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註釋

The Great Migration--the exodus of more than six million blacks from

their southern homes hoping for better lives in the North--is a defining

event of post-emancipation African-American life and a central feature

of twentieth-century black literature. Lawrence Rodgers explores the historical

and literary significance of this event and in the process identifies

the Great Migration novel as a literary form that intertwines geography

and identity.

Drawing on a wide range of major literary voices, including Richard Wright,

Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, as well as lesser-known writers such

as William Attaway (Blood on the Forge) and Dorothy West (The Living Is

Easy), Rodgers conducts a kind of literary archaeology of the Great Migration.

He mines the writers' biographical connections to migration and teases

apart the ways in which individual novels relate to one another, to the

historical situation of black America, and to African-American literature

as a whole.

In reading migration novels in relation to African-American literary

texts such as slave narratives, folk tales, and urban fiction, Rodgers

affirms the southern folk roots of African-American culture and argues

for a need to stem the erosion of southern memory.