Detective fiction featuring white women and people of colorsuch as Barbara Neelys Blanche White and Walter Mosleys Easy Rawlinshas become tremendously popular. Although they are considered "light reading," mysteries also hold important cultural and social "clues." Much recent scholarly work has demonstrated that race is both a cultural fictionnot a biological realityand a central organizing principle of experience. Popular writers are likely to reflect the conventions of their own historical situations.In Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction, Maureen T. Reddy explores the ways in which crime fiction manipulates cultural constructions such as race and gender to inscribe dominant cultural discourses. She notes that even those writers who appear to set out to revise outdated conventions repeatedly reproduce the genres most conservative elements. The greatest obstacle to transforming crime fiction, Reddy states, is the fact that the genre itself is deeply embedded in the discourse of white (and male) superiority. There is, therefore, an absolute necessity to break away from that discoursethrough reversal or other strategiesin order to produce work that defies, and thus helps readers to defy, the dominant ideology of race.      

Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction

Literature & Fiction

Reddy, Maureen T.

History & Criticism

Rutgers University Press

<p>Looks at how women protagonists are changing the mystery novel, and analyzes the new detectives created by women authors</p>

Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel

United States

Continuum Intl Pub Group

<p>A collection of essays, poems, stories, and artwork considers all aspects of motherhood from a feminist perspective</p>

Mother Journeys: Feminists Writing About Mothering

Politics & Social Sciences

Roth, Martha

Social Sciences

Spinsters Ink Books

A collection of essays, poems, stories, and artwork considers all aspects of motherhood from a feminist perspective

Mother Journeys: Feminists Write About Mothering

Women's Studies

Spinsters, Ink

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Books by Reddy, Maureen T.