I’ve been intending to read the book What Was African American Literature? for years because I was curious about Kenneth Warren’s premise that African American literature was during a very short period that started during the Jim Crow era. This book was published in 2011; I wonder how his premise holds up in 2021. I can get down with calling contemporary literature by Black authors, African diaspora literature. Warren writes that “With some significant qualifications, I am arguing here that, mutatis mutandis, African American literature as a distinct entity would seem to be at an end, and that the turn to diasporic, transatlantic, global, and other frames indicates a dim awareness that the boundary creating this distinctiveness has eroded …. I can buy this notion.
Let’s see….
This will be an exploration….
Questions to ponder….
1. In light of Warren’s premise, how are these texts taught in K-12 schools?
2. So, what is the current African Americanist literary project? I will contemplate whether or not Black writers still write for the good of the race in fiction; in nonfiction the answer is yes.
3. What about now after the faux post racial era?
4. What is the treatment of racial identity and collective trauma in literature by Black authors?
5. What is the role of literacy in a conceptualization of the purposes or necessity for labeling Black literature.
I think literature is the documentation of how people live, think, and know. It’s a reflection of what was going on in a certain time period. Analyzing contemporary Black authors can reveal important truths about our racialized experiences in society.
References
Warren, K. W. (2011). What Was African American Literature? (Vol. 10). Harvard University Press.