SOURCE: Jablon, Madelyn. “The Künstlerroman and the Blues Hero.” In Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature, pp. 55-79. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Jablon attempts to define the characteristics of the black künstlerroman genre, using several novels that use a blues musician as its artist-protagonist.

Today. My simple passion is to write our names in history and walk in the light that is woman. 

—Sonia Sanchez, Poem

Linda Hutcheon's discussion of mimesis of process situates metafiction in its classical context by explaining how mimesis of product superseded mimesis of process and became the sole criterion for evaluating and interpreting fiction. Her examination of classical rhetoric is a persuasive argument for the reintroduction of mimesis of process into the discussion of literature. As a point of entry into black metafiction, mimesis of process yields important findings. The first is that black fiction...