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African American literature

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Literature types

   African American literature is literature written by, about, and
   sometimes specifically for African Americans. The genre began during
   the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet Phillis Wheatley
   and orator Frederick Douglass, reached an early high point with the
   Harlem Renaissance, and continues today with authors such as Toni
   Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley being ranked among the top
   writers in the United States. Among the themes and issues explored in
   African American literature are the role of African Americans within
   the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery,
   and equality.

   As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the
   centuries, so, too, have the foci of African American literature.
   Before the American Civil War, African American literature primarily
   focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the popular subgenre
   of slave narratives. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors
   such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington debated whether to
   confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. During the
   American Civil Rights movement, authors like Richard Wright and
   Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation and black
   nationalism. Today, African American literature has become accepted as
   an integral part of American literature, with books such as Roots: The
   Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, The Colour Purple by Alice
   Walker, and Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and
   award-winning status.

Characteristics

   African American literature tends to focus on themes of particular
   interest to Black people, for example, the role of African Americans
   within the larger American society and issues such as African American
   culture, racism, religion, slavery, freedom, and equality. This focus
   began with the earliest African American writings, such as the slave
   narrative genre in the early 19th century, and continues through the
   work of many modern-day authors.

   Another characteristic of African American literature is its strong
   tradition of incorporating oral poetry into itself. There are many
   examples of oral poetry in African American culture, including
   spirituals, African American gospel music, blues and rap. This oral
   poetry also shows up in the African American tradition of Christian
   sermons, which make use of deliberate repetition, cadence and
   alliteration. All of these examples of oral poetry have made their way
   into African American literature.

   However, while these characteristics exist on many levels of African
   American literature, they are not the exclusive definition of the
   genre. As with any type of literature, there are disagreements as to
   the genre's definitions and which authors and works should be included.
   Some people include in African American literature writings by African
   Americans which lack black characters and situations and are not
   particularly targeted at black audiences, such as, for example, much of
   the earlier work of bestselling novelist Frank Yerby and that of
   science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany. Yerby, whose historical
   fiction with white protagonists earned him the title "king of the
   costume novel," became the first African American to write a
   bestselling novel, The Foxes of Harrow. The work of Delany, who is
   outspokenly gay, often has treated issues of sexual identity and social
   bias. While Delany does not specifically address these issues in an
   African American context, many consider him a leading voice in African
   American literature.

History

Early African American literature

   Just as African American history predates the emergence of the United
   States as an independent country, so too does African American
   literature have similarly deep roots.
   Phillis Wheatley
   Enlarge
   Phillis Wheatley

   Among the first prominent African American authors was poet Phillis
   Wheatley (1753–84), who published her book Poems on Various Subjects in
   1773, three years before American independence. Born in Senegal,
   Africa, Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery at the age of
   seven. Brought to America, she was owned by a Boston merchant. Even
   though she initially spoke no English, by the time she was sixteen she
   had mastered the language. Her poetry was praised by many of the
   leading figures of the American Revolution, including George
   Washington, who personally thanked her for a poem she wrote in his
   honour. Despite this, many white people found it hard to believe that a
   Black woman could be so intelligent as to write poetry. As a result,
   Wheatley had to defend herself in court by proving she actually wrote
   her own poetry. Some critics cite Wheatley's successful defense as the
   first recognition of African American literature.

   Another early African American author was Jupiter Hammon (1711–1806?).
   Hammon, considered the first published Black writer in America,
   published his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with
   Penitential Cries" as a broadside in early 1761. In 1778 he wrote an
   ode to Phillis Wheatley, in which he discussed their shared humanity
   and common bonds. In 1786, Hammon gave his well-known Address to the
   Negroes of the State of New York. Hammon wrote the speech at age
   seventy-six after a lifetime of slavery and it contains his famous
   quote, "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to
   reproach us for being black, or for being slaves." Hammon's speech also
   promoted the idea of a gradual emancipation as a way of ending slavery.
   It is thought that Hammon stated this plan because he knew that slavery
   was so entrenched in American society that an immediate emancipation of
   all slaves would be difficult to achieve. Hammon apparently remained a
   slave until his death. His speech was later reprinted by several groups
   opposed to slavery.

   William Wells Brown (1814–84) and Victor Séjour (1817–74) produced the
   earliest works of fiction by African American writers. Séjour was born
   free in New Orleans and moved to France at the age of 19. There he
   published his short story " Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") in 1837; the
   story represents the first known fiction by an African American, but
   written in French and published in a French journal, it had apparently
   no influence on later American literature. Séjour never returned to
   African American themes in his subsequent works. Brown, on the other
   hand, was a prominent abolitionist, lecturer, novelist, playwright, and
   historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown
   escaped to the North, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a
   prolific writer. Brown wrote what is considered to be the first novel
   by an African American, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853).
   The novel is based on what was at that time considered to be a rumor
   about Thomas Jefferson fathering a daughter with his slave, Sally
   Hemings.

   However, because the novel was published in England, the book is not
   considered the first African American novel published in the United
   States. This honour instead goes to Harriet Wilson, whose novel Our Nig
   (1859) details the difficult lives of Northern free Blacks.

Slave narratives

   A subgenre of African American literature which began in the middle of
   the 19th century is the slave narrative. At the time, the controversy
   over slavery led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue,
   with books like Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) representing the abolitionist
   view of the evils of slavery, while the so-called Anti-Tom literature
   by white, southern writers like William Gilmore Simms represented the
   pro-slavery viewpoint.

   To present the true reality of slavery, a number of former slaves such
   as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass wrote slave narratives, which
   soon became a mainstay of African American literature. Some six
   thousand former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote
   accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate
   books or pamphlets.

   Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms:
   tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist
   struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the
   abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a
   strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now recognized as the
   most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans, with
   two of the best-known being Frederick Douglass's autobiography and
   Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).

Frederick Douglass

   Frederick Douglass
   Enlarge
   Frederick Douglass

   While Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–95) first came to public attention as
   an orator and as the author of his autobiographical slave narrative, he
   eventually became the most prominent African American of his time and
   one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history.

   Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass eventually escaped and worked
   for numerous abolitionist causes. He also edited a number of
   newspapers. Douglass' best-known work is his autobiography, Narrative
   of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which was
   published in 1845. At the time some critics attacked the book, not
   believing that a black man could have written such an eloquent work.
   Despite this, the book was an immediate bestseller.

   Douglas later revised and expanded his autobiography, which was
   republished as My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In addition to serving
   in a number of political posts during his life, he also wrote numerous
   influential articles and essays.

Post-slavery era

   After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of
   African American authors continued to write nonfiction works about the
   condition of African Americans in the country.

   Among the most prominent of these writers is W.E.B. Du Bois
   (1868–1963), one of the original founders of the NAACP. At the turn of
   the century, Du Bois published a highly influential collection of
   essays titled The Souls of Black Folk. The book's essays on race were
   groundbreaking and drew from DuBois's personal experiences to describe
   how African Americans lived in American society. The book contains Du
   Bois's famous quote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the
   problem of the colour-line." Du Bois believed that African Americans
   should, because of their common interests, work together to battle
   prejudice and inequity.

   Another prominent author of this time period is Booker T. Washington
   (1856–1915), who in many ways represented opposite views from Du Bois.
   Washington was an educator and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a
   Black college in Alabama. Among his published works are Up From Slavery
   (1901), The Future of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and Its
   People (1905), and My Larger Education (1911). In contrast to Du Bois,
   who adopted a more confrontational attitude toward ending racial strife
   in America, Washington believed that Blacks should first lift
   themselves up and prove themselves the equal of whites before asking
   for an end to racism. While this viewpoint was popular among some
   Blacks (and many whites) at the time, Washington's political views
   would later fall out of fashion.

   A third writer who gained attention during this period in the US,
   though not American, was the Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), a
   publisher, journalist, and crusader for Black nationalism. He is best
   known as a champion of Black nationalism and the "back-to-Africa"
   movement, which encouraged people of African ancestry to return to
   their ancestral homeland. He wrote a number of essays and nonfiction
   books.

   Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who often wrote in the rural, black dialect of
   the day, was the first African American poet to gain national
   prominence. His first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy, was published in
   1893. Much of Dunbar's work, such as When Malindy Sings (1906), which
   includes photographs taken by the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and
   Joggin' Erlong (1906) provide revealing glimpses into the lives of
   rural African-Americans of the day. Though Dunbar died young, he was a
   prolific poet, essayist, novelist (among them The Uncalled, 1898 and
   TheFanatics, 1901) and short story writer.

   Even though Du Bois, Washington, and Garvey were the leading African
   American intellectuals and authors of their time, other African
   American writers also rose to prominence. Among these is Charles W.
   Chesnutt, a well-known essayist.

Harlem Renaissance

   The Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940 brought new attention to
   African American literature. While the Harlem Renaissance, based in the
   African American community in Harlem in New York City, existed as a
   larger flowering of social thought and culture—with numerous Black
   artists, musicians, and others producing classic works in fields from
   jazz to theatre—the renaissance is perhaps best known for the
   literature that came out of it.

   Among the most famous writers of the renaissance is poet Langston
   Hughes. Hughes first received attention in the 1922 poetry collection,
   The Book of American Negro Poetry. This book, edited by James Weldon
   Johnson, featured the work of the period's most talented poets
   (including, among others, Claude McKay, who also published three
   novels, Home to Harlem, Banjo and Banana Bottom and a collection of
   short stories). In 1926, Hughes published a collection of poetry, The
   Weary Blues, and in 1930 a novel, Not Without Laughter. Perhaps,
   Hughes' most famous poem is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which he
   wrote as a young teen. His single, most recognized character is Jesse
   B. Simple, a plainspoken, pragmatic Harlemite whose comedic
   observations appeared in Hughes's columns for the Chicago Defender and
   the New York Post. Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) is, perhaps, the
   best-known collection of Simple stories published in book form. Until
   his death in 1967, Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books
   of short stories, two novels, and a number of plays, children's books,
   and translations.

   Another famous writer of the renaissance is novelist Zora Neale
   Hurston, author of the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
   (1937). Altogether, Hurston wrote 14 books which ranged from
   anthropology to short stories to novel-length fiction. Because of
   Hurston's gender and the fact that her work was not seen as socially or
   politically relevant, her writings fell into obscurity for decades.
   Hurston's work was rediscovered in the 1970s in a famous essay by Alice
   Walker, who found in Hurston a role model for all female African
   American writers.

   While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come
   out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became
   well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer, who wrote
   Cane, a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural
   and urban Black life, and Dorothy West, author of the novel The Living
   is Easy, which examined the life of an upper-class Black family.
   Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen, who described
   everyday black life in his poems (such as a trip he made to Baltimore,
   which was ruined by a racial insult). Cullen's books include the poetry
   collections Colour (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the
   Brown Girl (1927). Frank Marshall Davis's poetry collections Black
   Man's Verse (1935) and I am the American Negro (1937), published by
   Black Cat Press, earned him critical acclaim. Author Wallace Thurman
   also made an impact with his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of
   Negro Life (1929), which focused on intraracial prejudice between
   lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans.

   The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African American
   literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were
   primarily read by other Black people. With the renaissance, though,
   African American literature—as well as black fine art and performance
   art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture.

Civil Rights Movement era

   A large migration of African Americans began during World War I,
   hitting its high point during World War II. During this Great
   Migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in
   the American South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where
   they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.

   This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black
   community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen
   during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing
   American Civil Rights movement, which made a powerful impression on
   Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists
   were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of
   Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address
   these issues with their writings.

   One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work
   addressed issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for
   his novel Go Tell it on the Mountain, wrote deeply personal stories and
   essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual
   at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American
   culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics
   as Another Country and The Fire Next Time.

   Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin
   called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best
   known for his novel Native Son (1940), which tells the story of Bigger
   Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was
   so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays
   Notes of a Native Son, in reference to Wright's novel. However, their
   friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's
   Protest Novel," which criticized Native Son for lacking credible
   characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright's other books are
   the semiautobiographical novel Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953),
   and White Man, Listen! (1957).

   The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison, best known
   for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.
   Even though Ellison did not complete another novel during his lifetime,
   Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in literary
   history. After Ellison's death, a second novel, Juneteenth, was pieced
   together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years.
   Ralph Ellison circa 1961
   Enlarge
   Ralph Ellison circa 1961

   The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets,
   most notably Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to
   win the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry,
   Annie Allen. Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well
   known during the 1950s and '60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.

   During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national
   attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose play A Raisin in the Sun
   focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959
   New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained
   attention was Amiri Baraka, who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays.
   In more recent years, Baraka has become known for his poetry and music
   criticism.

   It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books
   about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil Rights
   Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King,
   Jr.'s " Letter from Birmingham Jail".

Recent history

   Beginning in the 1970s, African American literature reached the
   mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling
   and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of
   African American writers began to be accepted by academia as a
   legitimate genre of American literature.

   As part of the larger Black Arts Movement, which was inspired by the
   Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, African American literature
   began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are
   generally credited with helping to promote and define African American
   literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction
   writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel.

   James Emanuel took a major step toward defining African American
   literature when he edited (with Theodore Gross) Dark Symphony: Negro
   Literature in America, the first collection of black writings released
   by a major publisher. This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator
   at the City College of New York (where he is credited with introducing
   the study of African-American poetry), heavily influenced the birth of
   the genre. Other influential African American anthologies of this time
   included Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by
   LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal in 1968 and The
   Negro Caravan, co-edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses
   Lee in 1969.

   Toni Morrison, meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors
   when she worked as an editor for Random House in the 1960s and '70s,
   where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl
   Jones. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the most important
   African American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, The
   Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Among her most famous novels is
   Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. This story
   describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to
   save her from a life of slavery. Another important novel is Song of
   Solomon, a tale about materialism and brotherhood. Morrison is the
   first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

   In the 1970s novelist and poet Alice Walker wrote a famous essay that
   brought Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel Their Eyes Were
   Watching God back to the attention of the literary world. In 1982,
   Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her
   novel The Colour Purple. An epistolary novel (a book written in the
   form of letters), The Colour Purple tells the story of Celie, a young
   woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to
   marry a man who physically abuses her. The novel was later made into a
   film by Steven Spielberg.

   The 1970s also saw African American books topping the bestseller lists.
   Among the first books to do so was Roots: The Saga of an American
   Family by Alex Haley. The book, a fictionalized account of Haley's
   family history—beginning with the kidnapping of Haley's ancestor Kunta
   Kinte in Gambia through his life as a slave in the United States—won
   the Pulitzer Prize and became a popular television miniseries. Haley
   also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965.

   Other important writers in recent years include literary fiction
   writers Gayl Jones, Ishmael Reed, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Kenan, and
   John Edgar Wideman. African American poets have also garnered
   attention. Maya Angelou read a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration,
   Rita Dove won a Pulitzer Prize and served as Poet Laureate of the
   United States from 1993 to 1995, and Cyrus Cassells's Soul Make a Path
   through Shouting was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Cassells
   is a recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award. Lesser-known poets
   like Thylias Moss, and Natasha Trethewey also have been praised for
   their innovative work. Notable black playwrights include Ntozake
   Shange, who wrote For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When
   the Rainbow is Enuf; Ed Bullins; Suzan-Lori Parks; and the prolific
   August Wilson, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays. Most
   recently, Edward P. Jones won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for
   The Known World, his novel about a black slaveholder in the antebellum
   South.

   African American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A
   pioneer in this area is Chester Himes, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote
   a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson
   and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives. Himes
   paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh
   Holton. African Americans are also represented in the genres of science
   fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler,
   Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Brandon Massey, Charles
   R. Saunders, John Ridley, John M. Faucette, Sheree Thomas and Nalo
   Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors.

   Finally, African American literature has gained added attention through
   the work of talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who repeatedly has leveraged
   her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book
   Club. At times, she has brought African American writers a far broader
   audience than they otherwise might have received.

Critiques

   While African American literature is well accepted in the United
   States, it is not without controversy. To the genre's supporters,
   African American literature exists both within and outside American
   literature and is helping to revitalize the country's writing. To
   critics, African American literature is part of a Balkanization of
   American literature. In addition, there are some within the African
   American community who do not like how their own literature sometimes
   showcases Black people.

Existing both inside and outside American literature

   According to James Madison University English professor Joanne Gabbin,
   African American literature exists both inside and outside American
   literature. "Somehow African American literature has been relegated to
   a different level, outside American literature, yet it is an integral
   part," she says.

   This view of African American literature is grounded, in many ways, in
   the experience of Black people in the United States. Even though
   African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most
   of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens. As a
   result, they were part of America while also being outside it.

   The same can be said for African American literature. While it exists
   fully within the framework of a larger American literature, it also
   exists as its own entity. As a result, new styles of storytelling and
   unique voices are created in isolation. The benefit of this is that
   these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help
   revitalize the larger literary world (McKay, 2004). This artistic
   pattern has held true with many aspects of African American culture
   over the last century, with jazz and hip hop being just two artistic
   examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before
   reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American
   culture.

   Whether African American literature will keep to this pattern in the
   coming years remains to be seen. Since the genre is already popular
   with mainstream audiences, it is possible that its ability to develop
   new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some
   critics—may be a thing of the past.

Balkanization of American literature?

   Despite these views, some conservative academics and intellectuals
   argue that African American literature only exists as part of a
   balkanization of literature over the last few decades or as an
   extension of the culture wars into the field of literature. According
   to these critics, literature is splitting into distinct and separate
   groupings because of the rise of identity politics in the United States
   and other parts of the world. These critics reject bringing identity
   politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could
   write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks."

   People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it
   limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition
   and, more importantly, judges ethnic writers merely on the basis of
   their race. These critics reject this judgment and say it defies the
   meaning of works like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, in which Ellison's
   main character is invisible because people see him as nothing more than
   a Black man. Others criticize special treatment of any ethnic-based
   genre of literature. For example, Robert Hayden, the first
   African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
   Congress, once said (paraphrasing the comment by the black composer
   Duke Ellington about jazz and music), "There is no such thing as Black
   literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all."

   Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics
   through writing actually deepens human understanding and that,
   previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by
   American literature. (Jay, 1997)

   The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is
   not breaking apart because of new genres like African American
   literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the
   increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of
   diversity than ever before in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004).
   This view is supported by the fact that many African American
   authors—and writers representing other minority groups—consistently
   reach the tops of the best-seller lists. If their literature only
   appealed to their individual ethnic groups, this would not be possible.

African American criticism

   Some of the criticism of African American literature over the years has
   come, surprisingly enough, from within the African American community.
   This results from complaints that Black literature sometimes does not
   portray Black people in a positive light.

   This clash of aesthetics and racial politics has its beginnings in
   comments made by W.E.B DuBois in the NAACP publication The Crisis. For
   example, in 1921 he wrote, "We want everything that is said about us to
   tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art
   and Propaganda be one." He added to this in 1926 by saying, "All Art is
   propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists."
   DuBois and the editors of The Crisis consistently stated that
   literature was a tool in the struggle for African American political
   liberation.

   DuBois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed most clearly when
   he clashed in 1928 with African American author Claude McKay over
   McKay's best-selling novel Home to Harlem. To DuBois, the novel's frank
   depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem only appealed to
   the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for
   portrayals of Black "licentiousness." DuBois also said, "Home to Harlem
   ... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its
   filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." This criticism was
   repeated by others in the Black community when author Wallace Thurman
   published his novel The Blacker the Berry in 1929. This novel, which
   focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and
   darker-skinned Blacks, infuriated many African Americans, who did not
   like such a public airing of their culture's "dirty laundry."

   Naturally, many African American writers did not agree with the
   viewpoint that all Black literature should be propaganda, and instead
   stated that literature should present the truth about life and people.
   Langston Hughes articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist
   and the Racial Mountain" (1926), when he said that Black artists
   intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public
   or white public thought.

   A more recent occurrence of this Black-on-Black criticism arose in
   charges by some critics that Alice Walker's novel The Colour Purple
   unfairly attacked Black men. Walker later refuted these charges in her
   book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult.

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