I, Too, Sing America
African American Literature from Revolutionary
Poetry to Contemporary Black Fiction
Lecturer: PD Dr. Stefan L. Brandt, Guest Professor
Room and time: Room 6, Wednesdays 12-14
Course number and type: 123250 – Arbeitsgemeinschaft (interactive LV)
First session: October 12, 2011
Selected Bibliography
Primary Texts
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970).
Baldwin, James. “Going to Meet the Man” (1965).
---. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).
---. “Notes of a Native Son” (1955).
---. “Sonny’s Blues” (1957).
Bambara, Toni Cade. The Salt Eaters (1980).
Brown, William Wells. Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter (1853).
Chesnutt, Charles. The Conjure Woman, and Other Conjure Tales (1899).
---. The House Behind the Cedars (1900).
---. The Marrow of Tradition (1901).
Douglass, Frederick. “The Heroic Slave” (1853).
---. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845).
---. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1852).
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
---. Dusk of Dawn. An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940).
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952).
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African, Written by Himself (1789).
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
Harper, Frances E. “Ethiopia” (1853).
Himes, Chester B. “To What Red Hell” (1934).
Hopkins, Pauline E. Contending Forces (1900).
Hughes, Langston. “I, Too, Sing America” (1924).
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Sweat” (1926).
---. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (1861)
Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912).
Jones, LeRoi (aka ‘Amiri Baraka’). Dutchman (1964).
Larsen, Nella. Passing (1929).
---. Quicksand (1928).
Locke, Alain. “The New Negro” (1925).
Lorde, Audre. “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” (1984).
Morrison, Toni. A Mercy (2008).
---. Beloved (1987).
---. The Bluest Eye (1970).
---. Jazz (1992).
---. Paradise (1997).
---. Sula (1974).
---. Song of Solomon 1977).
---. Tar Baby (1981).
Toomer, Jean. Cane (1923).
Truth, Sojourner. “Ar’nt I a Woman? Speech to the Women’s rights Convention in Akron, Ohio”
(1851).
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple (1982).
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery (1901).
Wheatley, Phillis. “To His Excellency, George Washington” (1776).
Wilson, August. Fences (1987).
---. The Piano Lesson (1990).
Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig (1859).
Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940).
---. Black Boy (1945).
X, Malcolm, and Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964).
Secondary Texts
Adell, Sandra. Double Consciousness/Double Blind: Theoretical Issues in Twentieth-Century
Black Literature. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1994.
Allen, Marlene D., and Williams, Seretha D., eds. Afterimages of Slavery: Essays on
Appearances in Recent American Films, Literature, Television and Other Media. Jefferson,
N.C.: McFarland, 2012.
Ammons, Elizabeth, and Annette White-Parks, eds. Tricksterism in Turn-of-the-Century
American Literature. Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England, 1994.
Ammons, Elizabeth. Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the
Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford Press, 1991
Andrews, William L, ed. African American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993.
Andrews, William. Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991.
---. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865.
Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986.
---, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds. The Oxford Companion to African American
Literature. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.
Baker, Houston A. The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism. Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1980.
---. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987.
Baldwin, James. “The Nigger We Invent.” In: Equity & Excellence in Education, 7:2 (1969): 1523.
---. The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1985.
Barlow, William. ‘Looking Up and Down’: The Emergence of Blues Culture. Philadelphia:
Temple Univ. Press, 1989.
Bean, Anne Marie, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara. Inside the Minstrel Mask:
Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy. Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New
England, 1996.
Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts
Press, 1987.
Benston, Kimberly W. Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism.
London: Routledge, 2000.
Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Frederick Douglass’ Narrative. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
---, ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Chelsea House, 1990.
Boeckmann, Cathy. A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American
Fiction, 1892-1912. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2000.
Boelhower, William. Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature. New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987.
Bontemps, Arna. The Harlem Renaissance Remembered. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972.
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1988.
Braxton, Joanne. Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition.
Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1989.
Brim, Matt. “Papas’ Baby: Impossible Paternity in ‘Going to Meet the Man’.” In: Journal of
Modern Literature, Vol. 30, no. 1 (Autumn 2006): 173-198.
Brown, Sterling. Negro Poetry and Drama & The Negro in America Fiction. [1937] Preface by
Robert A. Bone. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. Black American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary
Tradition, 1877-1915. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1989.
Buckner, Timothy R., and Caster, Peter, eds. Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men: Black
Masculinity in U.S. History and Literature, 1820-1945.Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press,
2011.
Butler, Robert. Native Son: The Emergence of a New Black Hero. Boston: Twayne, 1991.
Callahan, John F. In the African-American Grain: Call-and-Response in Twentieth-Century
Black Fiction. 2nd ed. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1990.
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. London and Boston: Faber,
1991.
Castronovo, Russ. Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom.
Berkeley et al: Univ. of Berkeley Press, 1995.
Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia, and Sidney Kaplan, eds. Black and White in American
Culture. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1969.
Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1985.
Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Conner, Marc C., ed. The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson:
Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2000.
Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New
York: Routledge, 1994.
Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Slave's Narrative. New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1985.
David, Thadious M. Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, & Literature. Chapel Hill:
Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, 1995.
DuCille, Ann. The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction.
New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985.
Elam, Michele. The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium.
Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2011.
Ferraro, Thomas J. Ethnic Passages: Literary Immigrants in Twentieth Century America.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993.
Fleischner, Jennifer. Mastering Slavery: Memory, Family, and Identity in Women’s Slave
Narratives. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1996.
Foster, Frances Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-Bellum Slave Narratives.
1979. 2nd. ed. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
---. Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892.
Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993.
Fulop, Timothy Earl, and Albert J. Raboteau, eds. African-American Religion: Interpretive
Essays in History and Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.
Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison’s Fiction. Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Gardner, Jared. Master Plots: Race and the Founding of American Literature, 1787-1845.
1998.
Garfield, Deborah M., and Rafia Zafar, eds. Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the ›Racial‹ Self. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1987.
---. Loose Canons. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.
---. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1988.
---, ed. Black Literature and Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, 1984.
---, and K.A. Appiah, eds. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York:
Amistad, 1993.
---, and K.A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York:
Amistad, 1993.
---, et al., gen. eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1974.
Ginsberg, Elaine K., ed. Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press,
1996.
Glasrud, Bruce A., and Wintz, Cary D., eds. The Harlem Renaissance in the American West:
The New Negro’s Western Experience. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. 1963. New York and Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.
Graham, Maryemma, and Ward, Jerry W. Jr., eds. The Cambridge History of African American
Literature. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011.
Greene, J. Lee. Blacks in Eden: The African American Novel's First Century. Charlottesville:
Univ. Press of Virginia, 1996.
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. ›Who Set you Flowin'?‹: The African-American Migration Narrative.
New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995.
Griffith, Paul. “James Baldwin’s Confrontation with Racist Terror in the American South:
Sexual Mythology and Psychoneurosis in ‘Going to Meet the Man’.” In: Journal of Black
Studies, Vol. 32, no. 5 (May 2002): 506-527.
Gunning, Sandra. Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 18901912. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996.
Handley, George B. Postslavery Literatures in the Americas: Family Portraits in Black and
White. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2000.
Harris-Lopez, Trudier. Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning
Rituals. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984.
Hay, Samuel A. African American Theatre: A Historical and Critical Analysis. Cambridge and
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Henderson, Brian. “The Searchers: An American Dilemma.” In: Film Quarterly 34.2 (Winter
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Hill, Patricia, gen. ed. Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American
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Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the
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hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981.
Holloway, Karla F.C. Moorings and Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black
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Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.
Hull, Gloria. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge: Belknap Press
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Jackson, Blyden. The History of Afro-American Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ.
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Jackson, Lawrence Patrick. The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African
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