Chapter Five  Black American Literature and Chinese-American Literature

            

Section One   Black American Literature

I . Historical background:

1. General introduction:

Black American literature has to be considered separately for the reason, that it is all tied up with the bitter experience of the Black people. It has a different tradition from the American literature we have been talking about so far, which is generally white. Certainly, Many American white writers created images of the black in American literature, for example, Stowe created the images of black in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Mark Twain created the black image—Jim in the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, etc. However, all the images written by the whites can not be free of prejudice of the whites. Black American literature differs in kind from all these.    

It centers on a myth, though also-biblical, quite different from that on which white American literature is based. Whereas the latter has been inspired at the outset by the myth of the Garden of Eden, Black American literature is patterned on that of deliverance from slavery, that of the Hebrew prophet Moses leading the Jews in their flight from the bondage of Egypt. This is in a way the key to understanding this literature. The Black people often try to express their feelings and aspirations in biblical terms, possibly for want of a better medium. We have noted earlier that "Go down. Moses," one of the hundreds of Black spirituals composed in the nineteenth century, translates the bondage of Israel in Egypt into a parallel of their own enslavement in America. They have been oppressed so hard that they can no longer bear, and they do not want to toil in fetters any more: they want” to go," which is another way of saying" freedom" and "emancipation." This is the essential spirit running through Black American literature.

2. Development of Black literature:

Black American literature underwent a long process of evolution. Oral tradition came first in the form of songs, ballads and spirituals, in short, folk literature in its various manifestations.

Then in the eighteenth century, Black poets like Jupiter Hammon (l720--1800) and Phyllis Wheatley (1753--l894) appeared on the scene. The abolitionist movement and the Civil War brought a new impetus to Black literature. Paul Laurence Dunbar(1872--l906) and James Weldon Johnson (l871--l938) produced substantial works of poetry and won national recognition. The Black novel developed at the turn of the twentieth century, but really nothing significant appeared until the publication
of the widely acclaimed novel, Cane (l923), by Jean Toomer (1894--l967) who was essentially a poet. The l920s saw a new upsurge of Black American literature in what has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance to which Black authors like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and many others contributed. Black poetry became an indispensible part of American literature.

By far the most important person in the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes (l902-1967) known as Black America's poet 1aureate, who ultimately outgrew the movement, and developed into one of the major Black authors to help to make Black culture. Hughes loved 1iterature. When still in school, he began to write and publish. Around l925 he was working as a busboy in a hotel in Washington D. C. when he met the then well--known and influential white poet, Vachel Lindsay. Lindsay was so struck by the poems which Hughes had submitted to him for advice that he encouraged the Black boy to devote himself to writing. Hughes became known as" the busboy poet." The next year he put his poems together in a book, entitled The weary Blues. This collection marks a stage in Hughes' development as an author. The poems, like the blues songs, are sad in tone, describing the fact of having to live in a very cruel and oppressive world. But there is no fight in them. Merely describing how things are, they read as if Hughes were trying to relieve himself and his race of a mental load and to achieve a degree of reconciliation with the wicked world. His collection of short stories,The Ways of White Folks, appeared in 1934.

From the l930s onward the Black novel assumed an ever increasing importance writing to bring the bleeding heart out of hiding with more fighting spirit.

In 1940s the black literature reached maturity, which was called protest literature. The representative is the Native son by Richard Wright. In 1950s, Ralph Ellison’s  Invisible Man marked a higher level of maturity for American black literature. Black theatre was slower in developing. It was bleak in the last century and nothing of importance appeared until the early 1960s when James Baldwin came up with their militant plays to arouse their Black audiences to action. The sixties proved to be a turbulent period for the United States' when the Blacks seemed, all of a sudden, to awaken to the need for power, Black power, and it proved to be a period of spectacular growth in Black literature. The representative of this period is Toni Morrison ,whose works included the Blue Eye; the Song of Solomon and so on. Toni Morrison, who received a Nobel Prize for literature, was the first black woman to be so honored in the United States. Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931. She was the second of four children of George Wofford, a shipyard welder and Hamah Willis Wofford. Her parents moved to Ohio to find better opportunities and to escape the racist attitudes that had plagued blacks in the South. At home, she heard many songs and tales of Southern black folklore. Toni was brought up to be proud of her heritage and rich historical background. Toni grew up in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.A. Lorain was a small industrial town populated with immigrant Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks coexisting among one another. She attended an integrated school and in first grade, she was the only black student in the class and the only one who could read. She was friends with many of her white schoolmates and did not encounter discrimination until she grew older.