This research proposes a re-examination of the concept of death and the way it is utilized within selected contemporary African-American works of fictional literature. These texts present death and its use as a tool of empowerment as a paradigm beyond its traditional treatments in literature-particularly Africana-centered literature. Through the harnessing and manipulation of death, the characters featured in this work are recognized as those who encapsulate and re-invent circumstances that are otherwise disempowering and dysfunctional. Through death, these women re-propose their negative realities by using death as a manipulative for vengeance and to gain the ultimate freedom from oppression. In both Beloved and Kindred death is an escape mechanism through which the protagonists return to life as they would have it lived, and are re-born to re-engage life anew.