A frican A merican Novel

Abstract

The early formation of the African American novel was a simultaneously social and literary process that drew from, and fed into, the struggle against slavery and segregation. The relationship between politics and art has been a topical issue within this literary tradition ever since, generating intense and sophisticated discussions among African American novelists and their readers about the social responsibility of the artist and the intrinsic value of art. In the twentieth century and beyond, African American novels have frequently addressed such themes as racial tensions and conflicts in various regions of the U.S., the communal and individual consequences of the early twentieth‐century Great Migration of African Americans from the Southern countryside to Northern cities, black suffering and black achievement, the African American struggle for full human and civil rights and socio‐economic equality, African American women's concerns, and the profoundly consequential ways in which race , class , and gender intersect in American society. Since its known inception in 1853, when Clotel; or, the President's Daughter by William Wells Brown first appeared in print, the African American novel has evolved into a multi‐faceted literary tradition that is both socially aware and artistically complex and diverse.