At the Meetin’ Tree
Reading, Storytelling, and Transculturation in Daniel Black’s They Tell Me of a Home
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6187565 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pekka Kilpeläinen (Deleted Institution, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2016-08-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejas.11607 |
| OpenAlex | W2508126292 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
This article offers a transcultural reading of the issues of cultural trauma and mobility in Daniel Black’s novel They Tell Me of a Home (2005). The protagonist, T.L., returns to his agrarian home community, Swamp Creek, in Arkansas, after a ten-year absence in which he received a PhD in black studies in New York. His homecoming foregrounds the cultural clash between the patriarchal black community and the elitist academic world that T.L. represents. This is articulated in the novel at the aesthetic level as the tension between the oral storytelling tradition of the black community and the literary expression favored by T.L. The opposite sides of the cultural clash and their respective modes of cultural production are understood as ways of dealing with the cultural memory of slavery and its aftermaths. The Meetin’ Tree, the site of storytelling in Swamp Creek, becomes a transcultural space where these issues are negotiated. T.L. eventually adopts a newfound appreciation for his cultural roots and also initiates a change in the negative attitudes of the community towards education and reading. He thereby becomes a transcultural mediator between these conflicting cultures, aiming to stress and combine their strengths and to negotiate their weaknesses
Art · Art history · Homecoming · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · Storytelling · Transculturation · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
The black Atlantic
Imperial Eyes
Imperial Eyes
Feminist Politics
The Souls of Black Folk
Cultural Trauma
Up from Slavery
A History of European Women's Work
Cultural Trauma
Postcolonial Cultures
Transcultural Modernities and Anglophone African Literature
Of Other Spaces
Cartographies of Diaspora
The Political Unconscious
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |