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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...

We lost one of my biggest heroes this week: Prince Rogers Nelson passed away due to complications from an influenza virus. I do not know the full details of his passing, I only know that he is gone and he will be sorely missed. He was obviously one of the greatest musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, but few got to see his humorous side. This video from his appearance on The View gives us a rare glimpse of his gentler, funny personality.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online describes the Sentimental Novel, or the Novel of Sensibility, "...any novel that exploits the reader's capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting a beclouded or unrealistic view of its subject. In a restricted sense the term refers to a widespread European novelistic development of the 18th century, which arose partly in reaction to the austerity and rationalism of the Neoclassical period. The sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason and raised the analysis of emotion to a fine art..." "The assumptions underlying the sentimental novel were Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness of man and his belief that moral development was fostered by experiencing powerful sympathies. In England, Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1740) was recommended by clergymen as a means of educating the heart. In the 1760s the sentimental novel developed into the 'novel of...

"Unchained Memories," produced and presented by HBO, is perhaps one of the most comprehensive, enlightening, and moving recreations of slave life as told by those who suffered and lived to tell the tale. The readings and reenactments in this documentary are taken from interviews conducted by sociologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists--as well as historians, with former slaves in the 1930s. Many of these former slaves were in their late eighties, nineties, some were over 100 years old. They tell tales of forced starvation, deprivation, beatings and whippings, as well as surviving in the harshest climates without sufficient clothing to cover their bodies, or shoes on their feet. They speak of brutal planters who assumed their own sexual access to black female bodies as a natural right emasculated slave men and tore slave families apart. Most of all, they speak of work, work, work , with no respite for their endless labor. An interesting note to keep in mind about ...