"Dust Tracks on a Road," author Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, is not a typical black autobiography. Hurston is a complex woman and author who addresses both black and white audiences, shifting the cadences of her voice to invoke a readership that can hear the textures of many voices and respond to an underlying call to a world…

The distinguishable black theatre in America, mirroring a distinguishable black experience, is an artistic product which demands audience involvement. Both the Afro-American oral tradition and the art of gesture are integral aspects of black theatre. In addition, the tragedy found black theatre is not tragedy in the classic sense, as blacks feel…

One of the Afro-American writers who spoke out clearly during the postreconstruction period was Albery A. Whitman (1851-1902). A romantic poet, Whitman produced seven volumes of poetry. His profound belief in freedom and equality for his race is expressed forcefully in two long narrative poems, "Not a Man and Yet a Man" and "The…

To consider Frederick Douglass as an autobiographer, it is useful to examine each of his three autobiographical texts with a view to drawing some conclusion about their relation to one another, and about the relation of the author to each one. It seems likely that the shifting of Douglass' narrative stance is an index of his intellectual…

Black authors have long been telling America about its slave past, although America has apparently not been listening. Frank Webb's novel, "The Garies and Their Friends," was published in the same decade as Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and yet it has never achieved the popularity of Stowe's work, although its characters are…

The existential implications in Bontemps'"Black Thunder," Richard Wright's "Native Son," and Ellison's "Invisible Man" are explored in this paper. Each of these novels exhibits a concern about man structuring his existence through the choices he makes in an absurd world. Gabriel, the protagonist of "Black…

Literature seeks to recover the "facts" and fill in the gaps of knowledge as it enunciates the truth of existence. Nowhere is this more apparent than in African-American literature, where history and art are inextricably linked, where the personal truly is political. Throughout the history of the United States, the institution of slavery…

The differences between early African American narratives written by women and those written by men can be seen in a comparison of Harriet A. Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself" and Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." A comparison of these works…

Black feminist novelists continue to take issue with males who try to theorize about their artistic creations. Male attitudes toward black women's novels have been characterized as either apathetic, chauvinistic, or paternalistic. Black feminist writers should heed the call for collective racial progress and collective theoretical progress. The…

This opening address at the annual conference of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) introduces a community of ethnic scholars who make a considerable contribution to American Literature. The focus of the conference and the organization is to show that American literature does not have to be…

College English teachers today, in responding to black writers' demands for a forum, frequently resemble the old carpetbaggers, in that their teaching of black literature or composition reveals little or no background knowledge of the subject, with the course often being only a smoke screen for an informal study in something else. Such…

Examines the novels of two African writers to determine the nature of the black African women's experience. Attempts to determine how this experience can be analyzed in depth and breadth by progressing through four feminist perspectives: (1) personal, (2) social, (3) multicultural, and (4) spiritual/philosophical. (Author/SA)

Over 80 young adult novels for blacks were analyzed to determine how they revealed the shared experiences of black people in the family setting and the social world (including the world of work). The analyses showed that the authors of these books tended to focus totally on the familial aspects of the shared experiences of black people, a rather…

Aime Cesaire is one of the foremost French-speaking blacks in twentieth century literature. The concept of negritude--referring to the culture of French-speaking blacks--is often associated with his name. This paper discusses his life and work, and explores his life from his birth in Martinique, his early years, the years spent in Paris, and his…

Black autobiography can only be viewed sensibly in the classroom if an attempt is made to come to terms with the social and historical milieu in which the work was produced and with the persona and ethos of the writer. Critical failure to do so puts critic and text at a serious disadvantage because such failure restricts critical vision to the…