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African american literature importance essay
The importance of African American Lit
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Resistance Literature is a kind of literature which “aims to limit, oppose, or reject hegemonic institutions and cosmologies and systems, strategies and acts of domination” (Collins, 147). It is an expression of rebellion for the powerless spirits around the world, and a defiance of hegemony practiced on the oppressed. Resistance literature is a global phenomenon that has emerged out of the political conflict between western imperialism and non-western indigence resistance movements. Besides, the purpose of this kind of literature is to express particular sentiment against a colonizer or an aggressor either directly or indirectly. In addition to the colonized non-western writers, African-American writers have used this literature to speak for …show more content…
Since its beginning, writers of Afro-American literature have invented their own characteristics and their own unparalleled point of view. Some of the main characteristics which can be used to identify the African American literature are: writing the point of view of the African-American majority, mentioning historical African legends and African myths, indicating cultural values, using Biblical verses, proverbs and aphorism, using direct address-conversational tone, and using fringe characters such as criminals, as protagonists to highlight “the marginal place of African American in society.” Besides, African American literature has had its own language at the beginning, but it has slightly changed at the end. At the beginning, this language has been combined from mixing people who speak different African languages- as their owners have wanted them to communicate in English. As a result, the Afro-Americans have invented a new language to communicate called “Pidgins”. In addition, they have spoken English a little bit, but their spoken English has been called “African-American Vernacular English” and it has been considered slang. At the end, their English has become more comprehensible, and a little bit similar to the American English Language. Furthermore, African-American writers use frequently very common thematic concerns such as: the role of African-American within the …show more content…
To begin with, Harriet Ann Jacobs was born on February 11, 1813 and died on March 7, 1897. She was born into slavery to Elijah and Delilah Jacobs, and she had got a brother. Jacobs and her brother grew up in Edenton, NC. Her father was a skilled carpenter. When she was 6, her mother died and she was sent to live with her mother’s owner and mistress, Margaret Horniblow. Horniblow welcomed her into the family and taught her how to write, read and sew. After Horniblow’s death, Jacobs’s happy life ended. Furthermore, she was inherited by Horniblow’s three-year-old niece, Mary Matilda, the daughter of Dr. James Norcom. At the age of 11, Jacobs and her brother moved to the physician’s household, where their life was miserable. In 1835, she managed to escape. She lived seven years in her grandmother’s attic, before escaping in 1842 to the North by boat to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Moreover, she was taken in by anti-slavery friend who had helped her to go to New York, where she worked as a nursemaid. Through her life she had written one novel only. Correspondingly, Harriet Jacobs narrated her journey in life, in her outstanding
In Harriett Jacobs’s book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she informs her readers of her life as a slave girl growing up in southern America. By doing this she hides her identity and is referred to as Linda Brent which she had a motive for her secrecy? In the beginning of her life she is sheltered as a child by her loving mistress where she lived a free blissful life. However after her mistress dies she is not freed from the bondage of slaver but given to her mistress sister and this is where Jacobs’s happiness dissolved. In her story, she reveals that slavery is terrible for men but, is more so dreadful for women. In addition woman bore being raped by their masters, as well as their children begin sold into slavery. All of this experience
Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic,
The story of Harriet Jacobs begins in North Carolina. In 1813 she was born into slavery, though she didn’t realize that she was a slave, stating “I was born a slave; but I never knew it. ”(Jacobs 1809-1829). Jacobs was with her mother until her death in 1819, then she lived with Margaret Horniblow, her mother’s mistress. Horniblow taught Jacobs to read, write, and sew, then in 1825 she died and willed Jacobs to her five year old niece.
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
In the earliest part of Harriet?s life the whole idea of slavery was foreign to her. As all little girls she was born with a mind that only told her place in the world was that of a little girl. She had no capacity to understand the hardships that she inherited. She explains how her, ?heart was as free from care as that of any free-born white child.?(Jacobs p. 7) She explains this blissful ignorance by not understanding that she was condemned at birth to a life of the worst kind oppression. Even at six when she first became familiar with the realization that people regarded her as a slave, Harriet could not conceptualize the weight of what this meant. She say?s that her circumstances as slave girl were unusua...
Out of bitterness and rage caused by centuries of oppression at the hands of the white population, there has evolved in the African-American community, a strong tradition of protest literature. Several authors have gained prominence for delivering fierce messages of racial inequality through literature that is compelling, efficacious and articulate. One of the most notable authors in this classification of literature is Richard Wright, author of several pieces including his most celebrated novel, Native Son, and his autobiography, Black Boy.
Levels of Literacy in African-American Literature - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Song of Solomon, and Push
Jacobs, Harriet A.. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Ed. Jennifer Fleischner. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. Print.
Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form
The core principle of history is primary factor of African-American Studies. History is the struggle and record of humans in the process of humanizing the world i.e. shaping it in their own image and interests (Karenga, 70). By studying history in African-American Studies, history is allowed to be reconstructed. Reconstruction is vital, for over time, African-American history has been misleading. Similarly, the reconstruction of African-American history demands intervention not only in the academic process to rede...
Harriet Jacobs story clearly shows the pain she suffered as a female slave, but it also showed the strength she proved to have within herself. At such a young age she went through things that I have never experienced. Her way of surviving is what truly inspires. Imagine just having to watch your children grow up before your very eyes and not being able to give them a hug or kiss. The simple things that our parents do today for us, the things we take for granted, are what she hoped and prayed she could do one day. Jacobs died in 1897, but she continued to fight for the rights of African
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.