up—and Out: Remapping 1970s African American Visual Culture 5. "Can You Kill": Vietnam, Black Power, and Militancy in Black Feminist Literature 6. The Future in Black and White: Fran Ross, Adrienne Kennedy, and Post–Civil Rights Black Feminist 7. Renegotiating Racial Discourse: The Blues, Black Feminist Thought, and Post–Civil Rights 8. From Blaxploitation to Black Macho: The Angry Black Woman Comes of Age 9. From the Ground Up: Readers and Publishers in the Making of a Literary Public 10. A Woman's Trip: Domestic Violence and Black Feminist Healing in Ntozake Shange's For Colored Afterword: Post-Soul: Post–Civil Rights Considerations in the 21st Century Contributors Index Back cover | Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2020 — Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2020
|Robert J. Patterson is a professor of African American Studies and served as the inaugural chair of the Department of African American Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality.