Argues that it is white America that has made 'Roots' a best seller because it is comforting to most white Americans. The book doesn't make most of them feel quilty. It is consistently upbeat and optimistic. It contains much of the old dialect that depicts Blacks as being not-too-bright. It seems to say while some mistakes were made everything has…

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…

Shows the way in which Ralph Waldo Ellison--"a preeminent American moral historian"--reveals his approach to history in his essays and in his novel, "Invisible Man." (GW)

Describes the pattern of psychological and spiritual evolution in the consciousness of many of the black characters in "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," by Ernest J. Gaines. (GW)

Examines the parallels between Ellison's "Invisible Man" and Hamilton's works. States that Hamilton is strong in elucidating the experience of growing up simultaneously black and American and that it is a continuing condemnation of our times when she must reiterate Ellison's words concerning the duality of nonwhite literature. (CRH)

Examines a representative selection of novels by black authors that illustrate the tension that exists in black Americans who have cut themselves off from their historical roots by moving north, leaving behind communal values, and assimilating the values of the northern environment. (GW)

Discusses the way in which Margaret Walker's novel "Jubilee" successfully portrays black American history during the period of slavery, the Civil War years, and Reconstruction, as seen by the women who lived it. (GW)

Toni Cade Bambara's novel "The Salt Eaters" is art colored by social responsibility as the author attempts to give her African-American audience a sense of their history and their identity so they can value and accept collective work and responsibility. The novel's strengths and thematic weaknesses are discussed. (SLD)

Includes annotated bibliographies of young adult books written in the 1980s by Black authors. Selections intended to interest Black teenagers represent both historical and contemporary realistic fiction. (NKA)

This analysis of 20th-century Negro literature contains chapters discussing 16 authors: (1) "The First Forty Years: 1900-1940," including W. E. B. DuBois, Charles W. Chesnutt, James W. Johnson, Paul L. Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen; (2) "Migration: William Attaway and 'Blood on the Forge'"; (3) "Richard…

These volumes offer a blend of genres, authors, and purposes. Specific portraits are provided for each volume in chronological order. The central historical and educational values are in the view that the books give of the world of petit-bourgeois African-American women at the turn of the century. (SLD)

The 15 studies in this collection investigate the various images of the Negro in American literature--images which range from streotype to archetype. In the first six studies, critics discuss the literary tradition of the Negro in colonial literature (Milton Cantor), in the Southern novel prior to 1850 (Tremaine McDowell), in literature of the…

Intended to provide help for those interested in studying West African literature, this book is divided into three parts. Part One provides background information: the various African oral traditions are discussed, related to the way of life of the people, and examined for the extent to which they form the basis of present West African literary…