Introduction

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The introduction analyzes how, when, and in what forms those of African descent intervened in early American literature and initiated an African American literary tradition. The lens of mediation obscures, or refracts, the presence of Black Africans in early American literature, but this reader emphasizes their roles as literary figures and human agents whose actions in the material world shaped their textual presence. Recognizing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Black Africans as authors requires recognizing that authorship was and is a collaborative social process of textual production. The texts that Black Africans in colonial North America consumed and helped to produce are most frequently found in ecclesiastical or legal records, in letters or diaries, and in the newspaper. Recovering these texts from the archive invites students of early American literature to engage more fully with questions about the consciousness and subjectivity of Black Africans struggling to survive—and thrive—in colonial North America.