Bio-Critical Introduction, State of The Art, and Outlook

Abstract

Abstract “Great Day” after “The Long Night,” in Ann DuCille’s words (1995: 23), refers to Fall 1993 when, after a long period of dearth and endurance, the novelist Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature and her Ohio compatriot, Rita Dove, was installed as poet laureate of the United States. Both authors had previously won Pulitzer Prizes: Dove in 1987 for Thomas and Beulah (1986) and Morrison in 1988 for Beloved (1987). These prestigious awards and posts marked momentous events of empowerment in American letters, for the two recipients were not only female but African American as well. It was a time of great communal significance, of personal and public, national, racial, and engendered honor. “Rooms of Their Own: Toni Morrison, Rita Dove” was the title of Paul Gray and Jack E. White’s accolade in Time 18 (Oct. 1993: 86–89). Crossing Color is meant as a critical inquiry into the transcultural spacings and spatiotemporal relations of Dove’s oeuvre from the beginning of her career in the late 1970s into the late 1990s. This first book-length study on her work addresses academics as well as the wide audience she was able to reach during her successful two years as the Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry (1993–1995).