African American literature - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

African-American literature is the body of literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was sold into slavery at age seven...

and Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African involved in the British movement towards the abolition of the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807...

, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...

, and continuing today with authors such as the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

-winning Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

and award-winning Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley

Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los...

being ranked among the top writers in the United States. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, and equality

Social equality

Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...

. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals

Spiritual (music)

Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...

, sermons, gospel music

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

and rap

Rapping

Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

.

As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the centuries, so, has the focus of African-American literature. Before the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, the literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery

Slavery

, as indicated by the genre of slave narrative

Slave narrative

The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...

s. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. During the American Civil Rights movement, authors such as Richard Wright

Richard Wright (author)

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...

and Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...

wrote about issues of racial segregation

Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

and black nationalism

Black nationalism

Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...

. Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature

American literature

American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...

, with books such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S....

by Alex Haley

Alex Haley

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...

, The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...

(1982) by Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

, which won the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

; and Beloved
Beloved (novel)
Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War , it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state...

by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and award-winning status.

Characteristics and themes

In broad terms, African-American literature can be defined as writings by people of African descent living in the United States. It is highly varied. African-American literature has generally focused on the role of African Americans within the larger American society and what it means to be an American. As Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

professor Albert J. Raboteau

Albert J. Raboteau

Albert Jordy Raboteau is an African American scholar of African and African American religions.Before Raboteau was born, his father, Albert Jordy Raboteau , was killed in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, by a white man who was never convicted of the crime. His mother moved from the South where she was...

has said, all African-American study "speaks to the deeper meaning of the African-American presence in this nation. This presence has always been a test case of the nation's claims to freedom, democracy, equality, the inclusiveness of all." African-American literature explores the issues of freedom and equality long denied to Blacks in the United States, along with further themes such as African American culture

African American culture

African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...

, racism

Racism

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, slavery

Slavery

, a sense of home. and more.

African-American literature has both been influenced by the great African diasporic heritage and shaped it in many countries. It has been created within the larger realm of post-colonial literature

Post-colonial literature

Postcolonial literature , is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule...

, although scholars distinguish between the two, saying that "African American literature differs from most post-colonial literature in that it is written by members of a minority community who reside within a nation of vast wealth and economic power."

African-American oral culture is rich in poetry, including spirituals

Spiritual (music)

Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...

, gospel music

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

, blues

Blues

and rap

Rapping

. This oral poetry also appears in the African-American tradition of Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

sermon

Sermon

A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...

s, which make use of deliberate repetition, cadence and alliteration. African-American literature—especially written poetry, but also prose—has a strong tradition of incorporating all of these forms of oral poetry.

These characteristics do not occur in all works within the genre. Some scholars resist using Western literary theory to analyze African-American literature. As the Harvard literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship. He has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for his teaching, research, and...

said, "My desire has been to allow the black tradition to speak for itself about its nature and various functions, rather than to read it, or analyze it, in terms of literary theories borrowed whole from other traditions, appropriated from without."

Early African American literature

African American history

African-American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans held in the United States from 1619 to 1865...

predates the emergence of the United States as an independent country, and African-American literature has similarly deep roots.

Lucy Terry

Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American.Terry was stolen from Africa and sold into slavery as an infant...

is the author of the oldest known piece of African-American literature: "Bars Fight". Although written in 1746, the poem was not published until 1855, when it was included in Josiah Holland's History of Western Massachusetts. The poet Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was sold into slavery at age seven...

(1753–84) published her book Poems on Various Subjects in 1773, three years before American independence. Born in Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...

, Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery at the age of seven. Brought to America, she was owned by a Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

merchant. By the time she was sixteen, she had mastered her new language of English. Her poetry was praised by many of the leading figures of the American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

, including George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, who thanked her for a poem written in his honor. Some whites found it hard to believe that a Black woman could write such refined poetry. Wheatley had to defend herself in court to prove that she had written her work. Some critics cite Wheatley's successful defense as the first recognition of African-American literature.

Another early African-American author was Jupiter Hammon

Jupiter Hammon

Jupiter Hammon was a Black poet who became the first African-American published writer in America when a poem appeared in print in 1760. He was a slave his entire life, and the date of his death is unknown. He was living in 1790 at the age of 79, and died by 1806...

(1711–1806?). Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America, published his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" as a broadside

Broadside (printing)

A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically, broadsides were posters, announcing events or proclamations, or simply advertisements...

in early 1761. In 1778 he wrote an ode

Ode

Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...

to Phillis Wheatley, in which he discussed their shared humanity and common bonds.

In 1786, Hammon gave his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York". Writing at the age of 76 after a lifetime of slavery, Hammon said, "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves." He also promoted the idea of a gradual emancipation

Abolitionism

Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...

as a way to end slavery. Hammon is thought to have been a slave until his death. His speech was later reprinted by several abolitionist groups.

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer...

(1814–84) and Victor Séjour

Victor Séjour

Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand was an American expatriate writer who worked in France. Though mostly unknown to later African American authors, his short story "Le Mulâtre" is the earliest known work of fiction by an African American author.Séjour was born in New Orleans to a free mulatto...

(1817–74) produced the earliest works of fiction by African-American writers. Séjour was born free in New Orleans and moved to France at the age of 19. There he published his short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

"Le Mulâtre
Le Mulâtre
"Le Mulâtre" is a short story by Victor Séjour. It is the earliest known work of fiction by an African-American author. It is written in French and was published in the Revue des Colonies in March of 1837.-External links:*...

" ("The Mulatto") in 1837. It is the first known fiction by an African American, but as it was written in French and published in a French journal, it had apparently no influence on later American literature. Séjour never returned to African-American themes in his subsequent works.

Brown, on the other hand, was a prominent abolitionist, lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian in the United States. Born into slavery in the South

South

South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.South is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.By convention, the bottom side of a map is south....

, Brown escaped to the North

North

North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.North is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west.By convention, the top side of a map is north....

, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer. Brown wrote Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
Clotel
Clotel; or, The President's Daughter is an 1853 novel by U.S. author and playwright William Wells Brown, an escaped slave from Kentucky who was active on the anti-slavery circuit...

(1853), considered to be the first novel written by an African American. It was based on the persistent rumor that president Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

had fathered a daughter with his slave Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings

Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...

. The novel was first published in England.

The first African-American novel published in the United States was Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859). It expressed the difficulties of lives of northern free Blacks.

Slave narratives

A genre of African-American literature that developed in the middle of the 19th century is the slave narrative, accounts written by fugitive slaves about their lives in the South. At the time, the controversy over slavery

Slavery

led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue, with novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

(1852) representing the abolitionist view of the evils of slavery. The "Anti-Tom" novels were written by southern writers in support of slavery and southern society, and in opposition to the northern portrayals. An example is William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms was a poet, novelist and historian from the American South. His writings achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced...

, but women were prominently represented among the bestselling novelists: for instance, Mary Eastman and xxx

XXX

XXX may refer to:* The number 30 in Roman numerals* The year 30 AD* Games of the XXX Olympiad, the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, England* Super Bowl XXX, held on January 28, 1996* A mark indicating "extra strong"* Alcoholic beverages...

.

The slave narratives became integral to African-American literature. Some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets. Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now recognized as the most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans, with two of the best-known being Frederick Douglass's autobiography and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with...

by Harriet Jacobs (1861).

Frederick Douglass

While Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–95) first came to public attention as an orator and as the author of his autobiographical slave narrative, he eventually became the most prominent African American of his time and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history.

Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass eventually escaped and worked for numerous abolitionist causes. He also edited a number of newspapers. Douglass' best-known work is his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and ex-slave, Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period...

, which was published in 1845. At the time some critics attacked the book, not believing that a black man could have written such an eloquent work. Despite this, the book was an immediate bestseller.

Douglass later revised and expanded his autobiography, which was republished as My Bondage and My Freedom
My Bondage and My Freedom
My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first , discussing in greater detail his transition from bondage to liberty...

(1855). In addition to serving in a number of political posts during his life, he also wrote numerous influential articles and essays.

Post-slavery era

After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of African American authors continued to write nonfiction works about the condition of African Americans in the country.

Among the most prominent of these writers is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), one of the original founders of the NAACP. At the turn of the century, Du Bois published a highly influential collection of essays titled The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history....

. The book's essays on race were groundbreaking and drew from Du Bois's personal experiences to describe how African Americans lived in American society. The book contains Du Bois's famous quote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." Du Bois believed that African Americans should, because of their common interests, work together to battle prejudice and inequity.

Another prominent author of this time period is Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

(1856–1915), who in many ways represented opposite views from Du Bois. Washington was an educator and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Alabama. Among his published works are Up From Slavery
Up From Slavery
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his slow and steady rise from a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the...

(1901), The Future of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and Its People (1905), and My Larger Education (1911). In contrast to Du Bois, who adopted a more confrontational attitude toward ending racial strife in America, Washington believed that Blacks should first lift themselves up and prove themselves the equal of whites before asking for an end to racism. While this viewpoint was popular among some Blacks (and many whites) at the time, Washington's political views would later fall out of fashion.

A third writer who gained attention during this period in the US, though not a US citizen, was the Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...

(1887–1940), a newspaper publisher, journalist, and crusader for Pan Africanism through his organization the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1990s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its...

(UNIA). He encouraged people of African ancestry to look favorably upon their ancestral homeland. He wrote a number of essays published as editorials in the UNIA house organ the Negro World
Negro World
Negro World was a weekly newspaper, established in January 1918 in New York City, which served as the voice of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, an organization founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914...

newspaper. Some of his lecture material and other writings were compiled and published as nonfiction books by his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey

Amy Jacques Garvey

Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey was the second wife of Marcus Garvey, and a journalist and activist in her own right. She was born to George Samuel and Charlotte Henrietta Jacques, in Kingston, Jamaica....

as the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans (1924) and More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1977).

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....

, who often wrote in the rural, black dialect

African American Vernacular English

African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...

of the day, was the first African American poet to gain national prominence. His first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy, was published in 1893. Much of Dunbar's work, such as When Malindy Sings (1906), which includes photographs taken by the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and Joggin' Erlong (1906) provide revealing glimpses into the lives of rural African-Americans of the day. Though Dunbar died young, he was a prolific poet, essayist, novelist (among them The Uncalled, 1898 and The Fanatics, 1901) and short story writer.

Even though Du Bois, Washington, and Garvey were the leading African American intellectuals and authors of their time, other African American writers also rose to prominence. Among these is Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South, where the legacy of slavery and interracial relations had resulted in many free...

, a well-known short story writer and essayist.

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...

from 1920 to 1940 brought new attention to African American literature. While the Harlem Renaissance, based in the African American community in Harlem in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, existed as a larger flowering of social thought and culture—with numerous Black artists, musicians, and others producing classic works in fields from jazz to theater—the renaissance is perhaps best known for the literature that came out of it.

Among the most famous writers of the renaissance is poet Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

. Hughes first received attention in the 1922 poetry collection, The Book of American Negro Poetry. This book, edited by James Weldon Johnson, featured the work of the period's most talented poets (including, among others, Claude McKay

Claude McKay

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...

, who also published three novels, Home to Harlem, Banjo and Banana Bottom and a collection of short stories). In 1926, Hughes published a collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, and in 1930 a novel, Not Without Laughter. Perhaps, Hughes' most famous poem is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes.-Composition and publication history:Langston Hughes wrote the poem on an envelope while traveling by train to Mexico as he crossed the Mississippi River to St. Louis. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was first published in The...

," which he wrote as a young teen. His single, most recognized character is Jesse B. Simple, a plainspoken, pragmatic Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

ite whose comedic observations appeared in Hughes's columns for the Chicago Defender
Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender is a Chicago based newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers.In just three years from 1919–1922 the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks....

and the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

. Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) is, perhaps, the best-known collection of Simple stories published in book form. Until his death in 1967, Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books of short stories, two novels, and a number of plays

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

, children's books, and translations.

Another famous writer of the renaissance is novelist Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

, author of the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication, and has come to be regarded as a seminal...

(1937). Altogether, Hurston wrote 14 books which ranged from anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

to short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

to novel-length fiction. Because of Hurston's gender and the fact that her work was not seen as socially or politically relevant, her writings fell into obscurity for decades. Hurston's work was rediscovered in the 1970s in a famous essay by Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

, who found in Hurston a role model for all female African American writers.

While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His first book Cane is considered by many as his most significant.-Early life:...

, who wrote Cane, a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural and urban Black life, and Dorothy West

Dorothy West

Dorothy West was a novelist and short story writer who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel The Living Is Easy, about the life of an upper-class black family.-Early years:...

, author of the novel The Living is Easy, which examined the life of an upper-class Black family. Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was an American poet who was popular during the Harlem Renaissance.- Biography :Cullen was an American poet and a leading figure with Langston Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance. This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African...

, who described everyday black life in his poems (such as a trip he made to Baltimore, which was ruined by a racial insult). Cullen's books include the poetry collections Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927). Frank Marshall Davis

Frank Marshall Davis

Frank Marshall Davis was an American journalist, poet, and political and labor movement activist.-Early life:...

's poetry collections Black Man's Verse (1935) and I am the American Negro (1937), published by Black Cat Press, earned him critical acclaim. Author Wallace Thurman

Wallace Thurman

Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.-Early life:...

also made an impact with his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans.

The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other Black people. With the renaissance, though, African American literature—as well as black fine art and performance art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture.

Civil Rights Movement era

A large migration of African Americans began during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, hitting its high point during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. During this Great Migration

Great Migration (African American)

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...

, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities like Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.

This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights movement, which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings.

One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin

James Baldwin (writer)

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...

, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...

. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain
Go Tell It on the Mountain (novel)
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. The novel examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community...

, wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as Another Country
Another Country (novel)
Another Country is a 1962 novel by James Baldwin. The novel tells of the bohemian lifestyle of musicians, writers and other artists living in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. It portrayed many taboo themes such as bisexuality, interracial couples and extramarital affairs.-Plot summary:The first...

and The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time is a book by James Baldwin. It contains two essays: "My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation," and "Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind." The first essay, written in the form of a letter to Baldwin's...

.

Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright

Richard Wright (author)

, whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel Native Son
Native Son
Native Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...

(1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays Notes of a Native Son
Notes of a Native Son
Notes of a Native Son is a non-fiction book by James Baldwin. It was Baldwin's first non-fiction book, and was published in 1955. The volume collects ten of Baldwin's essays, which had previously appeared in such magazines as Harper's Magazine, Partisan Review, and The New Leader...

, in reference to Wright's novel. However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel," which criticized Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright's other books are the autobiographical novel Black Boy
Black Boy
Black Boy is an autobiography by Richard Wright. The author explores his childhood and race relations in the South. Wright eventually moves to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party....

(1945), The Outsider (1953), and White Man, Listen! (1957).

The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...

, best known for his novel Invisible Man (1952), which won the National Book Award

National Book Award

The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

in 1953. Even though Ellison did not complete another novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in literary history. After Ellison's death in 1994, a second novel, Juneteenth
Juneteenth (novel)
Juneteenth is the title of African American writer Ralph Ellison's second novel , published posthumously as a 368-page condensation of over 2000 pages written by him over a period of forty years. It was originally written without any real organization, and Ellison's longtime friend, biographer and...

(1999), was pieced together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript will be published as Three Days Before the Shooting
Three Days Before the Shooting
Three Days Before the Shooting... is the title of the edited manuscript of Ralph Ellison's never-finished second novel. It was co-edited by John F. Callahan, the executor of Ellison's literary estate, and Adam Bradley, a professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The book was...

(2008).
Jones, Edward " The Known World", 2003
Carter Stephen, "New England White" 2007
Wright W.D. "Crisis of the Black Intellectual",2007

The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most notably Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...

, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry, Annie Allen. Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the 1950s and '60s are Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Her primary focus is on the individual and the power one has to make a difference in oneself and in the lives of others. Giovanni’s poetry expresses strong racial pride, respect for family, and her...

and Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books...

.

During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was an African American playwright and author of political speeches, letters, and essays...

, whose play A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes...

focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

, who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka has become known for his poetry and music criticism.

It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King, Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail

The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, also known as The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr., an American civil rights leader...

Recent history

Beginning in the 1970s, African American literature reached the mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of African American writers began to be accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature.

As part of the larger Black Arts Movement

Black Arts Movement

The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka...

, which was inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power

Black Power

Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...

Movements, African American literature began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping to promote and define African American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel.

James Emanuel

James Emanuel

James Emanuel is a poet and scholar from Alliance, Nebraska. Emanuel, who is ranked by some critics as one of the best and most neglected living poets, has published more than 300 poems, 13 individual books, an influential anthology of African American literature, an autobiography, and more...

took a major step toward defining African American literature when he edited (with Theodore Gross) Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America (1968), a collection of black writings released by a major publisher. This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator at the City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

(where he is credited with introducing the study of African-American poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

), heavily influenced the birth of the genre. Other influential African American anthologies of this time included Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal in 1968; The Negro Caravan, co-edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee in 1969; and We Speak As Liberators: Young Black Poets - An Anthology, edited by Oorde Coombs and published in 1970.

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

, meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors when she worked as an editor for Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

in the 1960s and 70s, where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.- Biography :...

and Gayl Jones

Gayl Jones

Gayl Jones is an African American writer from Lexington, Kentucky.-Early life:After earning the Frances Steloff Award for Fiction while attending Connecticut College, Jones graduated with a Masters in creative writing at Brown University.-Career:The same year, she published her first book...

. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the most important African American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Among her most famous novels is Beloved
Beloved (novel)
Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War , it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state...

, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...

in 1988. This story describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to save her from a life of slavery. Another important novel is Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon (novel)
Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American male living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood....

, a tale about materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

, unrequited love

Unrequited love

Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections...

, and brotherhood. Morrison is the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

.

In the 1970s novelist and poet Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

wrote a famous essay that brought Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

and her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication, and has come to be regarded as a seminal...

back to the attention of the literary world. In 1982, Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

and the American Book Award

American Book Award

The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

for her novel The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...

. An epistolary novel

Epistolary novel

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...

(a book written in the form of letters), The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to marry a man who physically abuses her. The novel was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

.

The 1970s also saw African American books topping the bestseller lists. Among the first books to do so was Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S....

by Alex Haley

Alex Haley

. The book, a fictionalized account of Haley's family history—beginning with the kidnapping of Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte is the central character of the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley, and of the television miniseries Roots, based on the book. Haley described his book as faction - a mixture of fact and fiction...

in Gambia

The Gambia

The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....

through his life as a slave in the United States—won the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

and became a popular television miniseries

Miniseries

A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...

. Haley also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination...

in 1965.

Other important writers in recent years include literary fiction

Literary fiction

Literary fiction is a term that came into common usage during the early 1960s. The term is principally used to distinguish "serious fiction" which is a work that claims to hold literary merit, in comparison from genre fiction and popular fiction . In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more upon...

writers Gayl Jones, Rasheed Clark, Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...

, Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean novelist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in the city of St. John's on the island of Antigua in the nation of Antigua and Barbuda...

, Randall Kenan

Randall Kenan

Randall Kenan is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. Raised in a rural community in North Carolina, Kenan has focused his fiction on what it means to be black and gay in the southern United States. Among his books is the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was...

, and John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...

. African American poets have also garnered attention. Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...

read a poem at Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

's inauguration, Rita Dove

Rita Dove

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...

won a Pulitzer Prize and served as Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

of the United States from 1993 to 1995, and Cyrus Cassells

Cyrus Cassells

-Life and work:Cassells was born in Dover, Delaware, grew up in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, and began writing poetry in high school. He graduated in 1979 from Stanford University with a degree in film and broadcasting, and landed a job creating poetry filmstrips in the film division of...

's Soul Make a Path through Shouting was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Cassells is a recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award

William Carlos Williams Award

The William Carlos Williams Award is given out by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry book published by a small press, non-profit, or university press....

. Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her 2006 collection, Native Guard.Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. She earned the A.B. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in poetry from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from...

won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with her book Native Guard. Lesser-known poets like Thylias Moss

Thylias Moss

Thylias Moss is an American poet, writer, experimental filmmaker, sound artist and playwright, of African American, Indian, and European heritage, who has published a number of poetry collections, children’s books, essays, and multimedia work she calls poams, products of acts of making, related to...

also have been praised for their innovative work. Notable black playwrights include Ntozake Shange

Ntozake Shange

Ntozake Shange born October 18, 1948, is an American playwright, and poet. As a self proclaimed black feminist, much of the content of her work addresses issues relating to race and feminism....

, who wrote For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf is a 1975 experimental play by Ntozake Shange. Initially staged in California, it has been performed Off-Broadway and on Broadway, and adapted as a book, a television film, and a theatrical film...

; Ed Bullins

Ed Bullins

Ed Bullins is an African American playwright. He was also the Minister of Culture for the Black Panthers. In addition, he has won numerous awards, including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and several Obies. He is one of the best known playwrights to come from the Black Arts Movement...

; Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan-Lori Parks is an African American playwright and screenwriter. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Topdog/Underdog.-Early years:...

; and the prolific August Wilson

August Wilson

August Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...

, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays. Most recently, Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones

Edward Paul Jones is an American novelist and short story writer. His 2003 novel The Known World received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.-Biography:...

won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Known World
The Known World
The Known World is a 2003 historical novel by Edward P. Jones. It was his first novel and second book. Set in antebellum Virginia, it examines issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by free black people as well as by whites...

, his novel about a black slaveholder in the antebellum South.

Young African American novelists include David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham is an American novelist, author of historical fiction and fantasy.Durham's first novel, Gabriel's Story, centered on African American settlers in the American West. Walk Through Darkness followed a runaway slave during the tense times leading up to the American Civil War...

, Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is an African American author and winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction...

, Kalisha Buckhanon

Kalisha Buckhanon

Kalisha Buckhanon is an African-American author. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, Buckhannon received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New School University. Buckhanon's first novel, Upstate, was published in 2006 by St....

, Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson is an American writer of literary fiction.-Biography:Born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johnson writes primarily about the lives of African-Americans, using fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels as mediums...

, ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer is an African-American author, notable for her works of short fiction.-Life:She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; her given name is Zuwena...

and Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is a New York-based novelist. He is best known as the author of the 2001 novel John Henry Days. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.-Early life:...

, just to name a few. African American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction

Genre fiction

Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....

. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes

Chester Himes

Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels...

, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives. Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley

and Hugh Holton. African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...

, Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant.- Background :Butler...

, Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is an African American science fiction writer, lecturer, creative consultant, and human performance technician....

, Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due is an American author.-Biography:Tananarive Priscilla Due was born in Tallahassee, Florida, the oldest of three daughters of civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due and civil rights lawyer John D. Due Jr...

, Robert Fleming

Robert Fleming (author)

Robert Fleming is a journalist and writer of Erotic fiction and Horror fiction. He is also a contributing editor for Black Issues Book Review...

, Brandon Massey

Brandon Massey

Brandon Massey was born June 9, 1973, in Waukegan, Illinois. He grew up in Zion, a suburb north of Chicago. Brandon is a writer of thriller fiction who has at this writing six published novels, one story collection, and has edited three anthologies....

, Charles R. Saunders

Charles R. Saunders

Charles R. Saunders also credited as Charles Saunders is an African American author and journalist currently living in Canada. During his long career, he has written everything from novels both fiction and non-fiction, to screenplays and radio plays.- Background :Saunders was born in Elizabeth,...

, John Ridley

John Ridley

John Ridley is an American film director, actor, and writer.Ridley got his start as a stand-up comedian. He eventually was hired as a writer for sitcoms such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Martin...

, John M. Faucette

John M. Faucette

John M. Faucette was an African American science fiction author. He published 5 novels and one short story. At the time of his death he had seven unpublished novels in various states of completion...

, Sheree Thomas

Sheree Thomas

Sheree Thomas also credited as Sheree R. Thomas and Sheree Renée Thomas is a writer, book editor and publisher whose Dark Matter collected the works of some of the best African American Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy writers. Authors such as Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Charles R...

and Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican science fiction and fantasy writer and editor who lives in Canada. Her novels and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling.Hopkinson has...

being just a few of the well-known authors.

Finally, African American literature has gained added attention through the work of talk show host Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

, who repeatedly has leveraged her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...

. At times, she has brought African American writers a far broader audience than they otherwise might have received.

Critiques

While African American literature is well accepted in the United States, there are numerous views on its significance, traditions, and theories. To the genre's supporters, African American literature arose out of the experience of Blacks in the United States, especially with regards to historic racism and discrimination, and is an attempt to refute the dominant culture's literature and power. In addition, supporters see the literature existing both within and outside American literature

American literature

and as helping to revitalize the country's writing. To critics , African American literature is part of a Balkanization

Balkanization

Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other, and it is considered pejorative.The term refers to the...

of American literature. In addition, there are some within the African American community who do not like how their own literature sometimes showcases Black people.

Refuting the dominant literary culture

Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and subject to racist attitudes. This experience inspired some Black writers, at least during the early years of African American literature, to prove they were the equals of European American authors. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture."

However, by refuting the claims of the dominant culture, African American writers weren't simply "proving their worth"—they were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Scholars expressing this view assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora

African diaspora

The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...

, African American literature thereby broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." This view of African American literature as a tool in the struggle for Black political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, perhaps most famously by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Existing both inside and outside American literature

According to James Madison University

James Madison University

James Madison University is a public coeducational research university located in Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S. Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, the university has undergone four name changes before settling with James Madison University...

English professor Joanne Gabbin, African American literature exists both inside and outside American literature. "Somehow African American literature has been relegated to a different level, outside American literature, yet it is an integral part," she says.

This view of African American literature is grounded in the experience of Black people in the United States. Even though African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens and were actively discriminated against. As a result, they were part of America while also outside it.

The same can be said for African American literature. While it exists fully within the framework of a larger American literature, it also exists as its own entity. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices are created in isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help revitalize the larger literary world (McKay, 2004). This artistic pattern has held true with many aspects of African American culture

African American culture

over the last century, with jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

and hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

being just two artistic examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American culture.

Whether African American literature will keep to this pattern in the coming years remains to be seen. Since the genre is already popular with mainstream audiences, it is possible that its ability to develop new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some critics—may be a thing of the past.

Balkanization of American literature

Despite these views, some conservative

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

academics and intellectuals argue that African American literature only exists as part of a balkanization

Balkanization

of literature over the last few decades or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature. According to these critics, literature is splitting into distinct and separate groupings because of the rise of identity politics

Identity politics

Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...

in the United States and other parts of the world. These critics reject bringing identity politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks."

People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition and, more importantly, judges ethnic writers merely on the basis of their race.

Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing actually deepens human understanding and that, previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature. (Jay, 1997)

The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres like African American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than ever before in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004).

African American criticism

Some of the criticism of African-American literature over the years has come from within the community; some argue that Black literature sometimes does not portray Black people in a positive light and that it should.

W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in the NAACP's The Crisis on this topic, saying in 1921, "We want everything that is said about us to tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one." He added in 1926, "All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists." Du Bois and the editors of The Crisis consistently stated that literature was a tool in the struggle for African-American political liberation.

Du Bois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed when he clashed in 1928 with the author Claude McKay

Claude McKay

over his best-selling novel Home to Harlem. Du Bois thought the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem appealed only to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness." Du Bois said, "'Home to Harlem' ... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." Others made similar criticism of Wallace Thurman

Wallace Thurman

's novel The Blacker the Berry in 1929. Addressing prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, the novel infuriated many African Americans, who did not like the public airing of their "dirty laundry."

Many African-American writers thought their literature should present the full truth about life and people. Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). He wrote that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or white public thought.

More recently, some critics accused Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

of unfairly attacking black men in her novel The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...

(19xx). In his updated 1995 introduction to his novel Oxherding Tale, Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson, Charlie Johnson, Charley Johnson or Chuck Johnson may refer to:-American public officials:*Charles Johnson , Democratic-Republican who represented 8th congressional district, 1801–1802...

criticized Walker's novel for its negative portrayal of African-American males: "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." Walker responded in her essays The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (19xx).

Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, educator. He was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1976.-Biography:...

, the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the nation's official poet. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of...

, critiqued the idea of African American Literature saying (paraphrasing the comment by the black composer Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

about jazz and music), "There is no such thing as Black literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all."

External links

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Characteristics and themes

Early African American literature

Slave narratives

Frederick Douglass

Post-slavery era

Harlem Renaissance

Civil Rights Movement era

Recent history

Critiques

Refuting the dominant literary culture

Existing both inside and outside American literature

Balkanization of American literature

African American criticism

See also

Further reading

External links