Research Guide to American Literature

A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry across the Americas, 1900–2002 (2002) and
Pow-Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience—Short Fiction from
Then to Now (2009), which present the American experience as truly pancultural
by including works by people of all colors. Alex Haley wrote Roots (1976), a novel
that blends history and fiction in telling the story of slavery in the Americas.
The adaptation of the latter work as a highly successful television miniseries just
two years after publication raised American awareness of the realities of slav-
ery. John Edgar Wideman began publishing in the late 1960s; his early works
show a strong Modernist influence. From 1973 to 1981 he avoided publishing
to immerse himself in black history and culture. His Homewood trilogy, which
consists of the short-story collection Damballah (1981) and the novels Hiding
Place (1981) and Sent for You Yesterday (1983), reflects his experiences growing
up in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End of Philadelphia. Wideman
is also noted for the novel Philadelphia Fire (1990) and for Brothers and Keepers
(1984), a memoir he wrote with his brother Robbie, who went to prison for life
while Wideman was achieving success in the academic and publishing worlds.
Other African American male fiction writers of the 1970s and 1980s include
Ernest J. Gaines, who is the subject of a Study Guide on Works and Writers
in this volume; and Charles Johnson, who is especially known for his National
Book Award–winning Middle Passage (1990), relating the experiences of a free
black man traveling on a slave ship in the 1830s.
In poetry, major figures include Michael S. Harper and Rita Dove (Dove is the
subject of a Study Guides on Works and Writers in Part III of this volume), Lucille
Clifton, and Audre Lorde; the careers of the Black Arts figures Giovanni and
Sanchez have continued into the contemporary era, as well. While their individual
expressions and personal visions vary, they have all experimented with the adapta-
tion of musical forms into poetry and explored African American history. Clifton
and Lorde write about experiences particular to women; Giovanni and Lorde have
both written about suffering from cancer. (Giovanni is a survivor of the lung cancer
that was diagnosed in 1995; Lorde died of breast cancer in 1992.)
In the 1980s and 1990s these poets were joined by Yusef Komunyakaa, who
has written about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and about African
American life in the rural South. For even more-recent noted African Ameri-
can poets, students might look to the work of Natasha Trethewey and Kevin
Young. Trethewey’s first collection, Domestic Work (2000), was chosen by Dove
for the first Cave Canem Poetry Prize; her Native Guard (2006) won the Pulit-
zer Prize. Young’s Jelly Roll (2005) is a collection of poetry that is inspired by
the blues and by black vernacular and grows out of the oral tradition. Sapphire
(pseudonym of Ramona Lofton) became known for her prowess at slam poetry
and published three volumes of verse. Sapphire is also the author of Push, a
haunting 1996 novel about an obese, illiterate African American teenager who
is abused by her parents; the pursuit of literacy helps to free her from these
circumstances but not without costs. The film adaptation, Precious, was released
to critical acclaim in 2009. The novel and the movie raise questions about the
potentially troubling political implications of such representations of blackness
in contemporary literature.

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