black literature
African-American authored works
Black literature is writing by authors of African descent, particularly African Americans, encompassing fiction, poetry, essays, and drama that often explores the Black experience, identity, and history.
The term covers a tradition spanning slave narratives through the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary works: Toni Morrison is a towering figure in black literature.
Also called African American literature when referring specifically to U.S. writers.
- slavery narrativesAccounts by enslaved persons
- slave narrativeEnslaved person's autobiographical account
- Toni Morrison"Song of Solomon"
- racial identityPerceived ancestral group membership
- Jim Crow eraPeriod of American racial segregation
James Baldwin · Zora Neale Hurston · novels · poetry · short stories · intersectionality · resilience · Langston Hughes · Chinua Achebe · Maya Angelou · freedom · plays · family bonds · resistance · oral traditions · call and response · roots · memoirs
- Black Literatureslave narratives, Harlem Renaissance, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin
- Caribbean diasporaWindrush, Afro-Caribbean, Cuban Americans, chain migration, transnationalism
black literatureEuropean literature
Written works from Europe
black, literature, blacks, blacker, blackest, blacken, blackened, blackening, blackness