This study aims to uncover the political significance of black women's domestic fiction in the post-Reconstruction period. The author's cultural analysis draws upon a range of texts including works by Harriet Wilson, Pauline Hopkins, Katherine Tillman and Zora Neale.

In Domestic Allegories of Political Desire, Claudia Tate uncovers the political significance of black women's domestic fiction in the post-Reconstruction period. Tate's cultural analysis draws upon a broad range of texts, including ante-bellum works such as Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, domestic fiction by Pauline Hopkins, Katherine Tillman, and Angelina Weld Grimké, and modernist classics such as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.

'one of the indispensable collections of interviews for anyone concerned with the current wave of African American women's writing ... This new book should find just as secure a place among all serious students of the formation of traditions of modern black women's fiction. ... certain to remain the key work on its subject for the foreseeable future.' Kate Fullbrook, University of the West of England, American Studies, Volume 28, Part 2 - 1994