Why should you read African American Literature?

Crushing a coal to make diamond is a not a matter of coincidence as it takes the required time limit and certain process of effort to fulfill. Likewise getting an African American Literature has to go under a huge amount of trial and observation to being recognized as a valuable piece of writing. Undoubtedly African American writers have to stand out by having experienced based on certain level of diversity, adversity and hope. Definitely, such an undergoing piece of literary work contains a heavy and valuable content to become recognized worldwide.

Most of the African American literature themes are based on the story which tells about slavery, discrimination, freedom and cultural acceptance. Since this particular arena of literature begins to be coming into the scenario from 18th century, African American Literary characteristics reflects the history and consequences of enslavement in human civilization .Why shouldn’t you read such piece of literature which undergoes the significant tales of human life then?

African American Literary characteristics:

African American literary characteristics begin to take part in focus since 18th century by crushing down through slavery and colonization. Since these early beginnings, African-American writing has taken on its own characteristics and unique perspective. In the United States, such a country with a history of slavery and segregation laws, the elementary characteristic of African American literature is that it speaks to the African-American experience. As a result, different types of works are about individuals struggling to get themselves in a white-dominated society. Making characters like "fringe", African American authors portrays criminals, tricksters and those of non-mainstream sexuality the primary protagonists in their novels. These characters highlight the marginal place of African Americans in society. For instance, novels with fringe characters are Richard Wright's novel "Native Son" and Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple."

African American Literature themes:

African-American literature begins with chronicles by slaves in the pre-revolutionary period focused on freedom and elimination of slavery. The passé succeeding the Civil War until 1919 is labelled as the Modernization period. Influenced by apartheid, execution, movement and the women’s suffragette movement. Furthermore, Harlem Renaissance and the “flowering of Negro literature,” as James Weldon Johnson called it, African-American literature since World War II has delved into modernist high art, Black Nationalism and post racial identities.

The earliest African-American literature was focused on the “indelible stain” of slavery on American soil. The writers focused on themes of slavery, emphasizing the cruelty, indignity and the ultimate dehumanization of slaves. They were mostly written by slaves

who had escaped into freedom. Classic slave narratives include the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” by Frederick Douglass and “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs. Slavery and slave narrative are recurring themes in African-American literature adopted in the modern times by writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.

African American Literature authors:

 “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” remarked by Maya Angelou  at San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church.  Miserably, this woe was once common to millions of African-Americans, whose stories often went untold or unheard, however published and read by the world.

 1. During the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist and playwright with famous poems such as “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and Crotty Fave. The lives of poor blacks through the invention of what was called “jazz poetry” where Hughes depicts “Let America Be America Again  Factoid.

  2. Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Because of portraying epic themes and richly detailed characters, such as in The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved, she is well renowned. 

 3. Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author of four novels and over fifty short stories, plays and essays. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was written during her fieldwork in Haiti with the Guggenheim Foundation, which provides grants to professionals in the creative arts. 

African American Literature Essay:

There has been always a space for black authors in literature where we get to know another genre of human story authentically.

Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope was his second book and the No. 1 New York Times bestseller when it was released in the fall of 2006. The title was derived from a sermon he heard by Pastor Jeremiah Wright called "The Audacity to Hope." It was also the title of the keynote speech the then-Illinois State Senator gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Before becoming the 44th president of the United States, Obama's Audacity of Hope outlined his optimistic vision to bridge political parties so that the government could better serve the American people's needs.