- What
kind of literature can be written by those whose historical legacy includes
legal penalties against reading and writing? - What
kind of literature can be written by those whose very humanity has been
historically denied by a dominant culture?
In 1773, three years before the founding of the United States,
Phillis Wheatley underwent examination by a panel of eighteen white men,
“the most respectable characters in Boston,” who sought to ascertain
if the 20-year old poet, “a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years
since brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa,” did indeed write the
volume of poetry she was seeking to publish. Exactly two hundred years later,
African American novelist Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The
work of both writers are responses to questions every African American writer
must address: What kind of literature
can be written by those whose historical legacy includes legal penalties
against reading and writing? What kind of literature can be written by those
whose very humanity has been historically denied by the dominant culture? The answers–to call on long and deep vernacular traditions
of jazz, blues, protest, rap, gospel, spirituals, sermons, folktales, belles
lettres, and, in Zora Neale Hurston’s, words, “words walking without
masters; walkin’ altogether like harmony in a song”–will be considered in
this class. In addition to Wheatley and Morrison, we will study representative
African American literature from spirituals to detective fiction, focusing on
the development of themes and issues in relation to the historical periods that
gave rise to African American literary movements such as slave narratives, the
Harlem Renaissance, and the Black Arts movement.
Text: The
Norton Anthology of African American Literature (available at Revolution
Books: 2626 S. King Street 944-3106). Additional readings (handouts) may also
be assigned
Requirements:
- Two 4-5 page Literary Essays
- Weekly one-page Reading Responses
- Two Oral Presentations on course materials
- Leading a class discussion on a relevant ethical issue (led by groups of three students)
- A poem recitation (from memory)
- Final Exam
- Active participation and regular attendance