SOURCE: “Writing Black,” in American Energies, William Morrow and Co., 1992, pp. 168-73.

In the following excerpt, Birkerts argues that while Jones raises interesting questions about the distinctive form of African-American writers, her theories are flawed and she fails to take into account the issue of authority.

The basic premise of Gayl Jones's Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature is as follows: that modern African-American writers did not begin to realize their true literary identity until they either rejected the dominant modes of the European American tradition, adopting instead the forms and approaches suggested by their own oral and musical traditions, or else found ways to transform the received patterns through the deep incorporation of indigenous elements. Jones is highly discriminating in tracing the evolution of the various strategies of adoption and incorporation—of dialect speech, say, or the structures and idioms of blues, spirituals, and jazz...