African American literature has expanded and developed over a series of time periods in which the particular writings reflected some aspects of Black lives. What’s most admirable about African American literature is the consistency throughout the periods to convey a message of strength and encouragement for blacks. One of the most important writing periods in literature history is the realism, naturalism, and modernism period which expanded over twenty years from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Realism, as it relates to literature, is creating pieces of writings that accurately reflects the world as it is. Urban realism showed black lives at it really was. Sometimes this may result in brutal very detailed stories. Naturalism has more of a philosophical …show more content…
Dating from 1960 to 1975, this particular era aimed at embracing the African American community and the culture and music that comes with it. Most of the writings during this time called for blacks to unite as one and embrace themselves; not to fall back into the hands of society and the white man. Then, the contemporary period can be dated from the 1960’s to the present. Throughout African American literature in general, there are similarities in the overall themes of stories and poems in which many African Americans can relate to within all three time periods. From the Naturalistic era, Richard Wright wrote a story titled The ethics of living Jim Crow. To no surprise, this story entails of the struggles black men had to endure in the workforce under Jim Crow laws. The first line which says, “My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small.”, sets the tone for the overall message of the story. The narrator, a young black man, tells of his many encounters with white people and how that has, inevitably allowed him to learn and understand his role in society. In the story, the narrator is mistreated with hatred by his superior white …show more content…
However, there were pieces of literature during this era that spoke of the brutality that was going on in society. June Jordan wrote the poem titled Poem about Police Brutality. With a straightforward title, this poem talked about the death of an African American businessman Arthur Miller who was intervening in a struggle between the police and his brother. In his poem, June says “tell me something/ what you think would happen if/ everytime they kill a black boy/ then we kill a cop/ everytime they kill a black man/ then we kill a cop”. Jordan raises the question whether the inter-exchange of deaths between blacks and the police would be valid. This relates to the black arts movement as well. Some individuals had a more aggressive approach in regards to social issues between blacks and whites. Nevertheless, Jordan brings to the forefront the issue of police brutality which is something that blacks had to deal with on a constant basis. Thus relating back to Wright’s ethics of Jim Crow, both pieces of literature is relatable amongst the black community in particular. The only separating difference is that Jordan’s poem does not, in any way, suggest learning to deal with these issues, but rather is a protest against police brutality. Whereas in The ethics of Jim Crow there is no statement of protest, just the recollection of memories of
Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. 163-67. Print.
African Americans history has been one of the most difficult yet grandiose parts of the human evolution. Their journey was long to reach the freedom they have today in America. One of the most important part of the afro American story is the Reconstruction period who took part from 1865 to 1877. Black literature also grew during that time and became more inspirational for future generations yet mostly descriptive of the shifts from slavery to some kind of freedom. Charles W. Chesnutt, an Afro-American writer, who lived during the American Civil War, was the first black American to publish fiction stories. Through many of his literary work, such as, his journal or The Wife of His Youth, Chesnutt left his mark on the modern society who still discusses his writing. Charles W. Chesnutt’ use of characters and themes and mainly trough the use of rhetorical devices such as examples and comparisons in his fictional stories or in his journals address the societal issues of the Reconstruction Period for the African American.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. Print.
"Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." This passage written in Black Boy, the autobiography of Richard Wright shows the disadvantages of Black people in the 1930's. A man of many words, Richard Wrights is the father of the modern American black novel. Wright has constituted in his novels the social and economic inequities that were imposed in the 30's in hope of making a difference in the Black Community. His writing eventually led many black Americans to embrace the Communist Party.
Poet, journalist, essayist, and novelist Richard Wright developed from an uneducated Southerner to one of the most cosmopolitan, politically active writers in American literature. In many of Richard Wright's works, he exemplifies his own life and proves to “white” America that African American literature should be taken seriously. Before Wright, “white” America failed to acknowledge the role African American writing played in shaping American culture. It was shocking in itself that an African American could write at all. Thus, Richard Wright is well known as the father of African American literature mainly because of his ability to challenge the literary stereotypes given to African Americans.
African American writing regularly addresses racial personality—from books on going to expositions on Black Power—from journalists as differed as W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison. Be that as it may, these authors are once in a while studying on how they build a racial personality for themselves and their characters. Dark writings can possibly uncover the variables that make racial personality and clear up how the procedure of consideration and prohibition work inside the African American group. Building up a strategy for deciphering how racial character is tended to in African American writings is critical in comprehension the implicit rejection in the dark group. The answers (or inquiries) that rise up out of this study
Jim Crow laws, a serious blemish on America’s legislative history, were measures enacted in the South to impose racial segregation. Beyond this, they were a code that allowed, and essentially encouraged, the disenfranchisement and oppression of African Americans. With such a cruel ordinance in place, African Americans had to learn to adjust their mannerisms and lifestyles accordingly in order to survive. However, this learning process was far from effortless or painless, as evidenced through Richard Wright’s work “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”. This piece is paramount in understanding the African American personality and response during the Jim Crow laws, as well as for comparing today’s society to those especially trying times.
Washington, Mary Helen. "The Darkened Eye Restored: Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women". Angelyn Mitchell, ed. Within the Circle: An Anthology of African-American Literature, Criticism From the Present. Durham: Duke, 1994. 442-53.
Jim Crow was a white actor who had a popular television show mocking African Americans. This is how the “Jim Crow Law” came into existence. This law described primarily how the south in the 1877 to the 1950 use to describe the segregation system. It was a state law passed in the South that established different rules for blacks and whites. Every African American life in the south was effected during the Jim Crow laws. Black textile workers could not work in the same room as whites, nor enter through the same door. They were not allowed to even gaze out of the same window as the white employees. During the times of this law, industries employment were hard to come by for blacks. When they were hired, many of the unions passed rules to exclude them. Some black workers acted as “clowns” for white men. This was done to order to gain favors with the whites, make extra money to move north. But Wright was determined to make a better name for himself after seeing his family belittle themselves. He knew this type of foolishness would never allow him to save enough money to be able to leave. The only thing that gave Wright comfort and peace, came in reading books. He begins a serious effort in self-education in Memphis, and reads enough that he feels he has gained some knowledge of the world beyond the American
Smith, David Lionel. “The Black Arts Movement and Its Critics.” American Literary History. 3.1 (Spring 1991): 94-109.
Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
———. The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch. New York: Viking Press, 1937.
Richard Wright’s autobiographical sketch, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow was a glimpse into the life of a young black man learning to navigate the harsh and cruel realities of being black in America. Through each successive journey, he acquired essential life skills better equipping him to live in a society of inequality. Even though the Supreme Court, provided for the ideology of “separate but equal” in the 1896 case, Plessy v, Ferguson, there was no evidence of equality only separation (Annenberg, 2014).
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.