Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

LESSON 14 
DEVELOPMENT OF AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE DURING THE XX CENTURY 
Plan 
1.
 
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States 
2.
 
African American oral culture is rich in poetry, including spirituals, African American gospel 
music, blues, and rap.
 
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers 
of African descent
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. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late eighteenth century writers 
as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the 
Harlem Renaissance, and continuing today with authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and 
Walter Mosley. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are the role 
of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, 
slavery, and equality. African American writing has also tended to incorporate oral forms such as 
spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, and rap.
As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the centuries, so, too, 
have the foci of African American literature. Before the American Civil War, African American 
literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the subgenre of slave narratives. 
At the turn of the twentieth century, books by authors such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. 
Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. During the 
American Civil Rights movement, authors such as Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote 
about issues of racial segregation and black nationalism. Today, African American literature has 
become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books such as 
Roots: The Saga of 
an American Family
by Alex Haley, 
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker, and 
Beloved
by Toni 
Morrison, achieving both best-selling and award-winning status. 
In broad terms, African American literature can be defined as writings by people of African 
descent living in the United States of America. However, just as African American history and life 
is extremely varied, so too is African American literature. Nonetheless, African American literature 
has generally focused on themes of particular interest to Black people in the United States, such as 
the role of African Americans within the larger American society and what it means to be an 
American. As Princeton University professor Albert J. Raboteau has said, all African-American 
studies, including African American literature, "speaks to the deeper meaning of the African-
American presence in this nation. This presence has always been a test case of the nation's claims to 
freedom, democracy, equality, the inclusiveness of all." African American Literature explores the 
very issues of freedom and equality which were long denied to Black people in the United States, 
along with further themes such as African American culture, racism, religion, slavery, and a sense 
of home, among others.
African American literature constitutes a vital branch of the literature of the African 
diaspora, and African American literature has both influenced by the great African diasporic 
heritage and in turn influenced African diasporic writings in many countries. African American 
literature exists within the larger realm of post-colonial literature, even though scholars draw a 
distinctive line between the two by stating that "African American literature differs from most post-
colonial literature in that it is written by members of a minority community who reside within a 
nation of vast wealth and economic power."
African American oral culture is rich in poetry, including spirituals, African American 
gospel music, blues, and rap. This oral poetry also shows up in the African American tradition of 
Christian sermons, which make use of deliberate repetition, cadence and alliteration. African 
American literature—especially written poetry, but also prose—has a strong tradition of 
incorporating all of these forms of oral poetry.
2
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/African_American_literature 

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However, while these characteristics and themes exist on many levels of African American 
literature, they are not the exclusive definition of the genre and don't exist within all works within 
the genre. There is resistance to using Western literary theory to analyze African American 
literature. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the most important African American literary scholars, 
once said, "My desire has been to allow the black tradition to speak for itself about its nature and 
various functions, rather than to read it, or analyze it, in terms of literary theories borrowed whole 
from other traditions, appropriated from without."
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African-American history predates the emergence of the United States as an independent 
country, and African-American literature has similarly deep roots. 
Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known piece of African-American literature, "Bars 
Fight". Terry wrote the ballad in 1746 after an Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts. She was 
enslaved in Deerfield at the time of the attack, when many residents were killed and more than 100, 
mostly women and children, were taken on a forced march overland to Montreal. Some were later 
ransomed and redeemed by their families or community; others were adopted by Mohawk families, 
and some girls joined a French religious order. The ballad was first published in 1854, with an 
additional couplet, in