Banerjee 38
Chapter 3
Literature is an artistic expression of human experience. This experience is projected
by African diaspora which was produced in the African-American literature of
twentieth century. Carr points out, “the African-American literature is the body of
literature produced in the United States by the writers of African descent” (10, 11). It
began with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley and
Olaudah Equiano. They touched the high points with slave narratives of the nineteenth
century. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a time when literature and art
flourished. Writers of African-American literature have been acknowledged by the
greatest awards with the Nobel Prize to Toni Morrison. African-American literature
explored issues of freedom and equality long denied to Blacks in the United States, it
also
included
as
Prince
remarks,
“themes
such
as African
American
culture, racism, religion, slavery, a sense of home”(20) and more. The writings of
African American have integrated the oral forms as Ward concludes “AfricanAmerican writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons,
gospel music, blues and rap” (146).
The African Americans are in actual fact Black Americans or Afro-Americans and prior to
that American Negroes. They are citizens and inhabitants of the United States “ who have
at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are
the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United
States”(Rucker 126). Though some have partial ancestry in the native population of
Africa, but the study speaks the presence of African American in this nation. As Princeton
University professor Albert J. Raboteau remarks, “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"(qtd. in Coon 32).
3. Harriet Ann Jacobs
4. Olaudah Equiano
6. Harriet E. Wilson
5. Alex Haley
4. Alice Walker
3. Maya Angelou
2. Toni Morrison
1. James Emanuel
3.6 Modern History
1. Dorothy West
2. Ralph Ellison
3. James Baldwin
4. Gwen dolyn Brooks
2. Ann Petry
3. Chester Himes
4. Willard Mortley
3.5.2 Assimilation
1. Richard Wright
3.5.1 Remonstration
3.5 Civil Rights Movement Era
Fig. 4. Significant African American Writers (18th & 19th Century approx)
4. Charles Waddell Chestnutt
5. Claude McKay
4. Zora Neale Hurston
3 Jean Toomer
2. Langston Hughes
1. Wallace Henry Thurman
3.4 Harlem Renaissance
3. Paul Laurence Dunbar
2. Booker T. Washington
1. W.E.B. DuBois
3.3 Reconstruction Era
2. Frederick Douglass
3. Phillis Wheatley
5. William Wells Brown
1. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher
3.2 Slave Narrators
2. Jupiter Hammon
1. Lucy Terry
3.1 Emergence of African
American lit.
AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS
Banerjee 39
Banerjee 40
The significant writers of nearly two decades are shown in the fig. 4 with its
elaboration in the chapter. The history of African-American begins in the 16th century
with African slaves who rapidly raised their voices against the Spanish
explorer LucasVásquez de Ayllón and as the time advances to the present day, Barack
Obama who has been elected as the current 44th President, of the United States, On
November 4, 2008. Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican
Senator John to become the first African American to be elected President. The
percentage of voters as remarked by Kuhn, a writer and political analyst, as “Fully 96
percent of Black voters supported Obama and constituted 13 percent of the electorate,
a 2-percentage-point rise in their national turnout.” It took nearly one hundred and
twenty seven years to paint the white house into Black house when Barack Obama
became the President. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues
like slavery, development of the African-American community, racial separation,
which were faced by the African Americans. The development of African American
literature discussed in this chapter is pertaining to the significant writers of the period
who really struggled hard to gain identity in the American society through their
literary writings and promoted Black literature.
3.1 Emergence of African-American literature
Lucy Terry
Jupiter Hammon
Phillis Wheatley
(1730-1821)
(1711 - 1806)
(1753–84)
Olaudah Equiano
(1745 – 1797)
William Wells Brown
Harriet Wilson
(1814 – 1884)
(1825-1900)
The history of African American began long before United States emerged as an
independent country; more over African-American literature has similarly deep roots.
Banerjee 41
Many of the earliest published Black writers were slaves and abolitionists. Lucy
Terry’s poem Bars Fight was the oldest known work of African American literature
though written in 1746 but it was not published till 1855. Her work was a ballad written
about attack made upon two white families by Native Americans on August 25, 1746.
“The poem was preserved orally until it was finally published in 1855” (Shockley).
The first African American to publish literature in the US was a Black poet; Jupiter
Hammon.Though several years before in England and not in U.S., Phillis Wheatley
had published her poems in 1767. Hammon was an ardent Christian so was allowed to
attend school. His first published poem was written on Christmas Day, 1760, “An
Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries in which a Negro
belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen's Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December,
1760"( Hammon). The poem in 1761 became visible as a Broadside in 1761. Hammon
was well thought-out as a religious poet who served as a preacher to the other
enslaved members of the Lloyd estate. He was famous for his seven poems and four
prose pieces which were discovered eighty-seven years ago. Hammon continues to
exist as first known African American to publish literature within the present-day
United States .He presents one of his experiences after a lifetime of slavery at the age
of 76 in the year 1786. He talks about the experience that personally he does not want
to be free but hopes for the young Negroes to be free. In his ‘Address to the Negroes
of the State of New York’, he said, "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find
nobody to reproach us for being Black, or for being slaves"(Hammon 44).
The period did not bring popularity to both the writers and hence they are
overshadowed by Phillis Wheatley. Her wisdom captivated the attention of her own
time and gained for her contemporary literary attention in U.S. and abroad. With
American Revolution gaining strength, Wheatley turned her themes that expressed
Banerjee 42
ideas of the rebellious colonists. Smith points out “in 1768, Wheatley wrote To the King's
Most Excellent Majesty, in which she praised George III for repealing the Stamp Act ”
(123). Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773; gained her
immense popularity both in England, and the Thirteen Colonies after publishing it. George
Washington praised her work. Henry Louis Gates remarks on Wheatley’s popularity as
“Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to
Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England (published 1773) is a collection of 39
poems
written
by Phillis
Wheatley.
The
first
professional African-
American woman poet in America and the first African-American woman whose writings
were published” (5). In 1775, Phillis Wheatley published another poem entitled, To His
Excellency, George Washington in 1775 praising G.Washington. Phillis Wheatley was
invited by Gen. George Washington in 1776 to his Cambridge, MA headquarters to
express gratitude for her poem, dedicated to him.
The early African American literature has many other writers as Wheately’s most
famous Black contemporary, published his two-volume autobiography, The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, which was
written by him. He was one of the prominent Africans involved in the British
movement for the abolition of the slave trade. As a young man he was enslaved and
purchased his freedom, and worked as an author, merchant, and explorer in South
America, the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies. The horrors of slavery
depicted in his autobiography had an impact on the enactment of the Slave Trade Act
of 1807. It was the first influential slave autobiography published in 1789 with several
editions. His experience as a Black immigrant caused a consciousness on publication
when it was published. The book added fuel to a growing anti-slavery movement in
Great Britain. In fact, “Equiano was so shocked by this culture that he tried washing
Banerjee 43
his face in an attempt to change its color” (Equiano 109). There was no doubt about the
fact that the book was an exemplary work of English literature by a new, African author.
The progress was seen in the works of fiction by African-American writers. The
earliest works of fiction by the African-American writers was produced by William
Wells Brown (1814–84) and Victor Séjour (1817–74). Séjour was born free in New
Orleans and at the age of 19. His short story Le Mulâtre ("The Mulatto") was
published in 1837. It is the first known fiction by an African American, but the story
was written in French language therefore it had no impact on later American literature.
This made W.W.Brown, to be the first novel written by an African American. He was
a prominent abolitionist, novelist, historian and playwright, in the United States. He
escaped to North, and became a prolific writer. Brown’s novel Clotel; or, The
President's Daughter (1853), was considered to be the first novel written by an
African American. The novel narrates the story of the beautiful light-skinned AfricanAmerican daughter of Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress; Clotel who dies trying
to save her own daughter from slavery.
Since Brown’s novel was first published in England therefore the credit goes to
Harriet Wilson's Our Nig . Harriet E. Wilson was the first African-American female
novelist in the United States. In 1859 Wilson had written the autobiographical
novel Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. It narrates the life of a
working- class Black woman in the North. The novel deals with racism in the preCivil War North. It tells about the problems of lives of northern free Blacks. Wilson's
novel Our
Nig was
published
in
1859
which illustrates
the
discrimination
of indentured servitude and racism existing before the civil war in northern United
States. The novel became obscure soon after its publication. In 1982,Ferguson
Banerjee 44
concludes that “it was rediscovered by professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who confirmed
it was the first novel by an African American published in the United States” (118).
It can be analysed that the African-American history exists before the United States
emerged as an independent country. The African-American history is the part
of American history that talks about the African-American or Black American cultural
groups in the United States. Most African Americans are the ancestors of captive
Africans who were held in the United States from 1619 to 1865.
3.2 Slave narrators
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher
(1811-1896)
Frederick Douglass
(1818- 1895)
Harriet Ann Jacobs
(1813-1897)
The slave narrators compiled the brutality and suffering undergone by them in their
slave narratives which were written by the fugitive slaves. In the middle of the
nineteenth century the genre of African-American literature that developed were the
slave narratives. The narrations described cruelties of life under slavery and about
their lives in the South. They also frequently depicted life after escaping to freedom.
During that period controversy over slavery led to emotional literature dealing with
both sides of the issue such as novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet
Beecher Stowe's. This novel represents the abolition of a practice against the evils of
slavery. In response to this, Southern white writers wrote about the "Anti-Tom"
novels trying to truly describe life under slavery and the more severe cruelties suffered
Banerjee 45
by free labour in the North such as Aunt Phillis's Cabin (1852) by Mary Henderson
Eastman and The Sword and the Distaff (1853) by William Gilmore Simms.
The slave narratives were important to African-American literature. Nearly 6,000
earlier slaves from North America and the Caribbean had written about their lives.
The figures show that about 150 of these slave narratives published as separate books
or pamphlets. These tales were very famous for they were written to inspire the
revolutionary struggle because they have a powerful autobiographical intension. Many
narratives by African Americans were recognized as the most literary of all 19thcentury writings, with two of the best among them being Frederick Douglass's
autobiography and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).
Gatewood remarked, in essay review, on his impressive anti slavery writing“Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman.
After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining
note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.” The anti-slavery
writings of Douglass eloquently described his experiences about slavery. In 1845 he
wrote his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave. This book influenced his support for abolition.
This book was an immediate best seller but some critics did not believe that a Black man
could have written such an expressive work. Later, Douglass revised and extended his
autobiography and it was republished as My Bondage and My Freedom in1855.Two more
autobiographies were written by him. His last book was Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass published in 1881. It covered events through and after the Civil War.
Yet another American writer, Harriet Ann Jacobs escaped from slavery and became
abolitionist speaker and a reformer. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was Jacobs'
Banerjee 46
only work, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. It was one of the
first autobiographical narratives which depict the struggle about the freedom by
female slaves and a description of abuse and sexual harassment they experienced.
Due to the Atlantic Slave trade there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in
the United States by 1860 and another group of 500,000 African Americans lived free
across the country. During the American Civil War in 1863, President Abraham
Lincoln signed the Proclamation. The information retrieved from National Archives
and Records Administration(NARA) an independent agency of the United States
government for preserving and documenting government and historical records was
about the freedom of slaves; “the proclamation declared that all slaves in states which
had seceded from the Union were free.” Most of the records and figures elaborated
here is the projection of deep study on the African American Literature and quoting of
some most important sources.
3.3 Reconstruction era
W. E. B. Du Bois
(1868 – 1963)
Booker T. Washington
(1856–1915)
Paul Laurence Dunbar
(1872-1906)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
(1858 – 1932)
The reconstruction era after the war was known as the post-war reconstruction era or post
slavery era in the late 1890s. It was also known as the beginning period of progress for
African Americans. The northern states wanted to give freedom to the African slaves but
the Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation because they
wanted to preserve slavery instead of freedom. Most African Americans complained and
Banerjee 47
followed the Jim Crow laws. They wanted to stop becoming victimised by racially
motivated violence. With the end of war and slavery a lot of non-fiction works were
written by the Blacks about the condition of African Americans in the United States.
Most prominent among these writers was W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963). He did his
doctorate in sociology from Harvard University. He was one of the original founders
of the NAACP, in 1910. Du Bois published a prominent collection of essays titled The
Souls of Black Folk. The groundbreaking essays on race were actually drawn from Du
Bois's personal experiences and with descriptions of how African Americans lived in
rural Georgia and in the larger American society. Du Bois wrote on race and colour:
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line"(10), an
assertion since well thought-out prescient.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), represented opposite and distinct views from Du
Bois. “The two great leaders have become icons of radical versus conservative
approaches to social change in the twentieth- century African American Culture”
(Horne and Young 1).B.T. Washington was an educator and the founder of
the Tuskegee Institute, Which in history, is a Black college in Alabama. In 1901,
Washington gave a detailed account of his work that he faced being a slave child
during the civil war in his autobiography, Up from Slavery and the way they overcome
those difficulties and received the degree from the Hampton University. He also
expresses his views to establish Tuskegee University for the benefits of the Blacks so
that they get educated and come up in life. Washington thinks about on the kindness
of both teachers and philanthropists, who assisted in refining and educating Blacks and
Native Americans. This book, though a biography of his life, in fact drew an image of
the problem faced by African Americans. His other published works were The Future
of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and Its People (1905), and My Larger
Banerjee 48
Education (1911). In contrast to Du Bois, who had taken a more aggressive outlook
towards ending racial conflict in America, Washington’s belief was that the Blacks
should first prove themselves the equal of whites before thinking for an end to racial
discrimination. Some Blacks and many Whites agreed to this at that time but
Washington's political views fell useless later.
The first African-American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, gained national prominence
for he wrote in the rural, Black dialect of the day in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Oak and Ivy was his first book of poetry published in 1893. Dunbar
subsidized the printing of the book himself, though he earned back his investment in
two weeks by selling copies personally often to passengers on his elevator (Wagner
76). The larger section of the book as Alexander analyses the poem, “the Oak section,
consisted of traditional verse whereas the smaller section, the Ivy, featured light poems
written in dialect” (38). Dunbar died young as a prolific poet, playwright, short story
writer and novelist, (among them The Uncalled, 1898 and The Fanatics, 1901).
Dunbar had written a hundred books of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels,
and a play. Riis points out on the lyrics of Dunbar that he wrote “ In Dahomey - the
first musical written and performed entirely by African-Americans to appear
on Broadway in 1903; the musical comedy successfully toured England and America
over a period of four years - one of the more successful theatrical productions of its
time(91). During his life, substantial importance was laid on the piece of information
that Dunbar was of Black descent.
A lot of Dunbar’s work was written in conventional English and some in African
American dialect. The diversity of the poet’s production could be seen in two concise
examples of Dunbar’s work, the first in standard English and the second in dialect.
Banerjee 49
This is the thirteenth poem Dreams written in 1899. The following lines are taken
from Ambleside Online: Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).
(From "Dreams")
What dreams we have and how they fly
Like rosy clouds across the sky;
Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,
Of love that comes to cheer and bless;
And how they wither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade —
The fame that for a moment gleams,
Then flies forever, — dreams, ah — dreams!
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an eminent mixed race author, political activist, short
story writer and essayist. He had written on diverse issues of racial and social identity
in the post-Civil War and was among the African American writers who stand distinct
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His earliest work was a compilation
of short stories entitled The Conjure Woman, which was printed in 1899. These stories
highlighted Black characters who spoke in language, as was accepted in
much southern literature at the time. The same year, he published another short story
of collected works, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899),
with title story, as The Passing of Grandison , and others. These stories reversed
contemporary facts about the actions of slaves, and their seeking of liberty, and
bringing up new concerns and issues about African-American culture.
Chesnutt's stories were different and complex from his contemporaries. His writings
were about the characters facing with complex issues of mixed race and racial
identities. The complex issues were significant during the social instability of
Banerjee 50
Reconstruction and late 19th-century southern society. He also finished the biography
of the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass who escaped from slavery, prior to the war.
The eighteenth-century slave narratives were a source of insight and motivation to
readers. It not only revealed the history and literature of African American but
discloses the complexities of dialogue in the last two centuries between whites and
Blacks. The Post slavery era is after the end of slavery and the American Civil War.
During this period a number of African-American authors wrote nonfiction works to
present the position of African Americans in the United States. The two leading Black
intellectuals, though had opposing views on improvement of the Blacks but Du Bois
and Washington both had actually written towards ending racial strife in America.
While the very beginning of the century took over the consciousness of the early
mainstream American naturalists Crane, Dreiser, Sinclair, Dos Passos, Farrell,
Steinbeck, who uncovered the stark and dirty realities of urban life, it took the Negro
writers quite a few decades to come out of the agrarian feudal South.
3.4 Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
(1902 –1967)
(1891 – 1960)
Jean Toomer
(1894-1967)
Claude McKay
(1889-1948)
The cultural movement that spanned in the 1920s till 1930s, with the end of slavery
brought new avenues for the Black people. It was a movement comprised of AfricanAmerican artists and intellectuals that emerged in the early part of the twentieth century.
The black could attend the educational and other institutions, which resulted in flowering
of Black culture. The phenomenon was known as Harlem Renaissance which led the
Banerjee 51
African American literature to reach one of the highest points. The significance of this era
is explained in Encyclopedia Wikipedia:
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.
The writers and artists in Harlem led a flourishing new movement in literature, theatre,
and jazz. The Harlem Renaissance represented the flowering in literature and art of the
New Negro Movement or New Negro Intellectuals of the 1920s. The period immediately
after the World War I, witnessed the Great Migration of African Americans from the
South to the North. Most of the African American’s populated in Detroit, Chicago,
Philadelphia and New York City searched for Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City
searched for work, prospects and an opening to live a life which is not subjugated. In this
regard Hayes-Williams points out in his article, Capital Gazette,
This period is also known as the Harlem Renaissance which
embodied the lifestyle of what was called sociological critic, Alan
LeRoy Locke; “The New Negro Movement.” This movement was the
birth of spirit, self-determination and heritage- a sort of racial
consciousness played out through arts………. Zora Neale Hurston’s
literature was made public and she was the first to call “rich white
patrons Negrotarians. (Hayes-Williams)
The artists of Harlem Renaissance are separated into three groups of writers which are depicted
with the help of three different colours in the figure given below. In Encyclopedia of Harlem
Renaissance, Aberjhani., Sandra L. West writes about the term Nigrotarian and Niggerati as
“Negrotarian term coined by Zora Neale Hurston used to refer patrons to white patrons of Black
Banerjee 52
artists and writers. Niggerati term adopted was adopted by Wallace Thurman and Zora Neale
Hurston as a sarcastic poke at the Black literati of the Harlem Renaissance. In Thurman’s novel
Infants of the Spring, meeting place for writers and artists is called NIGGERATI MANOR”
(379).
The fig. 5 shows three groups of major contributors to the flowering of the New Negro
Movement during the 1920’s and 1930’s in Harlem: Niggerati writers with red colour, New
Negro Intellectuals with green and Negrotarian patrons with yellow.
Langston Hughes
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Countee Cullen
Zora Neale Hurston
Richard Bruce
Nugent
Wallace Thurman
Claude Mckay
Harlem
Renaissance
Jean Toomer
Fig.5. The three groups of contributors to Harlem Renaissance / New Negro Movement.
Source: “Harlem Renaissance;” <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem Renaissance>.Web. 16 Apr.2014
Banerjee 53
Wallace Henry Thurman (1902–1934) an active American novelist during the Harlem
Renaissance. He used the term Niggerati writers for the group of young African
American intellectuals of Harlem Renaissance with deliberate irony. One of the most
prominent writers of the renaissance was poet Langston Hughes. He was an American
poet, novelist, social activist, playwright, and journalist. The first time Hughes received
attention was in 1922 poetry collection, The Book of American Negro Poetry. Another
collection of poetry, The Weary Blues was published in 1926, and a novel, Not without
Laughter in 1930.
Hughes' most well-known poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers was published in 1921
in Crisis Magazine. This poem was written on a train ride to Mexico. The poet was going to
live with his father for one year. This poem was the most popular work as it celebrated the
right and the spirit of the Black community at the time of great racial narrow-mindedness,
injustice, and discrimination in America. The white society did not like Hughes’ attitude of
helping Black community .He therefore became the unofficial poet laureate of the Harlem
Renaissance. Francis points out on the change of title; “He famously wrote about the period
that The negro was in vogue which was later paraphrased as When Harlem was in
vogue"(30).
The life and works were extremely prominent as mentioned earlier along with the
contemporaries like Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee
Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. They tried to describe the low-life in
their art which portrays the real lives of Blacks in the poorer social-economic strata. The
divisions and prejudices were criticized by the writers as they were based on the skin
color within the Black community and stressed on racial realization and cultural
nationalism without any self-hate. His thought helped in uniting people of African
Banerjee 54
descent and Africa from one corner to another to promote pride in their varied Black folk
culture and Black artistic.
Zora Neale Hurston, a niggerate was among the famous writers of the renaissance. As a
novelist, she wrote the classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God .It was written in the
1937 and is the best novel among the four novels and more than 50 published short stories,
plays, and essays. She was also an American folklorist and anthropologist, and author
during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Her work was rediscovered in the 1970s
by Alice Walker in a famous essay. Alice thought of Hurston as a role model for all female
African American writers. Besides the two most influential writers of the Harlem
Renaissance, Hurston and Hughes, a number of other writers were also famous during this
period.
Jean Toomer, a noted author of the novel Cane (1923), also wrote famous collection of
stories, poems, and portrays on rural and urban Black life whereas the author of the
novel The Living is Easy, Dorothy West, depicts the life of an upper-class Black family at
the time of World War I. She too belonged to the Harlem Renaissance period and was a
novelist and short story writer. Her main contribution to the Renaissance was the
magazine Challenge, founded by her in 1934 with $40 which published literature depicting
the realistic sketches of African Americans. Jean Toomer’s Cane was considered to be the
most significant. The structure of a novel is a series of vignettes revolving roughly round the
origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. Blue Meridian was his
last literary work published during his lifetime. After 1950, he stopped writing for
publication but he wrote for himself, including many autobiographies.
Claude McKay was an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance .He wrote three novels:
Home to Harlem (1928), which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo (1929),
and Banana Bottom (1933). The novel, Home to Harlem, showed the street life in Harlem
Banerjee 55
and was to have major influence on Black intellectuals in the Caribbean, West Africa,
and Europe. McKay's novel gained a considerable readership, particularly with people who
desired to know more about the dreadful, details of Harlem nightlife. His novel was an
effort to capture the active and powerful spirit of the uprooted Black vagabonds. The main
theme of his book was to discuss the underlying racial and cultural identity in a
white society.McKay also authored Gingertown (1932), a collection of short stories, and
two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and Harlem: Negro
Metropolis (1940). His work greatly influenced an invention of Black authors
including James Baldwin and Richard Wright.
The 1920s Harlem Renaissance movement brought about a great change for the betterment.
It re-created an exclusive African-American identity and commemorating Black voices in the
arts. Poets and novelists like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright hoped to construct a New
Black identity that would alter racial stereotypes by proving the depth of the AfricanAmerican intellect. The Harlem Renaissance was known as the New Negro Movement as it
included many new African-American cultural expressions of the urban areas in the
Northeast and Midwest United States, out of which Harlem was the largest. The term ‘New
Negro’ was made popular by Alain LeRoy Locke(1886-1954). He was the philosophical
architect and acknowledged Dean of cultural efflorescence associated with the New Negro
Movement from 1919 to1934.His collection of writing,The New Negro,was published in
1925.James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) preferred to call the period flowering of Negro
literature or intellectuals. He was the first African-American professor at New York
University. He was a leader of the NACCP and a leading figure in the creation and
development of the Harlem Renaissance.“He wrote substantial portions of his novel, The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and his poetry collection, Fifty Years, during this
period”(Roberts 3) . Johnson's first achievement as an author was the poem Lift Ev'ry Voice
and Sing (1899).
Banerjee 56
The first half of the 20th century perceived the African American activist, W.E.B. DuBois
who supported pan-Africanism. In 1903 he published a collection of 14 essays,The Souls of
Black Folk. He served as an editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis and strongly
protested against lynching, Jim Crow Laws and discrimination in education and
employment .Horne and Young remarks on an intellectual Negro, Du Bois;
After earning his Ph.D from Harvard in 1895, Du Bois honed his
sociological understanding of African American culture and his
philosophical outrage with White racism during an early career of writing
and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and Atlanta University. By
1903, with publication of The souls of Black folk, his clarion call to
African American pride and Activism, Du.Bois blasted Washington for
acquiescing to white racism.(1)
The social activist,Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) founded the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and worked for the African Times and Orient Review, which
advocated Pan-Africanism. Arthur Schomburg (1874 – 1938), was a historian, writer, and
activist in the United States who researched and raised attentiveness of the great
contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society. He
collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history over the
years, which was purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, named in his honor, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch
in Harlem.
In the beginning of 1930s the members of CPUSA as Negrotarians seemed to foster an
environment for the African-American intellectuals maturation. The Negrotarians are
reform-minded white members of the CPUSA. They are white folks who supported the
lives and work of Harlem Renaissance writers. Some of them like the two women Louise
Bryant and Charlotte Mason may have been imperative because they initiated an
Banerjee 57
equivalent accessiblity ideal - egalitarian - for blacks and black culture in America and
Europe. But it is Carl Van Vechten who, perhaps, had the most impact as a white man in
a mixed cultural movement. He is also famous for publishing a novel called Nigger
Heaven.
Although there was an outpouring of creating during 1920s.The craze of Black
writing, Black art, and Black culture declined by the early 1930s due to the Great
Depression that took place in the United States .The pictures of a few legends of
Harlem Renaissance is added in the beginning of the description of this period and the
names of major contributors to the flowering of the New Negro Movement is shown
in the figure out of which significant writers are discussed in brief. While the writings
by Black Americans represent a great development, the early Negro fiction lagged
behind the mainstream growth by several decades. During the 1920’s when
urbanization began being depicted in Black literature, the resulting fictional image was
shallow and distorted. The advancement of fiction writer could be seen in the Civil
Rights Movement era.
3.5 Civil Rights Movement Era
During the World War I, a huge resettlement of African Americans began hitting its high
point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the racism and
settled in northern cities like Chicago, for the search of jobs in factories and other sectors
of the economy. This migration formed a new logic of independence in the Black
community
which
produced
a
Black
urban
culture
during
the
Harlem
Renaissance. The migration influenced the rising American Civil Rights movement,
which made a strong impression on Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
The bubble burst with strikes and evictions, bread lines and hunger marches, caused by
the great depression. The Black writers could no longer ignore the plight of the urban
Banerjee 58
masses. Paradoxically, the first Negro novelist to deal with ghetto life in the Northern
cities was a southern refugee named Richard Wright. The chief promoter of this situation
was Richard Wright, whose fiction, autobiography, and social commentary influenced
African American literature from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
Richard Wright’s The Native Son (1940) exerted such a great influence on subsequent
Black American fiction that a host of imitators enrolled themselves in the Wright’s school
of post-War Black American fiction – a movement described as Urban realism – Chester
Himes, Ann Petry, Williard Motley being the major Writers. These writers belonged to the
Remonstration Fiction as immediate –post war fiction spanning in the mid of 1940s.The
Second World –War also heralded unprecedented advances in the field of civil rights. In
response to this, late – post War novelists known as Assimilation Fiction, seemed more
inclined towards integration, assimilation and assertion rather than protest, which
characterized the immediate – post war novelists, see fig.6.
Post-War-Black Fiction
1 Immediate
2 Late
Post War
Post War
Fiction
Fiction
3.5.1Remonstration Fiction
Spanning mid 1940s
3.5.2Assimilation Fiction
Spanning early 1950s
RICHARD WRIGHT SCHOOL
Fig. 6 – Post War Black Fiction
A broad classification can be done keeping in view the outstanding disposition of the
major works of post War writers instead of keeping all the writers and their literary
works of the period in water –tight compartments: -
Banerjee 59
3.5.1 Remonstration Fiction
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
The major writers:
1.Richard Wright
Uncle Tom’s Children (1938)
The Native Son (1940)
Black Boy (1945)
The Outsider (1953)
The Long Dream (1958)
Lawd Today (1963)
8.
9.
10.
11.
2.Chester Himes If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945)
Lonely Crusade (1947)
Cast the First Stone (1952)
Third Generation (1954)
12.
13.
3.Ann Petry The Street
(1946)
Country Place (1947)
14.
4.Willard Motley
Knock on Any Door
(1947)
The minor writers: Carl Offord The White Face (1943)
Curtis Lucas Third Ward Newark (1947)
Alden Bland Behold a Cry (1947)
William Gardner Smith Last of the Conquerors (1948)
Willard Savoy Alien Land (1949)
Philip B. Kaye Taffy (1950)
Lloyd Brown Iron city (1951)
3.5.1. Remonstration Fiction (Richard Wright School)
Richard Wright
(1908-1960)
Ann Petry
(1908-1997)
Chester Himes
(1909-1984)
Willard Motley
(1909-1965)
In Remonstration fiction these four writers are explained in detail with brief outline of
minor writers at the end of it. Richard Wright is more popular among the contemporary
writers. His literature is related to racial themes, especially those involving the
Banerjee 60
predicament of African Americans for the period of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.
His literary writings helped to change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th
century. A literary critic states on the literature of Wright School;
For the Wright School, literature is an emotional catharsis – a means
of dispelling the inner tensions of race…The protest content of these
novels can be plotted along a curve ranging from “pure racial” at one
extreme to “pure social” at the other. On the racial end of the curve, the
antagonist is Jim Crow; on the social end, the antagonist is ordinarily the
city slum or, in some instances, the social order. (Bone 158)
Richard Wright’s works symbolizes the naturalist tradition of race writing in which
economic inequality and racial aggression are shown to form the strongest influential
forces in a Black American’s life. Richard Wright’s first novel Native Son, caused a
whole generation of Negro novelists to be influenced. It sketches filthy chaos of urban
ghetto culture and the Black individual who stands against the chaos causing upheaval
in personal, social and spiritual development of an individual. It portrays a stunning
picture of urban Black living. In The Native Son one can see an unparalleled advance
towards the Black urban character.
The protagonist in the novel is 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African
American living in absolute poverty. Chicago's South Side ghetto was where Bigger
lived in the 1930s. The treatment of Bigger in the novel and his motivations conform
to the conventions of literary naturalism. A literary critic gives his comment on the
character of Richard Wright’s character, Bigger;
Wright makes clear his conclusion that individuals such as
Bigger Thomas live by a strange and, by society’s standards, a
perverted code. They cannot hope to succeed by following
Banerjee 61
acceptable social, economic, and legal channels; so they seek
instead, release from the frustration and anger generated by the
cruel
hoaxes
perpetrated
against
them,
socially
and
economically; by such people as the Daltons, and legally, by
such people as the racist prosecutor, Buckley. And that release,
denied any other course, comes through the drive to destroy—
themselves, others it really does not matter. (Whitlow 112)
Richard Wright sees the life of Bigger Thomas in the same perspective as in what he
sees the Black ghetto, as the end product of a long historical process in his non-fictional
work, Twelve Million Black Voices (1941), published hard on the heels of Native Son.
Bigger’s end becomes tragic not because he dies but because he dies with hatred. He is
a helpless creature, a tragic hero, and a beaten individual who craves for fraternity,
friendship and faith against a hostile environment, which not only destroys him but also
defeats him. The importance of his works comes not from his technique and style, but
from the impact his ideas and attitudes have had on American life. Bigger Thomas, the
central figure of Native Son, is a murderer, but his situation galvanized the thought of
Black leaders towards the desire to confront the world and help shape the future of their
race.
The utter confusion externally in Native Son resulted in alienating socially. On the
other hand it brought on a spiritual alienation and dryness in Black Boy (1945), an
autobiographical novel. The narrator was unable to find comfort and peace in religion
is apparent from his inability to pray. But he kept this failure hidden within himself
undisclosed. He was persuaded that if he be successful in praying, his words would hit
the ceiling and softly shower upon him like feathers. His futile attempts at praying
became troublesome and spoilt his days.
Banerjee 62
In The Outsider (1953), the metaphor of alienation is once again explored. This is an
existentialist novel. Cross Damon’s dissatisfaction with his Black identity brought
about an identity crisis. Although he tried to form a new individuality and a new
future for himself by cutting off his cultural past, he was reminded of his failure in
life. When he is alienated he feels insecure and his fear is aggravated and intensified.
In Lawd Today (1963) also the character Bigger Thomas is subjected to facing defeat
and dejection. Jake Jackson is an older version of Bigger Thomas. His living condition
is horrible, routine is boring; his poorly paid job has made him callous and enraged. In
the short – story collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1936) is foreshadowed with the
same pain and violence and being uprooted from the South and once again the identity
crisis which ends in utter destruction.
The central idea of individual awareness against outward chaos is the key idea of Richard
Wright’s works as the aggressive surroundings not only rule the individual but also wipe
him out. Though Wright’s protagonist rises in opposition to the outward disturbance with
the intention to protest, he is unable to control over the chaos and becomes a puppet at the
hands of situations which not only fixes on the way his life should be but also marked its
limitations. Wright’s progress was noted by an ability to meet the current trends of social
and intellectual history of that time. His most important involvement was his desire to
accurately represent the condition of Blacks to white readers. Thus he destroyed the white
myth of the tolerant, humorous and docile Black man.
Ann Petry and Willard Motley were two most gifted followers of Richard Wright.
Ann Petry was the first Black woman American author. The first two novels of Ann
Petry– The Street (1946) and The Country Place (1947) depict the influence of
outward disturbance on a person’s mind, though the type of chaos is poles apart in
both the novels. The Street novel portrays the typical Richard Wright’s protest
Banerjee 63
method. Ann Petry’s second major work Country Place is a far cry from urban reality
and portrays metaphysical disturbance rather than social and racial chaos. Resided
underneath the peaceful surface of a country town to the prejudice and spitefulness
typical at the centre of such a life, the novel deeply infers “that resistance to change is
not a parochial trait but a universal human tendency. Seeking for certainty in a world
of flux, man creates images or dreams which he tries to invest with timelessness”
(Bone 183).All the characters in the novel have got over their illusions towards the
end of the novel. Those positive characters could change their lost illusion to
something worthwhile so they have the source to grow and be creative. Ann Petry’s
The Country Place has a wider and universal appeal than her early works like short
stories and a novella, which has a strong and distinct racial emphasis. Above all it
does not belong to Richard Wright’s School of protest novels.
Chester Himes, was associated with the labor movements, and a product of Great
Depression. He too was an American author and was the representative of Richard
Wright’s school. He wrote a series of Harlem Detective novels including If He Hollers
Let Him Go (1946). Himes too, depicts the external or outward disturbance in the
social surroundings and the chaos is so influential that the individual is shown as a
puppet. The individual has no option but to follow the will of the society. The
individual is rendered unsuccessful and helpless in front of society.
Some of Motley's fiction was published by the Chicago Defender when he was just 13
years old; it also launched him on his career as a writer. The first novel, Knock on Any
Door was printed in 1947 and received a critical acclaim for its realistic presentation. The
protagonist was Nick Romano, an Italian American altar boy who becomes a criminal
because he was poor and had the experience of difficulties of an immigrant. It was an
instant hit. During the first three weeks 47,000 copies were sold out in print.
Banerjee 64
It has already been mentioned the name of minor writers along with their works. The
central theme of each of them revolves encircling the racial differences and class
consciousness. It all dealt with urban reality and made the social disturbances and
sufferings of city slum which ultimately ended in prison life. Iron City (1951) by
Lloyd Brown has environmentalist approach. It is a novel for propaganda about the
benefits of environment and cannot be called a piece of art. It brought out all the
violence, suffering, immorality and misery of urban slums. Urban realism was another
form of protest fiction which became flooded towards the end of fourth decade and
later war came to take prominence which had a hand in shaping the Black fiction.
During the World War I there was economic depression as well racial oppression but
World War II on the contrary brought in a new wave in the field of civil rights. This
affected the relationship between races in a positive way. The protest that was there in
the Black fiction gave way to new paths of assimilation. The generation of Negro
writers produced after the war could perceive beyond the sufferings of their own that
had made them well prepared to deal with human tragedy more deeply.
3.5.2 Assimilation Fiction
15.
1. Dorothy West
The Living Is Easy (1948)
16.
17.
2. Ralph Ellison
Short stories (1937-1944)
Invisible Man (1952)
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
3. James Baldwin
Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953)
Giovanni’s Room (1956)
Another country’ (1962)
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968)
No Name in the street (1972) a collection of short stories
23.
4. Gwendolyn Brooks
Maud Martha (1953)
Banerjee 65
The late –post war writers who were more inclined towards integration in the early
1950s belonged to Assimilation Fiction. With the end of the forties the protest fiction
of Wright’s School also ended. They became saturated and except for Ann Petry,
Williard Motley, and Richard Wright himself, the writers of the movement were left
with not much to say. The urban realism movement or the protest fiction exposed all
the dark inhumanity, depravity and criminal activity against the Blacks of urban slums.
The gesture of complaint and dispute in the Black fiction were preoccupied by the new
channels of assimilation. The legends of assimilation fiction were as follows with the
elaboration of few significant writers.
Dorothy West
(1907-1998)
Ralph Ellison
(1914- 1994)
James Baldwin
(1924 –1987)
Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917-2000)
Dorothy West is best known for sharp interpretations of diverse issues within the
African American Community. She was a novelist, short story writer, magazine editor
and a newspaper journalist. She is best known for her novel The Living Is Easy (1948)
and also wrote many short stories and essays, which depict life of an upper-class Black
family. The novel revolves around an upper class Black family. One of the key themes
is about individual consciousness against outward chaos but with difference .It is not
like the immediate post war protest fiction, here the individual is held responsible for
the chaos and not the society. Dorothy’s main involvement to the Harlem Renaissance
was to bring out the magazine Challenge.
The African American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer, Ralph Ellison was
motivated into the world of literature as Richard Wright's protégé. He was initially a
Banerjee 66
sculpture and had studied music. It took him seven years to write Invisible Man and
publish it in 1952 and won him the National Book Award and gained enormous
popularity. This was Ellison’s one and only novel through which he earned respect as
an American writer and it was also one of the central texts of the African-American
literature. Ralph Ellison’s theme was also Individual consciousness against external
chaos but it was of a wider dimension in his fiction. Ellison had a positive vision
which realized the necessity of making a personal moral choice to make him distinct
from other Black writers. The other post war Black heroes were defeated by the chaos
around them where as Ellison’s protagonist was shown as a victorious character who
is above the chaos of invisibility.
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet,
and social critic. Essays were his strong point and he was weakest as a playwright. His
Go tell it on the Mountain (1953) was the only success but James Baldwin was the
most significant Black writer seen in the fifties. Baldwin's next novel, Giovanni's Room
(1956), stimulated controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its clear
homoerotic content. Baldwin's next two novels, Another Country (1962) and Tell Me
How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), are sprawling, experimental works. Go Tell
it on the Mountain is in the same league as Jean Toomer’s Cane. Richard Wright’s
Native son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man serve as an important contribution not
only to Black fiction but also to American fiction.
The title story, Going to Meet the Man is among the collection of his short stories,
which stands out for its complicated relationship between racial brutality and
sexuality. In this instant, the protagonist, a middle – aged southern deputy sheriff of
the South, sexuality comes to him only after he brings back to memory those brutal
experiences he had suffered in his life. Out of these experiences, the memory which
Banerjee 67
stands out distinct was that of beating a young Black civil rights worker when blood
poured out of his ears and nose. The first lynching that he had observed was of a Black
man burnt alive and mutilated.
In 1968 Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks , an African-American poet was appointed poet
Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
Congress in 1985. If 1953 marked the publication of Go Tell it on the Mountain by
James Baldwin, the same year, 1953 also marked the publication of Maud Martha –
the first and the only novel by Gwendolyn Brooks. In Maud Martha the protagonist is
a Black girl of Chicago. Maud Martha Brown who suffers due to discriminations she
experiences as she grows up, determines to enjoy, respect and love life. In spite of the
trials and tribulations suffered by her she creates a world of happiness out of limited
sources and life of order out of chaos.
During the Civil Rights time period one can see the rise of Black women poets. The
most notably among them being Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win
the Pulitzer Prize. She was awarded for her book of poems, Annie Allen (1949).
Besides Gwendolyn Brooks there were other female poets who won acclaim during
1950s and ‘60s. They were Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.
A number of playwrights also came into prominence during this time. Those who
acquired national attention being Lorraine Hansberry. Her play A Raisin in the
Sun revolves around a poor Black family of Chicago. It won, New York Drama Critics'
Circle Award in 1959. Another playwright who acquired attention was Amiri Baraka.
She wrote controversial plays off-Broadway. In recent years, Baraka has become famed
for his poetry and music criticism. Baraka is an American dramatist, poet and novelist.
He has gone through the anger and experience of African Americans. He used his
writings as a weapon against racism and with its help he later advocated scientific
Banerjee 68
socialism. The first published collection of essays in book form was Baraka’s The
Essence of Reparations. It is said that Amiri Baraka is committed to social justice and
there is no other American author like him. His essays are radical and explore the
issues of racism and all that it related to and is sure to become a twenty-first century
cascading movement of Black people.
Therefore it can be said that all the bitterness of 1930s was removed after the war.
There were remonstrations after the war in immediate post- war years. By the late
1940s the fire of remonstration died out and in the early 1950s the urge of
remonstration was replaced by new inclination for assimilation.
3.6 Modern history
James Emanuel
(1921-living poet)
Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
(1931-living novelist) (1928-living poet)
Alice Walker
Alex Haley
(1944-novelist)
(1921-1991)
In the 1970s, African American literature reached its height. Books by Black writers
constantly achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was the time when the
academic world accepted the work of African American writers as a legitimate genre
of American literature. During this period a number of scholars and writers are
generally attributed with serving to promote and define African American literature as
a genre, including the fiction writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet
James Emanuel.
James Emanuel is a poet and scholar from Alliance, Nebraska. He is ranked by some
critics as one of the best and most neglected living poets. He has published more than
300 poems, 13 individual books, an influential anthology of African American
Banerjee 69
literature, an autobiography, and more. The anthology, published in 1968 by Free
Press, was one of the first major collections of African American writings. “This
anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator, heavily influenced the birth of
the African American literature genre” (Womack).
Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor and professor. She contributed a lot to
promote Black literature and authors when she was an editor for Random House in the
1960s and 70s. She edited books of authors like Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. Toni
Morrison’s novels were famous for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and splendidly
detailed characters. Her best known novels are The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of
Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987). She won Nobel Prize in 1993 and the Pulitzer Prize in
1987 for Beloved. In this novel the story of a slave is described who found liberty but killed
her infant daughter to keep her away from the wretched life of slavery. Morrison is the first
African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Beloved was modified into the
1998 film, in which Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover were starring.
Dr. Maya Angelou is an extraordinary Renaissance woman who is well-known for the
great voices of contemporary literature. As a poet, historian, actress, playwright,
producer, director, educator, best-selling author and civil-rights activist, she travelled
throughout the world, to spread her well-known knowledge. Maya Angelou fascinates
through the robustness and sheer magnificence of her words and lyrics. I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings in 1969 is an autobiography which describes the early years of an
African-American writer. She was the harbinger of a new-fangled memoirist and was
among the first African American women writers who were able to discuss her
personal life in public. The book opens with three-year-old Maya and her older brother
who were sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when
Maya becomes a mother at the age of 17. In the course of Caged Bird, Maya
Banerjee 70
transfigures from a sufferer of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-confident,
distinguished young woman capable of responding to prejudice. Angelou's major
works have been considered as an autobiographical fiction, but several critics have
characterized them as autobiographies.
Alice Malsenior Walker is popularly known by the name Alice Walker and for her
most prominent novel The Color Purple in 1982. She was born on 9 February 1944,
in Eatonton, Georgia. She took part in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi
and extended her support to work as a teacher, social worker and lecturer. In 1983,
Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her epistolary
novel The Color Purple. It tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is physically
abused by her stepfather and then is compelled to marry a man who
sexually abuses her. A film was later made by Steven Spielberg on her epistle novel.
She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender.
The 1970s also witnessed African American books topping the bestseller charts. Roots:
The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley was among the first novel to do so. Alex
Haley, became the distinguished and illustrious of his race. He remained unbeaten as no
other African-American had ever solicited to sketch his family history back from its tribal
origins, through the apprehension of the slave trade, and on to achieving something
resembling equality in the world of the white man. Garry Abrams in his essay writes the
remark of the novelist Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage on the popularity of
Haley’s novel; “A friend once told me that [the impact of] Roots was the equivalent of
putting a man on the moon....in Roots, he found a way to present history in a very popular,
commercial format-not just to Black people, but to everyone” (Abrams E1, E2).
Banerjee 71
For nearly twelve years, as Jacqueline Trescott in the essay praises Haley, for his
talents as a storyteller and contributions to American culture, “stocky and feckledbronze, travelled around to book club luncheons and church assemblies talking about
his search for his ancestors” (qtd. in Draper 347).Therefore he is known as the seventh
generation writer of one of the slave named Kunta Kintey who was brought by the
slave ship Lord Ligonier on 29 September 1767 in Annapolis. His novel Roots helped
many Americans to deal sincerely with the history of slavery and stimulated a keen
interest in genealogy. Garry Abrams extols “ Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm
X inspired millions to trace their family origins, take pride in racial identity and
broaden their grasp of history” (Abram E1,E2)
Rick DuBrow remarks on the significance of the miniseries, “Alex Haley’s 1977
miniseries, Roots , not only gave American a lasting emotional experience about Black
history, it also revolutionised prime-time television storytelling with its book-like
novelization of a gigantic story”(DuBrow F1,F9). The novel Roots has made the term
griot popular much more widely known outside Africa than previously it has been
known to African-American wise men and women, community leaders, or story tellers.
Haley’s first literary writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965 gave us the
words and lessons of a complex political leader. Haley’s other writings include
periodicals like Atlantic, Harper’s, Readers Digest and The New York Times etc.
The other significant writers of twentieth century includes the fiction writers as Gayl
Jones, Rasheed Clark, Ishmael Reed, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Kenan, and John Edgar
Wideman. African American poets have also gathered attention. Maya Angelou read a
poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration, Rita Dove won a Pulitzer Prize and offered as Poet
Banerjee 72
Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, and Cyrus Cassells's Soul Make a
Path through Shouting was listed for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Finally, African American literature has obtained the attention through the work of talk
show host Oprah Winfrey, who frequently has leveraged her reputation to encourage
literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book Club. At times, she has exposed the
African American writers to a broader audience than they had received. The African
American literature is the outcome of the experiences of Blacks in the United States,
especially the historic racism and discrimination. By the year 2000, African Americans
had advanced remarkably.
The place of African Americans in American society has transformed over the
centuries, so, has the focus of African-American literature. From the influx of enslaved
Africans to the recent election of President Barack Obama, Black people have been
important in the story of the United States. In the New World democratic experiment
the African Americans have been the contributors and also the victims of slavery. The
survey of African American literature gives a panoramic view of the growth and
advancement of Black literature in United States from Lucy Terry in eighteenth century
till the well-known writers of recent history like Alice Walker and Alex Haley. The
themes and issues explored in this literature are the roles of African Americans within
the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, Black identity
and equality.
Banerjee 73
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