Past TRR Issue
There’s no shame in going back in time and revisiting an ancestral literary bastion. I will not apologize, nor will I pull any punches as I go for the jugular in my attempt to embellish and enlarge the literati of bygone eras, whom for all it’s worth needs no further implication. The world knew from the beginning that people of color were writers. The Greeks and Romans marveled at our libraries at Timbuktu and sought authority to emulate our literary lore. Suffice it to say, the books in Black literary history is intact. At one point people of other persuasion would have you believe that dead white males wrote all the classics. In the last two hundred years, black writers have contributed some of the most spirited and important works to American literature. These range from early narratives depicting slavery to modern works dealing with the lingering effects of slavery, racism, social commentary, and apartheid among other subjects. In fact, some of the most risky work these days are being written not only by African Americans, but Americans of other familial descent, including Black writers in Africa and Europe. In modern times arguably the first documented writer of color can be bestowed upon Phillis Wheatley in 1773. We’ve always been vociferous and bold with our expressions as the earliest published black writers were slaves and abolitionists. Slave narratives are rife without historic content as witnessed by The Smithsonian’s vast collection of memorabilia. The turn of the century gave us more recognition as we became prolific and sassy with our production as literacy and educational opportunities increased. Of that era such erudite scholars as W.E.B DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass came to fore.DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk , Up From Slavery by Washington, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Douglass all are hallmarks of remarkable achievement despite perilous times.
The Harlem Renaissance is revered and notable for a time in history where we flourished both individually and collectively to create a Mecca and an esthetic for quality work. Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McCay, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Dorothy West, Richard Wright, et al, was the figures that found favor. Richard Wright, Zora, and Cullen wrote prolifically and without limits, with work such as Not Without Laughter , Their Eyes Were Watching God, Cane, The Wedding, and countless poetry and prose by Cullen. The 1940’s and 1950’s saw the trend begat new luminaries to carry the torch, as the Renaissance paved the way for black writers to give us seminal work indicative of the times. A triumverate of particularly notable writers would emerge to illustrate this. Novelist Richard Wright, whose career bridged three decades, published an unflinching condemnation of racism in Native Son; his friend Ralph Ellison, who brought readers inside the world of an ordinary black person in Invisible Man; and James Baldwin, who produced Notes of a Native Son —a direct response to Wright's book, and a first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain , which reflected upon his life in Harlem as the son of a Baptist minister. In the ‘60’s, The Civil Rights movement made a powerful impression on black voices and the need to transcend freedom anew in the publishing world like no other. Baldwin, whose books and essays dealt not only with race but sexuality, familial order, and the trails and tribulation of expatriation, gave new meaning to political expressionism. This period saw many ‘firsts’ in the field of literature. Most notably, Lorraine Hansberry, a demure young playwright, nevertheless provided good fodder for fiction with her play A Raisin in the Sun ; she became the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka also rose to prominence with his risky and risqué off-Broadway plays, and Ntozake Shange emerged with her self-defined mélange on women, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf . In the 70s and 80s, books by black writers routinely topped the best-seller lists. Nobelist Toni Morrison rose to prominence, as did successful black writers such as Alice Walker, Alex Haley, and Maya Angelou. Other distinctive voices such as Gayl Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, and John Edgar Wideman also emerged during these decades—writers whose works sought to move beyond easy categories and encompass the style and vernacular of blacks both in America and abroad. In closing, no matter what era, no matter how the tables have been turned to satisfy institutions where racism attempted to stifle literary intent from Black folk, we have found ways to be heard…. and if you do what need to be done to keep our ancestors legacies alive, the classics will prevail and be here to remind us that celebrating Black literary history is a continuous thing.
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