2Discussion Board #3: Exploring Themes, Characters, Symbols, and Social Justice in African American Literature

1. Choose and Analyze an Element
   • Select one of the following elements from this week’s reading:
     • Themes: Identify a theme in the reading that reflects concepts such as racialization, sovereignty, liberation, or decolonization. Explain how this theme is developed in the text and its significance for understanding the ethnic group’s experiences and struggles.
     • Characters: Choose a character who represents a social struggle or cultural value within their community. Describe how the character’s experiences reflect issues like race, class, gender, or resistance, and connect this to larger themes like self-determination, anti-racism, or solidarity.
     • Symbols: Identify a symbol that appears in the text. Describe its cultural or social meaning in relation to the community and how it relates to themes of sovereignty, liberation, or anti-colonial resistance.
2. Apply Theory and Knowledge from Ethnic Studies
   • Connect your analysis to one or more of the following course concepts: race and racism, equity, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, settler colonialism, and anti-racism. Explain how the text reflects or challenges these concepts within the cultural context of Native American, African American, Asian American, or Latina/o American communities.
3. Provide a Quote for Support
   • Include a relevant quote from the text to support your analysis. Explain how this quote strengthens your understanding of the chosen theme, character, or symbol and its connection to larger social or cultural issues.
4. Pose a Question for Further Thought
• Ask a question that encourages your classmates to reflect on the intersection of race and social justice within the text. For instance, you might ask how the theme relates to modern issues of immigration, reparations, or language policies, or how the text speaks to ongoing movements for racial justice and decolonization.

_______________________This week’s reading

1. Chapters 1-6 of We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza.

2. (Other reading from the week’s lecture) The following is a historical overview of events that have influenced African American Literature:

   Antebellum Literature

   • African Americans launched their literature in North AmericaLinks to an external site. during the second half of the 18th century, joining the war of words between EnglandLinks to an external site. and its rebellious colonies with a special sense of mission. The earliest African American writers sought to demonstrate that the proposition “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of IndependenceLinks to an external site. required that Black Americans be extended the same human rightsLinks to an external site. as those claimed by white Americans. In the early 19th century, the standard-bearers of African American literature spoke with heightening urgency of the need for whites to address the terrible sin of slaveryLinks to an external site..

   The Civil War and ReconstructionWith the outbreak of the Civil War, many African Americans deployedLinks to an external site. their pens and their voices to convince President Abraham LincolnLinks to an external site. that the nation was engaged in nothing less than a war to end slavery, which Black men, initially barred from enlisting, should be allowed to fight. This agitation led eventually to a decisive force of 180,000 Black soldiers joining the Union army. The short-lived era of ReconstructionLinks to an external site. in the United States (1865–77) elicited an unprecedented optimism from African American writers.The late 19th and earlier 20th centuriesAs educational opportunity expanded among African Americans after the war, a self-conscious Black middle class with serious literary ambitions emerged in the later 19th century. Their challenge lay in reconcilingLinks to an external site. the genteel style and sentimental tone of much popular American literatureLinks to an external site., which middle-class Black writers often imitated, to a real-world sociopolitical agenda that, after the abandonment of ReconstructionLinks to an external site. in the South, obliged African AmericanLinks to an external site. writers to argue the case for racial justiceLinks to an external site. to an increasingly indifferent white audience.The Harlem RenaissanceThe phenomenon known as the Harlem RenaissanceLinks to an external site. represented the flowering in literatureLinks to an external site. and art of the New Negro movement of the 1920s, epitomized in The New NegroLinks to an external site. (1925), an anthology edited by Alain LockeLinks to an external site. that featured the early work of some of the most gifted Harlem Renaissance writers, including the poets Countee CullenLinks to an external site., Langston HughesLinks to an external site., and Claude McKayLinks to an external site. and the novelists Rudolph FisherLinks to an external site., Zora Neale HurstonLinks to an external site., and Jean ToomerLinks to an external site.. The “New Negro,” Locke announced, differed from the “Old Negro” in assertiveness and self-confidence, which led New Negro writers to question traditional “white” aestheticLinks to an external site. standards, to eschewLinks to an external site. parochialism and propagandaLinks to an external site., and to cultivateLinks to an external site. personal self-expression, racial pride, and literary experimentation. Spurred by an unprecedented receptivity to Black writing on the part of major American magazines, book publishers, and white patrons, the literary vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance enjoyed critical favour and financial rewards that lasted, at least for a few, until well into the Great DepressionLinks to an external site. of the 1930s.The Advent of Urban RealismDespite the enormous outpouring of creativity during the 1920s, the vogue of Black writing, Black art, and Black cultureLinks to an external site. waned markedly in the early 1930s as the Great DepressionLinks to an external site. took hold in the United States. African AmericanLinks to an external site. pundits in the 1930s and ’40s tended to depreciate the achievements of the New Negroes, calling instead for a more politically engaged, socially critical realism in literatureLinks to an external site..African American Theatre During the decade following World War II, professional African American dramatistsLinks to an external site.—such as William Blackwell Branch, authorLinks to an external site. of In Splendid Error (produced 1954); Alice ChildressLinks to an external site., creator of the Obie Award-winning Trouble in Mind (produced 1955); and Loften Mitchell, best known for A Land Beyond the River (produced 1957)—found greater access to the white American theatre than any previous generation of Black playwrights had known. Baldwin began a dramatic career in 1955 with The Amen Corner, which focuses on a female preacher in a Harlem storefront church. Hughes continued his stage presence with his musical comedyLinks to an external site. Simply Heavenly in 1957. But no one in African American theatre could have predicted the huge critical and popular success that came to Chicagoan Lorraine HansberryLinks to an external site. after her first playLinks to an external site., A Raisin in the SunLinks to an external site., opened at the Ethel BarrymoreLinks to an external site. Theatre on Broadway in March 1959. The Literature of Civil Rights Declaring that “all art is ultimately social,” Hansberry was one of several African American writers—most prominently Baldwin and Alice WalkerLinks to an external site.—to take an active part in the civil rights movementLinks to an external site. and to be energized, imaginatively and socially, by the freedom struggles of the late 1950s and the ’60s. The murder of Emmett TillLinks to an external site., a Black teenager visiting Mississippi in 1955, led Gwendolyn BrooksLinks to an external site. to compose “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till,” signaling her gravitation toward a more explicitly socially critical verse as featured in her volume The Bean Eaters (1960). Poets Margaret Esse Danner and Naomi Long Madgett began their careers publishing similar work in the 1950s.Renaissance in the 1970’s A variety of literary, cultural, and political developments during the 1950s and ’60s, including the heightened visibility of Hansberry, Kennedy, Walker, and Brooks, the expanding presence of Black women’s experience and expressive traditions in African AmericanLinks to an external site. writing, and the impact of the women’s movement on African American women’s consciousnessLinks to an external site., fostered what has been termed “the Black women’s literary renaissance” of the 1970s.The turn of the 21st CenturyAlthough women’s writing claimed center stage in the eyes of many critics and a large number of readers of African American literature from the 1970s to the end of the 20th century, African American female and male writers continued to receive important recognition for their work during this time.