Post-1900 African-American Literature

from Bernard Bell, African American Novel and Its Tradition, 1987 and Frank Magill, Masterpieces of African American Literature,1992.

This handout contains only a few of the many works written by African American since 1990 with only the barest of comments. Most of the comments come from the sources above; the rest are mine - Richard Varron

1. The Harlem Renaissance (1917-1935)
2. Growth of Naturalism (1935-1945)
3. Myth, Legend and Ritual(1945-1960)
4. Contemporary African American Literature(1960-present)
5. Historical Time Line (1900-present)
6. Definitions

1. The Harlem Renaissance (1917-1935)
1. Poetic Realism and Historical Romances

Jean Toomer - Cane 1923

Modernist collection of poems and short stories. The picture in this work is built up by a collection of images from the various stories and poems in a similar way as in The Wasteland . Its development of an overall image of Southern life is similar to the build up of life in Joyce's Dubliners. Each story or poem builds the image. Read "Fern" in the text.

Arna Bontemps - Black Thunder -1936

Impressionistic; influenced by the slave narrative form; deals with the desire to be free

2. Genteel Realism: Nationalism/Multiculturalism
1. Nella Larson

Quicksand -1928

A study of the mulatto women; "Irene Regfield,the heroine who occasionally passes for convenience, is equally tragic in her misguided sense of values." (Bell 110)

Passing -1929

Story of the consequences of a mulatto women "passing" for white. Helga Crane is a "lonely, sexually repressed, intelligent black women with no family" who escapes from her white birth place to the "peace and contentment" of Harlem (Bell 110)

Jesse Fauset

Plum Bun -1929

Deals with being black in a white middle class society

Chinaberry Tree

Story of "adultery and illegitimacy" of three black women in a small New Jersey town (Bell 107)

2. Folk Romance: Primitivism

Claude McKay - Home in Harlem -1928 & Poems

Most of his poems are written in standard sonnet form; born and educated in Jamaica; See "If We Must Die" and "Harlem Dancer" in text

Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston was know for her collection and study of folk tales.


See: African American Literature Handout for samples

• Jonah's Gourd Vine -1934; biographical sketch of her parents
• The Eyes of God are Watching - 1937
• Moses Man at the Mountain -1938; religious allegory using the Old Testament
• Dust Tracks on the Road -1942; autobiographical
3. Folk Realism

Langston Hughes

See "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". Look at A Raisin in the Sun" and compare with "Harlem" in our text to see where the title comes from. Hughes is the best known writer of this period.

1. Countee Cullen -poems; see examples in our text.
4. Satiric Realism
1. Rudolph Fisher - Walls of Jericho -1928
2. George Samuel Schuyler - Black No More
3. Wallace Turman - The Blacker in the Berry - 1929

1. Richard Wright
Native Son 1940;
first work to confront racism directly; central character is Bigger Thomas; Chicago setting " Native Son employs the tenets of naturalism and existentialism to portray Bigger Thomas, the stereotypical 'nigger'" (Sheila J. McDonald qtd. Magill).

 

Black Boy 1945; autobiographical
See "The Man Who Went to Chicago" in our text.
• The Outsider 1953; rejection of existentialism
• Long Dream 1958; use of slang in this work is dated
• Lawd Today 1963; tragedy

Chester Himes If He Hollers Let Him Go 1945;

social criticism; story of a black man working in a defense plant

2. Ann Perry Narrows 1953; New England setting

 

Ralph Walden Ellison- Invisible Man 1952

influenced by The Wasteland ; deals with how the black man is invisible in white society; existential in nature. See chapter 1 ("Battle Royal") in our text to get some flavor of his writing.

1. James Baldwin (See: "Sonny's Blues" in our text)
• Go Tell It to the Mountain 1953; autobiographical
• Notes of a Native Son 1955; essays of cultural criticism
• Another Country 1962 ; deals with issues of sex and race
• The Fire Next Time 1963; essays of the Nation of Islam
• Blues For Mister Charlie 1964; protest drama

1. Neorealism
1. Critical Realism
1. Alice Walker
• Meridian -1976; autobiographical

The Color Purple -1982;

written in epistolary (letter) form; made into a movie; deals with issues of being a black women. Her latest work deals with female circumcision in Africa

2. Poetic Realism
1. Toni Morrison
• The Bluest Eye - 1970; psychological
• Sula -1973; physiological
• Song of Solomon 1977; impressionistic; religious allegory
• Tar Baby 1981; social criticism
• Beloved 1987; historical realism

 

3. Postmodern
1. Neoslave Narrative

Margaret Walker- Jubilee -1966

traces her parents' family in the 19th century. See our text for other works.

Ernest Grains- The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman -1971

made into a movie; deals with a woman growing up in the South during the period 1860 to 1960.

Alex Haley - Roots -1976

traces the search of a man trying to find his African origins; made into a mini-series which became the highest rated mini-series up to that time; wide crossover appeal; historical work

Maya Angelou- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings -1970

autobiography about growing up in Arkansas; read her work at the Clinton inaugural; her works have again become best sellers after the readings.

Charles Johnson Middle Passage -1990

the term "Middle Passage" refers to the path that the slave ships took in going from Africa to North America.

2. Romance Fantasy
1. John Edgar Wideman- Brothers and Keepers -1984
2. Clarence Major- Painted Turtle -1988

 

3. Satire
1. Ishmael Reed- Mumbo Jumbo 1972; mystery
2. Hal Bennett- A Wilderness of Wines
4. Social Realism
1. Social Criticism
1. Claude Brown- Man Child in the Promised Land 1966
2. Eldridge Cleaver- Soul On Ice 1968;

Malcolm X- The Autobiography of Malcolm X -1965

made into a movie; written with Alex Haley

 

5. Social Realism

Lorraine Hansbery- A Raisin in the Sun 1959 (play)

story of middle class blacks in Chicago; title comes from a line from Langston Hughes's work, "Harlem". See textbook for work for both "Harlem" and A Raisin in the Sun.

Gloria Naylor-The Women of Bruster Place 1982 (movie)

made into a movie; deals with the lives of various women in a densely packed neighborhood. A chapter of this book, "Etta Mae Johnson" is in our textbook.

1. August Wilson-Fences 1985 (play)

 

Ntozaka Shange-

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf- 1976; play; see textbook to get an idea of how she uses the language; (she spells her words the way they are pronounced

4. Poetry
1. Amiri Baraka (former LeRoi Jones) social criticism; see "Beautiful Black Women" in our text"
2. Gwendolyn Brooks - See "We Real Cool" in text
3. Lucille Clifton - See "the thirty eighth year of my life" in text
4. Rita Dove-poet - laureate of the U.S. 1995
5. Nikki Giovanni - See "Women Poem" in text
6. June Jordan - See "Free Flight" in text
7. Sonia Sanchez
8. Maya Angelou See other works
5. Anthologies

 

Brotherman: the Odyssey of Black Men in America

Herb Boyd and Robert Allen. eds. New York: Ballantine, 1995.

 This book contains writing by African American men ranging from Du Bois, Douglas, Washington and Garvey to Arthur Ashe and Magic Johnson to Ice T and Louis Farrakhan. All types of writing are covered from essays to short stories to poems. It is now out in paperback. 900 pages.

Daughters of Africa

Margaret Busby. ed. New York:Ballantine, 1992.

 This work contains writings by women of African decent from all over the world and spans the period from ancient Egypt to the present. One of the interesting features of this book is that it puts African American women's writing into a context of writing by women of African decent in other parts of the world as well as those in Africa itself. All types of writing are covered in this 1088 page book.

 

• 1998 Spanish American War - Annexation of Cuba and Puerto Rico
• 1914-1918 World War I
• 1917-1935 Harlem Renaissance / Modernism
• 1929-1933 Depression in America
• 1941-1945 Word War II
• 1951-1955 Korean War
• 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education - School desegregation
• 1950's Introduction of Television
• 1963-1970 Civil Rights movement in the U.S.
• 1963 Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" (see textbook)
• 1965-1973 Vietnam War
• 1965 Malcolm X assassinated
• 1968 Martin Luther King assassinated
• 1973 Oil Crisis
• 1979 Iranian Revolution - Islam takes a more important place in American Policy / Oil Crisis
• 1991 Persian Gulf War

 

Existentialism

"Existentialist writers are characterized by their concern with 'being,' which contrasts not only with knowing but also with abstract concepts, which cannot fully capture what is individual and specific." They point out that "the individual is not a detached observer of the world, but" is in fact "'in the world'" and thus part of it. ( Encyclopedia of Literature Jean-Paul Satre, in his existentialist text, Being and Nothingness, points out that "we are not free to cease being free" (567) and that we are "fully conscious of the choice which we are" (597). He also points out that it is impossible to lie to oneself since at the moment the lie is created we are aware that it is a lie (87). One of the frequent related themes is a sense of alienation from the world (as was seen in Kafka's writings). It often deals with the meaninglessness of life in which the character has no choices Cf. Naturalism. In practice, Existentialism is used in different ways by different people using different aspects of the term.

 

Impressionism

"The depiction of a scene, emotion, or character by details intended to achieve a vividness of effectiveness more by evoking subjective and sensory impressions than by re-creating or representing an objective reality." This is often found with writers who use "stream-of-consciousness" as was seen in Joyce and to some degree in Eliot and Kafka( Encyclopedia of Literature)

Naturalism

"A theory in Literature emphasizing the role of heredity and environment upon human life and character development." Characters are "presented without moral judgment" and are "seen as helpless products of heredity and environment" who are " motivated by strong instinctual drives from within, and harassed by social and economic pressures from without." (Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, 1995) In the way this term is used here, it reflects the view of the writer that their characters have little control over what is happening to them.

 

Primitivism

"Proposed a belief in man's natural goodness, and in the inevitable corruption of civilization." It represents a belief in "the noble savage", who is more purer than the civilized world.(The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature) In terms of the works discussed here, it may reflect the greater importance on the lower class African Americans who had not become part of the elite as a source for understanding the African American. Bell points out that writers, such as McKay, emphasized "the exotic aspects of Harlem."(113) Look at "Harlem Dancer" in the textbook.

 

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