Chapter 25 Multiethnic literature (?) African American Literature

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Chapter 25 Multiethnic literature (?) African
American Literature
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Introduction

• 1.History
• ?African American literature has come a long way.
  It is a unique literature because it is all tied
  up with the unique experience of the African
  American people and the phases of their steady
  growth.1 The American Americans have a history of
  their own. Their life in Africa before they were
  brought to America, the middle passage when so
  many of them died on the ships bringing them
  over, the slavery which was worse than death, the
  Emancipation after the Civil War, their movement
  to the cities where their life began to be
  polarized, the process of integration into the
  mainstream, and the Black Power movement and the
  Civil Rights movement--all these factors decide
  that the literary tradition of the African
  Americans is to be drastically different from the
  American literature we have been talking about so
  far, which is generally Anglo-American, and does
  not include much of American Indian culture and
  that of the African Americans. For a long time
  the images of the African Americans in mainstream
  American literature had been presented in a
  distorted manner. Even well wishing writers like
  Mark Twain were unable to overcome their
  prejudices. For instance, Jim in The Adventures
  of Huckleberry Finn is made out to be very funny
  and is important in the novel only for helping to
  reveal the growth of the social awareness of the
  white boy. These may not be

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• intentional the writers, dealing with an
  experience they do not easily share, just cannot
  help writing about it the way they do.
• ?African-American literature is the body of
  literature 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 and Olaudah Equiano,
  reaching early high points with slave narratives
  and the Harlem Renaissance, and continuing today
  with authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou
  and Walter Mosley being ranked among the top
  writers in the United States. Among the themes
  and issues explored in African American
  literature are the role of African Americans
  within the larger American society,
  African-American culture, racism, slavery, and
  equality. African American writing has also
  tended to incorporate within itself oral forms
  such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues
  and rap.
• ?As African Americans' place in American society
  has changed over the centuries, so, too, have the
  focus of African American literature. Before the
  American Booker T. Washington debated whether to
  confront or appease racist attitudes in the
  United States. During the American Civil

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• Rights movement, authors such as Richard Wright
  and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial
  segregation and black nationalism. Today, African
  American literature has become accepted as an
  integral part of American literature, with books
  such as Roots The Saga of an American Family by
  Alex Haley, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and
  Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both
  best-selling and award-winning status. Civil War,
  African American literature primarily focused on
  the issue of slavery, as indicated by the
  subgenre of slave narratives. At the turn of the
  20th century, books by authors such as W. E. B.
  Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated whether
  to confront or appease racist attitudes in the
  United States. During the American Civil Rights
  movement, authors such as Richard Wright and
  Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial
  segregation and black nationalism. Today, African
  American literature has become accepted as an
  integral part of American literature, with books
  such as Roots The Saga of an American Family by
  Alex Haley, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and
  Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both
  best-selling and award-winning status.

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• 2.Characteristics and themes?In broad terms,
  African American literature can be defined as
  writings by people of African descent living in
  the United States of America. However, just as
  African American history and life is extremely
  varied, so too is African American
  literature.That said, African American literature
  has generally focused on themes of particular
  interest to Blacks in the United States, such as
  the role of African Americans within the larger
  American society and what it means to be an
  American. As Princeton University professor
  Albert J. Raboteau has said, all African-American
  studies, including African American literature,
  "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." As such, it can be
  said that African American Literature explores
  the very issues of freedom and equality which
  were long denied to Blacks in the United States,
  along with further themes such as African
  American culture, racism, religion, slavery, a
  sense of home. and more.

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• ?African American literature constitutes a vital
  branch of the literature of the African diaspora,
  with African American literature both being
  influenced by the great African diasporic
  heritage and in turn influencing African
  diasporic writings in many countries. In
  addition, African American literature exists
  within the larger realm of post-colonial
  literature, even though scholars draw a
  distinctive line between the two by stating 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, African American gospel
  music, blues and rap. This oral poetry also
  appears in the African American tradition of
  Christian sermons, which make use of deliberate
  repetition, cadence and alliteration. African
  American literatureespecially written poetry,
  but also prosehas a strong tradition of
  incorporating all of these forms of oral poetry.

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• ?However, while these characteristics and themes
  exist on many levels of African American
  literature, they are not the exclusive definition
  of the genre and do not exist within all works
  within the genre. In addition, there is
  resistance to using Western literary theory to
  analyze African American literature. As Henry
  Louis Gates, Jr., one of the most important
  African American literary scholars, once 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."

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

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Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

• 1.Life
• Frederick Douglass c.1817-1895, American
• abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md. The son of
• a black slave, Harriet Bailey, and an unknown
• white father, he took the name of Douglass
• (from Scott's hero in The Lady of the Lake)
• after his second, and successful, attempt to
  escape from slavery in 1838. At New Bedford,
  Mass., he found work as a day laborer. An
  extemporaneous speech before a meeting at
  Nantucket of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
  Society in 1841 was so effective that he was made
  one of its agents. Douglass, who had learned to
  read and write while in the service of a kind
  mistress in Baltimore, published his Narrative of
  the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. Fearing
  capture as a fugitive slave, he spent several
  years in England and Ireland and returned in
  1847,

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• after English friends had purchased his freedom.
  At Rochester, N.Y., he established the North Star
  and edited it for 17 years in the abolitionist
  cause. Unlike William L. Garrison, he favored the
  use of political methods and thus became a
  follower of James G. Birney. In the Civil War he
  helped organize two regiments of Massachusetts
  African Americans and urged other blacks to join
  the Union ranks. During Reconstruction he
  continued to urge civil rights for African
  Americans. He was secretary of the Santo Domingo
  Commission (1871), marshal of the District of
  Columbia (1877-81), recorder of deeds for the
  same district (1881-86), and minister to Haiti
  (1889-91). Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
  (1962) is a revised edition of his autobiography,
  which has also been published as My Bondage and
  My Freedom.

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• 2. Douglass major works
• Writing A Narrative of the Life of Frederick
  Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
• My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
• Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881,
  revised 1892)
• Speeches "The Church and Prejudice"
• Self-Made Men
• "Speech at National Hall, Philadelphia July 6,
  1863 for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments"
• "What to a slave is the 4th of July?"

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• 3.Masterpiece My Bondage and My Freedom
• ?Introduction 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
  (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass),
  discussing in greater detail his transition from
  bondage to liberty. Douglass, a former slave,
  following his liberation went on to become a
  prominent abolitionist, speaker, author, and
  publisher.
• In his foreword to the 2003 Modern Library
  paperback edition, John Stauffer writes My
  Bondage and My Freedom, is a deep meditation
  on the meaning of slavery, race, and freedom, and
  on the power of faith and literacy, as well as a
  portrait of an individual and a nation a few
  years before the Civil War.

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My Bondage and My Freedom

• As his narrative unfolds, Frederick
  Douglassabolitionist, journalist, orator, and
  one of the most powerful voices to emerge from
  the American civil rights movementtransforms
  himself from slave to fugitive to reformer,
  leaving behind a legacy of social, intellectual,
  and political thought. The 1855 text includes
  Douglasss original Appendix, composed of
  excerpts from the authors speeches as well as a
  letter he wrote to his former master.
• ?Significance His book, My Bondage and My
  Freedom, an autobiography, relates, as its title
  suggests, the archetypal story of African
  Americans escaping from their cruel and wicked
  white masters to emancipation. It is a moving and
  historically interesting book. Douglass was very
  articulate and spoke, as he did so for himself,
  of the ambitions and feelings of the African
  American race. Always popular, the book has never
  been out of print. It was later expanded into The
  Life and Times of Frederick Douglass to include
  his Civil War experience.

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Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

• 1.Life
• (born April 5, 1856, Franklin county, Va., U.S.
• died Nov. 14, 1915, Tuskegee, Ala.) U.S.
• educator and reformer. Born into slavery,
• he moved with his family to West Virginia
• after emancipation. He worked from age nine, then
  attended (1872 75) and joined the staff of the
  Hampton (Va.) Normal and Agricultural Institute.
  In 1881 he was selected to head the Tuskegee
  Normal and Industrial Institute, a new
  teacher-training school for African Americans,
  and he successfully transformed it into a
  thriving institution (later Tuskegee University).
  He became perhaps the most prominent African
  American leader of his time. His controversial
  conviction that African Americans could best gain
  equality in the U.S. by improving their economic
  situation through education rather than by
  demanding equal rights was termed the Atlanta
  Compromise. His books include Up from Slavery
  (1901).

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• 2. Washingtons major works
• Black-Belt Diamonds Gems From the Speeches,
  Addresses, and Talks to the Students of Booker T.
  Washington, Fortune Scott, 1898.
• The Future of the American Negro, Small,
  Maynard, 1899.
• (With Edgar Webber) The Story of My Life and Work
  (autobiography), J. L. Nichols, 1900.
• (With Max Bennett Thrasher) Up From Slavery
  (autobiography), A. L. Burt, 1901.
• Character Building (lectures), Doubleday, 1902.
• Working With the Hands (autobiography),
  Doubleday, 1904.
• The Negro in Business, Hertel, Jenkins, 1907.
• The Story of the Negro The Rise of the Race From
  Slavery, 2 volumes, Doubleday, 1909.
• Selected Speeches of Booker T. Washington,
  edited by E. Davidson Washington, Doubleday,
  1932.

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• W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963)
• W. E. B. DuBois was the intellectual leader of
  African
• American protest at that time. DuBois went to
  Harvard
• where he became the first African American to
  receive
• a Ph. D., and later did further studies at the
  University
• of Berlin. A sociologist and a historian, he was
  also a
• prolific writer. He wrote dozens of books, a book
  of
• poetry, novels, essays, and some autobiography.
  His
• most influential book, The Souls of Black Folks
  is Essays and Sketches (1903),DuBois helped to
  found a movement, the National Association for
  the Advancement of Colored People, the
  organization which fought more than any other for
  civil rights. However, from the 1920s, he decided
  that to fight for the African Americans in the
  United States was a lost game. This led to his
  developing the Pan-African movement and, later,
  in 1961, to his joining the Communist Party. At
  the age of 94 he became a citizen of Ghana. His
  name is closely associated with the African
• Americans struggle for freedom.

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• Countee Cullen (19031946)
• His precocious success may have been one of the
• signals of the coming of the Harlem Renaissance.
• Cullen was well educated at New York University
• and Harvard. With his poem "Shroud of Color"
• appearing in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury
• in 1924, and the publication of the first three
• volumes of poetry, Color (1925), Copper Sun
• (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927),
  he was probably the most popular African American
  poet and African American literary figure in
  America at the time. Cullen was traditional in
  form. He could handle "white verse"--ballads,
  sonnets, quatrains etc. very well. There are
  skill and power in his work. Thematically, he
  deals with the African American experience
  seriously, often from a religious perspective.
  For a long time after his death, he was ignored,
  but fresh interest in his poetry has appeared in
  recent years, and his works have been reissued.
  His often-anthologized poem is "Yet Do I Marvel."
  The poet marvels at how inscrutable God's ways
  are to "make a poet Black, and bid him sing!"
  Here is some ambiguity of feeling well portrayed
  the poet is very self-conscious and probably
  pleased and proud that he as a black person could
  write and that he was equal with others including
  the whites before God.

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Langston Hughes (19021967)

• 1.Life and Career
• ?(born Feb. 1, 1902, Joplin, Mo., U.S. died May
• 22, 1967, New York, N.Y.) U.S. poet and writer.
• He published the poem "The Negro Speaks of
• Rivers" when he was 19, briefly attended
• Columbia University, and worked on an
• Africa-bound freighter. His literary career was
  launched when Hughes, working as a busboy,
  presented his poems to Vachel Lindsay as he
  dined. Hughes's poetry collections include The
  Weary Blues (1926) and Montage of a Dream
  Deferred (1951). His later The Panther and the
  Lash (1967) reflects black anger and militancy.
  Among his other works are short stories
  (including "The Ways of White Folks," 1934),
  autobiographies, many works for the stage,
  anthologies, and translations of poetry by
  Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral. His
  well-known comic character Jesse B. Semple,
  called Simple, appeared in his newspaper columns.

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• ?In the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes was
  known as African Americans' poet laureate, who
  ultimately outgrew the movement, and developed
  into one of the major African American authors to
  help make African American culture.5 Hughes loved
  literature. Hughes became known as "the busboy
  poet." In1926,Hughes put his poems together in a
  book, entitled The Weary Blues. This collection
  marks a stage in Hughes' development as an
  author. The poems, like the blues songs, are sad
  in tone, describing the fact of having to live in
  a very cruel and oppressive world. But there is
  not much fight in them. Merely describing how
  things are, they read as if Hughes were trying to
  relieve himself and his race of a mental load and
  to achieve a degree of reconciliation with the
  wicked world. In 1935 Hughes became one of the
  key speakers at the American Writers' Conference.
  From then on his influence as an author was felt
  everywhere and his production was tremendous.
  Novels, poems, plays, essays, translations, an
  autobiography--all these simply

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• poured out of him. He was one of the founders of
  the black theater in the Federal Theater Project
  during the Depression. He was the editor of a
  good many anthologies of African American
  literature. And more than anybody else in the
  history of the country, he encouraged other
  African American writers to write.
• ?Author of poetry, long and short fiction, plays,
  nonfiction, and autobiography. In early years,
  worked as assistant cook, launderer, busboy, and
  at other odd jobs worked as seaman on voyages to
  Africa and Europe lived at various times in
  Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet
  Union. Madrid correspondent for Baltimore
  Afro-American, 1937 visiting professor in
  creative writing, Atlanta University, 1947
  poet-in-residence, Laboratory School, University
  of Chicago, 1949.

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• 2. Hughes major works
• Poetry The Weary Blues, Knopf, 1926.
• The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, Knopf, 1932.
• Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951.
• Fiction The Ways of White Folks (stories),
  Knopf, 1934.
• Simple Speaks His Mind (stories), Simon and
  Schuster, 1950.
• Simple Takes a Wife (stories), Simon and
  Schuster, 1953.
• Simple Stakes a Claim (stories), Rinehart, 1957.
• Simple's Uncle Sam (stories), Hill and Wang,
  1965.
• Plays Mulatto, New York City, 1935.
• Little Ham, Cleveland, 1936.
• Black Nativity, New York City, 1961.

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3.Masterpiece"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

• I've known rivers
• Ive known rivers ancient as the world and older
  than the flow of human blood in human veins.
• My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
• I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
• I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to
  sleep.
• I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids
  above it.
• I heard the singing of Mississippi when Abe
  Lincoln
• went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
  bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
• Ive known rivers.
• Ancient, dusky rivers.
• My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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• ?The comment of Onwuchekwa Jemie "The Negro
  Speaks of Rivers" is perhaps the most profound of
  these poems of heritage and strength. Composed
  when Hughes was a mere 17 years old, and
  dedicated to W. E. B. DuBois, it is a sonorous
  evocation of transcendent essences so ancient as
  to appear timeless, predating human existence,
  longer than human memory. The rivers are part of
  God's body, and participate in his immortality.
  They are the earthly analogues of eternity deep,
  continuous, mysterious. They are named in the
  order of their association with black history.
  The black man has drunk of their life-giving
  essences, and thereby borrowed their immortality.
  He and the rivers have become one. The magical
  transformation of the Mississippi from mud to
  gold by the sun's radiance is mirrored in the
  transformation of slaves into free men by
  Lincoln's Proclamation (and, in Hughes's poems,
  the transformation of shabby cabarets into
  gorgeous palaces, dancing girls into queens and
  priestesses by the spell of black music). As the
  rivers deepen with time, so does the black man's
  soul as their waters ceaselessly flow, so will
  the black soul endure. The black man has seen the
  rise and fall of civilizations from the earliest
  times, seen the beauty and death-changes of the
  world over the thousands of years, and will
  survive even this America. The poem's meaning is
  related to Zora Neale Hurston's judgment of the
  mythic High John de Conquer, whom she held as a
  symbol of the triumphant spirit of black

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• America that John was of the "Be" class. "Be
  here when the ruthless man comes, and be here
  when he is gone." In a time and place where black
  life is held cheap and the days of black men
  appear to be numbered, the poem is a majestic
  reminder of the strength and fullness of history,
  of the source of that life which transcends even
  ceaseless labor and burning crosses.
• ? The comment of Jean Wagner "The Negro Speaks
  of Rivers" heralded the existence of a mystic
  union of Negroes in every country and every age.
  It pushed their history back to the creation of
  the world, and credited them with possessing a
  wisdom no less profound than that of the greatest
  rivers of civilization that humanity had ever
  known, from the Euphrates to the Nile and from
  the Congo to the Mississippi.
• ?The comment of Joyce A. Joyce Hughes captures
  the African American's historical journey to
  America in what is perhaps his signature poem,
  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Dedicated to W E.
  B. Du Bois and using water or the river as a
  metaphor for the source of life, the poem traces
  the movement of black life from the Euphrates and
  Nile rivers in Africa to the

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• Mississippi. Hughes subtly couches his
  admonishment of slavery and racism in the refrain
  "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." The
  first time the line appears in the poem it
  follows the poet's assertion that he has known
  rivers "ancient as the world and older than the
  flow of / human blood in human veins." The poet
  here identifies himself and his blackness with
  the first human beings. The second and only other
  time the line appears in the poem occurs after
  the poet has made reference to Mississippi, New
  Orleans, and Abe Lincoln. He places the lines "My
  soul has grown deep like the rivers" at the end
  of the poem, this time suggesting that he is no
  longer the same man who "bathed in the Euphrates"
  and "built his hut near the Congo." He is now a
  black man who has experienced the pain of slavery
  and racism, and his soul now bears the imprint of
  these experiences.

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• 4.Themes
• Hughes's thematic concerns go far beyond racial
  issues. He wrote in praise of the October
  Revolution, sympathized with the Chinese and
  their revolution, and visited Spain and wrote to
  support the Spanish people in their fight against
  the Fascist regime of Franco. In form Hughes'
  poetry is noted for its fresh simplicity and its
  notable features of the free verse of Whitman,
  Sandburg, and Paul Dunbar (1872-1906). Hughes was
  heir to the tradition of the African American
  folklore and jazz and wrote in a brisk, rhythmic
  manner so that many of his poems have become
  popular songs. His creative career has helped, in
  no small way, pave the way for the further
  development of African American literature.

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Richard Wright (19081960)

• 1.Life and career
• ?(born Sept. 4, 1908, near Natchez, Miss., U.S.
  
• died Nov. 28, 1960, Paris, France) U.S. novelist
  and
• short-story writer. Wright, whose grandparents
  had
• been slaves, grew up in poverty. After migrating
• north he joined the Federal Writers' Project in
  Chicago, then moved to New York City in 1937. He
  was a member of the Communist Party in the years
  1932 44. He first came to wide attention with a
  volume of novellas, Uncle Tom's Children (1938).
  His novel Native Son (1940), though considered
  shocking and violent, became a best-seller. The
  fictionalized autobiography Black Boy (1945)
  vividly describes his often harsh childhood and
  youth. After World War II he settled in Paris. He
  is remembered as one of the first African
  American writers to protest white treatment of
  blacks.

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• ?Published first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's
  Half Acre," 1924 worked variously as a
  dishwasher, busboy, porter, street sweeper, and
  group leader for a Chicago Boys Club worked for
  U.S. Postal Service, Chicago, beginning in1932
  wrote poetry for leftist publications attended
  American Writers' Congress, New York City, 1935
  prepared guidebooks for Federal Writer's Project,
  mid-1930s worked for Federal Theater Project,
  1936 wrote for the Daily Worker, late 1930s
  published Uncle Tom's Children, 1938 published
  Native Son, 1940 published autobiography Black
  Boy, 1945 lectured, appeared on radio and
  television, and contributed to periodicals, late
  1940s attended Bandung Conference in Indonesia,
  1955.

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• 2. Wrights major works
• Uncle Tom's Children Four Novellas, Harper
  Brothers, 1938.
• Native Son, Harper Brothers, 1940.
• Black Boy A Record of Childhood and Youth,
  Harper Brothers, 1945.

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• 3.Masterpiece Native Son
• ?Story The plot is divided into three parts
  1.Fear   2.Flight   3.Fate. Bigger Thomas, no
  father, lived with his mother, brother and sister
  in a kitchen net.One morning, his sister found a
  big rat and Bigger was asked to beat it to death.
  The rat is facing death and had a death struggle.
  It ran up into Biggers trouser. He was so angry
  that he still beat it though it was already
  dead.Bigger went to work in the white Doltons as
  a driver. Mrs. Doltons was blind and often
  encouraged him to finish his education. One day,
  Mary, Mrs. Doltons daughter, asked him to send
  her to her boyfriend who was a communist. Mary
  got overdrunk. Bigger carried her to her bedroom.
  Just then Mrs. Doltons appeared, he put a pillow
  on Marys mouth in order that his owner couldnt
  misunderstand him.   As a result, Mary died after
  Mrs. Daltons left. He put Mary into a furnace to
  burn her body.After that, Thomas escaped.
  Biggers girlfriend persuaded him to go to the
  police office. However, he killed his girlfriend
  in case she might betray him. Marys boyfriend
  sent a lawyer to defend Bigger. But no matter how
  hard, Bigger was still sentenced to electric
  chair. Ironically, he was more condemned for
  killing Mary incidentally rather than his
  purposely killing his black girlfriend. 

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• Native Son
• ?Characterization of Bigger Thomas A. Bad
  nigger blacks are always the victims, they are
  persecuted and lynched in other writings.
  However, bigger is a rebellious figure, because
  he is someone who kills and who is violent.B. A
  victim of society, rats confrontation with
  Bigger is the metaphor of Biggers confrontation
  with society. In the latter part, Bigger is
  weaker. Thats why the last chapter is called
  Fate. He is so powerless compared to the white
  society. Violence is his self-affirmation. Here
  we can see the authors theme. C. Bigger is
  modern American. Bigger is a product of America,
  or the native son of the land. He is dispossessed
  and disinherited man. Modern world is a world of
  alienation not only to blacks but also to whites.
  Biggers experience can be everybodys experience
  in a sense. he responds to the world's
  anticipation."

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Native Son

• ?Significance Native Son is an extremely
  fascinating book. It simply exploded on the
  sensibility of the American reading public.
  Dealing with one of the thorniest problems with
  which America had been beleaguered, the racial
  question, the book pushed it into the reader's
  mind in a manner no one had ever done before. For
  the African Americans the message is clear, that
  they are human beings and should be treated as
  such, and that if nothing else can help to assert
  their dignity and identity, then it is legitimate
  to resort to violence. For the whites, the
  message is equally clear, that the moment has
  arrived when they have to come to terms with
  their African American fellowmen, and that, if
  they are not ready yet, they have got to be quick
  or they will have to take the consequences.
  Bigger Thomas, the hero of the book, embodies a
  new type of African American personality.
  Rebellious by nature, he never is able to feel at
  peace with the world in which he finds himself.
  The vehement violence which breaks out of him and
  which eventually leads him to the electric chair
  has been brewing in the bosom of his race for
  over three

33
Native Son

• centuries, ever since the first of his ancestors
  were brought to the land of their enslavement
  over three centuries ago. The bitterness has
  fermented, and the patience and humility of the
  African Americans are not inexhaustible. If not
  given the recognition that is due to them, the
  African Americans are perfectly ready to take the
  law into their own hands. Thus Bigger Thomas,
  more than any other African American fictional
  figures, represents a higher level of African
  American racial awareness. In him and his
  actions, the African Americans saw their identity
  and the whites their folly and obligation.

34
Ralph Ellison(19141994)

• 1.Life
• (Ralph Waldo Ellison), 1914-94, African-American
• author, b. Oklahoma City, Okla. studied
  Tuskegee
• Inst. (now Tuskegee Univ.). Originally a trumpet
• player and aspiring composer, he moved (1936) to
• New York City, where he met Langston Hughes,
• who became his mentor, and became friends with
• Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.
• Ellison's earliest published writings were
  reviews
• and stories in the politically radical New Masses
  magazine. His literary reputation rests almost
  completely on one novel, Invisible Man (1952). A
  classic of American literature, it draws upon the
  author's experiences to detail the harrowing
  progress of a nameless young black man struggling
  to live in a hostile society. Ellison also
  published two collections of essays, Shadow and
  Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). His
  collected essays were published in 1995, and a
  volume of stories appeared in 1996. For many
  years Ellison struggled with the writing of a
  second novel, sections of which appeared
  (1960-77) in magazines, but it was still
  uncompleted at his death. Condensing the
  sprawling mass of text and notes written over
  four decades, his literary executor assembled the
  novel Juneteenth, which was published in 1999.

35

• 2.MaasterpieceInvisible Man
• ?Story Speaking from the hole in the ground
• which he says is "like a grave," he relates his
• bitter experience of having lived a death of a
• life for some twenty years until he discovered
• his invisibility. He tells us how he began life
• with great expectations and won the approval of
  the whites of his region who, pleased with his
  humility, sent him with a scholarship to a state
  college for Negroes in order to "Keep this
  Nigger-Boy Running." Tliere he became the protrg6
  of Dr. Bledsoe, the president, who, however,
  expelled him for having shown a white benefactor
  of the institution around places unfit for his
  eyes. Next he went to New York where, as the
  administration stipulates, blacks should be
  "invisible." What he tried to do was to be seen.
  In a factory on Long Island he incurred the
  displeasure of his fellow workers unintentionally
  in a disturbance. Later, on the occasion of an
  old African American couple being driven out of a
  fiat, he made a radical speech which subsequently
  put him in touch

36
Invisible Man

• with a "brotherhood," a Communist affiliation,
  but he was amazed to find that the brotherhood
  saw the cause of the African Americans only as
  one of so many pawns on its chessboard. His
  dreams all evaporated, and he went into
  "hibernation" in an underground cellar. It is
  from there that he speaks.
• ?Significance Invisible Man is immensely
  interesting as a work of art. It is more than a
  "protest novel." Ellison's vision is too great
  and his taste is too catholic to allow his book
  to remain merely on that level. There is, on the
  one hand, good reason toread the novel as one
  African American book on racial discrimination,
  black-white relationship, and the rebellious
  stance that the African American protagonist
  evinces toward an unjust and repressive society.
  Indeed, the book has been read that way. On the
  other hand, Invisible Man means much more than
  that. It covers a much more extensive territory
  of life, so that it transcends race and racial
  relations, and goes beyond protest to a new phase
  of perception in the evolution of the African
  American awareness. In so doing, what happens to

37
Invisible Man

• an African American becomes a metaphor, a
  formula, or even a paradigm for all humankind.
  This is ultimately the reason why Invisible Man
  has appealed to its readers so much for so long.
• ?Consummate craft The formal and technical
  resourcefulness that it exhibits is simply
  amazing. To begin with, the symbolism of the book
  is impressive and fascinating. It may have owed
  its title to H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, but
  it is more than that. The art of the book is
  ultimately Ellison's own. The notion of
  invisibility, the overriding symbol all through
  the novel, appears to be metaphysical at first
  because difficult to identify with immediately,
  but with some stretch of the imagination on the
  part of the readers, it becomes alarmingly
  physical and true as a universal fact of life. It
  forces all people to think and contemplate about
  their own situation. Then wenotice, among other
  things, the exquisite skill with Welch Ellison
  manipulates his prose style. This changes
  deliberately with the change of the narrator's
  environment from the South to the North and
  finally to his place of hibernation somewhere in
  New York City. As Ellison himself professes, he
  dreamed

38
Invisible Man

• somewhere in New York City. As Ellison himself
  professes, he dreamed of a flexible and swift
  style, at once facing the brutal experience of
  modern man and expressing hope, human fraternity,
  and individual self-realization. It is a style
  which uses all the resources of the language, its
  riches, its idiomatic expression and the
  rhetorical flourishes from past periods still
  alive today.

39
James Baldwin(1924-1987)

• 1.Life and career
• ?James Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York
• City, on August 2, 1924, the oldest of nine
• children. His father was a lay preacher in the
• Holiness-Pentecostal sect, and at the age of
• 14 Baldwin was also ordained a preacher. At
• 18 he graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School,
  and in 1944 he met Richard Wright, who helped
  secure a fellowship that allowed Baldwin the
  financial freedom to devote himself solely to
  literature. By 1948 Baldwin had concluded that
  the social tenor of the United States was
  stifling his creativity, and he went to Europe
  with the financial assistance of a Rosenwald
  fellowship. In Europe, Baldwin completed Go Tell
  It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son
  (1955), and Giovanni's Room (1956).

40

• ?Wrote first book review for New Challenge in
  1937 worked for Federal Writers' Project and
  wrote for various publications, 1938-42 managing
  editor, Negro Quarterly, 1942 continued
  contributing book reviews and short stories to
  periodicals through mid-1940s began work on
  novel, Invisible Man, 1945 Invisible Man
  published, 1952 lectured in Europe, 1954
  resided in Rome, 1955-57 taught Russian and
  American literature at Bard College, 1958-61
  visiting professor at University of Chicago and
  at Rutgers and Yale universities, early 1960s
  Gertrude Whittall Lecturer, Library of Congress,
  and Ewing Lecturer, University of California, Los
  Angeles, both 1964 fire at summer home in
  Plainsfield, MA, destroyed 350 text pages of
  unfinished novel, 1967 served as Albert
  Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York
  University, 1970-80.

41

• 2. Baldwins major works
• Fiction Go Tell It on the Mountain, Knopf,
  1953.
• Giovanni's Room, Dial, 1956.
• Another Country, Dial, 1962.
• Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Dial,
  1968.
• Nonfiction Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press,
  1955.
• Nobody Knows My Name More Notes of a Native Son,
  Dial, 1961.
• The Fire Next Time, Dial, 1963.

42

• 3.Masterpiece Go Tell It on the Mountain
• ?Story It consists of three sections, all about
• a boy, John Grimes, now 14, trying to define
• himself against his background--his father,
• his church, etc. Section one, "The Seventh Day,
• " describes him wandering on the morning of
• His 14th birthday, wondering whether anyone
• bothers to remember it. As he moves around
• with the few coins his mother has given him for
  the occasion, he remembers how unkind his father
  has been to him. He feels lonely and sad. Section
  two, "The Prayers of the Saints," records the sad
  lives of John's aunt Florence and his mother,
  Elizabeth, and the sad but selfish behavior of
  his father, Gabriel. The section serves as a
  footnote to the wretched lives of the family and
  especially to the nervous relationship between
  John and his father. John's biological father
  committed suicide in prison, and Gabriel is his
  stepfather. The last section of the novel, "The
  Threshing Floor," recounts the process of John's
  salvation through conversion, but ends with John
  not feeling much better.

43
Go Tell It on the Mountain

• ?Theme Thematically, Baldwin's book relates the
  galling reality of African American life against
  a historical background which shows that the
  African Americans as a race have been over the
  centuries trying to attain to self-recognition
  and emotional and psychological maturity. The
  growth of John Grimes undergoes stages which
  associate his earlier memories of Sunday mornings
  with those of other characters like Florence,
  Gabriel, and Elizabeth, all memories Of pain and
  suffering peculiar to an enslaved people. What
  Baldwin calls in the second part of his book,
  "The Prayers of the Saints," reaches the height
  of its pathos when "Elizabeth's Prayer" begins
  with Elizabeth's pathetic "Lord, I wish I had of
  died/ In Egypt Land!" Baldwin is telling his
  people in powerful modern language that they are
  suffering an age-old injustice, and that they
  must fight this injustice as best as they can.
  The power of this book lies in the fact that the
  reader is forever kept conscious of an oppressed
  race groaning and struggling for salvation.

44
Go Tell It on the Mountain

• ?style and language The theme of the book is
  reinforced by its style and its language, which
  remind one constantly of the Old Testament, with
  the Bible staying in the back of the reader's
  mind. We notice some semblance of a
  stream-of-consciousness technique at work,
  especially in the second part of the book.
  Nevertheless, the bit sand fragments of the lives
  of the Grimeses come to the reader as a whole,
  gradually pieced together through the church
  service and the prayers. Then there is the major
  symbolism of the book to consider. It merits
  particular attention because it is powerful as it
  tells a truth in a forthright manner. As we noted
  earlier on, Gabriel calls his own son Roy. He
  would like to see Roy lying on the ground in the
  church where John lies on the night of
  conversion. John is to him a kind of Ishmael, not
  of the royal line. All the time, Gabriel is fully
  aware that he is a stepfather and behaves well as
  one. This relationship between father and son can
  be seen, in a way, to signify something of a
  broader, more national magnitude. It can be
  symbolic of the place of the African Americans in
  the nation of the United States. It reveals the
  clear image of the country behaving to its black
  offspring like a stepfather. The African
  Americans have felt the way they have because of
  this unjust treatment.

45
Amiri Baraka (1934-)

• 1.Life and career
• Born as Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New
• Jersey, on October 30, 1934, Baraka studied
• at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities
• and at the New School for Social Research.
• After taking a bachelor of arts degree at Howard
• in 1953, he spent two years in the U.S. Air
  Force in Puerto Rico. Baraka's life may be
  divided into two major periods. As a resident of
  New York City's Greenwich Village, LeRoi Jones
  led the life of a typical white American. He
  married a caucasian woman, Hettie Cohen, and they
  had two children. He and his wife published
  Yugen, a poetry magazine, and he coedited a
  literary newsletter, Floating Bear. Jones's
  political commitment began when he visited Cuba
  in 1960.
• In 1965 Jones moved to Harlem and began the
  second period of his life. Here he lived a
  totally African American and separatist life. As
  founder and director of the Black Arts Repertory
  Theatre School, he made every aspect of his life
  "black" and opposite to the "white" life he had
  previously known.

46

• 2. Barakas major works
• Poetry Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide
  Note( 1961)
• The Dead Lecturer (1964)
• Play Dutchman and The Slave (1964)
• Novel The System of Dante's Hell (1965)
• Tales (1967)
• Studies Negro Music in White America (1963)
• African American Music (1967)
• Raise Race Rays Raze Essays Since 1965 (1971)
• The Motion of History and Other Plays (1978)

47

• 3.Influece
• Amiri Baraka knows what he should do as an
  African American artist. In one of his essays he
  states categorically that the mission of an
  African American artist is to help destroy the
  America as he knows it. He writes with a view to
  reaching and moving people, and writes so as to
  unite art and politics. Thus his writings,
  poetry, drama, and essays, especially of the more
  recent period, are fired with revolutionary
  ideology and possess a "clear revolutionary
  edge," so that they pierce like swords and knives
  into the "sinful" body of American society. Amiri
  Baraka was one of the masterminds of the Black
  Arts Movement which flourished during the whole
  of the 1960s and the early 1970s, and which
  associated Black arts with the concept of Black
  power. As one of the most eloquent exponents of
  the radical African American stance with regard
  to white-dominated America, Amiri Baraka has been
  very influential on the post-1960s African
  American writing. Amid Baraka has been a prolific
  writer.

48
Toni Morrison (1931-)

• 1.Life and career
• ?She was born in Northern Ohio and was
• educated at Howard University and Cornell
• University. She began writing in the early
• 1960s and published her first novel, The
• Bluest Eye in 1970. Since then she has
• written quite a few works of importance such as
  Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby
  (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise
  (1998). Morrison is an award-winning writer. The
  many literary awards include the National Book
  Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award,
  the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize for
  literature in 1993. She is an international
  celebrity.

49

• ?Writer. Texas Southern University, Houston,
  instructor in English, 1955-57Howard University,
  Washington, DC, instructor in English, 1957-64
  Random House, New York City, senior editor,
  1965-85 State University of New York at
  Purchase, associate professor of English,
  1971-72 State University of New York at Albany,
  Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, 1984-89
  Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Robert F.
  Goheen Professor of the Humanities,1989--.
  Visiting lecturer, Yale University, 1976-77, and
  Bard College,1986-88 Clark Lecturer at Trinity
  College, Cambridge, and Massey Lecturerat Harvard
  University, both 1990.
• 2. Morrisons major works
• Sula (1973)
• Song of Solomon (1977)
• Tar Baby (1981)
• Beloved (1987)
• Jazz (1992)
• Paradise (1998)

50

• 3.Masterpieces Song of Solomon
• ?It tells the story of an African American trying
  to recover his family roots. Set in a small town
  in Michigan, the story covers the one hundred
  years of African American history from the Civil
  War through the 1960s.
• ?Themes A major theme in the novel is Milkman's
  quest for identity as a black man in the
  20th-century United States, as he slowly tries to
  piece together the history of his ancestors,
  which he achieves by journeying into his father
  and aunt's past, searching for origins.
  Names-their sources and meanings-also tie into
  this larger search for identity.
• The novel is written in the third person, but the
  narrative weaves in and out of different
  character viewpoints, beliefs,

51

• Song of Solomon
• and psychologies. The reader is given insight
  into Macon and Pilate's early lives together, as
  well as an understanding of their personal
  history and of the effects of slavery on the Dead
  family, including Milkman. The search for
  identity, the effects
• of geographical displacement on African
  Americans, and the effects of distorted love all
  play out as important themes in the novel.
  Another major theme is the idea that the
  individual must find freedom from not only saving
  himself.
• Furthermore, throughout the novel, flight is
  presented as one of the only ways to achieve
  freedom in an otherwise stifling world. Although
  the exact meaning of flight, in both the literal
  and the figurative sense, changes as the novel
  progresses, Milkman's fascination with flight
  remains constant.

52
Beloved

• ?It is based on the true antebellum story of a
  slave mother, Margaret Garner, killing her own
  children just for them to avoid slavery.
  "Beloved" in Morrison's novel is the word
  inscribed onthe tombstone of the child killed by
  its mother. Nineteen-year-old Sethe Suggs, a
  runaway slave mother, is about to be captured by
  her pursuers. She decides to kill all her
  children so that they would not have to suffer
  the way she had as a slave. She succeeds in
  slashing the throat of the youngest two-year-old
  baby girl and is caught and serves a prison
  sentence. Then she gives birth to her daughter
  Denver, and works as a cook. Eighteen years pass,
  and Beloved as a baby ghost comes to haunt her
  mother's house at 124 Bluestone Road. She manages
  to drive her two brothers away, but is chased
  away by Paul D., her mother's former fellow
  slave. Beloved reappears, however, in human form,
  as a twenty-year-old girl, beautiful and
  freakish, capable of metamorphosis and of
  becoming invisible. She keeps following her
  mother around, harassing her with disturbing
  questions, making incessant demands for stories
  and for food, and accusing her of abandoning her.
  Sethe is on the brink of both physical and
  emotional collapse. Her daughter Denver asks for
  the help of the community, which respond and
  eventually drive the ghost away by singing a song
  of exorcism. Sethe is still disintegrating, but
  Paul D. returns to inject the desire for life in
  her.

53
Beloved

• ?Writing feature The major formal feature of
  Beloved is the use of magic realism. Morrison's
  ghost does not make the book a ghost story. There
  is this obvious magic and supernatural element in
  the narrative first the baby ghost causing
  strange voices, lights, and violent shaking, and
  then the ghost assuming actual human form, but
  behaving in uncanny ways, becoming invisible,
  appearing mysteriously, moving Paul D. out of
  Sethe's house, and exhibiting her growing psychic
  powers. This element shocks and jostles readers
  as well the characters out of their normal way of
  living and thinking. It fits well into the larger
  realistic scheme to serve the author's purpose.
• ? Historical significant It reconstructs history
  through black folk culture and folk tales, and
  brings to life the horrible experience of slavery
  as history. It is a powerful book it not only
  makes African Americans think it compels the
  white segment of the society to face history,
  too. They have to face the harm that racism has
  done to Baby Suggs, Ella, Stamp, as well as Sethe
  and Paul D.,

54

• to the countless number of African Americans dead
  or living, and to humanity in general. The
  barbaric behavior of "Schoolteacher" and his like
  and the horrors of the system they enforced--the
  Sweet Home which is a veritable hell, the slave
  ship, the human suffering, the indignities to
  which the salves were made to submit, etc.--all
  these should be enough of a reminder, and a
  shock, to all white people that history may be
  ignored or forgotten, but it is ever present in
  all lives as a point of reference.
• 4.Influence
• Toni Morrison is a major contemporary American
  writer. She is the foremost author of
  contemporary black women's renaissance, which
  includes, among others, Alice Walker, Gloria
  Naylor, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, and
  Gayle Jones. Her oeuvre has drawn the attention
  of her readers to the importance of
  reconstructing history and interpreting the past
  from a racial perspective. She has blazed a new
  trail for her fellow writers.

55
Alice Walker (1944-)

• 1.Life
• Alice Walker was born into a sharecropper's
• family in Eatonton, Georgia. She attended
• Spelman College in Atalanta, Georgia, and
• finished her education in Sarah Lawrence
• College in Bronxville, New York. She began
• writing in college and published her first
• works--poems as well as stories--in 1965. Later
  she received fellowships in support of her
  writing career. She has, by virtue of the great
  amount of fiction, poetry, and essays she has
  written over the years, made herself a central
  figure in contemporary American literature. In
  addition to her volumes of poetry and short
  stories, she has published quite a few novels
  such as The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970),
  Meridian (1976), The Color Purple (1982), The
  Temple of My Familiar (1989), and Possessing the
  Secret of Joy (1990). Her greatest achievement so
  far is her novel, The Color Purple, which won for
  her both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer
  Prize.

56
(No Transcript)
57

• 2. Walkers major works
• The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
• Meridian (1976)
• The Color Purple (1982)
• The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
• Possessing the Secret of Joy (1990)
• 3.Masterpiece The Color Purple
• ?Introduction The Color Purple is an epistolary
  novel. It consists of 90 letters, of which over
  two thirds (61 in number) Celie wrote to God, 14
  to her sister Nettie, and 15 Nettie wrote to
  Celie. The story centers on Celie's life, with
  Nettie's African adventure as complementary. The
  time frame of the novel covers over thirty years,
  and Celie is now in middle age, in her mid or
  late forties or thereabout.
• ?Themes The female relationships are friendly
  and sisterly and also sexual. Celie and Sofia
  have a friendly relationship with each other
  because Celie was Sofias stepmother in law, and
  they befriended each other because the men in
  their life treated them poorly. Shug Avery had a
  large number of

58
The Color Purple

• shallow relationships in her life previous to
  Celie, and Celie had always been in relationships
  that were the product of real or implied threats
  of violence. (relationship)
• The implication throughout the text is that the
  1930s Georgia was a difficult place to live for
  black people, due to widely-held prejudices
  amongst the white population. Slavery was a
  recent memory. Due to their mistreatment at the
  hands of white people, the characters believe
  that their children are doomed to grow up in a
  racist society, with no hope for improvement.
  Furthermore, Sofia is convinced that due to the
  influence of society's prejudice her children
  will become cynical of everyone around them. The
  black characters have difficulty accepting this
  condition, yet they see no hope of change in the
  future. Alice Walker lived a rather difficult
  life surrounded by white people. (racism)

59
The Color Purple

• The majority of the men and women involved in the
  story are of the opinion that men should dominate
  women. Harpo feels threatened by his
  strong-willed, defiant wife, Sofia, and tries to
  become physically stronger than her so that he
  can beat her and return things to what he sees as
  their natural order. Throughout the book, women
  are degraded by men and treated as second-class
  citizens. This inequality mirrors the inequality
  between the races. (sexism)
• ?Significance The Color Purple marks a new phase
  of growth in African American consciousness. It
  raises questions for thought for the African
  Americans they need to get to know themselves
  better and get ready for accountability for their
  own lives. These questions are relevant
  especially now when discrimination has to make
  way for a new life for both races, however
  reluctant it is to vanish into history. The stage
  is getting set for the African Americans to make
  the best of what life offers for them. Harpo
  follows his father's example and achieves
  reconciliation with his wife Sophia. Everybody
  learns about life. The new phase of African
  American awareness is also exhibited in Celie's
  keeping a white man in her employ she learns to
  strike a racial balance. Love flourishes in her
  life. It redeems. This leads and adds to the
  happy ending.

60
Alex Haley (1921-1992)

• Alex Haley was a journalist and a novelist. His
• major achievements were the two important
• books he wrote, The Autobiography of Malcolm
• X (1965), and Roots (1976). The first of these he
• collaborated with Malcolm X, and it became
• probably the most influential African American
• autobiography of the 20th century. Roots is a
• novel of over six hundred pages, a finely wrought
  chronicle of an African American family from the
  mid-life the eighteenth century through the time
  of writing. The book marked a new level of
  self-awareness of the African American people as
  a race. Along with its two televised versions, it
  created quite a stir about racism and slavery. A
  painful record of the African American people
  falling into slavery and struggling to survive
  it, the book has produced a shock of recognition
  in readers both black and white, the African
  Americans getting to know their true ancestry,
  and the whites, some of them at least, stirred to
  the depth of their being by the extent of the
  injustice their race was capable of committing.
  Although Haley's influence may be more cultural
  than strictly literary, his Roots has added a new
  dimension to African American literature.

61
Maya Angelou (1928)

• (born April 4, 1928, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.)
• U.S. poet. She was raped at age eight
• and went through a period of muteness.
• Her autobiographical works, which
• explore themes of economic, racial,
• and sexual oppression, include
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), The Heart
  of a Woman (1981), and All God's Children Need
  Traveling Shoes (1986). Her poetry collections
  include Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore
  I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), and I
  Shall Not Be Moved (1990). Her recitation of a
  poem she wrote for Bill Clinton's first
  inauguration (1993) brought her widespread fame.
  In 2002 she published her sixth volume of
  memoirs, A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

62
Gloria Naylor (1950-)

• Her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place
• (1982), won the American Book Award for the
• Best First Novel that year and also the National
• Book Award. So far she has published five
• novels--Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988),
• Bailey's Caf (1992), and her most recent work,
• Sophhira Wade which is a sequel to Mama Day, and
  a collection of short stories, Men of Brewster
  Place (1998). Naylor is particularly good at
  depicting the lives of the African American
  women. Sensitive to their feelings and problems,
  Naylor portrays their struggles for survival with
  compassion and humor. Her detailed accounts of
  their environments, characterized by poverty,
  sexism, racial and patriarchal oppression, and
  the complexity of interrelationships, offer a
  convincing testimony of her conviction that an
  artist has to stay in contact with their culture
  and heritage. Naylor has a strong sense of place
  in her writing.

63
Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)

• Toni Cade Bambarafought for black
• America, for black women, and for
• the ethnic minorities in America.
• She wrote vehemently against racial
  discrimination and racial stereotyping,
• and asserted the identity of the African
  Americans in face of Anglo-American culture and
  of some African Americans following the
  mainstream. Her short story collections include
  Gorilla, My Love (1971) and The Sea Birds Are
  Still Alive (1977). Her other works range from
  essays, poems, screenplays, and novels such as
  The Salt Eaters (1982) and If Blessing Comes
  (1987). She also edited two anthologies of
  African American writings. One of her short
  stories,

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Rita Dove (1952-)

• She was the first African American poet who
• was appointed to the position of Poet
• Laureate of the United States in 1994.
• Dove writes mainly poetry. Her themes
• cover African American life and the life
• of other ethnic groups as well. She sees
• poetry in the daily lives of the people and
  hears poetry in their daily speech. Her poetry
  appeals by virtue of its lyric, often endearing
  tone. Dove is very often autobiographical, hoping
  to touch the lives of other people by first
  understanding and living her own to the fullest.
  Her collections of poems include The Yellow House
  on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and
  Beulah (1986) which won the Pulitz