AWKWARD, Michael

PERSONAL: Male. Education: University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D., 1986.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, 3808 Walnut-Bennett 320, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail—michawk@dept. english.upenn.edu.

CAREER: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, associate professor of Afro-American and African studies, director of English; University of Pennsylvania—Philadelphia, professor of English, 2000—. Cultural critic, writer and scholar.

WRITINGS:

Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor) New Essays on Their Eyes Were WatchingGod, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1995.

Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Awkward describes in Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir what it was like to be raised in extreme poverty in Philadelphia. His father left the family after years of abuse. His mother was an alcoholic who struggled with and eventually overcame her addiction. Awkward's problems worsened when, as a young child, he pulled a red-hot cast-iron skillet down onto his head, causing serious physical and emotional trauma. In his formative years Awkward struggled with issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, Awkward devoted his energy to the study and teaching of contemporary Afro-American literature and culture. His interests also encompass autobiography, gender studies, film studies, and popular culture.

In Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels Awkward surveys the works of four important black authors and the ways in which their work interplay. Concentrating on Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, and Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Awkward views Hurston as a literary forerunner and mentor to contemporary black authors such as Morrison, Naylor, and Walker. According to A. Deck in Choice, "He presents a convincing argument that Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker each infuse the western genre of the novel with the specific expressive elements of Afro-American culture.... This is a brilliant study of a specific Afro-American cultural trait that links these novels into a discernible tradition." Edna L. Steeves in Modern Fiction Studies commented that "Michael Awkward describes his book as one black male's contribution to what Mary Helen Washington has pointed out as an important project, that is, the knitting together of the continuities of the African-American woman's literary tradition."

Awkward's second book, New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God, presents five essays written by recognized scholars on the importance of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The essays are authored by Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway and critics Nellie McKay, Hazel V. Carby, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, all of whom are well known for their work on African American literature and, more specifically, on Hurston as an author. Awkward serves as editor of the book and also provides an introduction, outlining key points made in prior critical reviews. According to Missy Dehn Kubitschek in African American Review, "Awkward, Hemenway, and Carby address the history of the novel's reception by critics and the academy; McKay delineates the novel's relationship to traditions of autobiography; and DuPlessis explores the work's implications for feminist cultural studies. The theses of the essays are often explicitly identified, and although all present engaged, complicated analyses, their clarity and minimal jargon will make the volume particularly accessible to its principal audience."

In Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality Awkward explores the dynamics of "positionality," or how one's work reflects one's racial, sexual or other unique characteristics. One of the key elements of the book involves debates among black and feminist scholars over who has jurisdiction to interpret various texts. The book is divided into two parts, the first titled "Surveying the Critical Terrain." According to Shanna Green Benjamin of African American Review, "In part one, Awkward explicates critical texts to chart his sense of Black male feminism and examines 'the differences race can make in the interpretation of black texts.' The second section, 'Interpretation of the Borders,' questions the 'relationship between race and reading' in selected texts. In part two, close readings take center stage against a backdrop of other relevant theories." According to Benjamin, "There can be little doubt that Awkward's questions move Afro-Americanist literary and cultural thought to a new level of interpretive rigor."

In Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, Awkward presents his "autocritograpy," or "an account of individual, social, and institutional conditions that help produce a scholar." As an academic, critic and writer, Awkward has spent his career studying those issues that confused and bewildered him as a youth. He talks about the poverty in which he lived, as well as the impact of a significant childhood burn incident that left physical and emotional scars. According to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, "Wisely, Awkward confronts his demons head-on with clarity and candor. However, he occasionally retreats from his gutsy revelations with verbose investigations of classic works of African-American fiction such as The Bluest Eye and Black Boy, which he uses to expand his musings on his life....Awkward acknowledges that many will resist his antipatriarchal stance, but he continues to press for 'the dismantling of the phallocentric rule by which black females and . . . countless other African American sons have been injuriously 'touched.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, summer, 1994, Missy Dehn Kubitschek, review of New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God, p. 305; fall, 1999, Shanna Greene Benjamin, review of Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality, p. 533; fall, 2001, Robert B. Stepto, review of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, p. 493.

American Literature, December, 2000, Kenneth W. Warren, review of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, p. 893.

Belles Letres, spring, 1991, review of New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Booklist, December 1, 1999, Vernon Ford, review of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, p. 680.

Callaloo, fall, 1990, review of Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels, p. 928.

Choice, December, 1989, A. Deck, review of Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels, p. 628; December 1991, review of New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God, p. 594; June, 2000, T. Bonner, Jr., review of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, p. 1808.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 28, 1995, review of Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality, p. A38.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1991, Edna L. Steeves, review of Inspiriting Influences, p. 737.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 1999, review of Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir, p. 47.*