ABSTRACT
This introduction presents on overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses how some unusually skilled writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Mary Lavin, and Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, have presented difficult subject matter to unwilling audiences in the United States and Ireland in the twentieth century. Morrison and Ni Dhuibhne have been continuing these communicative accomplishments into the twentieth-first century. The book provides a brief examination of how rhetorical indirection appears in even older oral cultures, such as the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, as well as the folk cultures that have influenced African American and Irish writers. It also provides test cases that demonstrate how strategies with folkloric elements provide authors cover from audience rejection while they enable authors to communicate with audience members ready to receive new ideas. The book explores the relationships between censorship, folklore, and specific strategies.
