Demirtürk (American culture and literature, Bilken Univ., Turkey) has written five books and numerous articles on black and feminine identity. In the present useful study of contemporary African American novels she analyzes (and includes plot summaries of) Daniel Black's Listen to the Lambs (2016), Sister Souljah's A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (2015), Victoria Murray's Stand Your Ground (2015), and Walter Mosely's Charcoal Joe (2016) and Down the River unto the Sea (2018). Demirtürk demonstrates that these novels provide examples of and strategies for transgressing white supremacy with positive social and political action, healthy personal behavior and identity, and strategic resistance. As an extension to the Black Lives Matter Movement these novels portray black characters who are not so much objects of victimization but people who make their everyday violent environment habitable. An afterword looks at the "Kaepernick moment" as an example of "strategy for change." Kaepernick's political performativity enacts an alternative form of defiance in a culture that makes blacks vulnerable.



Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

In a masterful way and using all of the current theoretical and critical tools, Professor E. Lale Demirturk in The African American Novels in the Black Lives Matter Era explores the everyday interior and complex lives of vulnerable black male individuals as they resist whiteness and signify a different and more just American society. It is a truly significant undertaking. As expected, Professor Demirturk, again, demonstrates how her critical eye is brilliantly and precisely focused on the heartbeat of the contemporary African American novel and the American society.

W. Lawrence Hogue, University of Houston, author of "Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and African American Narratives"