Chapter 8 Black AmericanLiterature
I.Overview
Negro – coloured (legallyfree) – black (after civil rights movement)
1.oral tradition
(1)songs and ballads
(2)spirituals: sorrow of the singers’ earlier conditionand longing for freedom
(3)blues: after civil war, derived from work songs –loneliness, separation, losses, wonderings, love, desperation, sense of doom
(4)jazz: after WWI, developed from blues, died out in theGreat Depression
2.written literature (from 1760s)
(1)poetry: religious, enduring, patient to the white
(2)slave narrative: autobiographical experience of theperson
(3)1920s:HarlemRenaissance –New York,black – black dialect and black folklore – “the new negro” – representatives:Langston Hughes (“black poet laureate”), Huston, Claude McKay
(4)1940s: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison
(5)50s~60s: a lot of black writers emerged in the civilrights movement: James Baldwin, Brooks, Jones
(6)70s~80s: publishing of “Root” (Alex Haley), Walker –“The Colour Purple”, Morrison (the second woman writer and the only black whowon Nobel Prize)
II.Richard Wright
1.life
2.works
(1)Uncle Tom’s Children: Four Novellas
(2)Native Son
(3)Black Boy
(4)The Outsider (the first novel of existentialism inAmerica,published inFrance)
3.themes and subjects
His common theme is to condemnracism, urge reform, criticize evils of society. His books focus on racialconflict and physical violence. They review the devastating effect ofinstitutionalized hatred (hatred brought by social system) and humiliation onblack males’ psyche. They affirmed dignity and humility of society’s outcasts.
4.writing techniques – realism, naturalism
He tries to show that peoplecannot escape from society. Therefore, society must be changed. He is a fatherfigure, especially to the writers of violence.
III.Ralph Ellison
1.life
2.works: Invisible Man
significance: It has auniversality of theme (problems of all modern people), not only regionaldilemma of existence.
3.attitude: complexity of art – the best art makes goodpolitics, not vice versa.
IV.James Baldwin
1.life
2.works
(1)Go Tell It on the Mountain
(2)Notes of a Native Son
(3)Nobody Knows My Name
(4)The Fire Next Time
3.point of view
Baldwincalls for theblacks to resort to means including force so as to bring about the nation’sself-realization. He saw love and understanding as difficult but necessary wayto overcome racial conflict.
4.themes: race, homosexuality
V.Alice Walker
1.life
2.works
(1)Once (a collection of poems)
(2)In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (“womanism” insteadof feminism)
(3)The Colour Purple (epistolary)
VI.Toni Morrison
1.life
2.works
(1)The Bluest Eye
(2)Sula
(3)Song of Solomon (the best black novel afterNative SonandInvisible Man)
(4)Tar Baby
(5)Beloved
(6)Jazz
(7)Love (trilogy)
3.themes: love, guilt, history, individual, gender,race, religion
4.purpose: to empower the black people to act forthemselves, to recognize for their own world, own history, own reality
5.style – many kinds of factors: naturalism, realism,fantasy, reality, magical realism
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