Wilfred Samuels - Encyclopedia of African-American Literature (2007).pdf - Encyklopedia Literatury - MMarkMMark

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

AFRICAN-AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Wilfred Samuels

Associate Editors

Loretta Gilchrist Woodard

Tracie Church Guzzio

Encyclopedia of African-American Literature

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ISBN-10: 0-8160-5073-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-5073-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Encyclopedia of African American literature / Wilfred D. Samuels, editor; Tracie Guzzio,

associate editor, Loretta Gilchrist Woodard, associate editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8160-5073-2 (acid-free paper)

1. American literature—African American authors—Encyclopedias. 2. American literature—

African American authors—Bio-bibliography—Dictionaries. 3. African American authors

—Biography—Dictionaries. 4. African Americans—Intellectual life—Encyclopedias.

5. African Americans in literature—Encyclopedias. I. Samuels, Wilfred D. II. Guzzio, Tracie.

III. Woodard, Loretta Gilchrist.

PS153.N5E48 2007

810.9'896073003—dc22

2006026140

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

C ONTENTS



Introduction

Acknowledgments

AtoZEntries

Bibliographyof

SecondarySources

581

MajorWo r k s by

African-AmericanWriters

585

ListofContributors

593

Index

595

T ABLE OF

I NTRODUCTION

We have always been imagining ourselves . . .

we are the subjects of our own narratives,

witnesses to and participants in our own

experience. . . . We are not, in fact, “other.”

(Morrison, 208)

style that constitutes the foundation and heartbeat

of the African-American literary tradition.

During the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries,

unknown black bards, as James Weldon Johnson

recounts, placed their lips to the sacred fire of

poetry and created “sorrow songs” whose lyrics

responded to the dehumanization of the world of

chattel slavery, a world that, in the end, reduced

African Americans to “three-fifths other.” In their

songs, they registered their personal humanity

and simultaneously humanized the troubled and

troubling world around them. The lyrics of such

songs as “Steal Away,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,”

and “Motherless Child,” as well as the didactic and

often humorous narratives and tales about Brer

Rabbit, Tar Baby, and High John de Conquer, com-

mented on current conditions, passed on tradi-

tions, entertained, and offered lessons in morality

and virtue in the “broken tongue” that black people

created. But when exposed to the written texts and

more formal language of Western culture, African

Americans also put pen to paper to create works of

merit. For example, kidnapped between the ages

of seven or eight, Ethiopian-born Phillis Wheatley

confounded the community of her New England

“city upon a hill,” the cradle of many Founding

Fathers, with her broadsides and eventually with

In this profoundly proud, eloquent, and bold

declaration, novelist Toni Morrison takes on those

“serious scholars” and new discoverers of what

she defines as a rich “Afro-American artistic pres-

ence” in Western culture in general and American

culture in particular. For many years Western

scholars considered the phrase African-American

literature to be either a myth or a contradiction

and either negated or dismissed the rich body of

writing by Americans of African descent.

As Olaudah Equiano declares in his 18th-cen-

tury autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of

Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African,

Written by Himself (1789), black Africans brought

with them to the strange land of the “New World”

memories of their traditions of dance, music, and

poetry, which, planted in the British colonies of

North America in particular, took root in the new

songs they sang. Today those songs run deep like

a river in the souls of black folks and reverberate

and resound in the antiphonal call-and-response

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