From Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Help ― Critical Perspectives on White-authored Narratives of Black Life

While narratives films such as The Help, Django Unchained, and The Blind Side have achieved popular acclaim, they have also been the subject of critical controversy, demonstrating that the much touted 'post-racial America' has yet to come to terms with the power of race in contemporary imaginative and social lives. Examining a wide range of texts and film this collection of essays boldly investigates the promise and perils of racial ventriloquism, that is, when white authors appropriate the history and stories of black life.

Claire Oberon Garcia is Professor of English and Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Program at Colorado College, USA. Her areas of interest include black women's writing, the Black Atlantic, and the New Negro and Negritude Movements. She has contributed articles to journals such as The International Journal of Francophone Studies and The Henry James Review.

Vershawn Ashanti Young is a member of the Faculty of Arts, in the Department of Drama and Speech Communication at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His scholarly areas of expertise fall within the domains of African American language, literature, performance studies/performance theory, and gender. He has published in such journals as PMLA and African American Review and has either authored or edited (both individually and collaboratively) seven books, including the recent Other People's English (2013).

Charise Pimentel is an Assistant Professor at Texas State University in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, USA. Her research focuses on social justice issues in the following areas: race and education, multicultural education, bilingual education, critical media literacy, and critical whiteness studies. She has published in the Journal of Latinos and Education, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Multicultural Education, and Multicultural Perspectives.