Consciousness of FBI Ghostreading Fills a Deep and Characteristic Vein of African American Literature

F.B. Eyes ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Gloria Naylor ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
Danzy Senna ◽  
The One

This part argues that Afro-modernist literature “pre-responded” to FBI inspection, internalizing the likelihood of Bureau ghostreading and publicizing its implications with growing bluntness and embellishment over the years from 1919 to 1972 and beyond. Thus, the fifth and last of the book's five theses, and the one that finally involves closer encounters with black poems, stories, essays, and novels than with their silhouettes in FBI files: Consciousness of FBI ghostreading fills a deep and characteristic vein of African American literature. Section 1 examines decisive responses to FBI surveillance in both the early journalism and the foundational poetry of the Harlem movement. Section 2 charts the FBI's migrant status in Afro-modernism from the mid-1930s through the early Cold War. Section 3 focuses on the expatriate trio of Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, and Chester Himes, and their interlocking fictions of Paris noir in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Section 4 widens its focus, owing to the profusion of black Bureau writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The final section sketches African American literature's less heated skirmish with the FBI after Hoover's death—a skirmish now led by black women including Ai, Audre Lorde, Danzy Senna, and Gloria Naylor.

scholarly journals Set Thine House in Order: Black Feminism and the Sermon as Sonic Art in The Amen Corner

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 271
Author(s):  
Melanie R. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Women's Spirituality ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Sonic Art ◽  
Women Preachers

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois discusses the historical and cultural beginnings of the black preacher as “the most unique personality developed on American soil.” He writes, “[the black preacher] found his functions as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong…Thus as bard, physician, judge, and priest within the narrow limits allowed by the slave system rose the Negro preacher.” Far from being a monolith, the preacher figure embodies many complexities and variances on how the preached Word can be delivered. This begs the question, in what ways can we reimagine DuBois’s black preacher figure in his words, “the most unique personality developed on American soil,” as a black woman? What remains to be seen in scholarship of the mid-twentieth century is an articulation of the black woman preacher in African American literature. By reimagining and refiguring a response to DuBois’s assertion above, how is the role of the black woman preacher and impact of her sermons portrayed in African American literature? Using the art of the sermon, the intersection of music, and James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner as a central text, this article examines the black woman preacher in character and African American women’s spirituality in twentieth century literature. I argue that the way in which Margaret Alexander, as a black woman preacher in the text, creates sermonic spaces of healing and restoration (exegetically and eschatologically) for herself and others outside of the church becomes a new mode of social and cultural resistance. This article works to re-envision the black woman and reposition her in the center of religious discourse on our way to unearthing the modes of transfiguration black women preachers evoke in and out of the pulpit.

scholarly journals The Self in Society: Exploring Cultural Embeddedness in Gloria Naylor’s Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 329
Author(s):  
Anjila Singh Mehla
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Gloria Naylor ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

<div><p><em>A most significant development that has taken place on the global literary scene during the last few decades or so is the dramatic emergence of African-American voices as a distinct and dominant force. Along with Toni Morrison scores of African American Fiction writers, poets, playwrights, autobiographers, and essayists have mapped bold new territories; they have firmly entrenched themselves in the forefront of contemporary American Literature. This article retraces this exciting literary phenomenon in the context of the lives, works, and achievements of Gloria Naylor and her contemporaries. Naylor discovered feminism and African American Literature, which revitalized her and gave her new ways to think about and define herself as a black woman.</em></p></div>

scholarly journals Music of Survival: A Search for Identity in the Works of Richard Wright

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Shadan Jafri
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
American Life ◽  
The People

The complexly changing nature of American life and the vigorous versatility and all-encompassing spread of the written record are the marks of American literature. Social forces always make their imprint on literature. Especially in America where the democratic processes bring the people into immediate familiarity with and sensitive response to cultural forces, the literature has responded quickly to such pressures. African American literature consists of the literary work by the writers of Afro-origin settled in USA. The category“ slave narratives” were writings by people who had experienced slavery. It described their journeys to independence and their survival struggles. The concepts explored and issues raised were racism, slavery, and social equality.

scholarly journals CONTINUITY OF AFROCENTRIC TROPES ABOUT AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY FORMATION IN THE NOVELS BY PAULE MARSHALL AND GLORIA NAYLOR

2020 ◽  
Vol X (32) ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Sandra Novkinić
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Paule Marshall ◽  
Gloria Naylor ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Spiritual Leader

African American literature that is fundamentally a socially symbolic linguistic construct, seeks different ways to expand and continue the use of Afrocentric vernacular tropes of personal and collective identity formation. The five residual oral forms – oratory (including everyday speech acts), myth/ritual performance, legend, tale, and song – as well as satire, irony, and paradox are used by contemporary African American novelists. This paper points to how the legendary black ancestors and elder members of the community, the gifted and often rebellious orator, musician, artist, the spiritual leader, and the messianic figure are equally enduring symbols and tropes. The aim of this work is to show the way in which the contemporary African American novelists Paule Marshall and Gloria Naylor use these (above mentioned) characters and symbols to reconstruct their long struggle as individuals and as community against anti-black racism. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on continuity of Afrocentric tropes in African American personal/collective and female/male identity formation as represented in selected novels by Paule Marshall and Gloria Naylor.

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