In the following essay, Braziel asserts that Jamaica Kincaid's utilization of Obeah, a Caribbean diasporic religion, in “In the Night” “is linked to contemporary Caribbean diasporas and the traversal of spaces, times, and cultures that such migration enacts.”

In the following essay, Welsh cogitates Pauline Melville's particular status as a Guyanese of mixed-race ancestry through a theoretically informed examination of her collection of stories, Shape-shifter.

In the following essay, N'Zengou-Tayo investigates how Edwidge Danticat utilizes traditional Haitian stories and beliefs in her work.

In the following essay, Mullen points to the prevalence of racial stereotypes in short fiction during the 1930s and 1940s, and then traces the transformation of the genre by such authors as Chester Himes, Richard Wright, and others who, according to Mullen, not only achieved mass literary success but also used their works to outline a strategy of calculated racial resistance.

In the following essay, Baum reflects on the politico-feminist aspects of Zora Neale Hurston's work, drawing parallels with other black female writers such as Nella Larson, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, remarking that many readers of Hurston's work have tended to focus on her sexual politics instead of her racial politics.

In the following essay, Hamer and Hamer trace the development of African American women's short fiction from the nineteenth century to the present.

In the following essay, Solard provides an analysis of “Blood Burning Moon,” citing the story as an example of Toomer's point of view regarding race relations and spirituality.

In the following introduction, excerpted from a short story anthology by writers of African descent, Rowell reflects on the difficulty in choosing a title for this collection, noting that finding common ground across the numerous authors featured, as well as attempting to define the notion of the African diaspora in a way that would reflect the many nationalities represented in this collection, were tasks he did not anticipate until he began work on the project.

In the following essay, Sanders maintains that the main thematic concerns of M. Nourbese Philip's “Stop Frame” are “memory and history and, in part, the relation of what has become, in North America and the Caribbean at least, competing memories of slavery and the Holocaust.”