Isha Mehta 1313276---- afro-american literature in the Color Purple

AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

                               Isha Mehta (1313276) 

African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phyllis Wheatley. Before the high point of slave narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. African-American literature reached early high points with slave narratives of the nineteenth century. The Harlem of the 1920s was a time of flowering of literature and the arts. Writers of African-American literature have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize to Toni Morrison. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African-American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.

                  African American Literature is rooted in America by writers of African descent. The primary origins of this genre can be traced in eighteenth century writers as Philips Whitely and Olaudah Equiano, who reached high points with slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance. Today African American Literature is continued with authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Walter Mosley who are ranked as the top writers in the United States. This genre is accepted as an integral part of American literature.  This special kind of literature has generally focused on themes of particular interest to Black people in the United States. Mostly the Afro-American Feminism novels basically deal with the problems of Sexism, Racism, Gender Bias, Oppression of women, Slavery, Male-Female relationships, Preservation of black culture, effects of being colonized, etc. The central character of this novel is ‘Celie’. This novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  Celie – Poor, barely literate Afro-American women in the south struggles to escape the brutality and degradation of the ill-treatment afforded her by men. The novel chronicles the life of a poor and abused Afro-American woman who eventually triumphs over oppression through affirming female relationship.  Sold as Slaves African men and woman came to the American continent as labourers (who became slaves) in a ship in 1619. From that time onwards, many more blacks were brought as slaves from Africa to America. As the cotton plantation owners needed more and more people to work in plantations, they bought them from the ship's captains and other agents, and made them work in fields and plantations. When more hands were needed, the slave ships caught more black people in Africa and brought them to New England and sold them as slaves. African American Literature is the Literature created by African Americans. It is the voice of the race oppressed for several generations. It is heard in the groans of pain and strains of anger and protest. A study of black women inevitably leads one to the beginning of the Afro-American Literature. Apart from the slave narratives, the novels that are written in the early days are classified as abolitionist novels. The novels written between 1890 and 1920 are labelled as novels of accommodation and assimilation. The revolutionary elements in Afro-American fiction are found from its very beginning in the element of protest. Slavery is one of the themes for the African American writers after the Harlem Renaissance. White owners auctioned many of the black women when they found they did not need them. Many times that tore apart families. The problem of slavery continued for nearly 240 years after 1819. Apart from the pain of slavery and sexual abuse, most black women did not have good relationship within their families. Slave men were not allowed to speak against whites. White slave owners sometimes sexually abused black women. When some black men had affairs with white women, they were lynched. After the First World War, many black people from the southern farms started to move towards northern ghettoes. This movement from the south to the north prepared the ground for the literary renaissance, in other words, the Harlem Renaissance. In Afro-American Literary history, the black women’s predicament has captured an important place, and proves to be one of the most productive and sustained movements. The sustained focus on black male sexism has not done much in popularizing the segment of Afro-American literature; hence it does not appeal to most of the accomplished black male writers. In real life, the black woman may prove she is more than equal to the black male in the labour and the struggle for black people's progress. Afro-American novel emerged only in the middle of the 19th Century during the charged debates over slavery and freedom in America. Actually, it was only in the 1920’s that the novel became a fully recognised literary form according to the setup standards of the mainstream scholarship. At this time class and gender also became important social issues to be discussed.

                          Above all the other misrepresentations and abuses that Walker portrays in The Color Purple, is the one that states that abused Southern black women must be victims all their lives, and these are the ones that must be overturned above all others. As Walker herself has said, “I liberated Celie from her own history. I wanted her to be happy”. And in that she has succeeded admirably.