African American Lit from 1940

Unit 1

Literary Naturalism

Relationship to nature/environmental surroundings to show how reality is shaped by social environment

Literary Naturalism Example

A Raisin in the Sun

Tragicomedy  

Drama and comedy paradoxical 

Tragicomedy example

invisible man

Realism

relationship to and representation of reality and understanding value of life as it is

What White Publishers Won’t Print- Zora Neal Hurston

• Relationship to capitalism/market

• Lit role as a mirror- value of art/realism is what they won’t print

Who is associated with Black Naturalism 

Stems from the Richard Wright School of Thought and the 1940 novel Native Son

What is Black Naturalism 

• Emphasis on external forces and function

• Challenging sterotypes  to indicate that they were caused by situation eather than behaviors inherent to being Black 

Example of Black Naturalism

Ann Petry The Street

Richard Wright Blueprint for Negro Writing

Responsibility of Black writing

Audience and purpose for Negro Writing

Black Modernism

Representation of alienation, disilllusionment, rejection of tradition within contect of thr Black experience 

What does Black Modernism use

Use of narrative form

Music and Jazz as a structural form- source of meaning within narrative

Poetry

Does not fit in within jjust one of the literary and atristic movements

Zora Neale Hurston

What White Publishers Won't Print

Ann Pretry

The Street Chapter 1

Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Paule Marshall

Brown Girl, Brownstones

Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun

James Baldwin

Sonny’s Blues

Margaret Walker

For My People

Robert Hayden

Fredrick Douglass

Richard Wright suggested that culture stems from two sources

Folklore and Negro Church

Realism was NOT used as an approach in what

Wright School of Thought

Black Realism Example

A Raisin in the Sun, What White Publishers Won’t Print

Black Modernism Example

Sonnys Blues, Invisible Man