African American literature

African American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African Americans. The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet Phillis Wheatley and orator Frederick Douglass, reached an early high point with the Harlem Renaissance, and continues today with authors such as Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou 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.

Critiques

While African American literature is well accepted in the United States, it is not without controversy. To the genre's supporters, African American literature exists both within and outside American literature and is 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.

Related Topics:
American literature - Balkanization

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Existing both inside and outside American literature

According to James Madison University English professor Joanne Gabbin, African American literature exists both inside and outside American literature. "Somehow African American literature has been relegated to a different level, outside American literature, yet it is an integral part," she says.{{ref|Madison}}

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This view of African American literature is grounded, in many ways, in the experience of Black people in the United States. Even though African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens. As a result, they were part of America while also being outside it.

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The same can be said for African American literature. While it exists fully within the framework of a larger American literature, it also exists as its own entity. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices are created in isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help revitalize the larger literary world (McKay, 2004). This artistic pattern has held true with many aspects of African American culture over the last century, with jazz and hip hop being just two artistic examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American culture.

Related Topics:
African American culture - Jazz - Hip hop

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Whether African American literature will keep to this pattern in the coming years remains to be seen. Since the genre is already popular with mainstream audiences, it is possible that its ability to develop new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some critics—may be a thing of the past.{{ref|Norton_1}}

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Balkanization of American literature?

Despite these views, some conservative academics and intellectuals argue that African American literature only exists as part of a so-called "balkanization" of literature over the last few decades or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature.{{ref|Multiculturalism}} According to these critics, literature is splitting into distinct and separate groupings because of the rise of identity politics in the United States and other parts of the world. These critics reject bringing identity politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks."{{ref|Dalrymple}}

Related Topics:
Conservative - Culture wars - Identity politics

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People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition and, more importantly, judges ethnic writers merely on the basis of their race. These critics reject this judgment and say it defies the meaning of works like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, in which Ellison's main character is invisible because people see him as nothing more than a Black man.{{ref|Ellison}} Others criticize special treatment of any ethnic-based genre of literature. For example, Robert Hayden, the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, once said, "There is no such thing as Black literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all."{{ref|Hayden}}

Related Topics:
Robert Hayden - Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

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Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing actually deepens human understanding and that, previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature.{{ref|multi}} (Jay, 1997)

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The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres like African American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than ever before in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004). This view is supported by the fact that many African American authors—and writers representing other minority groups—consistently reach the tops of the best-seller lists. If their literature only appealed to their individual ethnic groups, this would not be possible.

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African American criticism

Some of the criticism of African American literature over the years has come, surprisingly enough, from within the African American community. This results from complaints that Black literature sometimes does not portray Black people in a positive light.

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This clash of aesthetics and racial politics has its beginnings in comments made by W.E.B DuBois in the NAACP publication The Crisis. For example, in 1921 he wrote, "We want everything that is said about us to tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one." He added to this in 1926 by saying, "All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists."{{ref|Theory}} DuBois and the editors of The Crisis consistently stated that literature was a tool in the struggle for African American political liberation.

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DuBois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed most clearly when he clashed in 1928 with African American author Claude McKay over McKay's best-selling novel Home to Harlem. To DuBois, the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem only appealed to the "prurient demand" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness." DuBois also said, "Home to Harlem ... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath."{{ref|Lowney}} This criticism was repeated by others in the Black community when author Wallace Thurman published his novel The Blacker the Berry in 1929. This novel, which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, infuriated many African Americans, who did not like such a public airing of their culture's "dirty laundry."{{ref|Hudson}}

Related Topics:
Claude McKay - Wallace Thurman

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Naturally, many African American writers did not agree with the viewpoint that all Black literature should be propaganda, and instead stated that literature should present the truth about life and people. Langston Hughes articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), when he said that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or white public thought.

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A more recent occurrence of this Black-on-Black criticism arose in charges by some critics that Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple unfairly attacked Black men.{{ref|Purple}} Walker later refuted these charges in her book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult.

Related Topics:
Alice Walker - The Color Purple

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