The Literature Book

306

FREEING YOURSELF

WAS ONE THING

CLAIMING OWNERSHIP

OF THAT FREED SELF

WAS ANOTHER

BELOVED (1987), TONI MORRISON

B

y the end of the 20th

century, African-American

writing had grown from the

slave narratives of 150 years earlier

into a major canon of American

literature. From educational works

such as Booker T. Washington’s

Up From Slavery (1901), through

the vibrant literature of the 1920s

Harlem Renaissance, it reached

a high point with Ralph Ellison’s

philosophical novel Invisible Man

(1952). During the late 1950s and

the 1960s, young black writers

were fueled by the civil rights

and Black Power movements.

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved

emerged during a new flourishing

of black writing that began in the

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Contemporary African-

American literature

BEFORE

1953 James Baldwin’s Go Tell

It on the Mountain captures the

pain of life in a racist society.

1976 Alex Haley’s novel Roots:

The Saga of an American

Family traces family history

back to slavery.

1982 Alice Walker reveals the

hardships of African-American

women’s lives in the 1930s in

The Color Purple.

AFTER

1997 Junot Díaz’s sizzling

prose paints a picture of the

Dominican-American diaspora

in his story collection Drown.

1998 Edwidge Danticat

recounts the 1937 massacre

of Haitian cane workers in

The Farming of Bones.

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