query: what is african american literature?

title: African-American literature

text: and fiction as well as journalism, with newspaper writers like Jennie Carter(1830-1881) developing a large following. Among the most prominent of post-slavery writers is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), who had a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University, and was one of the original founders of the NAACP in 1910. At the turn of the century, Du Bois published a highly influential collection of essays entitled "The Souls of Black Folk". The essays on race were groundbreaking and drew from Du Bois's personal experiences to describe how African Americans lived in rural Georgia and in the larger American society.

title: African-American literature

text: while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as "Another Country" and "The Fire Next Time". Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel "Native Son" (1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection

title: African-American literature

text: In broad terms, African-American literature can be defined as writings by people of African descent living in the United States. It is highly varied. African-American literature has generally focused on 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 study "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." African-American literature explores the issues of freedom and

title: African-American literature

text: the idea of African-American Literature by saying (paraphrasing the comment by the black composer Duke Ellington about jazz and music): "There is no such thing as Black literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all." Kenneth Warren's "What Was African American Literature?" argues that black American writing, as a literature, began with the institution of Jim Crow legislation and ended with desegregation. In order to substantiate this claim, he cites both the societal pressures to create a distinctly black American literature for uplift and the lack of a well formulated essential notion of literary blackness. For this scholar, the

title: African-American literature

text: equality long denied to Blacks in the United States, along with further themes such as African-American culture, racism, religion, slavery, a sense of home, segregation, migration, feminism, and more. African-American literature presents experience from an African-American point of view. In the early Republic, African-American literature represented a way for free blacks to negotiate their identity in an individualized republic. They often tried to exercise their political and social autonomy in the face of resistance from the white public. Thus, an early theme of African-American literature was, like other American writings, what it meant to be a citizen in post-Revolutionary America.

title: African-American literature

text: late 19th and early 20th centuries de jure racism crystallized the canon of African-American literature as black writers conscripted literature as a means to counter notions of inferiority. During this period, “whether African American writers acquiesced in or kicked against the label, they knew what was at stake in accepting or contesting their identification as Negro writers.” He writes that “[a]bsent white suspicion of, or commitment to imposing, black inferiority, African American literature would not have existed as a literature” Warren bases part of his argument on the distinction between "the mere existence of literary texts" and the formation of

title: African-American literature

text: Club. At times, she has brought African-American writers a far broader audience than they otherwise might have received. 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

title: African-American literature

text: mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of the white intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for Black political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, perhaps most famously by W. E. B. Du Bois. According to Joanne Gabbin, a professor, 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. She bases

title: African-American literature

text: African-American literature has both been influenced by the great African diasporic heritage and shaped it in many countries. It has been created within the larger realm of post-colonial literature, although scholars distinguish between the two, saying 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, 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,

title: African-American literature

text: 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. Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and subject to racist attitudes. This experience inspired some Black writers, at least during the early years of African-American literature, to prove they were the equals of European-American authors. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no

title: African-American literature

text: African-American literature African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of slave narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who

title: African-American literature

text: (contracts, property, and evidence) to compose the narratives that cohere the tradition. African-American literature African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of slave narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period

title: African-American literature

text: to promote and define African-American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel. James Emanuel took a major step toward defining African-American literature when he edited (with Theodore Gross) "Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America" (1968), a collection of black writings released by a major publisher. This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator at the City College of New York (where he is credited with introducing the study of African-American poetry), heavily influenced the birth of the genre. Other influential African-American anthologies of this time included "Black

title: African-American literature

text: and alliteration. African-American literature—especially written poetry, but also prose—has a strong tradition of incorporating all of these forms of oral poetry. These characteristics do not occur in all works by African-American writers. Some scholars resist using Western literary theory to analyze African-American literature. As the Harvard literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 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." One trope common to African-American literature is

title: African-American literature

text: "signifying". Gates claims that signifying “is a trope in which are subsumed several other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, and also hyperbole an litotes, and metalepsis.” Signifying also refers to the way in which African-American "authors read and critique other African American texts in an act of rhetorical self-definition". African-American history predates the emergence of the United States as an independent country, and African-American literature has similarly deep roots. Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known piece of African-American literature, "Bars Fight". Terry wrote the ballad in 1746 after an Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts.

title: African-American literature

text: Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King, Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Beginning in the 1970s, African-American literature reached the mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of African-American writers began to be accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature. As part of the larger Black Arts Movement, which was inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, African-American literature began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping

title: African-American literature

text: came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African-American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize to Toni Morrison. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap. As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the centuries, so has the focus of African-American literature. Before the American Civil

title: African-American literature

text: 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. Since African-American literature is already popular with mainstream audiences, 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. Some conservative academics and intellectuals argue that African-American literature exists as a separate topic only

title: African-American literature

text: overall human condition. Critics also disagree with classifying writers on the basis of their race, as they believe this is limiting and artists can tackle any subject. Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing deepens human understanding and previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature. (Jay, 1997) The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres such as African-American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than before

title: African-American literature

text: works: the narrative was serialized and bears resemblances to Charles Dickens' style.– Many critics are still attempting to decode its literary significance and establish its contributions to the study of early African-American literature. A genre of African-American literature that developed in the middle of the 19th century is the slave narrative, accounts written by fugitive slaves about their lives in the South and, often, after escaping to freedom. They wanted to describe the cruelties of life under slavery, as well as the persistent humanity of the slaves as persons. At the time, the controversy over slavery led to impassioned literature

title: African-American literature

text: her theory 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 and were actively discriminated against. As a result, they were part of America while also outside it. Similarly, African-American literature is within the framework of a larger American literature, but it also is independent. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices have been created in relative isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation

title: African-American literature

text: after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." Others made similar criticism of Wallace Thurman's novel "The Blacker the Berry" in 1929. Addressing prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, the novel infuriated many African Americans, who did not like the public airing of their "dirty laundry." Many African-American writers thought their literature should present the full truth about life and people. Langston Hughes articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). He wrote that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or

title: African-American literature

text: include James Gronniosaw, John Marrant, and George White. William L. Andrews argues that these early narratives "gave the twin themes of the Afro-American 'pregeneric myth'—knowledge and freedom—their earliest narrative form". These spiritual narratives were important predecessors of the slave narratives which proliferated the literary scene of the 19th century. These spiritual narratives have often been left out of the study of African-American literature because some scholars have deemed them historical or sociological documents, despite their importance to understanding African-American literature as a whole. African-American women who wrote spiritual narratives had to negotiate the precarious positions of being black and women

title: What Is Literature?

text: What Is Literature? What Is Literature? (), also published as "Literature and Existentialism",) is an essay by French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, published by Gallimard in 1948. Initially published in freestanding essays across French literary journals "Les Temps modernes", "Situations I" and "Situations II", essays "What is Writing?" and "Why Write?" were translated into English and published by the Paris-based literary journal Transition 1948. The English translation by Bernard Frechtman was published in 1950. Sartre attempts to devise an understanding of the effect literature has on those who are subjected to it. In the foreword Sartre addresses his critics

title: What Is Literature?

text: The art of writing is deeply linked to freedom and thus ventures into the fields of politics and democracy. The poet frees himself by disassociation, and the prose writer fulfills a duty to utilize language for the end of a conceived free society. What Is Literature? What Is Literature? (), also published as "Literature and Existentialism",) is an essay by French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, published by Gallimard in 1948. Initially published in freestanding essays across French literary journals "Les Temps modernes", "Situations I" and "Situations II", essays "What is Writing?" and "Why Write?" were translated into English and

title: African-American literature

text: written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture." By refuting the claims of the dominant culture, African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora, African-American literature broke "the

title: African-American literature

text: most important African-American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, "The Bluest Eye", was published in 1970. Among her most famous novels is "Beloved", which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. This story describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to save her from a life of slavery. Another important novel is "Song of Solomon", a tale about materialism, unrequited love, and brotherhood. Morrison is the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the 1970s novelist and poet Alice Walker wrote a famous essay that brought Zora Neale Hurston

title: African-American literature

text: published by an African American. Parallels between Wilson's narrative and her life have been discovered, leading some scholars to argue that the work should be considered autobiographical. Despite these disagreements, "Our Nig" is a literary work which speaks to the difficult life of free blacks in the North who were indentured servants. "Our Nig" is a counter-narrative to the forms of the sentimental novel and mother-centered novel of the 19th century. Another recently discovered work of early African-American literature is "The Bondwoman’s Narrative", which was written by Hannah Crafts between 1853 and 1860. Crafts was a fugitive slave from Murfreesboro,

title: African-American literature

text: York City police detectives. Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh Holton. African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Brandon Massey, Charles R. Saunders, John Ridley, John M. Faucette, Sheree Thomas and Nalo Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors. Finally, African-American literature has gained added attention through the work of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who repeatedly has leveraged her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book

title: African-American literature

text: won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays. Most recently, Edward P. Jones won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "The Known World" (2003), his novel about a black slaveholder in the antebellum South. Young African-American novelists include David Anthony Durham, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Tayari Jones, Kalisha Buckhanon, Mat Johnson, ZZ Packer and Colson Whitehead, to name a few. African-American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New

title: African-American literature

text: by a racial insult). Cullen's books include the poetry collections "Color" (1925), "Copper Sun" (1927), and "The Ballad of the Brown Girl" (1927). Frank Marshall Davis's poetry collections "Black Man's Verse" (1935) and "I am the American Negro" (1937), published by Black Cat Press, earned him critical acclaim. Author Wallace Thurman also made an impact with his novel "The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life" (1929), which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African-American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read

title: African-American literature

text: by other Black people. With the renaissance, though, African-American literature—as well as black fine art and performance art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture. A large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities such as Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy. This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban

title: African-American literature

text: texts into a coherent body of literature. For Warren, it is the coherence of responding to racist narratives in the struggle for civil rights that establishes the body of African-American literature, and the scholar suggests that continuing to refer to the texts produced after the civil rights era as such is a symptom of nostalgia or a belief that the struggle for civil rights has not yet ended. In an alternative reading, Karla F. C. Holloway's "Legal Fictions" (Duke University Press, 2014) suggests a different composition for the tradition and argues its contemporary vitality. Her thesis is that legally cognizable

title: African-American literature

text: in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004). Some of the criticism of African-American literature over the years has come from within the community; some argue that black literature sometimes does not portray black people in a positive light and that it should. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in the NAACP's magazine "The Crisis" on this topic, saying in 1921: "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 in 1926, "All Art is propaganda and ever must be,

title: African-American literature

text: current scholarly conversation. At the turn of the 20th century, non-fiction works by authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated how to confront racism in the United States. During the 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 "" by Alex Haley, "The Color Purple" (1982) by Alice Walker, which won the Pulitzer Prize; and "Beloved" by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and award-winning status.

title: African-American literature

text: believe that a Black woman could write such refined poetry. Wheatley had to defend herself in court to prove that she had written her own work. Some critics cite Wheatley's successful defense as the first recognition of African-American literature. As a result of the skepticism surrounding her work, "Poems on Various Subjects" was republished with "several introductory documents designed to authenticate Wheatley and her poetry and to substantiate her literary motives.” Another early African-American author was Jupiter Hammon (1711–1806?), a domestic slave in Queens, New York. Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America, published his poem "An Evening

title: African-American literature

text: of African Americans in America during the period.– Jarena Lee published two religious autobiographical narratives: "The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee" and "Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee". These two narratives were published in 1836 and 1849 respectively. Both works spoke about Lee's life as a preacher for the African Methodist Church. But her narratives were not endorsed by the Methodists because a woman preaching was contrary to their church doctrine. Some critics argue that Lee's contribution to African-American literature lies in her disobedience to the patriarchal church system and her assertion of women's rights within

title: African-American literature

text: Her book "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects", a collection of poems and essays prefaced by William Lloyd Garrison, was published in 1854 and sold more than 10,000 copies within three years. Harper was often characterized as "a noble Christian woman" and "one of the most scholarly and well-read women of her day", but she was also known as a strong advocate against slavery and the post-Civil War repressive measures against blacks. The Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940 was a flowering of African-American literature and art. Based in the African-American community of Harlem in New York City, it was part of

title: African-American literature

text: no influence on later American literature. Séjour never returned to African-American themes in his subsequent works. Brown, on the other hand, was a prominent abolitionist, lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian in the United States. Born into slavery in Kentucky, Brown was working on riverboats based in St. Louis, Missouri, when he escaped to Ohio. He began to work for abolitionist causes, making his way to Buffalo, New York and later Boston, Massachusetts. He was a prolific writer, beginning with an account of his escape to freedom and experience under slavery. Brown wrote "Clotel; or, The President's Daughter" (1853), considered to

title: African literature

text: African literature African literature is literature of or from Africa. As George Joseph notes in his chapter on African literature in "Understanding Contemporary Africa", whereas European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive: Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. In Ethiopia, there is a substantial literature written in Ge'ez going back at least to the fourth century AD; the best-known work in this tradition is the "Kebra Negast", or "Book of Kings." One popular form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, in which a small animal uses its wits

title: African-American literature

text: despite the wailing of the purists." Du Bois and the editors of "The Crisis" consistently stated that literature was a tool in the struggle for African-American political liberation. Du Bois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed when he clashed in 1928 with the author Claude McKay over his best-selling novel "Home to Harlem". Du Bois thought the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem appealed only to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness." Du Bois said, "'Home to Harlem' ... for the most part nauseates me, and

title: African-American literature

text: a slave in Edenton, North Carolina and was the first woman to author a slave narrative in the United States. Although her narrative "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was written under the pseudonym "Linda Brent", the autobiography can be traced through a series of letters from Jacobs to various friends and advisors, most importantly to Lydia Maria Child, the eventual editor of incidents. The narrative details Jacobs' struggle for freedom, not only for herself but for her two children. Jacobs' narrative occupies an important place in the history of African-American literature as it discloses through her firsthand

title: African-American literature

text: on both sides of the issue, with novels such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe's representing the abolitionist view of the evils of slavery. Southern white writers produced the "Anti-Tom" novels in response, purporting to truly describe life under slavery, as well as the more severe cruelties suffered by free labor in the North. Examples include "Aunt Phillis's Cabin" (1852) by Mary Henderson Eastman and "The Sword and the Distaff" (1853) by William Gilmore Simms. The slave narratives were integral to African-American literature. Some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their

title: African American Review

text: African American Review The African American Review (AAR) is a scholarly aggregation of essays on African-American literature, theatre, film, the visual arts, and culture; interviews; poetry; fiction; and book reviews. The journal has featured writers and cultural critics including Trudier Harris, Arnold Rampersad, Hortense Spillers, Amiri Baraka, Cyrus Cassells, Rita Dove, Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, and Ishmael Reed. It is the official publication of the Modern Language Association's Division on Black American Literature and Culture. Between 1967 and 1976, the journal appeared under the title Negro American Literature Forum and until 1992 as Black American Literature Forum before obtaining its

title: African-American literature

text: in Washington, D.C., and she counseled President Abraham Lincoln. Truth never learned to read or write but in 1850, she worked with Olive Gilbert, a sympathetic white woman, to write the "Narrative of Sojourner Truth". This narrative was a contribution to both the slave narrative and female spiritual narratives. After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of African-American authors wrote nonfiction works about the condition of African Americans in the United States. Many African-American women wrote about the principles of behavior of life during the period. African-American newspapers were a popular venue for essays, poetry

title: African literature

text: the periods of colonization and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" (1789). In the colonial period, Africans exposed to Western languages began to write in those tongues. In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also known as Ekra-Agiman) of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) published what is probably the first African novel written in English, "Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation". Although the work moves between fiction and political advocacy, its publication and positive reviews in the Western press mark a watershed moment in African literature. During

title: South African literature

text: of the first literary works of note is Olive Schreiner's 1883 "The Story of an African Farm", which can be linked to Van den Heever's "Laat Vrugte" as a "plaasroman". The novel was a revelation in Victorian literature: it is heralded by many as introducing feminism into the novel form. However, Mossman (1990: 41) argues that "The most frequently taught work of South African literature in American classrooms is "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1948) by Alan Paton". A possible reason for this is that it was made into a film starring James Earl Jones, and it depicts a typical racist

title: South African literature

text: South African literature South African literature is the literature of South Africa, which has 11 national languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, Venda, SiSwati, Tsonga, and Ndebele. Elleke Boehmer (cf. Cullhed, 2006: 79) writes, “Nationalism, like patriarchy, favours singleness—one identity, one growth pattern, one birth and blood for all ... [and] will promote specifically unitary or ‘one-eyed’ forms of consciousness.” The first problem any student of South African literature is confronted with, is the diversity of the literary systems. Gerrit Olivier notes, "While it is not unusual to hear academics and politicians talk about a 'South African literature',

title: What Is Literature?

text: who condemn him for supposing literature can be political rather than relegated to purely art. Using the term "committed writing" in relation to the writer who is politically active, Sartre begins his query into the art of writing. The book is divided into four chapters: Sartre makes a significant distinction between prose and poetry; arguing that prose is committed writing, and that only poetry fits into his critics' conception of literature as an object (such as a painting or a sculpture). Sartre maintains that the prose writer utilizes language with deliberation, and in keeping with his early existentialist philosophy that

title: African-American literature

text: It was the first African-American fiction to portray passing, that is, a mixed-race person deciding to identify as white rather than black. It also explored northern racism, in the context of a brutally realistic race riot closely resembling the Philadelphia race riots of 1834 and 1835. The first African-American novel published in the United States was Harriet Wilson's "Our Nig" (1859). It expressed the difficulties of lives of northern free Blacks. "Our Nig" was rediscovered and republished by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in the early 1980s. He labeled the work fiction and argued that it may be the first novel

title: African-American literature

text: been a slave on Long Island until his death. In the 19th century, his speech was later reprinted by several abolitionist groups. William Wells Brown (1814–84) and Victor Séjour (1817–74) produced the earliest works of fiction by African-American writers. Séjour was born free in New Orleans (he was a free person of color) and moved to France at the age of 19. There he published his short story ""Le Mulâtre"" ("The Mulatto") in 1837. It is the first known fiction by an African American, but as it was written in French and published in a French journal, it had apparently

title: What Is Literature?

text: time, because great prose is directly linked to the writer's external economy. Sartre considers it a mistake to divorce literature from the author, and accuses his critics of only appreciating literature after its authors are dead; thus supposedly removed from history, their work can be consumed without being considered "committed", or inherently political or philosophical. Sartre believes that prose communicates ideas, and is an appeal by the individual to feel essential from the world. The prose writer reveals or discloses his experience of the world to others. This contrasts with the poet, who performs acts of perceiving rather than disclosing.

title: African-American English

text: use, but to help students differentiate between settings where its use is and is not appropriate. African-American English African-American English (AAE), also known as Black English in North American linguistics, is the set of English dialects primarily spoken by most black people in North America; most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a more standard English. African-American English shows variation such as in vernacular versus standard forms, rural versus urban characteristics, features specific to singular cities or regions only, and other sociolinguistic criteria. There has also been a significant body of African-American literature

title: African-American English

text: African-American English African-American English (AAE), also known as Black English in North American linguistics, is the set of English dialects primarily spoken by most black people in North America; most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a more standard English. African-American English shows variation such as in vernacular versus standard forms, rural versus urban characteristics, features specific to singular cities or regions only, and other sociolinguistic criteria. There has also been a significant body of African-American literature and oral tradition for centuries. African-American English began as early as the seventeenth century, when the

title: South African literature

text: such as school libraries. South African literature South African literature is the literature of South Africa, which has 11 national languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, Venda, SiSwati, Tsonga, and Ndebele. Elleke Boehmer (cf. Cullhed, 2006: 79) writes, “Nationalism, like patriarchy, favours singleness—one identity, one growth pattern, one birth and blood for all ... [and] will promote specifically unitary or ‘one-eyed’ forms of consciousness.” The first problem any student of South African literature is confronted with, is the diversity of the literary systems. Gerrit Olivier notes, "While it is not unusual to hear academics and politicians talk about

title: African American Communication

text: understandings of intercultural communication or African Americans' communicative experiences. However, he also noted that the book "does include some discussion of a fairly vast amount of literature", and that it had the "potential to instigate debate over the ontology of human difference." Lillie M. Fears in "Mass Communication and Society" wrote that "the authors do accomplish their goal of presenting a cultural analysis of African American communication" and that "the book, replete with information from diverse bodies of literature, is really a reader or guide that can be used by researchers seeking to better understand African American culture and communication

title: African-American literature

text: in early America. Women claimed their authority to preach and write spiritual narratives by citing the Epistle of James, often calling themselves "doers of the word". The study of these women and their spiritual narratives are significant to the understanding of African-American life in the Antebellum North because they offer both historical context and literary tropes. Women who wrote these narratives had a clear knowledge of literary genres and biblical narratives. This contributed to advancing their message about African-American women’s agency and countered the dominant racist and sexist discourse of early American society. Zilpha Elaw was born in 1790 in

title: African literature

text: do not always follow in large numbers. One can also notice the appearance of certain writings that break with the academic style. In addition, the shortage of literary critics can be explored on the continent nowadays. Literary events seem to be very fashionable, including literary awards, some of which can be distinguished by their original concepts. The case of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations is quite illustrative. Inaugurated in 1980 and running till 2009, the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa was presented for the outstanding work of the year published in Africa. African literature African literature is literature

title: African literature

text: this period, African plays written in English began to emerge. Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo of South Africa published the first English-language African play, "" in 1935. In 1962, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o of Kenya wrote the first East African drama, "The Black Hermit", a cautionary tale about "tribalism" (discrimination between African tribes). Among the first pieces of African literature to receive significant worldwide critical acclaim was "Things Fall Apart", by Chinua Achebe. Published in 1958, late in the colonial era, "Things Fall Apart" analyzed the effect of colonialism on traditional African society. African literature in the late colonial period (between the

title: African-American literature

text: white public thought. More recently, some critics accused Alice Walker of unfairly attacking black men in her novel "The Color Purple" (1982). In his updated 1995 introduction to his novel "Oxherding Tale", Charles Johnson criticized Walker's novel for its negative portrayal of African-American males: "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." Walker responded in her essays "The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult" (1998). Robert Hayden, the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, critiqued

title: African-American literature

text: work, such as "When Malindy Sings" (1906), which includes photographs taken by the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and "Joggin' Erlong" (1906) provide revealing glimpses into the lives of rural African Americans of the day. Though Dunbar died young, he was a prolific poet, essayist, novelist (among them "The Uncalled", 1898 and "The Fanatics", 1901) and short story writer. Other African-American writers also rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among these is Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-known short story writer and essayist. Mary Weston Fordham published "Magnolia Leaves" in 1897, a book of poetry on religious,

title: African American Review

text: current title. It is based in St. Louis. The "AAR" has received three American Literary Magazine Awards for Editorial Content, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. African American Review The African American Review (AAR) is a scholarly aggregation of essays on African-American literature, theatre, film, the visual arts, and culture; interviews; poetry; fiction; and book reviews. The journal has featured writers and cultural critics including Trudier Harris, Arnold Rampersad, Hortense Spillers, Amiri Baraka, Cyrus Cassells, Rita Dove,

title: African-American literature

text: and her classic novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" back to the attention of the literary world. In 1982, Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel "The Color Purple". An epistolary novel (a book written in the form of letters), "The Color Purple" tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to marry a man who physically abuses her. The novel was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg. The 1970s also saw African-American books topping the bestseller lists. Among the

title: South African literature

text: be fabricated. It is unrealistic to ever think of South Africa and South African literature as homogenous, now or in the near or distant future, since the only reason it is a country at all is the interference of European colonial powers. This is not a racial issue, but rather has to do with culture, heritage and tradition (and indeed the constitution celebrates diversity). Rather, it seems more sensible to discuss South African literature as literature produced within the national borders by the different cultures and language groups inhabiting these borders. Otherwise the danger is emphasising one literary system at

title: African-American literature

text: because of the balkanization of literature over the last few decades, or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature. 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." People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the

title: African-American literature

text: example the special injustices that black women suffered under slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe was asked to write a foreword for Jacob's book, but refused. Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895) first came to public attention in the North as an orator for abolition and as the author of a moving slave narrative. He eventually became the most prominent African American of his time and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history. Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass eventually escaped and worked for numerous abolitionist causes. He also edited a number of newspapers. Douglass' best-known work is his autobiography,

title: African literature

text: and capitalism, between development and self-reliance and between Africanity and humanity. Other themes in this period include social problems such as corruption, the economic disparities in newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of women. Female writers are today far better represented in published African literature than they were prior to independence. In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence African writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Previously, Algerian-born Albert Camus had been awarded the 1957 prize. There is a lot of literary production in Africa since the beginning of the current decade (2010), even though readers

title: African-American literature

text: a larger flowering of social thought and culture. Numerous Black artists, musicians and others produced classic works in fields from jazz to theater; the renaissance is perhaps best known for the literature that came out of it. Among the most renowned writers of the renaissance is poet Langston Hughes, whose first work was published in "The Brownies' Book" in 1921. He first received attention in the 1922 publication "The Book of American Negro Poetry". Edited by James Weldon Johnson, this anthology featured the work of the period's most talented poets, including Claude McKay, who also published three novels, "Home to

title: African-American culture

text: family friends commonly accorded the status and titles of blood relations. This broader, more African concept of what constitutes family and community, and the deeply rooted respect for elders that is part of African traditional societies, may be the genesis of the common use of the terms like "cousin" (or "cuz"), "aunt", "uncle", "brother", "sister", "Mother", and "Mama" when addressing other African-American people, some of whom may be complete strangers. Immediately after slavery, African-American families struggled to reunite and rebuild what had been taken. As late as 1960, when most African Americans lived under some form of segregation, 78 percent

title: African-American literature

text: him, and published a few years before, was out of print and thus produced the rest of the chapters that constitute "Biography of an American Bondman". Brown was a qualified teacher but she was also extremely active as an advocate against slavery. Although not a US citizen, the Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), was a newspaper publisher, journalist, and activist for Pan Africanism who became well known in the United States. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). He encouraged black nationalism and for people of African ancestry to look favorably upon their ancestral homeland. He

title: American Renaissance (literature)

text: American Renaissance (literature) The American Renaissance period in American literature ran from about 1830 to around the Civil War. A central term in American studies, the American Renaissance was for a while considered synonymous with American Romanticism and was closely associated with Transcendentalism. Scholar F. O. Matthiessen originated the phrase "American Renaissance" in his 1941 book "American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman". The thematic center of the American Renaissance was what Matthiessen called the "devotion" of all five of his writers to "the possibilities of democracy". He presented the American Renaissance texts as "literature

title: African-American culture

text: oral tradition has influenced modern popular culture. Spoken word artists employ the same techniques as African-American preachers including movement, rhythm, and audience participation. Rap music from the 1980s and beyond has been seen as an extension of oral culture. The first major public recognition of African-American culture occurred during the Harlem Renaissance pioneered by Alain Locke. In the 1920s and 1930s, African-American music, literature, and art gained wide notice. Authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen and poets such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen wrote works describing the African-American experience. Jazz, swing, blues and other

title: American literature

text: Dakota, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and her 2012 novel "The Round House", which builds on the same themes, was awarded the 2012 National Book Award. One of the developments in late-20th-century American literature was the increase of literature written by and about ethnic minorities beyond African Americans and Jewish Americans. This development came alongside the growth of the Civil Rights movements and its corollary, the Ethnic Pride movement, which led to the creation of Ethnic Studies programs in most major universities. These programs helped establish the new ethnic literature as worthy objects of academic study, alongside such other

title: African-American literature

text: three years before American independence. Wheatley was not only the first African American to publish a book, but the first to achieve an international reputation as a writer. Born in Senegal, Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery at the age of seven. Brought to Massachusetts, she was owned by a Boston merchant. By the time she was 16, she had mastered her new language of English. Her poetry was praised by many of the leading figures of the American Revolution, including George Washington, who thanked her for a poem written in his honor. Some whites found it hard to

title: African-American culture

text: today. The sculptor Martin Puryear, whose work has been acclaimed for years, was being honored with a 30-year retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in November 2007. Notable contemporary African-American artists include Willie Cole, David Hammons, Eugene J. Martin, Mose Tolliver, Reynold Ruffins, the late William Tolliver, and Kara Walker. African-American literature has its roots in the oral traditions of African slaves in America. The slaves used stories and fables in much the same way as they used music. These stories influenced the earliest African-American writers and poets in the 18th century such

title: African-American literature

text: racial identities are sustained through constitutional or legislative act, and these nurture the "legal fiction" of African-American identity. "Legal Fictions" argues that the social imagination of race is expressly constituted in law and is expressively represented through the imaginative composition of literary fictions. As long as US law specifies a black body as "discrete and insular," it confers a cognizable legal status onto that body. US fictions use that legal identity to construct narratives — from neo-slave narratives to contemporary novels such as Walter Mosley's "The Man in My Basement" – that take constitutional fictions of race and their frames

title: African-American literature

text: role model for all female African-American writers. While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer, author of "Cane", a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural and urban Black life, and Dorothy West, whose novel "The Living is Easy" examined the life of an upper-class Black family. Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen, who in his poems described everyday black life (such as a trip he made to Baltimore that was ruined

title: African-American literature

text: "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave", which was published in 1845. At the time some critics attacked the book, not believing that a black man could have written such an eloquent work. Despite this, the book was an immediate bestseller. Douglass later revised and expanded his autobiography, which was republished as "My Bondage and My Freedom" (1855). In addition to serving in a number of political posts during his life, he also wrote numerous influential articles and essays. Early African-American spiritual autobiographies were published in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Authors of such narratives

title: African-American English

text: the distinct language of some African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coast. Gullah is an English creole: a natural language grammatically independent from English that uses mostly English vocabulary. Most Gullah speakers today probably form a continuum with the English language. A sub-dialect of Gullah is also spoken in Oklahoma and Texas, known as Afro-Seminole Creole. There is a long tradition of representing the speech of African Americans in American literature. A number of researchers have looked into the ways that American authors have depicted the speech of black characters, investigating how black identity is established and how

title: African-American studies

text: as Caribbean, African, and Afro-European) literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines such as: sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. And, increasingly, African American Studies departments are hiring and partnering with STEM scholars. Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African-American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America", 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo

title: African-American art

text: one of the most important times in African-American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African-American Studies programs within universities. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X. Among the well-known writers who were involved with the movement are Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Hoyt W. Fuller, and Rosa Guy. The Black Arts Movements of the 1960s signaled one of the greatest advancements of African American visual art in history, black women artists were underrepresented at the onset of the movement. These

title: African-American neighborhood

text: history that, until recent decades was primarily preserved through oral traditions. Major movements in literature, music, and the arts have their roots in African American neighborhoods: Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Soul, Rap, House, Hip hop, Rock 'n' roll and others. Cities were the places where young artists could meet and study with other artists and receive recognition, as did Jacob Lawrence when his "Migration Series" was featured by the Museum of Modern Art in New York when he was still in his 20s. African American neighborhoods have also generated African American theater and numerous dance companies in a variety of styles.

title: African-American literature

text: North Carolina. If her work was written in 1853, it would be the first African-American novel written in the United States. The novel was published in 2002 with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The work was never published during Crafts' lifetime. Some suggest that she did not have entry into the publishing world. The novel has been described as a style between slave narratives and the sentimental novel. In her novel, Crafts went beyond the genre of the slave narrative. There is some evidence that she read in the library of her master and was influenced by those

title: African literature

text: at the famous University of Timbuktu. The material covers a wide array of topics, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics, and philosophy. Swahili literature similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic teachings but developed under indigenous circumstances. One of the most renowned and earliest pieces of Swahili literature being "Utendi wa Tambuka" or "The Story of Tambuka". In Islamic times, North Africans such as Ibn Khaldun attained great distinction within Arabic literature. Medieval north Africa boasted universities such as those of Fes and Cairo, with copious amounts of literature to supplement them. The African works best known in the West from

title: What Happened to Burger's Daughter or How South African Censorship Works

text: What Happened to Burger's Daughter or How South African Censorship Works What Happened to Burger's Daughter or How South African Censorship Works is a 1980 collection of essays by South African novelist Nadine Gordimer and others. The book is about the South African government's banning and subsequent unbanning of Gordimer's 1979 novel "Burger's Daughter". The book was published in Johannesburg by Taurus Publications, a small underground publishing house established in the late-1970s to print anti-apartheid literature and other material South African publishers would avoid for fear of censorship. Its publications were generally distributed privately or sent to bookshops to be

title: African literature

text: increased literacy since most African nations gained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works appearing in Western academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 20th century. African writers in this period wrote both in Western languages (notably English, French, and Portuguese) and in traditional African languages such as Hausa. Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash between Africa's past and present, between tradition and modernity, between indigenous and foreign, between individualism and community, between socialism

title: African-American literature

text: Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing", edited by LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal in 1968; "The Negro Caravan", co-edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee in 1969; and "We Speak As Liberators: Young Black Poets - An Anthology", edited by Oorde Coombs and published in 1970. Toni Morrison, meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors when she worked as an editor for Random House in the 1960s and '70s, where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the

title: African-American literature

text: America to free parents. She was a preacher for five years in England without the support of a denomination. She published her "Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travel and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour" in 1846, while still living in England. Her narrative was meant to be an account of her spiritual experience. Yet some critics argue that her work was also meant to be a literary contribution. Elaw aligns herself in a literary tradition of respectable women of her time who were trying to combat the immoral literature of the time. Maria

title: South African literature

text: for the people living within them. Therefore: in a history of South African literature, do we include all Tswana writers, or only the ones with South African citizenship? Chapman bypasses this problem by including "Southern" African literatures. The second problem with the African languages is accessibility, because since the African languages are regional languages, none of them can claim the readership on a national scale comparable to Afrikaans and English. Sotho, for instance, while transgressing the national borders of the RSA, is on the other hand mainly spoken in the Free State, and bears a great amount of relation to

title: African American Beauty

text: African American Beauty Beauty is a perceived characteristic of an animal, idea, object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. Many people define beauty as something that is subjective, being that it is in the "eye of the beholder" to see what he or she thinks is actually beautiful. This "eye" is seen in many different cultures with each having a different preference. This subjective can be seen throughout history, especially in the African-American community. With the presence of oppression in the past, African-American cultural beauty has bend mended and redefined in many ways. Even

title: Arab American literature

text: social exclusion, due to a commonly-held belief that ‘whiteness’ was inherently synonymous to ‘Christian’ and ‘European’; a struggle that became a prominent theme in Arab American literature. This first group established what is known as the "Mahjar" period of Arab-American literature. The second wave introduced many Muslims to the Arab-American scene after the second World War, among them Palestinian refugees displaced following the Arab-Israeli War. As opposed to the Christian Arabs, this group had received education, were established in their vocations, and were knowledgeable about the patriotic ideals that had characterized the last years of Arab politics. Thus, Arab Americans

title: South African literature

text: of white writing.” The Afrikaans literary system, in contrast to the African languages, engages with European artistic movements such as Symbolism, expressionism, modernism, post-modernism, Dadaism and the like, offering literature familiar to a European or American audience. Some of the early names include Leipoldt and Langenhoven, who wrote the national anthem (""Die Stem""). Early poetry often deal with the Anglo-Boer War, and it is only in the 1930s that poetry reaches a significant literary standard. N. P. van Wyk Louw is the vanguard of the new movement, called "Dertigers", along with his brother WEG Louw, and Elisabeth Eybers, although they

title: African-American literature

text: War, the literature primarily consisted of memoirs by people who had escaped from slavery; the genre of slave narratives included accounts of life under slavery and the path of justice and redemption to freedom. There was an early distinction between the literature of freed slaves and the literature of free blacks born in the North. Free blacks expressed their oppression in a different narrative form. Free blacks in the North often spoke out against slavery and racial injustices by using the spiritual narrative. The spiritual addressed many of the same themes of slave narratives, but has been largely ignored in

title: African-American literature

text: first to do so was "" by Alex Haley. A fictionalized account of Haley's family history—beginning with the kidnapping of his ancestor Kunta Kinte in Gambia through his life as a slave in the United States— "Roots" won the Pulitzer Prize and became a popular television miniseries. Haley also wrote "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" in 1965. Other important writers in recent years include literary fiction writers Gayl Jones, Rasheed Clark, Ishmael Reed, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Kenan, and John Edgar Wideman. African-American poets have also garnered attention. Maya Angelou read a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration, Rita Dove won a

title: African-American literature

text: influential that it secured his place in literary history. After Ellison's death in 1994, a second novel, "Juneteenth" (1999), was pieced together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript was published as "Three Days Before the Shooting" (2010). The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most notably Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry, "Annie Allen". Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the 1950s

title: African-American literature

text: wrote a number of essays published as editorials in the UNIA house organ, the "Negro World" newspaper. Some of his lecture material and other writings were compiled and published as nonfiction books by his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey as the "Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans" (1924) and "More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey" (1977). Paul Laurence Dunbar, who often wrote in the rural, black dialect of the day, was the first African-American poet to gain national prominence. His first book of poetry, "Oak and Ivy", was published in 1893. Much of Dunbar's

title: African-American literature

text: the Methodist Church. Nancy Prince was born in 1799, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was of African and Native American descent. She turned to religion at the age of 16 in an attempt to find comfort from the trials of her life. She married Nero Prince and traveled extensively in the West Indies and Russia. She became a missionary and in 1841 she tried to raise funds for missionary work in the West Indies, publishing a pamphlet entitled "The West Indies: Being a Description of the Islands, Progress of Christianity, Education, and Liberty Among the Colored Population Generally". Later, in 1850,

title: African-American literature

text: be the first novel written by an African American. It was based on the persistent rumor that president Thomas Jefferson had fathered a mixed-race daughter with his slave Sally Hemings. (In the late 20th century, DNA testing affirmed for most historians that Jefferson was the father of six children with Hemings; four survived to adulthood and he gave all their freedom.) The novel was first published in England, where Brown was living for several years. Frank J. Webb’s 1857 novel, "The Garies and Their Friends", was also published in England, with prefaces by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry, Lord Brougham.

title: American literature

text: the administrative language from Dutch to English. From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the American colonies. This is a small number compared to the output of the printers in London at the time. London printers published materials written by New England authors, so the body of American literature was larger than what was published in North America. However, printing was established in the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England. In England, restrictive laws had long confined printing to four locations, where the government could monitor

title: African-American culture

text: brought this complex religious dynamic within their culture to America. This fusion of traditional African beliefs with Christianity provided a common place for those practicing religion in Africa and America. After emancipation, unique African-American traditions continued to flourish, as distinctive traditions or radical innovations in music, art, literature, religion, cuisine, and other fields. 20th-century sociologists, such as Gunnar Myrdal, believed that African Americans had lost most of their cultural ties with Africa. But, anthropological field research by Melville Herskovits and others demonstrated that there has been a continuum of African traditions among Africans of the diaspora. The greatest influence of