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Definition
Long overlooked, the rich tradition of oral and written African-American literature had its beginnings in the songs, spirituals, and folktales of slaves working in the fields. By the late 18th century, a few slaves and former slaves, given the opportunity to read and write (an opportunity denied by law in many Southern states), published poetry. Notable among these were Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, both slaves whose poems reflect a strong religious tone. In the early years of the 19th century a number of slaves, aided and encouraged by abolitionists, published autobiographical accounts of their experiences as slaves. These slave narratives played a significant role in the anti-slavery movement that preceded the Civil War. In 1859, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was the first novel by an African-American writer to be published in the United States. In the years following the Civil War, African-American literature began to reflect the frustrations and fears of a people who in large part continued to suffer from widespread discrimination and segregation. The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the prose of Charles Chesnutt touch upon these themes, as do autobiographical works such as Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery (1901) and James Weldon Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912).In the 1920s, the vast migration from the rural South to the urban North in the years leading up to and following World War I resulted in the Harlem Renaissance, the term for the period of outstanding literary activity centered in the Harlem section of New York City. During this period, Harlem served as a magnet for talented young black artists, writers, and musicians. Among the most memorable are the poets Langston Hughes (The Weary Blues, 1926), and Countee Cullen (The Black Christ, 1929), and the novelists Jean Toomer (Cane, 1923), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem, 1928), Arna Bontemps (God Sends Sunday, 1931), and Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937). Another distinguishing feature of these writers was their incorporation of the rhythms and themes of blues and jazz.In the period preceding the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, African-American literature was dominated by three novelists: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin. Wright's Native Son (1940), Ellison's The Invisible Man (1952), and Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) matched passion with eloquence and literary skill in their depictions of the African-American experience. In the wake of the Civil Rights movement a new generation of writers emerged, establishing in unequivocal fashion the centrality of the African-American experience in the consciousness of all Americans. In the hands of writers such as Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969), Ishmael Reed (Mumbo Jumbo, 1972), Alice Walker (The Color Purple, 1982), the playwright August Wilson (Fences, 1987), and the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987), African-American literature has moved out of the ghetto onto the national stage.
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