AML4 class 3

1950s–1970s

Lorraine Hansberry – Raisin in the Sun 1959

Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 1969

1980s–now

Alice Walker – In Love and Trouble 1973,

The Color Purple 1983  the most famous one, epistolary novel (letters to
God), offers a story of standart multiple abuse of african women, then sexual
awakening like in Chopinʼs Awakening, full of violence

In Search of Our Mothersʼ Gardens 1983

connected with the concept of womanism - study this, african-american of
feminism, takes into account the culture and postavení of the african,
violence, sexual abuse, double exploitation

she wanted not theoretical womanism, but practical - end of abuse, same
income, equality

Everyday use 1973  first published at Harperʼs magazine

became a part of Walkerʼs first short story collection  In Love and Trouble

Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eyes 1970, Sula 1973, Beloved 1987

Gayl Jones – Corregidora 1975

AML4 class 3

4

Toni Cade Bambara – The Salt Eaters 1980

Gloria Naylor – The Women of Brewster Place 1982, Children of the Night:
Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present 1995

Nikki Giovanni (poetry)

Oprah Winfrey TV talk shows with writers)

Terry McMillan – Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-
American Fiction 1990, Waiting to Exhale 1992  main success, Getting to
Happy 2010  sequel to Waiting to Exhale

what looks unhappy for most, looks happy in others - ambiguity

film adaptation

belongs to a new generation (born 1951

she is provocative

Ntozake Shange – For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the
Rainbow is Enuf 1976

Suzan-Lori Parks – Topdog/Underdog 1999

Paule Marshall – Praisesong for the Widow 1983

Jamaica Kincaid – A Small Place 1988, The Autobiography of My Mother
1996

General features: Keith Byerman, “African American Fiction,ˮ in The
Cambridge Companion to American Fiction after 1945, ed. John N. Duvall
Cambridge University Press 2012, 8597.)

Common themes:

history (national, regional, local, personal, folk, literary, academic)

identity

the relationship of the individual to the community

religion and spirituality

gender, sexuality and sexual orientation

intra and inter-racial relationships (violence domestic and social)

family and personal relationships

assimiliation present in asian-american literature, but not in african ?

AML4 class 3

5

religion and spirituality - more in african than in asian

Techniques:

Satire, parody, melodrama, autobiography [and autobiographical novel],
tragedy and the picaresque as well as versions of mimesis

elements of bildungs roman (development of growing up), travel narrative,
epistolary novel,

modes of realism, naturalism, magic realism, modernism, and
postmodernism

New Trends:

Trey Ellis: “The New Black Aestheticˮ 1989  Terry McMillan

Henry Louis Gates Jr.  Figures in black, signifying monkey (the most important
african-american literary critic)