african american literature

African American Literature 1970 - PresentLit 325Cambridge CollegeChristina J. BrownellSenior Instructor

The Second Awakening

Impact of African American artistic production on world culture had never been greater

Work in film and television, music, and painting made African American artists household names

Never before had so much distinguished writing been produced by black Americans

Film and Television

James Earl Jones Eddie Murphy Denzel Washington Whoopi Goldberg Spike Lee Will Smith

Recording artists

Michael Jackson Ray Charles Stevie Wonder Whitney Houston Marvin Gaye Tina Turner

Artists and Painters

Romare Beardon Jacob Lawrence Faith Ringgold

Writers

Maya Angelou Toni Morrison Ernest J. Gaines Alice Walker Octavia Butler Jamaica Kincaid Toni Cade Bambera Rita Dove Walter Mosley Edwidge Danticat

The Renaissance of African American Women’s Writing “The Black Woman” - Anthology edited by

Toni Cade Bambara showcased efforts by black women to find their place in American literature

Toni Morrison and Alice Walker published first novels – The Bluest Eye and The Third Life of Grange Copeland in 1970

Explored themes of family violence, sexual oppression and abuse, racism, poverty

Private vs. Public Trauma Writings such as Maya Angelou’s

autobiographical description of childhood rape, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, did not focus on traumatic encounters between blacks and whites, but on violent intimate relationships

Black women writers were accused of bashing black men, and being disloyal to race

Maya Angelou (1928 - ) Poet, educator, historian, best-selling

author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas

With the guidance of her friend, James Baldwin, she wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in 1970

President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993, and her reading of "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world.

Alice Walker (1944 - ) Poet, short story writer,

novelist, essayist, anthologist, teacher, editor, publisher, and activist

Born in Georgia, a self-described “daughter of the rural peasantry”

Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple

“What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother’s day?”

Alice Walker explored this theme in her essay, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”

Generations of black women artists released their creativity in song, quilt- making, baking, and gardening

The creative will of African American women “Walker wants readers to consider how the will to artistically

create is linked to the will to survive, especially for those in society who have historically been denied any and all expressions of freedom, including creativity.  It is within this link between survival and creativity that Walker opens up a new way in which to think about artistry, specifically the artistry of African American women, by considering the smallest efforts at preserving momentary “beauties” as herculean efforts at maintaining humanity.  Under her perspective, survival itself becomes an act of artistry.”

~Barbara Smith “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism

Haunting Memoirs, Powerful Poetry

This period saw the resurgence of memoir as a prominent genre, reminiscent of traditional African American storytelling

Poetry “slams” became popular in clubs, campuses, and television

Performance poetry – meant to be heard rather than read

“Oprah’s Book Club” In 1996, Oprah Winfrey

established a book club for television audiences, featuring fiction by Toni Morrison, Pearl Cleage, Terry McMillan and other emerging writers

These books sold in the millions, and the number of novels published by African Americans increased immensely

Across the nation, readers organized book clubs to discuss what they were reading

“Black Texts Talk to other Black Texts” Contemporary writers acknowledge the

influence of traditional writing in their own work

Patterns of shared themes reflected in use of established texts “repeated with a black difference”

Identity and Literature Traditional African American literary study

has always been interdisciplinary- combining art, music, film, religion, history, and folklore

Today’s black popular culture is strongly influenced through interaction with film, video, and mass produced music

African American literary and cultural scholarship is now firmly grounded in the merging of these two influences

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo

sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for

life that gnaws in us all”

~ Richard Wright