African American Writers Research Articles

Botanical imaginary of indigeneity and rhizomatic sustainability in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

Abstract This article explores a botanical imaginary in A Mercy (2008), the ninth narrative by African American writer and critic Toni Morrison. Arguably, A Mercy features the botanical design of the rhizome to activate a revisionary model of sustainability. In particular, the narrative’s imaginary suggests a synergy that liberates the restrictive root of Indigeneity as a precondition to reconcile a tension of rigid binaries with the customary routes that lead to closure. This reconciliation will enunciate a radical break with the limited sustainability paradigms that are still constitutive of colonial modernity. Arguably, A Mercy features a transgressive array of journeys whose rhizomatic root of biodiversity transcends what is cultivated in the colonial American soil and mobilizes symbiotic and liberatory sustainability for humans and non-humans. Deleuze and Guattari’s principles of the “rhizome” philosophy contribute a main theoretical framework for construing the narrative’s botanical composition that suspends the inequitable realization of sustainability.

State Violence, Divine Abuse

Abstract It is tempting to attribute state violence to the imposition of a normative order, and it is tempting to construct an opposition between sanctifying that order and messianic interruptions of that order. This framework supposes that God, and the surrounding language of the sacred, follows the logic of rule, imposing a set of expectations on what is to be done enforced by threat of punishment. But what if we centre the story of Job in our account of the divine and with it an image of God as abuser rather than ruler, that is, God as only imposing the phantom of norms, norms that shift or evaporate as soon as they are imposed, never fulfilling a promise of reward or threat of punishment as expected? I explore this possibility through brief encounters with two texts on the racial violence of the state, one by Aimé Césaire and the other by the contemporary Black American writer Kiese Laymon.

Her Fierce Faith: Contextualizing Ellen Tarry as a Catholic Convert and Foremother of Black Lives Matter Activism

Abstract: This article contextualizes the timely significance of Ellen Tarry as an African American teacher, writer, activist, and Catholic convert who engaged in interracial justice before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement. It similarly presents her as a foremother of present-day Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism. Locating her divergences from other Black writers across time, this analysis features the distinctive admixture of secular and sacred values pervading her writings and work as a Harlem Renaissance journalist, autobiographer, and pioneering author of picture books for Black children and youth that promoted collaborative Catholic social action on behalf of her race.

THE INFLUENCE OF JAZZ AND BLUES ON AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

This research paper explores the profound influence of jazz and blues on African American literature, highlighting their role in shaping themes, narrative techniques, and cultural expressions. Jazz and blues, with origins rooted in African traditions and their evolution in the United States, serve as cultural symbols representing the resilience, creativity, and spirit of the African American community. The Harlem Renaissance marked a significant intersection of music and literature, with key figures such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison incorporating musical elements into their works to explore themes of identity, struggle, resilience, and community.Langston Hughes' poetry, notably "The Weary Blues," captures the rhythmic and emotional depth of blues, while Zora Neale Hurston’s novels, including "Their Eyes Were Watching God," integrate musical elements and African American folklore. Ralph Ellison’s "Invisible Man" employs jazz influences to explore themes of identity and cultural expression. These works demonstrate how jazz and blues have shaped the narrative structures and thematic depth of African American literature.Contemporary African American writers continue this tradition, drawing on jazz and blues to enhance their storytelling. Toni Morrison’s "Jazz" and Jesmyn Ward’s "Sing, Unburied, Sing" exemplify the ongoing influence of these musical genres, using them to deals complex themes and preserve cultural narratives.The paper concludes that the interconnectedness of music and literature in African American culture is a testament to the community's rich artistic heritage. Jazz and blues are integral to the African American narrative, providing a soundtrack to the community’s experiences and enhancing the emotional and cultural depth of their literature. This relationship celebrates the past and inspires future generations, ensuring the enduring legacy of jazz and blues in African American literary tradition.

XVIAmerican Literature: The Twentieth Century

Abstract This chapter has nine sections: 1. Poetry; 2. Fiction 1900–1945; 3. Fiction since 1945; 4. Genre Fiction; 5. Drama; 6. Comics; 7. African American Writing; 8. Native Writing; 9. Latino/a, Asian American, and General Ethnic Writing. Section 1 is by James Gifford; section 2 will resume next year; section 3 will resume next year; section 4 is by James Gifford; section 5 will resume next year; section 6(a) is by Anna Peppard; section 6(b) is by Orion Ussner Kidder; section 7 is by Adam Rudder; section 8 will resume next year; section 9 is by Antonio Velásquez. Very few titles were received for 2022 last year. This year includes more late arrivals than is typical.

Africa's Portrayal in African-American Writing

The depiction of Africa in African-American literature constitutes a nuanced and dynamic exploration, unveiling the intricate rapport between African-American writers and the African continent. Over centuries, Africa's portrayal has assumed myriad forms, serving as a symbolic homeland, a locus of struggle, and a wellspring of cultural inspiration. Imbued within these representations is a profound quest for identity and a yearning for belonging. Prestigious African-American authors, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Maya Angelou, adeptly interlace African culture, folklore, and history into the tapestry of their works. In so doing, they delve into themes of heritage, resilience, and cultural pride, presenting Africa not merely as a nostalgic ideal but as a vibrant tapestry of traditions intricately shaping the African-American experience. This representation transcends sentimentality, offering a palpable connection to ancestral roots and cultural heritage. Yet, the portrayal of Africa in African-American literature transcends idyllic visions of a distant homeland. Renowned authors such as Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie confront the harsh realities of colonization, slavery, and oppression in their narratives. In their hands, Africa becomes a complex terrain of struggle and resistance, where characters grapple with the enduring legacies of colonialism and the intricate dynamics of post-colonial identity. The representation of Africa in African-American literature reflects broader historical and political dynamics. During the Harlem Renaissance, there was a surge of interest in Pan-Africanism, as African-American writers actively sought connections with counterparts on the continent in the fight against racism and imperialism. This period witnessed an embrace of African art, literature, and culture, as writers sought to reclaim and celebrate their African heritage.

The problem of identification in Ch. N. Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun”

The article deals with the novel “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006) by the African-American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The writer shows different components of the identification process in the modern multicultural world. The main historical event of the novel is the Civil War of 1967-1970, which took place due to political and ethnic struggle. It was caused by numerous attempts by the southeastern provinces of Nigeria to secede and form the Republic of Biafra. The novel shows how the interethnic conflict between the Hausa and Igbo peoples, and later the war, influence not only the fate of the characters, but also the peculiarities of their identification process. This process is represented by three components: ethnic, national and gender. Kainene and Odenigbo, whose ethnicity is formed and recognized with the emergence of a new republic, feel, first, not as Nigerians, but as Igbos. Therefore, they take an active part in the Civil War. British interest in the war is shown through the characters of Susan and Richard who demonstrate typical colonial attitudes towards Africans. However, Richard’s interest in African culture contributes to the process of realizing the ethnic identity of Ugwu who chooses a member of the African community for his role model. Olanna, representing a new generation of Nigerian women, destroys the traditional forms of gender relations in Nigerian reality.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s universal history in Black Folk Then and Now (1939)

Abstract While debates about ‘Eurocentric’ versus ‘Afrocentric’ theories of history have driven previous studies of Du Bois’s writings on ancient Africa, I read his account of African antiquity in Black Folk Then and Now in the context of the moral and educational projects articulated within both Greco-Roman and African American historiography. I pay special attention to conventional ancient views of history that Diodorus expresses in his Bibliotheke, which treats history as a source of morally instructive examples and ‘universal history’ as especially educational because it synthesizes different historical narratives: these concepts of history were broadly influential into the nineteenth century, including among African American writers. An ancient model of universal history allows Du Bois to tell the story of a distinct human community and nevertheless insist on the unity of peoples, a principle which is central to his philosophy of race and of human history writ large.

Identity Politics as Lingua Franca?

Abstract Although identity politics dates back to the 1960 s, it has acquired a new urgency since the ascendance of Black Lives Matter in the late 2010 s. And while identity politics, as a critical framework, was developed in the United States, its rhetoric has since been taken up in much of the rest of the world. This article argues that the terminology of US-style identity politics is especially ill-suited to Germany, a country in which race does not exist as a legal category, and discrimination and inequality do not revolve around a Black/white axis. It points out, moreover, that the German appropriation of certain words and concepts – such as diversity, political correctness, cancel culture, woke, intersectionality, and others – clashes both with their usage and meaning in the US and with the demographic changes that have transformed post-Second World War German culture. In order to illustrate this clash, this article compares Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop (2019) with Yael Ronen’s Slippery Slope (2021), a critically acclaimed musical performed in English at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater. It critiques Slippery Slope’s appropriation of the buzzwords of identity politics and notes with regret that German theatres are ill-equipped to perform the plays of the most important playwrights working in the US today, a new generation of African American writers, including Jackson, whose work is steeped in the performance traditions of Black American cultures.

Gender, Borders and Boundaries in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

The concept of borders and boundaries is one of the important themes in English literature. It might refer to national borders or divisions within countries or symbolize physical barriers, societal divisions or personal limitations. Metaphorically, borders and boundaries might mean the boundaries based on caste, color, creed or sex or represent expectations and prejudices or search for selfhood and identity. Writers from the marginalized communities take up the themes of construction of identity in their writing. Similarly, African-American writers, while addressing the issues of race, gender and class, illustrate their struggle and experiences. Their own lives serve as an inspiration to write about the trauma of displacement and slavery. The English novel in the 18th and 19th century largely focused on women primarily confined to the roles of wife, mother and homemaker. However, some novelists such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Aphra Behn challenged gender stereotypes and advocated for greater female autonomy and intellectual freedom. Similarly, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte etc. questioned the prevailing attitudes and provided a fresh perspective on gender issues. Whereas Jane Austen celebrates intelligent and strong-willed female characters who resist societal pressures, Gaskell delves into the lives of working-class women and those on the margins of society. Similarly, Hardy chooses the sub-title A Pure Woman for his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles in order to question the Victorian norms. The paper discusses Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and analyses how the novel embodies rebellion against societal constraints by presenting an unconventional heroine who is able to move beyond boundaries and carve her path amid restrictions imposed by society in which she lives.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Autobiographical Legacy: Impact on African American Literature and Civil Rights

This research paper explores the autobiographical legacy of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, commonly known as W.E.B. Du Bois, and its profound influence on African American literature and the Civil Rights Movement. Du Bois, a prominent African American scholar, writer, and civil rights activist, penned a series of autobiographical works that not only documented his own life experiences but also played a pivotal role in shaping the narrative of the African American struggle for civil rights and equality. This paper examines Du Bois' autobiographical writings, including "The Souls of Black Folk," "Dusk of Dawn," and "The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois," and their impact on the broader African American literary tradition and the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. By analyzing Du Bois' life and his written accounts, this paper illustrates how his autobiographical legacy contributed to the intellectual and social fabric of African American history.

The Construction of Female Identity in Beloved from the Perspective of Post-Colonialism

Beloved is one of the historical trilogy by the African-American writer Toni Morrison. This paper interprets the process of the three black women's self-consciousness awakening and identity construction in Beloved from the perspective of post-colonialism by Homi K. Bhabha. Morrison depicts the painful revealing of the disremembered past of black people in Beloved. Through the depiction of Sethe as well as other ex-slaves, the novel expresses that only by confronting ghosts and rediscovering history can the characters be able to break down their constructed otherness, and embark on the obtaining of a subjective position.

African American’s Identification in Early Civil Rights Movement

Lorraine Hansberry is a prestigious African American writer who creates a classical work The raisin in the sun. Under the backdrop of early Civil Rights Movement, the play centers on male protagonist Walter and three other family female members’ identification when living in that white-dominated community. Their identification represents in two ways: merging into the mainstream society and returning to the ancestral culture or even district. The key to identity is one’s value and social behavior. It is imperative and indispensable for one to find his or her self-value in accordance with personal and social backdrop and experience.

Racial Feudalism

Recent scholarship has examined Alexis de Tocqueville's underexplored assertion that American racial stratification functioned as an extension of European feudalism. However, Tocqueville was not alone in his insights. At least a half-dozen nineteenth-century African American writers and thinkers, including Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria Stewart, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, and especially Hosea Easton, have also described America's racial hierarchy as a continuation of antecedent European feudal social structures. Not only do their perspectives on what I call racial feudalism in America lend credence to Tocqueville's hypothesis that the afterlife of medieval social frameworks continued to persist in the post-Enlightenment United States, but also black Americans establish a distinctive body of knowledge that must be read alongside Tocqueville to render a more complete understanding of antebellum US social hierarchy.

Difference And becoming in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar

Today’s Postmodern world finds itself in a crisis of how to address its diversity as we move forward in our fight for gender and racial equality. Alice Walker is an African American writer whose fiction is very illuminating in terms of embracing the differences within each and every one of us. Her characters represent an invitation for people to look outside of the realm of their familiar, to experiment with the unfamiliar and to absorb and cherish the differences in us by immersing in processes of becoming and growth. Walker’s transgressive characters project a variety of experiences that speak against the homogenizing nature of essentialism. They embody the postmodern philosophy of becoming, multiplicity, fluidity and creativity which I intend to unravel through a pluralistic analysis that aims to overcome the dangers of fixed identities by relying on Process philosophy and Deleuzian ontology of difference.

The Representation of Earlier African American Vernacular English by Charles W. Chesnutt

This article examines the validity of regional speech represented in the writings of an African American short story writer, essayist, lawyer, and stenographer Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) with a corpus of dialogues extracted from his literary works (approximately 40,000 words). As a touchstone for exploring its accuracy, the Atlas data from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the surrounding regions in Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valley− a region where the author spent his youth and his stories are set−are compared with the speech of his African American characters. The result reveals that the Atlas records and Chesnutt’s dialogues share many expressions in their regional lexicons ranging from single words to phrases. Considering the difficulty of recording all the synonyms and semantically related words from the same informant during the interview, the overall agreement between the two provides further evidence that as an African American writer who spent his formative years in a rural community in North Carolina, Chesnutt’s literary dialect offers a glimpse of earlier AAVE spoken in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, this article touches on Chesnutt’s racial identity and what led him to enter the literary world as it is pertinent to his linguistic background and the motive behind the use of literary dialect.

Sociological and Psychological Traits of Human Bonding to Reflected in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Man is a social animal and depends on others to fulfil his needs. Hence it becomes imperative that he maintains a proper relationship with others. It is indeed true that relationships cannot be created overnight. For building a relationship, one should have qualities like kindness, adaptability, understanding, tolerance, patience, and the like. Maintaining the relationship that is built is yet another challenging task. Since literature is a reflection of human life, many literary works focus on human bonding and the need and importance of maintaining a relationship through the portrayal of various characters. Purple Hibiscus is one such novel written by the African American writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, considered one of the 100 ‘Most Influential People.’ The novel brings out various aspects of human bonding and relationship through the incidents that occur in day-to-day lives. The present paper intends to analyse the struggles faced by the characters involved in different kinds of relationship and their realising the need of connectedness in the novel, Purple Hibiscus.

Political Concerns in Langston Hughes’s Scottsboro Limited

This article aims to elucidate Langston Hughes’s political concerns as reflected in his most important political play, Scottsboro Limited (1931). Langston Hughes is a distinguished African American writer who tried his hand in almost all literary genres. He epitomized the views and ideals of the African American literary movement known as ‘The Harlem Renaissance’. In this play, he attempts to justify his race’s need to pursue their political rights and fight for the achievement of equality and liberty. This is achieved by illustrating the contaminated political atmosphere and circumstances under which African Americans were leading their life. Furthermore, the reasons that led to Hughes’s political resentment and indignation are all brought to light. In this play, he presents an outrageous example that shows the prevalence of political corruption inside the law system itself. What is noticeable about Langston Hughes is that he does not confine himself to discussing the conditions of African Americans, but he attempts to deal with the absorbed rights of other groups of people worldwide. Consequently, he saw that there was a need for an international revolution against whites’ oppression. These harsh forces were represented by the white imperialists and wealthy persons both in Europe and the USA. In Scottsboro Limited, he encourages these helpless people to get united to be able to strive against their oppressors and attain their full rights. The last point that this article handles is Hughes’s relationship with the communist part. His illustration of how the political rights of poor people internationally are down-trodden was the reason which lurked behind the racially-prejudiced attempts to relate him to the activities of Communism in American society. They accused him of being a communist, though he never was. All these aspects are crystalized in the analysis of the play.

THE QUEST OF SELF-AWARENESS IN THE BLACK WOMEN’S IDENTITIES: THE ANALYSIS OF ZORA NEALE HURSTON’S THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

African American literature establishes a great artistic field with diverse cultural and thematic experiences. Throughout history, African Americans have experienced many troubles, such as segregation and discrimination in various areas. However, their literature shows a significant resistance to all the troubles in history. Numerous writers and artists explore themes such as African American culture, racism, religion, slavery, and a sense of homelessness, one of whom is Zora Neale Hurston. Besides her race, she is also a woman, so she is both a woman and a colored person at the bottom of the social ladder. Thus, Their Eyes Were Watching God is not only a source of race but also gender. This paper sheds light on the importance of Zora Neale Hurston in African American literature, and the study will be supported by other famous Afro-American writers’ articles and statements. Why is she so important? From which perspectives did she contribute to African American literature? Why was her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God mostly criticized? This novel, being important in the field of Black Feminism, concerns the hardships of black women racially and sexually. This study will answer these questions with examples from Zora Neale Hurston’s autobiographical novel Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (1984), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Alice Walker’s article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” (1975).

Exploring Black Writers’ Literary Strategies for Interdependence and Global Solidarity

This paper seeks to explore the techniques and strategies used by African and Afro-American writers to disseminate a sense of Black interdependence and solidarity on a global level. It will examine how Black authors are unceasingly using a planned strategy in their literary works to encourage Black people to envision a sustainable future for themselves. We contend that Black authors and critics are incessantly using the literary medium to inspire Black audiences to self-heal themselves from the trauma associated with European colonization of Africa in the bygone days and this issue is yet to receive a noteworthy observation in the literary field. Hence, this paper will examine various dimensions associated with the Black literary genre to explore more about the philosophies and strategies imbibed by Black writers to encourage their people to self-heal from their past while comprehending the significance of mutual interconnectedness. The select works this paper seeks to study comparatively are Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (2010), Alice Walker’s epistolary novel The Color Purple (2014), Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes’s fantasy fiction The Deep (2020), and Nnedi Okorafor’s science fiction Lagoon (2014). The frameworks used for this study are Postcolonialism, Africanfuturism, Afrofuturism, and African feminism which are treated as the vantage ground for this reading.