Books by Kevin Quashie

Kevin Quashie analyzes texts by of Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Evie Shockley, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others to argue for a black aliveness that is disarticulated from antiblackness and which provides the basis for the imagination and creation of a black world.

African American culture is often considered expressive, dramatic, and even defiant, and this matrix has dominated our understanding of black communities and texts. This explores how a different kind of expressiveness, from protests to readings to landmark texts, as represented in the idea of quiet could change common conceptions and provide a more nuanced view of black culture.

Kevin Everod Quashie explores the metaphor of the 'girlfriend' as a new way of understanding three central concepts of cultural studies: self, memory and language. He considers how the works of writers such as Toni Morrison and Ama Ata Aidoo inform the debates over the concept of identity.