Discussing African American novels from the early decades of the 20th century to the beginnings of the 21st, Demirtürk (American literature, Bilkent U., Turkey) explores how African American authors "deconstruct whiteness as an ideological appropriation of social space by delineating the `relational' status of the white identity, while intervening into the construction of white identities." In particular she discusses the conceptualization of the white supremacist attitude in Richard Wright's Savage Holiday; the historical construction of colonial whiteness in African American women's neo-slave narratives; the meanings of passing for white in Jessie R. Fauset's Plum Bun, Nella Larsen's Passing, and Chares W. Chesnutt's Paul Marchand, F.M.C.; the place of the black body in the discourse of whiteness in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; whiteness in postcolonial spaces in Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, the Timeless People; and the racialized urban construction of whiteness in Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)