Go There To Know There

James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and the Metaphor of the "Talking Book" "[My Master] used to read prayers in public to the ship's crew every Sabbath day; and then I saw him read. I was never so surprised in my life, as when I saw the book talk to my master, for I thought it did as I observed him to look upon it, and move his lips. I wished it would do so with me. As soon as my master had done reading, I followed him to the place where he put the book, being mightily delighted with it, and when nobody saw me, I opened it, and put my ear down close upon it, in great hopes that it would say something to me; but I was sorry, and greatly disappointed, when I found that it would not speak. This thought immediately presented itself to me, that every body and every thing despised me because I was black" (qtd xxxvi).  In the following video, an actor performs the script of Gronniosaw's narrative: The metaphor of the "Talking Book...

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1894 to Nathan Toomer and Nina Pinchback, Toomer spent his formative years oscillating between all-black and all-white schools: an experience that informed his resistance to any particular, racial background. His maternal grandfather, P.B.S. Pinchback was the first African American governor of Louisiana; however Toomer himself preferred to think of himself and his lineage, merely as American . During his young adulthood between 1914 and 1917, Toomer attended several institutions of higher learning, in which he studied physical fitness, social science, and history, but he never attained a degree. Following his education, Toomer went on to publish short stories. But it was his experience as a Georgia school principal that would help to shape his attitudes on race, and prompt him to identify himself as an African American. His 1923 publication, Cane was heralded as one of the most important novels of the Harlem Renaissance--and of the Lost Generatio...

George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977) was an essayist, novelist, and journalist for The Pittsburgh Courier , known for his unapologetic conservative and assimilationist views concerning race relations. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Schuyler grew up in Syracuse, New York. The author ascended from a long line of free blacks, some of whom, he claimed, had participated in the Revolutionary War. This heritage appears to have contributed to a sense of pride and confidence Schuyler possessed and articulated throughout his literary career. Schuyler's conservative leanings and active participation in the anti-Communism campaigns of the McCarthy era provoked controversy among African Americans who sometimes considered Schuyler not just an iconoclast, but a "traitor" (1220). Yet, Schuyler is heralded to this day for his literary contributions to the developing racial politics of the 20th century. Schuyler's novel, Black No More cast a satirical, yet critical eye on the pre...

Toni Morrison, b. 1931 (photo from theguardianuk.com) Chloe Anthony Wofford (now Toni Morrison) was born in February of 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Hers was a large family headed by devoted and hard-working parents who had moved the family from the South to Ohio to escape the pervasive racism and discrimination there. With them, they brought "the traditions of song and storytelling"--thereby introducing their daughter to a rich cultural heritage that would become the basis of much of Morrison's fiction (Gates 2211). Intellectually precocious, Morrison began reading at an early age, and her tastes ranged across national and generic boundaries: She was drawn to the work of Jane Austen, Gustav Flaubert, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski ( 1 ). She would become the first member of her family to attend college. As Gates relates, the students there could not pronounce her name, so she elected to go by "Toni." The first African American novelist to receive the Nobel Prize...

The Tar Baby Stories: Joel Chandler Harris *From Wikimedia Commons Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), was an American fiction writer, folklorist, and a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution . From 1862-1866, Harris served as an apprentice at Turnwold Plantation, in Eatonton, Georgia. While there, he spent much of his leisure time among the slaves of the plantation from whom he learned the storytelling tradition among African Americans whose oral tradition became the basis for his collection of Uncle Remus Tales . Though Harris has been credited for having revolutionized children's literature with his collection of folktales about the post-Reconstruction American South, contemporary critics argue that his rendition of these tales fosters an erroneous and romanticized image of the plantation South. Joel Chandler Harris Our texts cautions that "like other oral forms these tales were originally invented not for the printed page but for the spoken p...