" It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley."
The role that race played in the works of realist authors.
Historical context: The social and political climate of the time period in which Realism and Race emerged, including the abolitionist movement, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era.
Racial inequality: The realities of racial discrimination and oppression in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Literary conventions of Realism: The characteristics of Realism as a literary movement, including its focus on the unadorned depiction of everyday life and its rejection of romanticism.
The impact of scientific theories: The influence of social Darwinism and other scientific theories on perceptions of race and racial hierarchies in American society.
Regionalism: The role of geography and regionalism in shaping perceptions of race and ethnicity.
Gender roles: The ways in which gender roles intersect with race and class in Realist literature.
Psychological realism: The importance of psychological realism in portraying complex human experiences and the impact of social structures on individual consciousness.
Characterization: How Realist writers use characterization to explore the complexities and contradictions of human behavior.
Naturalism: The links between Realism and Naturalism as literary movements, including the emphasis on determinism and the influence of the environment on human behavior.
The Harlem Renaissance: The literary and artistic movement that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, which marked a significant development in African American artistic and cultural expression.
Naturalism: This type of realism emphasizes the influence of a person's surroundings, environment, and hereditary factors on their lives. Naturalistic writers tend to portray characters as victims of circumstance.
Regionalism: This type of realism focuses on the specific cultural, social, and economic aspects of a particular region. Regionalist writers depict characters who are deeply connected to their regions, highlighting the distinctiveness of each region.
Psychological Realism: This type of realism is concerned with the inner workings of the mind and how it affects emotions and behavior. Psychological realists depict characters who are complex and multi-dimensional, and who may experience inner conflicts and struggles.
Social Realism: This type of realism aims to expose social injustices and inequalities in society, particularly related to class, race or gender. Social realists often feature working-class characters who face social and economic difficulties.
Racial Realism: This type of realism deals with race relations and the experiences of people of color. Features characters who face issues related to their race, such as discrimination, racism, or prejudice.
Magical Realism: This type of realism features elements of the supernatural or magical within realistic settings. Often used to explore cultural or political themes, characters or events may have magical or surreal qualities.
Hyperrealism: This type of realism focuses on the minutiae of everyday life, often depicting mundane or ordinary characters going through the motions of day-to-day existence.
"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."