African American Identity in Literature

Introduction

In the eighteenth century, when the empirical theories of English thinkers John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton were shaping American literature generally, the African American presence in America added a new dimension to the cultural identity of American literature. Since African Americans were involuntarily transported into a new environment, their cultural transition became the source of their literary creativity as well as a historical contribution. With the passage of time, African American writers infused new perspectives into the literary canon through experimentation and through revisions of existing conventions.

Biographical Accounts

Personal accounts of slaves' journeys to and bondage in America produced a new genre, the slave narrative. The genre borrows from the autobiography, travelogue, and captivity narratives that were already common forms of writing among the early settlers. Slave narratives include complaints about a forced journey to America. While most Puritans and Pilgrims expressed faith in their God and hope in their journey to a new land, the African American narratives convey extremes of alienation and suffering.

Among the pioneer African American writers of slave narratives is Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), who narrated his experiences in America. His account, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), contains a description of the terrible journey by sea and the crushing effects of enslavement. In documenting his background and eventual education he also illustrates the great diversity within the African American population, due in part to the taking of slaves from different parts of Africa. Slaves were perceived in America as members of a single race, so their diversity of heritage was overlooked and their regional differences were ignored by slave owners, who defined them in terms of their functions.

For African Americans, the slave narrative became a means of protest against mistaken perceptions. From 1830 to 1865, with the exception of one poet, James Monroe Whitfield, all black authors wrote autobiographies or were subjects of biographical works. Among the best known is Harriet Tubman's Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869, revised as Harriet the Moses of Her People, 1886), the biography of a runaway slave who became a conductor on the Underground Railroad; at great risk to her life, she assisted slaves in fleeing to the northern states and freedom.

Frederick Douglass

The most famous African American in the antislavery movement was Frederick Douglass. He wrote three autobiographies during various phases of his life. He reports his early interest in learning how to read and write, his confrontation with his inhumane owners, and his ultimate freedom. He urged President Abraham Lincoln to enlist blacks in the Union Army. Dedicated to a vision of transforming the oppressed state of his race, Douglass shared his story to inspire others.

Elizabeth Keckley

A slave narrative written from a woman's perspective is Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes (1868). It gives a personal account of her life as a slave for thirty years and four years as a resident of the White House. This is a story of a woman whose talent as a dressmaker helped support her owners and whose savings from her own labor permitted her to buy her freedom and that of her son. A tragic blow came to her when her son died as a Union soldier. She rose to professional heights, serving as Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker. She enjoyed the respect of the Lincolns, and President Lincoln referred to her as Madame Keckley. The publication of the book, however, with its description of her interracial connections at the highest levels of post-Civil War society, strained her relations with the first family. Abandoned, in poverty, Keckley died in the House for Destitute Women and Children in Washington, DC.

After the Civil War, biographical narratives remained a popular genre among African American writers. These narratives integrate the art of storytelling and history telling and allow the authors to address the theme of racial discrimination within personalized contexts of economic and social challenges.

Booker T. Washington

The autobiography of Booker T. Washington, titled Up from Slavery (1901), is a personal testimony of success which is in many ways comparable to Benjamin Franklin's famous autobiography. As a native son of Virginia, Washington realized the importance of education. He worked at odd jobs and had $1.50 when he came to Hampton Normal, which later became Hampton University. He organized the first night school for black and Native American students. Washington became an advocate of the development of practical and technical skills; many of his African American opponents criticized him for his excessive loyalty to whites in a laboring capacity. His use of anecdotes in his biography invites a diversity of interpretations; however, it is clear that he offers African Americans practical advice for survival under severely adverse economic conditions.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Another black author who was concerned about the survival of African Americans in America was W. E. B. Du Bois, who advocated democratic rights for his race. He was conscious of the diversity among African American cultural experiences. Unlike Washington, who was born a slave, Du Bois was born free and grew up in the cosmopolitan culture of Massachusetts. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, then went to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude. He recorded impressions of his complex experiences in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). In this work, he makes a case for a racial bond among African Americans despite their varied backgrounds. He argues that Washington's advice in Up from Slavery stems from his rural agrarian background, and that the future of the African American race called for a more uniform approach to democratic rights.

Du Bois was aware of the psychological tensions linked to segregation; therefore, he predicted the color line as the problem of the twentieth century. He advocated that the talents and skills of African Americans must not be developed in contempt for other races, but rather in conformity to the greater ideals of the American republic. He proposed that double consciousness or pride in African heritage and pride in American citizenship was better than a divided self. There was no need for African Americans to seek assimilation in America at the cost of their African heritage. Although Du Bois' influence remained significant throughout the twentieth century, he expressed his own disillusionment with the lot of African Americans in his autobiographies.

Malcolm X

Some African Americans resorted to collaborative writing for biographical narrative. An example is The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964), written in collaboration with Alex Haley. It blends the dramatic conventions of narration with first-person reporting. The book captures America's cultural landscape of the 1950's and 1960's, while highlighting the turning points in Malcolm X's life. The biography records his criminal activities, prison experiences, and conversion to the Nation of Islam. After his release from prison, Malcolm X's pilgrimage to Mecca led to the realization that the message of religion is to foster peaceful relations among all races. Therefore, upon his return to America, he renounced his allegiance to Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X remained active in the struggle for equality of African Americans and became a popular black leader; he was assassinated in 1965.

Maya Angelou

The Civil Rights movement and the women's rights movement led to a wave of attention to African American women's narratives in the late twentieth century. Among the highest-profile writers in this vein was Maya Angelou, who had a wide-ranging career before publishing her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in 1969. It was considered groundbreaking for its forthright depictions of racism, rape, and other challenging subjects, which are presented as symbolic of the broader experience of African American women in general. Angelou continued to publish autobiographical works throughout her career, concluding with Mom & Me & Mom (2013).

Poetry

In addition to biographical accounts, African American writers have long used other genres to express their identity in America, including poetry. The legacy of folk literature enabled slaves to connect with their cultural origins despite their harsh experiences in America. With the passage of time, folk literature became a vehicle for blending the reality of experiences in America with nostalgia for the African past. The emotional experience of African American slaves inspired many toward artistic creativity, generating an international mix of poetic rhythms and sounds. As a result of their designated role in a laboring capacity, most slaves were not allowed to get a formal education and were generally perceived as unfit for intellectual activities. Only a few slaves had their owners' permission to read and write, and their literacy centered on the reading and interpretation of the Bible.

Phillis Wheatley

Among such privileged and literate slaves was the first African American poet, Phillis Wheatley, who was known as "a sable muse" among European educated circles. Wheatley was faced with the dual challenge of writing as an African American as well as a woman. She blended the literary conventions of her time, such as heroic couplets, with innovative zeal. For example, many of her poems depict the speaker as "an Ethiop," announcing her claim to a black heritage. In many of her elegies, she addresses the subject of death in the metaphorical context of Christian hope for salvation, implying rescue from a state of bondage. It was her love of liberty that prompted her to write the poem "To His Excellency General Washington" for leading the forces of independence. Unfortunately, poverty and domestic hardship squelched her poetic voice.

Wheatley's literary work was primarily accepted as testimony of African American ability to participate in American literature. Even though Wheatley's African American identity separates her from other early American writers, the devout religious trend in her poetry is in common with other colonial poets, such as Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor. Her personal awareness of the bondage of slavery, however, gives Wheatley's biblical allusions a special poignancy.

George Moses Horton and Paul Laurence Dunbar

Religious overtones in African American poetry are also present in the poetry of George Moses Horton. He was moved by hymns, so he learned to read and write in order to create his own poetry. In his collection The Hope of Liberty (1829), he makes free use of the ode, blank verse, heroic couplet, and stanzaic patterns. He was eventually successful in buying his freedom by selling his poetry, which was popular among the abolitionists.

Another source of inspiration to African American writers was folk music. In fact, the African American oral tradition helped to preserve the cultural memory of slaves. Folktales, myths, and songs could be passed on from generation to generation. The oral tradition was instrumental in conserving the double consciousness of African American writers, enabling them to freely borrow from European and African traditions. Folk literature became a source of solidarity amid the diversity of heritage, which included a wide range of African languages and traditions. The spirituals of African Americans blend folk music with religious fervor. The spirituals signify more than a spiritual yearning; they also depict the nostalgia for the lost state of freedom. Slaves made use of spirituals as sophisticated texts; appearing innocent, the lyrics could, for example, guide runaways.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century African American literature continued to merge its distinctive forms with mainstream American literature. A notable example is the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who wrote poems, novels, and plays and often incorporated the dialect of black communities in the American South. Dunbar's mixed use of oral and written conventions was also practiced by realists such as Mark Twain. It is not surprising that a renowned realist writer, William Dean Howells, praised Dunbar for integrating the African American voice into literature.

Harlem Renaissance

The 1920s marked the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, when African American writers transcended the constraints of the European tradition to infuse an independent perspective into American literature. The Harlem Renaissance produced powerful works of poetry by, among others, Langston Hughes, who cited his African heritage to claim ties to the grandeur of ancient civilizations. At the same time, he depicted the ravages of social and economic disparity. The liberating influence of the Harlem Renaissance invigorated African American literature and American literature in general.

Contemporary Poetry

African American poets continued to earn attention through the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first. One particularly high-profile example was Maya Angelou's reading of her 1993 poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove was the US Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. Similarly, Natasha Tretheway won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2007 and served as US Poet Laureate in 2012 and 2014.

Fiction

African American fiction mainly began to emerge in the nineteenth century. Toward the end of the nineteenth century novelist Pauline E. Hopkins addressed racism in her serial novels, exposing the hypocrisy within race relationships. Hopkins' fiction is prophetic in the sense that, as did Du Bois, she saw that the problem of the color line would be the great problem of the twentieth century. Later, Jean Toomer's collection of short fiction, Cane (1923), embraced the tensions of segregation and victimization of the mulatto from the male perspective. He makes powerful use of folk sound, imagery, and symbol to portray racial barriers that signal that a claim to an interracial heritage is a social taboo.

Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston

The Harlem Renaissance saw a surge in novels that captured the reality of African American experience. Author Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) remains a masterpiece that portrays the fate of a black man who is overpowered by economic oppression. The protagonist accidentally kills the liberal daughter of his employer. Wright pursued the prevailing conventions of naturalism to depict the helpless condition of African Americans. His novel resembles Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925); both writers were inspired by real trials.

Another major figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston, who grew up in the black community of Eatonville, Florida, and often focused on Southern identity in her writing. Her work marked a major breakthrough for feminist literature. For example, in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), she combines the voice of self-expression with the social challenges encountered by African American women.

Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin

As the Civil Rights movement progressed, some black writers became especially interested in probing the challenges and complexities of African American experience to understand their own cultural identity in America. Among the leading novelists who focused on the quest for identity was Ralph Ellison, who wrote Invisible Man (1952). This novel combines realism with surrealism and draws upon black folklore and myth. James Baldwin was another African American novelist who investigated the archetypal theme of initiation and discovery of self in his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). This novel draws heavily upon the author's childhood experiences.

With the growth sparked by the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement, African American literature blossomed and diversified from the 1960s on. Authors explored unique styles and themes such as Afrofuturism as well as broader literary trends, such as countercultural narratives and postmodernism. One important novelist of the time is Ishmael Reed. In his novel Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Reed experiments with the conventions of fiction to capture the complexity of African American identity as he integrates multiple layers of meaning in his prose. He parodies Western tradition and African American conventions, decrying any idealism that imposes unrealistic restrictions on the artist.

Alex Haley also proved to be an influential figure in fiction. He followed The Autobiography of Malcolm X with the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), which was based on Haley's research of his family history dating back to an African brought to the Americas as a slave. The Pulitzer Prize–winning work was a major crossover success, introducing many white Americans to African American literature and inspiring a similarly popular television miniseries. It also highlighted the frequent use of historical fiction as a means of examining African American identity.

Alice Walker and Toni Morrison

Perhaps the most important trend in African American literature in the late twentieth century was the increasing attention to the experience of African American women. While figures such as Hurston pioneered bringing women's voices into mainstream fiction, this legacy matured most notably in the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Walker, who also published poetry in addition to long and short fiction, uses a self-reflective voice in her masterpiece, the epistolary novel The Color Purple (1982). The book won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, signaling the new wave of critical acclaim for African American literature in general and African American women writers in particular.

Few novelists of any background achieved the level of both critical and commercial success as Toni Morrison. She began her career as an editor, promoting works by other African American writers such as Gayl Jones and Toni Cade Bambara, before her debut novel, The Bluest Eye, appeared in 1970. After years of building recognition, it was her masterpiece Beloved (1987) that launched her to literary superstardom, winning the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. That novel takes an innovative approach to a ghost story, tracing the historical context of slavery and exposes the hazards of allowing the past to override the present. Morrison would go on to become the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993, and earn many other accolades including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In many ways her success indicated the true integration of African American literature into the mainstream of American literature.

Twenty-First Century Fiction

African American authors continued to explore themes of identity into the new millennium. Historical fiction continued to provide a valuable lens for examining the African American experience, particularly the enduring legacy of slavery and racism. For example, Edward P. Jones's novel The Known World (2003) won the Pulitzer Prize for its take on the pre–Civil War American South. Another Pulitzer Prize winner was The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead, which presents the story of two slaves on the run. More contemporary-minded works also found considerable acclaim. Jesmyn Ward became the first female author to win two National Book Awards for Fiction, earning the honor for both Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). Each of those novels explores the dynamics of African American families in the modern American South.

Bibliography

Baker, Houston. Modernism and Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Claims that, for African American writers, the Harlem Renaissance brought liberation from traditional literary constraints.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Examines the influence of African folk tradition and the revisionist trends in African American literature.

Mandell, Daniel R. "Creating an African American Identity and a New Nation." Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, 4 May 2016, www.aaihs.org/creating-an-african-american-identity-and-a-new-nation/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2019.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Criticizes the perspective of critical theory that treats African American presence in literature from a fixed viewpoint and disregards the symbiotic interracial relationships.

"A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance." National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian,nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/new-african-american-identity-harlem-renaissance. Accessed 15 Aug. 2019.

Rico, Patricia San José. Creating Memory and Cultural Identity in African American Trauma Fiction. Brill, 2019.

Schwarz, A. B. Christa. Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Schwarz examines the work of four leading writers from the Harlem Renaissance—Countée Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent—and their sexually nonconformist or gay literary voices.

Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983. Surveys feminist African American scholarship and provides fifteen interviews with leading black women writers.