" It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley."
Analysis of literature produced by African American writers, examining the cultural and historical impact of race and identity.
Slavery and the Slave Narrative: Examining the slave narrative and exploring the impact of slavery on African American literature.
Harlem Renaissance: Exploring the literary, artistic, and cultural movement that emerged from Harlem, New York in the 1920s and 1930s.
Civil Rights Movement: Analyzing the intersection of African American literature and the Civil Rights Movement, including the works of authors such as James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.
Black Feminism: Examining the unique experiences of African American women and the ways in which their literature has contributed to the feminist movement.
Contemporary African American Literature: Exploring modern African American literature, including the works of contemporary authors such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison.
Non-Fiction African American Literature: Analyzing the impact of non-fiction works such as slave narratives, biographies, and essays on African American literature.
Southern Gothic Literature: Examining the unique genre of Southern Gothic literature and its prevalence in African American literature.
Afrofuturism: Exploring the genre of Afrofuturism and its prominence in African American literature, art, and music.
Religion and Spirituality: Analyzing the role of religion and spirituality in African American literature.
Hip-Hop Literature: Exploring the intersection of hip-hop culture and literature in African American works.
Slave Narratives: Slave Narratives are a venerable genre of African American literature which records the experiences of Africans kidnapped from their family members, descendants, and captured interests from the continent of Africa, brought against their will to work on the plantations of North and South America under bondage and how they struggled to attain their freedom.
Harlem Renaissance Literature: Harlem Renaissance Literature is a type of African American Literature that evolved during the period between 1917-1935 centered in the Harlem borough of New York City. This type of literature is famous for its experimentation and formal innovations that emphasize themes of identity, race, and culture, as well as folklore and folk tradition.
Black Feminist Literature: Black Feminist Literature is a genre of African American Literature that offers stories and perspectives that center on the experiences of African American women who suffer from economic hardships, racism and sexism, and class discrimination.
Afrofuturism: Afrofuturism is a type of African American Literature that combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and the historical with the African cosmological traditions. It explores what could have been, and what could be in a world where black people have economic, cultural and political sovereignty.
Civil Rights Literature: Civil rights literature is a type of African American Literature that narrates the experiences of the Civil Rights Movement. Many Civil Rights Works of African American Literature highlight the struggle of people of color to fight against systemic racism and to bring about a more equitable and just society.
Hip hop literature: Hip Hop Literature is a type of African American Literature that brings together elements of hip hop culture with conventional literary techniques. It includes lyrical lines and rhymes from hip-hop music, Gangsta Rap, R&B, and other musical styles.
Contemporary African American literature: Contemporary African American literature includes a variety of genres and themes orally and in print. It includes stories and experiences of people of color, exploring issues of identity, culture, race, and the human condition.
"Before the high point of enslaved people 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 came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands."
"The Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993."
"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."
"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."
"During the Civil Rights Movement, authors such as Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation and black nationalism."
"Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker, which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Beloved by Toni Morrison."
"In broad terms, African-American literature can be defined as writings by people of African descent living in the United States."
"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."
"African American literature explores the issues of freedom and equality long denied to Blacks in the United States, along with further themes such as African-American culture, racism, religion, enslavement, a sense of home, segregation, migration, feminism, and more."
"African-American literature presents experience from an African-American point of view."
"Thus, an early theme of African-American literature was, like other American writings, what it meant to be a citizen in post-Revolutionary America."
"all African-American literary 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.'"
"They often tried to exercise their political and social autonomy in the face of resistance from the white public."
"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."
"writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands."