masses.” Orators addressed themes such as the common enemy, American
hypocrisy, threatened black manhood, and black unity as a prerequisite for
black liberation. Students interested in researching this topic might consult
The Voice of Black Rhetoric, edited by Arthur Smith and Stephen Robb (Bos-
ton: Allyn & Bacon, 1971), and Peniel E. Joseph’s Dark Days, Bright Nights:
From Black Power to Barack Obama (New York: BasicCivitas, 2010). Consider
the ways in which contemporary African American orators such as Jesse
Jackson, Al Sharpton, and President Barack Obama echo their predecessors.
How have the themes evolved? What new strategies do they employ? Who is
the contemporary audience, and how has it effected changes in strategy and
message?- In recent years America has begun to acknowledge and celebrate the multi-
plicity of mixed-race identities in the country. Multiraciality has come to the
forefront in popular discussions of race, and most notably in the media, with
the recent election of the nation’s first biracial president. This trend is also evi-
dent in literature of the mid to late 1990s such as James McBride’s The Color of
Water, Gregory Williams’s Life on the Color Line, and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia.
How do these narratives deconstruct existing notions of race? Do they change
your ideas about the fluidity of race? How does multiraciality complicate and/
or potentially depoliticize cultural perceptions of race in America?
RESOURCES
Primary Works
Terry McMillan, ed., Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African American
Fiction (New York: Penguin, 1990).
Excellent anthology with strong coverage of important contemporary black writ-
ers, a valuable preface by John Edgar Wideman, and a useful introduction by
McMillan.
Arnold Rampersad, ed., The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Excellent anthology with strong representation of the contemporary era and use-
ful introductions.
Criticism
William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds., The Oxford
Companion to African American Literature (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
Invaluable volume of short essays on various movements and individual
writers.
Houston A. Baker Jr., Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s
Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Focuses on Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange but
extends beyond those authors to offer useful frameworks for understanding the