Af. Am. Lit

African American Vernacular Tradition

A cultural and literary tradition rooted in African oral storytelling, music, communal expression, and resistance, used to preserve history, share knowledge, and challenge oppression.

African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

A variety of English developed within African American communities, characterized by its own distinct grammar, vocabulary, and rhetorical styles to express cultural identity, creativity, and resistance.

Call-and-Response

A form of communal expression in which a leader provides a statement or vocal line and a group responds, establishing solidarity, shared identity, and collective resistance.

Trickster Figure

A character rooted in African storytelling who relies on intelligence, wit, and deception to outsmart more powerful adversaries, demonstrating ways the oppressed can resist control.

Insurrectionary Aunthood

An interconnected, communal model of society rooted in mutual aid, care, and collective responsibility through a female figure, extending beyond the nuclear family.

Signification

A rhetorical strategy in African American vernacular traditions involving indirect, subversive language and double-voiced wordplay, allowing the in-group to outsmart dominant power structures.

Most of the slave narratives begin with the role of the mother figure. Using one of the narratives, explain the role that the mother plays in “authoring” the narrator’s freedom.

mother figures and freedom, for douglass mother- sense of identity and connection despite slavery, Mary princes mother - figure of resistance and individual power to slavery, Wheatleys mother- figure of resistance the source of her education and intellegence

Most of the texts we have read include the role of the “trickster figure.” Using one narrative or text, describe where the trickster appears in the text and the role that it plays in the narrator’s or speaker’s fight for freedom.

Douglass-literacy is his intelligence, Wheatley - hidden meanings and signification, her resistance = they both operate as a trickster figure by not only hiding the true meaning of their writing behind veiled humility (signification), but also by challenging black intelligence narratives

Jefferson has numerous ideas about the lack black intelligence and literacy. Using one of the slave narratives, discuss how that narrative challenge Jefferson’s contentions about Black intelligence.

Douglass’s narrative and his literacy challenges the racist claim by demostrating his capacity for literacy, reasoning, self-education, and powerful political argument. The existance of the narrative is evidence of intellectual ability.