African American Literature (Essay Sample)

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African American Literature: Struggle amid Despair
African American Literature occupy a unique position in international encounter of cultures and humanistic discourse because it reflects the best impassioned encounters of a minority group living among the affluent of the most prosperous nation. Its themes and styles echo struggle and hope amid despair and squalor. Critical events in history have formed new turns and introduced new styles throughout the encounters, but one thing has characterised African American writers in their poignant diversities that gives the literature its distinct taste and character; struggle amid despair. The content of African American Literature exhibit discontinuities and epochs of various kinds due to the fact that the African American experience is one of discontinuities. For instance, before the attainment of the American independence, there was a distinct African American experience, during the era of slavery and afterwards, distinct epochs can be traced and in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery various episodes of the encounter can be distinctly selected. Nevertheless, throughout all the phases, the struggles of the Negro for emancipation and equality have confronted the African American than any people ever in the history of mankind. The impact of African American literature has been the demonstration of pure human struggle to overcome excoriating annihilation.
The content of African American expressional culture comprises diverse forms of literary genres. They include poetry, gospel music, spirituals, rap and blues. They employ equally diverse formats and styles. For instance, the Christian sermons would involve extensive deliberate repetitions, alliteration and cadence to impress a central message. Western literary theory nonetheless have been criticized for failing to effectively capture the soul of the art because African traditions and world view exhibited a critical divergence with mainstream literary cultures according to Henry Louis Gates Jr. He concludes the epithet with a land mark observation that African American literature exhibits a central trope of signification which conveys unique rhetorical alignments, metonymy, synecdoche and overall metalepsis (Gates & McKay 239).
Early African American Literature
The oldest known literary contribution of an African American was the 1746 works of Lucy Terry who was a slave in the Deerfield. It was followed by Phillis Wheatley in 1773 of the Poems on Various Subjects. Her poetry was praised by many including the eminent George Washington. Another group of prolific writers were fugitive slaves in the south who escaped and embarked full time to the cause of emancipation in the North. This category includes Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote the title Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. The key subject of the early slave narratives was their struggles, the melancholic and attitudes that trailed their desperate lives and general collapse of the state of welfare. About 6,000 former slaves in the United States and in the Diaspora wrote narratives about their experiences. These were not happy accounts of merry but bitter accounts of the experiences in the hands of ruthless slave masters, countless flogging, chaining with metal rings, starvation and deprivation of excoriating nature. Others authors on this category were Henderson Eastman and William Gilmore who wrote Aunt Phyllis’ Cabin (1852) and The Sword of Distaff (1853) respectively. The slave accounts and literary works can be grouped into three distinct categories like the tales of redemption based on the Southern Christian Movement, tales about the abolitionist movement and lastly the tales of African Progress. The best of this category nonetheless include the works of Harriet Jacobs (1861) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the Autobiography of Fredrick Douglass Narratives of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave. The pieces were moving both emotively and in their lyrical metre. Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and escaped to the North and devoted al his later life to the abolitionist cause and the Christian Movement in the North. The famous autobiography was later rewritten as My Bondage and My Struggles (1855).
Spiritual Narratives
The spiritual narratives were a special genre of African American literature that is widely appreciated for its impact on the character of many freed slaves. The famous authors of these pieces were James Gronniosaw, George White and John Marrant. Their central themes gave the African Americans the ‘pregeneric myth’ of Knowledge and Freedom. There are scholars who have considered these genres as non-literary works and branded them sociological and historical documents. This explains the element of departure that exists in African American experience in the manners of their literary style that exhibit parallels with Western interpretation and literary pedagogy.
The women writers regarded themselves as more than literary icons. They were ‘doers of the Word of God.’ Their spiritual narratives were immensely popular and their audiences were equally appalled by the contributions particularly due to the fact that during that time, African writer let alone female had no place in American social experience. The prominent contributors of these types were Zilpa Elaw and Maria W. Stewart who published a collection of religious writings. She also published a title that had a greater impact as Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality and Meditations. Other notable contributors were Jarena Lee and Nancy Prince who both published about their evangelical experiences (Smethurst 69). Sojourner Truth (1798-1883) was a notable contributor of the same genre. They championed abolitionist causes and they thrived under despicable conditions and made immense progress and contributions.
Post Slavery Era and Harlem Renaissance
The end of slavery and that of the American Civil war was another turning point in the experience of African American people in general. It was an era that produced a lot of both fictional and non-fiction works. Among the most critical of the contributors were W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) and Josephine Brown (born 1839). This phase represented enlightenment and scholastic achievement and the advancement in enlightenment brought a new phase of African American experience. Intellectual strivings and progress was the new tempo of the era as opposed to the era of spiritual quest to manifest the goodness of God and of the scriptures in human practical living (Jones 130). All these were struggles and despair because the resources to devote oneself to pure academic work were scanty and the publications would bring in just paltry income.
Among the most notable contributions of the Renaissance was Langston Hughes. He wrote The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922). In 1930 he published Not Without Laughter and the famous poem ‘The negro Speaks of Rivers.’ He further contributed a number of essays, short stories and novels beside the poetry.
The Civil Rights Movement and Recent Times
The civil rights movement inspired a new variety of African American literary contribution. The themes were distinct but the constant face of struggle and sacrifice was evident all...