African-American Writers

Name: Maru Janak JRoll No: 22

Paper: (8) Cultural Studies M.A: sem-2

Email: marujanak17@gmail.comSubmitted to: Smt.S.B. Gardi Department of

English M.K.Bhavnagar University

Introduction

African- American writing often displays a folkloric conception of human kind; a “double consciousness”, as W E B Dubois called it, arising from bicultural identity, irony, parody, tragedy, and bitter comedy in negotiating this ambivalence; attacks upon presumed white cultural superiority; a naturalistic focus on survival; and inventing reframing of language itself, as in language games like “Jiving”, “Sounding”, “Signifying”, “Playing the Dozens” and “Rapping”.

View of Albert J. Raboteau on 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."

Elison’s view on Black writers

“ Black people had before they knew there was such a thing as art.”

Bell correctly stresses, no other ethnic or social group in American has shared anything like the experience of American Blacks: kidnapping, the middle passage,slavery,southern plantation life,emancipation,Reconstruction and Post-reconstruction, Northern migration,urbanisation and ongoing racism.

African American writers

“Our Nig” (1859)----Harriet Wilson“The Bond woman’s Narrative”---Hunnah craftsRoots-saga of an American literature--Alex HaleyThe colour purple-Alice walker

African- American Literature, Devided into several major period

Comprising Colonial

Naturalism& Modernism

Reconstruction

Harlem Renaissance

Pre-World War I

Antebellum

Toni MorisonShe is an American Novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed characters.Best Novels: “The Bluest Eyes”, “Sula”, “Song Of Solomon", and “Beloved”Won Pulitzer prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved and the Nobel Prize.In 1975,her novel sula was nominated for the National Book Award.

Margaret Walker (07 July 1915- 30 November 1998) was an American poet and writer.She was part of the African- American literary Movement in Chicago.Notable works include the award winning poem For my People (1942) and the novel Jubilee (1966), set in the south during the American Civil War.

Margaret Walker

Richard Nathaniel Wright (04 September 1908- 28 November 1960) was an American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems and non- fiction.His literature concerns racial themes, especially those including the plight of African Americans during the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries.He wrote many short stories.

Richard Nathaniel Wright

Countee Cullen (30 May 1903- 09 January 1946) was an African American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.Worked as assistant editor for Opportunity magazine. His column “The Dark Tower” increased his literary reputation.First novel “One Way to Heaven” (1932), a social comedy of lower class blacks and the Bomgeoisie in New York city.Other works- “The Lost Zoo” (1940), “My Lives and How I Lost Them” (1942), “St. Louis Woman” (1946).

Countee Cullen

Thank You