“Keep Comin’ On:” Sterling Brown’s Enduring Challenges to African American Audiences

Abstract

This paper examines the significance of the challenge that Sterling Brown's (1930) essay "Our Literary Audience" posed to African American readers to be "better": more open-minded, more confident, more self-reflective, and more willing to let go of limiting views of African American poetry's "appropriate" subjects, levels of diction, and forms of poetry. It explores where Brown's theories related to these matters intersect with and diverge from those of his contemporaries, including Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. Finally, it considers the lasting impact of Brown's challenge on subsequent generations of African American writers and scholars.