It is widely accepted that the canon of African American literature has racial realism at its core: African American protagonists, social settings, cultural sym
For a work to be considered African American literature, does it need to focus on black characters or political themes? Must it represent these within a specifi
The political value of African American literature has long been a topic of great debate among American writers, both black and white, from Thomas Jefferson to
Winner of the SAMLA Studies Award Honorable Mention for the MLA William Sanders Scarborough Prize From the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent pe