What Was African American Literature?

The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures

by Warren

African American literature is over. With this provocative claim Kenneth W. Warren sets out to identify a distinctly African American literature—and to change the terms with which we discuss it.

Rather than contest other definitions, Warren makes a clear and compelling case for understanding African American literature as creative and critical work written by black Americans within and against the strictures of Jim Crow America. Within these parameters, his book outlines protocols of reading that best make sense of the literary works produced by African American writers and critics over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.

In Warren’s view, African American literature begged the question: what would happen to this literature if and when Jim Crow was finally overthrown? Thus, imagining a world without African American literature was essential to that literature. In support of this point, Warren focuses on three moments in the history of Phylon, an important journal of African American culture. In the dialogues Phylon documents, the question of whether race would disappear as an organizing literary category emerges as shared ground for critical and literary practice. Warren also points out that while scholarship by black Americans has always been the province of a petit bourgeois elite, the strictures of Jim Crow enlisted these writers in a politics that served the race as a whole.

Finally, Warren’s work sheds light on the current moment in which advocates of African American solidarity insist on a past that is more productively put behind us.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, Philosophy, American, Grad School

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2011

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book argues that what defined African American literature in the past was the legalized racism of slavery and Jim Crow. However, now that Jim Crow has ended, nothing holds together the category we commonly refer to as "African American Literature." Primarily, this is because while there has always existed certain class disparities within the black community, prior to Jim Crow any piece of black literature (even if it was elitist) was still a piece of evidence that blacks were in no way inferior and therefore a blow against legalized racism. Now, however, an elitist piece of black literature (and most literature is elitist) does nothing to help impoverished blacks since there's no codified racism to overturn. Furthermore, to continue to pursue African American literary studies as if it was the key to racial uplift is to at least tacitly endorse the idea that systemic issues in our society can be solved through individual contribution. In other words, arguing for the continued existence of African American Literature as a way to do social justice counter-productively promotes the detrimental ideology of personal responsibility.

I like Warren's politics and I think the book raises very important issues and comes to important conclusions. However, I think his claim is just a bit too grand. It is true (and Warren acknowledges) that such explicit racism as Jim Crow is gone. However, implicit systemic racism (see Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow) continues unabated. So, to me, it seems more accurate to argue that African American Literature has changed since the end of Jim Crow, but I don't think you can convincingly argue that it outright ended. Alternatively, you could argue that African American literature never really existed in the first place (because of identity divides including sex, sexuality, gender, and religion) but to argue that it had existed before and that it no longer exists now simply because of Jim Crow's demise is essential to argue that laws equal culture, which I cannot agree with. I think culture is far too complex to reduce down to laws. Still, I appreciate that the book challenges a lot of the essentializing that goes on in AfAm Studies and I think the premise of the book is solid, even if the conclusion is slightly too sensational.

[Tony Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘What was African American Literature,’ the text provided thought provoking arguments, important history, reference to African American Literature, and current literary debates – overall a very good read.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look into the workings of the genre of 'African American literature', which Warren claims no longer exists as a coherent genre now that segregation laws have been made obsolete and slavery is, you know, no longer a thing. Sadly, Warren forgets to actually come to a fulfilling synthesis to support his claim. Warren skims over the fact that discrimination is still a big thing, and reduces everyday racism to a small worry seeing as 'black people are now a part of a working democracy'.

Then again, this book was written before the whole Black Lives Matter-movement came along; I would argue that this movement alone has refurbished the platform for a coherent 'African American literature' - the police shootings have shown that racism is no small worry, even nowadays. So I'm inclined to disagree with Warren when he says that African American literature is no more than a historical term of designation - it might have spent a few years trying to recompose a sense of unity, but I do believe that nowadays the message of the 'black community and its plight' is back in full fervor, and rightfully so.

[Fari Cannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sounds an alarm, then refuses to pick up the phone. Not that there weren't solid points, or provocative ideas, but at the end I was left thinking "what a weird hill to die on." Does little to address contemporary concerns that might make African American literature still relevant, and seemingly wants to tether AA lit to a Jim Crow Era past, and say goodbye to both. This misses the shifting purposes, definitions and goals of African American literature, which makes him, not the literature, stuck in the past. Warren argues that "those who write it, and those who write about it, need it to distinguish the personal odysseys they undertake to reach personal success from similar endeavors by their white class peers," I wonder what being a professor of African American literature then says about him.

An interesting read for sure, but ultimately ironic, baffling and cynical.

[teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kenneth Warren (who frequently writes with Adolph Reed on similar themes) examines the historical and cultural context for AA literature, and points to a reality about literature broadly that makes it hard to expect any concrete change from its creation: mostly rich college educated people read and write it. There are moments where his argument slips but broadly I'd recommend this to anyone who has considered the role of a "Creative" and whatever political hang ups that might bring with it. Most important in this book and something that I wish he spent more time on was the concept of linked fate, created by Michael Dawson. Dawson found that Black people (seen most in educated black people) will understand that “that their individual life chances are linked to the fate of the race.” Is there space for a black writer who is not every black person?

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An incredibly intellectual exercise that overthinks the titular question, but I did enjoy it mostly because of that. I do think Warren simultaneously overcomplicates and oversimplifies his premise, which makes reading this a challenge, albeit a deserving one. The idea that something ceases to be once its foundational reason for existing has been eliminated - here, legal racism - is well made but rather high-minded. I would say this is a book for thinkers, not activists, as it proves its premise but leaves quite a vacuum to fill. Warren does posit that void is more imaginary than real now, considering what has transpired since, but it begs a tough-to-answer question about identity literature and its place, if it has one, in the field.

[Tiana J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warren makes a thoughtful, well-researched argument that African American literature has ended. He suggests that the works African Americans are writing now may speak to that history, but that this new literature is something different. The collective goals of the Civil Rights Movement and the end of legalized Jim Crow marks the end of what was known as African American literature. While I fully disagree with the work's premise, I think that Warren makes an interesting argument and uses a variety of historical and literary facts to formulate a controversial, yet valid, argument. This work is in conversation with other literary scholars who are thinking about these post-Civil Rights shifts and what that means for the future of African American literature.

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I'm a little lost. On the one hand this was an overly dense book. The first two chapters spent so much time and effort historicizing African American literature that I was bored, plus I forgot that it was a book describing why a certain literature was dead, not how a certain literature arose in the first place. History was certainly necessary, but perhaps not to the extent that it was given here. On the other hand, though, the third chapter and conclusion were rather compelling, offering a good amount of arguments and frameworks for understanding the purpose and function of African American literature, as well as analyzing the homage paid to original African American literary works in contemporary works written today. And I certainly understood the point that African American literature is a slippery concept, a literature born out of specific rejections or struggles against slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism, and its primary function is, paradoxically, to overcome a condition that created the need for the literature in the first place, and to self-define oneself in the face of a dominant culture that otherized, effectively otherizing oneself, while hoping to eliminate that need (to somewhat paraphrase Warren). In that sense, it's a lot like affirmative action--it exists in order to create a circumstance in which its existence is no longer necessary, but reactions to its existence tend to further its necessity. However, at the end of the book, I felt that Warren did more to prove that African American literature as a form of cultural preservation and reaction to racial history still does need to exist, if only for the same reason as affirmative action (that comparison is mine, not Warren's), and that without a distinct African American literature, we end up either with a whitewashed literary culture or a sell-out "African American literature" culture (meaning the stuff that Borders shelves as African American literature, which effectively equates the literary quality of Wright and Morrison with the commercial writers who write quick-sell books about baby mama drama, sex and drugs) or with a colorblind literary culture that erases racial history altogether. But I will admit that I probably got so exhausted at some points that I was not reading this as carefully as I should have.

[Tiffany]

Argues that ""Absent white suspicions of, or commitment to imposing, black inferiority [in Jim Crow time], African American literature would not have existed as a literature" (17). Continues that "Writers of African descent would have certainly emerged and written novels, plays, and poems that merited critical attention, but the imperative to produce and consider their literature as a corporate enterprise would not have obtained. The achievement of black writers lay in their having responded creatively to the impeoatives that derives from the establishment of a social order on the basis of assumed black inferiority, not not in any transcendence of these imperatives" (18).

The most interesting part for me in this piece, aside from the fun reading of Black No More, was the assertion that doing writing or literary criticism now on African American literature out of a motive for social justice risks doing just what Jim Crow era writers/critics did--perpetrated a sort of elite taste and control that reinforces class distinctions and illustrates larger social inequalities.

Looking forward to raising his arguments for discussion in African American Literature, English 379, in the Spring!

[Hollis]

This is a remarkably clear read for a seemingly provocative title and argument, which actually gets followed very thoroughly. Warren gives really strong reads on the political currents that directed prior and ongoing literary developments as well the political/academic reasons that direct scholarly discussions of Black literature both past and present. I'm very likely to read some more stuff by Warren, just for the depth+explaining of the chosen archive and his easy-to-follow prose. Highly recommended.

[Devin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Provocative in it's controversial claim that African American Lit ended with Jim Crow. However the book fails to make a compelling argument to justify this thesis. While informative on the history and evolution of African American literature in its various morphologies and concerns, I don't agree that we have achieved a level of social equality that would put an end to African American concerns with marginalization and institutionalized oppression.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging and accessible book that claims African American literature as a distinct literature ended with the end of Jim Crow segregation. Thought-provoking for sure.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brief (the chapters were originally given as lectures) but thought-provoking.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Have I mentioned before how much I despise academic writing? How needlessly complicated the vocabulary they use, how the writing and grammar goes in circles until it's become a knot with no hope of ever being untangled, how convoluted everything is? Because I do. I despise it with every fiber of my exhausted pre-finals being. If you can't explain your argument in simple terms everyone can understand, then you're simply not a good writer. And yeah I'll admit that this wasn't written for undergrads who haven't read every single book and story and essay referenced in the book, but I still had to read it and it's not unreasonable to expect the books I must read to be comprehensible.