User:Negron.grace/African-American literature

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Younger African-American novelists include David Anthony Durham, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Tayari Jones, Kalisha Buckhanon, Mat Johnson, ZZ Packer and Colson Whitehead, to name a few. African-American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives. Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh Holton. Edited from African-American literature

African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Brandon Massey, Charles R. Saunders, John Ridley, John M. Faucette, Sheree Thomas and Nalo Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors. Edited from African-American literature Many of these novelist take influence from writings like Toni Morrison's Beloved and Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl that allude to the social injustices African Americans have faced in American history. Incorporating these themes with characteristics of the Gothic, science fiction, and dystopian genres, stories like Octavia E. Butler's have begun to gain literary honor and critique. Butler's work, Fledgling illustrates a unique vampire mythology, tackling notions of racial superiority and gender roles. Authors like Brandon Massey strategically places some of his stories in Gothic southern settings that fuel the fear of his plots. Much like Morrison's haunted house, placing mystery and suspense in antebellum style houses is strategic to their craft.

African-American criticism (section)

Criticism regarding African-American literature in the spaces of education have influenced which stories can and should be taught in schools. Nina Mikkelsen's, Insiders, Outsiders, and the Question of Authenticity: Who Shall Write for African American Children? argues for the importance of authenticity when it comes to writing stories for young African American audiences. Mikkelsen tracks the significance of having students exposed to diversity while also maintaining authentic narratives by incorporating stories that not only include characters of color but are also written by people of color. While her perspective is broad and marketed towards writers and readers themselves, incorporating her same themes and analysis to authentic narratives proves useful in a classroom setting. She challenges what previous ‘diverse’ narratives might have accomplished while also dissecting why they were demeaning to the culture of authentic storytelling itself. This article fits into the discourse on having diverse literature for students to see themselves in the classroom and the importance of choosing texts who’s storytelling resonates with their own culture. Mikkelsen writes, "The idea of multicultural literature (that in which the idea of different world views or cultural references are built into the texture of the book itself-its focus, its emphasis, its subject matter) is a challenging one for readers who are not insiders of the culture being depicted." She believes providing students with content that portrays authentic and genuine reflections of multi-cultural experiences, allows for better engagement and connection in the classroom for those who resonate with these cultures.

Edit African-American literature (included citations)

The slave narratives were integral to African-American literature. Some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets. Slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif. Many of them are now recognized as the most literary of all 19th-century writings by African Americans, with two of the best-known being Frederick Douglass's autobiography and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).