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The most influential East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchange that has taken place in modern and postmodern times was the reading and writing of haiku. Here, esteemed contributors investigate the impact of Eastern philosophy and religion on African American writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, offering a fresh field of literary inquiry.

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Part I: Essays on Poetry Richard Wright´s Haiku, Zen, and the African - Yoshinobu Hakutani Richard Wright´s Haiku, Japanese Poetics, and Classical Chinese Poetry - Jianqing Zheng Wordsworthian Nature Poetry, Ashanti Culture, and Richard Wright´s Haiku: This Other World - Peter Landino Cross-Cultural Poetics: Sonia Sanchez´s Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums - Yoshinobu Hakutani Jean Toomer Revisited in James Emanuel´s Post-Modernist Jazz Haiku - Whatley Smith Part II: Essays on Ideology The Western and Eastern Thoughts of Ralph Ellison´s Invisible Man - Yoshinobu Hakutani West, East, Africa: Richard Wright´s Native Son and Classic Movie Monsters - Mera Moore Ishmael Reed´s Mumbo Jumbo through Confucianism - Yupei Zhou "A Beautiful Black Butterfly": Eastern Aesthetics and Postmodernism in Ishmael Reed´s Japanese by Spring - Preston Park Cooper "All Narratives Are Lies, Man, an Illusion": Buddhism and Postmodernism versus Racism in Charles Johnson´s Middle Passage and Dreamer - Preston Park Cooper

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" Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature: West Meets East is a fresh approach to an important, though little studied, aspect of African American literature. It examines how Eastern philosophy and literary assumptions have affected the work of a number of important black American writers, including Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Sonia Sanchez, James Emanuel, Ishmael Reed, and Charles Johnson." - Robert Butler, author of Contemporary African American Fiction: The Open Journey

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Yoshinobu Hakutani is aProfessor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at Kent State University.

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