Go There To Know There

 "All art is a kind of confession" (Gates, et al.). James Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York, in 1924 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Religion had come with many African Americans from the Deep South into storefront churches along the main drags of Harlem. Born to an unmarried mother, however, James had a troubled childhood that was defined by poverty and want. When his mother married, it was David Baldwin, a lay preacher, who expounded on a gospel of a jealous and angry god. Though the boy did have a run at street preaching in his youth, he would ultimately renounce Christianity and find peace in books. The library was a quiet respite for the child whose home life had become chaotic.  The time he spent with books in his youth would pay off, as he began a promising career as a teen. He wrote for a church newsletter, as well as for his school. He would later establish relationships with such notable figures as Countee Cullen and Richard Wright, who would help cu...

Hoodoo Priestess Marie Laveau ( photo credit ). "In African American literature, the vernacular refers to the church songs, blues, ballads, sermons, stories, and, in our own era, hip-hop songs that are part of the oral, not primarily the literate (or written-down) tradition of black expression. What distinguishes this body of work is its in group and, at times, secretive, defensive, and aggressive character: it is not, generally speaking, produced for circulation beyond the black group itself (though it sometimes is bought and sold by those outside its circle)" As Gates' definition suggests, the Vernacular encompasses the cultural creations of African Americans not simply as a form of catharsis or self-expression, but as a means of resistance. African American folk expression has been defined by scholars as "double-voiced," indicating that folk songs, sermons, jokes, and other modes of expression retained a meaning for the culture--and a separate mean...

The Cult of Domesticity--or, more pejoratively-- The Cult of True Womanhood , to the codification of social, sexual, and moral behavior for women in the 19th Century from 1820 until 1860.  It was Catherine Beecher, sister to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who identified the four pillars of virtue that would hold women to behavioral convention and keep them under masculine control.  By referring to this set of beliefs as pertaining to a "cult" reveals the depth of its impact on women's lives. Below are the four pillars of modest behavior, expected of all women of the middle class.  Piety : As Victorian society was divided into separate spheres--that of men (exterior world of business and work); and that of women (the home), 19th century women were thought to represent the 'heart' of the Victorian home, and therefore were believed responsible for embodying Christian asceticism, faith, modesty, and were entrusted with the religious instruction of children. Purity :...

Photo from The Academy of American Poets Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was one of the most beloved and celebrated poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Among his many contributions, Hughes helped to "define the spirit of the age" by underscoring the connections among multiple expressive forms--namely poetry's kinship to jazz--of the era. As our text explains, Hughes's autobiography, The Big Sea offers a rare, first-hand account of the scenes, sights, and happenings of one of the most important eras in African American literary--and cultural--history (Gates et al. 1289). Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes hailed from an illustrious family line: as Gates points out, Hughes was the grandson of a prominent Kansas politician; and his brother, John Mercer Langston, was, among other things, "founding dean of the law school" at Howard. Despite his auspicious family tree, Langston grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, in virtual poverty. In the years that followed, Hughes wo...

Dr. Dubois by Carl Van Vechten One of the most prominent of all African  American leaders of the 20th century, William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963), a self-proclaimed "race man" was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. DuBois was educated primarily in the North at Harvard and in Germany where he prepared for his Ph.D. However, it was when attended school at Fisk that he was confronted the appalling racism prevalent in the South: an experience that helped to shape his political philosophy and life's work. By the time he became a professor at Wilberforce University in Ohio, DuBois was a published author. DuBois had made it his mission to seek out "forums beyond academe from which he could address fundamental problems of race and justice in the United States" and one of those forums was the written page.  He was published in such prestigious literary journals as The Atlantic Monthly and The Dial , and his essays focused on sociological aspects of the ...

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969, writer Edwidge Dandicat moved to the United States to join her parents who had emigrated to the U.S. when she was young. The early separation from her parents would have a lasting effect on young Dandicat as would her arrival in the U.S. in 1981. Finding it difficult to adjust to American dress and manners, the newly arrived girl found solace in books. The separation she felt would become a theme in her later works. The 1994 novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory was developed from her Master's thesis at Brown University and is excerpted in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. As pointed out by Gates and his fellow scholars, Dandicat's novel reflects the discomfiture at living between cultures, of feeling separation from one's homeland and the reticence at accepting the new and strange environment. He writes, "Written in imagistic and lyrical prose, Breath, Eyes, Memory follows its protagonist as she moves between her Ha...

" The engendering impulse of African American literature is resistance to human tyranny. The sustaining spirit of African American literature is dedication to human dignity. As resistance to tyranny and dedication to human dignity became increasingly synonymous with the idea of America itself in the latter half of the eighteenth century, early African American writers identified themselves as Americans with a special mission. They would articulate the spiritual and political ideals of America to inspire and justify the struggle of blacks for their birthright as American citizens. They would also demand fidelity to those same ideals from whites whose moral complacency and racial prejudices hand blinded them to the obligations of their own heritage" (Gates et al. 151). In his introduction to "The Literature of Slavery and Freedom" (Norton), Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. points out many of the key issues facing the earliest African American writers of the eighteenth ...