Literature

African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th 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 the Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison and award-winning Walter Mosley being ranked among the top writers in the United States. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, and equality. African-American writing has 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, has the focus of African-American literature. Before the American Civil War, the literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the genre of slave narratives. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois 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 (1982) by Alice Walker, which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and award-winning status.

History

Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known piece of African-American literature: "Bars Fight". Although written in 1746, the poem was not published until 1855, when it was included in Josiah Holland's History of Western Massachusetts. The poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–84) published her book Poems on Various Subjects in 1773, three years before American independence. Born in Senegal, Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery at the age of seven. Brought to America, she was owned by a Boston merchant. By the time she was sixteen, she had mastered her new language of English. Her poetry was praised by many of the leading figures of the American Revolution, including George Washington, who thanked her for a poem written in his honor. Some whites found it hard to believe that a Black woman could write such refined poetry. Wheatley had to defend herself in court to prove that she had written her work. Some critics cite Wheatley's successful defense as the first recognition of African-American literature.

Another early African-American author was Jupiter Hammon (1711–1806?). Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America, published his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" as a broadside in early 1761. In 1778 he wrote an ode to Phillis Wheatley, in which he discussed their shared humanity and common bonds.

In 1786, Hammon gave his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York". Writing at the age of 76 after a lifetime of slavery, Hammon said, "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves." He also promoted the idea of a gradual emancipation as a way to end slavery. Hammon is thought to have been a slave until his death. His speech was later reprinted by several abolitionist groups.

Characteristics and themes

In broad terms, African-American literature can be defined as writings by people of African descent living in the United States. It is highly varied. African-American literature has generally focused on 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 study "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 issues of freedom and equality long denied to Blacks in the United States, along with further themes such as African American culture, racism, religion, slavery, a sense of home. and more.

African-American literature has both been influenced by the great African diasporic heritage and shaped it in many countries. It has been created within the larger realm of post-colonial literature, although scholars distinguish between the two, saying 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, gospel music, blues and rap. This oral poetry also appears 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.

Civil Rights Movement era

A large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.

This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights movement, which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings.

One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as Another Country and The Fire Next Time.

Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel Native Son (1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays Notes of a Native Son, in reference to Wright's novel. However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel," which criticized Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright's other books are the autobiographical novel Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953), and White Man, Listen! (1957).

Dance

African-American cultural dance has developed within African American communities in everyday spaces, rather than in studios, schools or companies. These dances are usually centered on folk and social dance practice, though performance dance often supply complementary aspects to this. Placing great value on improvisation, These dances are characterized by ongoing change and development. There are a number of notable African American modern dance companies using African American cultural dance as an inspiration, amongst these are the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

African American modern dance

African American modern dance drew on modern dance and African American folk and social dance along with African dance and Caribbean dance influences. Katherine Dunham founded Ballet Negre in 1936 and later the Katherine Dunham Dance Company based in Chicago, Illinois. She also opened a school in New York (1945). Pearl Primus drew on African and Caribbean dances to create strong dramatic works characterized by large leaps in the air. Primus often based her dances on the work of black writers and on racial and African-American issues, such as Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944), and Lewis Allan's Strange Fruit (1945). Alvin Ailey, a student of Lester Horton and Martha Graham, with a troupe of young African American dancers performed as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York in 1930. Ailey drew on his blood memories of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospel.

Tradition

In most African American dance cultures, learning to dance does not happen in formal classrooms or dance studios. Children often learn to dance as they grow up, developing not only a body awareness but also aesthetics of dance which are particular to their community. Learning to dance - learning about rhythmic movement - happens in much the same way as developing a local language 'accent' or a particular set of social values. Children learn specific dance steps or 'how to dance' from their families - most often from older brothers and sisters, cousins or other older children. Because cultural dance happens in everyday spaces, children often dance with older members of the community around their homes and neighbourhoods, at parties and dances, on special occasions, or whenever groups of people gather to 'have a good time'. Cultural dance traditions are therefore often cross-generational traditions, with younger dancers often 'reviving' dances from previous generations, albeit with new 'cool' variations and 'styling'. This is not to suggest that there are no social limitations on who may dance with whom and when. Dance partners (or people to dance with) are chosen by a range of social factors, including age, sex, kinship, interest and so on. The most common dance groups are often comprised by people of a similar age, background and often sex (though this is a varying factor).

Cultural expression

Lee Ellen Friedland and other authors argue that to talk about cultural dancing without talking about music or art or drama is like talking about fish without talking about water. Music and dance are intimately related in African American cultural dance, not only as accompaniments, but as intertwined creative processes.

Jacqui Malone describes the relationships between tap dancers who travelled with bands in the early 20th century, describing the way tap dancers worked with the musicians to create new rhythms. Much has been written about the relationship between improvisation in jazz and improvisation in jazz dance - the two are linked by their emphasis on improvisation and creative additions to compositions while they are in process - choreography and composition on the spot, in a social context - rather than a strict division between 'creation' and 'performance', as in the European middle class ballet and operatic tradition.

It is equally important to talk about the relationship between DJs MCs, b-boys and b-girls and graffiti artists in hip hop culture, and John F. Szwed and Morton Marks have discussed the development of jazz and jazz dance in America from European set dances and dance suites in relation to the development of musical artisanship.

History

The Greater Chesapeake area embracing Virginia, Maryland, and much of North Carolina was the earliest and perhaps most influential location of the black-while cultural interchange that produced "African American" dance. Captive Africans from numerous societies in several African regions began pouring into the area as slaves from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries. Given their cultural heterogeneity, including music and dance, they mostly likely learned to dance together by drawing on the "grammar of culture" shared across much of Western and Central Africa. Something like a regional Chesapeake tradition, a thing entirely novel in European eyes, arose perhaps not long before the eighteenth century had become the nineteenth. Within one or two generations of establishing these creolized African forms, or perhaps simultaneously, elements of European dances were added. "Competitive individuality and [probably] improvisation" were also Choreographic Elements of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century West African Dance" that were continued in this region.

New York and the Harlem Renaissance

Just as the Harlem Renaissance saw the development of art, poetry, literature and theatre in Harlem during the early 20th century, it also saw the development of a rich musical and dance life. Clubs (Cotton Club), Ballrooms (Savoy Ballroom), rent party and other black spaces as the birthplaces of new dances. Theatres and the shift from vaudeville to local 'shows' written and choreographed by African American artists. Theatres as public forums for popularising African American cultural dances.