Is black literature literature by blacks? Or only literature by blacks about blacks? (Or, conceivably, literature by non-blacks about blacks?) These are questions raised by Gene Andrew Jarrett, an assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, in his interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Judging a Book by Its Writer’s Color.”
“Thanks to the widely acclaimed Norton Anthology of African American Literature,” Jarrett begins,
we can read and celebrate an assortment and abundance of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama by black writers. But this admirable book ignores a remarkable history: Some of our most celebrated black authors weren’t always so “hungry for texts about themselves,” an actual phrase used to introduce the anthology’s second edition. Contrary to this claim, some canonical authors were just as interested in writing about our common humanity, regardless of racial differences.
Jarrett describes these writings that do not portray what might be called black themes as anomalies.
These short stories, novelettes, or excerpts of novels have two things in common. First, they feature characters who are white or racially unmarked or ambiguous. Second, these works tend to go unread, undersold, or out of print. For those reasons, they could be thought of as the anomalies of African-American literature.
A 2004 international bibliography of academic scholarship prepared by the Modern Language Association supports this point, particularly because the editors of anthologies of African-American literature tend to be scholars. In an analysis I did of the MLA bibliography, I found that anomalous stories constituted the main subject matter of less than 2 percent of all the dissertations, articles, chapters in edited collections, and books published on African-American writers since 1963. Such a circumstance has certainly prevented us from realizing how prolific and sophisticated our most famous black authors actually were.
By neglecting these works, we also fail to learn more about the most famous examples of African-American literature….
Continuing, Jarrett asks a very good question:
So why are anthologies of African-American literature so one-sided, reluctant to select such literary mitigations of racial politics? This canonical tendency is symptomatic of the broader cultural preoccupation of American society with racial authenticity. Since slave narratives were published in the first half of the 19th century, literature written by black people — or, more precisely, by people who are identified or who identify themselves as black — must be “the real thing,” a window into the black experience, in order to have any aesthetic, cultural, social, political, or commercial value.
He concludes that because most of this “anomalous” literature is excluded from scholarly and popular attention, our understanding of black literature is distorted. People arrive at this distorted understanding
because they focus on the author’s skin color. Although readers know by heart “not to judge a book by its cover,” they are still likely to remain superficial and prejudge the content of a book based on the author’s skin color. And if that book defies their expectations or presumptions, they ignore or devalue it. As long as readers cling to this idea, they fail to learn about black culture in all its guises. And that includes African-American literature beyond race.
But if a book shouldn’t be judged by its cover, isn’t it no less true that a person shouldn’t be judged by his or her cover? And isn’t placing people into color-coded compartments precisely what is necessary to sustain our regime of racial preferences?
John writes:
>>>”And isn’t placing people into color-coded compartments precisely what is necessary to sustain our regime of racial preferences?”
Would you consider “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, “black literature?”
Would you consider “Birth of a Nation” by D.W. Griffith, “black cinema?”
–Cobra
No, I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t deny that good and important literature could be written by whites (or Asians or whatever) about blacks as, according to the linked article, arbiters of black literature have exclused from its canon works, even by famous black authors, about whites.
It may well be, however, that black literature can only be written by blacks. Now if we only had a reliable measure to determine who is black, or how black you have to be to write black lit. Cogra, given your comments on this recent post, I assume you would argue that if Clarence Thomas were to ever write a novel it should not be classified as black literature.
Does Thomas Sowell — held in high regard by me — write Black Literature? I bet Mr. Jarrett wouldn’t think so. Sowell’s writings are merely crystal-clear and utterly convincing.
Since this is political nothing will be resolved. Black Studies is not going abolish itself. Or womens studies, or gay studies, or ….
Msybe the question can be clarified by the age old process of classification. Ask ‘is this Literary work or X Studies work’
If the former then you examine a subset of literature and X writers, etc. in relation with whole set of literary work. And work by non-X writers will also be studied.
But if this is X Studies then the world set of writers and literature doesn’t matter. It may as well not exist. The concern is X, what they have done, thought, expressed in literature.
I don’t see why works about Xs, written by non-Xs, would be in X Studies. Those would be in the non-X Studies subset ‘Non-Xs view of Xs’.
Damn I hate this stuff. We don’t know what (or even if) race is. Mostly we know what others think (or thought it was).
Cobra,
Was Marian Anderson a Black singer only when singing spirituals, and not when singing Brahms? You will recall that the DAR famously objected not to her program, but to her physical presence.
Michelle writes:
>>>”Was Marian Anderson a Black singer only when singing spirituals, and not when singing Brahms? You will recall that the DAR famously objected not to her program, but to her physical presence.”
The relevant question would be if Marion Anderson was singing “Negro Spirituals” as opposed to singing Brahms. People of any race can sing Negro Spirituals, just as people of any race can read Black Literature or view Black Cinema. Could Brahms have legitimately written a “Negro Spiritual?” That’s the other relevant question.
–Cobra
Regardless of how you phrase it, you still didn’t answer Michelle’s question, Cobra.
Personally, the problem I see with these sorts of programs (Black studies, Women’s studies, etc.) is that the range of topics and viewpoints is so extremely narrow as to be insulting. I mean, I took a “Women and the Law class” which was unwilling to study the recently (at the time) decided Carhart (partial birth abortion) case! There’s such a wide range of viewpoints published these days that it really is silly to endorse only one particular view as being “Black studies” or “Women’s studies” worthy.
Sorry, Cobra. I just reread your comment and realized I made a mistake. Your question is interesting. What do YOU think?
Cobra,
People of any race can sing Negro Spirituals, just as people of any race can read Black Literature or view Black Cinema.
Well, of course. But if you think that singing a spiritual as Marian Anderson could is remotely equivalent to reading a book or going to a movie, I’m really at a loss as to how to continue.
“Could Brahms have legitimately written a Negro Spiritual?” That’s a very good question, and a difficult one. Did Dvorak “legitimately” write the tune that quickly turned into a quasi-spiritual under the title of “Goin’ Home,” but is otherwise known in some quarters as the theme of the slow movement of Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony? Does the fact that the tune owes its existence to a dead European white dude make it somehow inauthentic, if African-American listeners then take it up as part of their store of music?
“Could Brahms have legitimately written a Negro Spiritual?”
Stephen Foster could. “Hard Times come again no more.” Dvorak often encouraged American composers to use the harmonies of spirituals in their music. He believed it was uniquely American.
Michelle writes:
>>>”Did Dvorak “legitimately” write the tune that quickly turned into a quasi-spiritual under the title of “Goin’ Home,” but is otherwise known in some quarters as the theme of the slow movement of Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony? Does the fact that the tune owes its existence to a dead European white dude make it somehow inauthentic, if African-American listeners then take it up as part of their store of music?”
Very difficult question to answer. Judging cultural authenticity is a very tricky, because there are rudimentary elements around that aren’t patented or copyrighted within creativity. Chords are chords, which exist naturally–it’s the composition and arrangement, and the familiarity there of that’s at question.
I’ll cede to your greater knowledge on composers as far as that part of the discussion is concerned. Adaptation and incorporation is nothing new to the American culture, as it’s relatively new. That Negro slaves, most of whom bereft of the formal music education (or ANY education, since it was illegal to teach slaves how to read) of composers like Dvorak could transform his works into something unique and IMHO sonically wonderful is cause for celebration, and not some sort of conservative monocultural homogenization movement.
To claim that such Negro Spirituals are “inauthentic” would be akin to claiming Apple Pie is not authentically American because:
>>>”English apple pie recipes go back to the time of Chaucer. The 1381 recipe (see illustration) lists the ingredients as good apples, good spices, figs, raisins and pears. The cofyn of the recipe is a casing of pastry. Saffron is used for colouring the pie filling.”
FOX NEWS ALERT–liberal declares war on Apple Pie
Negro Spirituals begat the Blues–the Blues begat Rock and Roll and those things flowing forth. If one wishes to take the beginnings of music back BEFORE European Colonization, I think you’ll find you’re going WAY back…
>>>”Ancient music was long thought to be all monophonic, but recent archaeological evidence indicates that this view is no longer true. The “oldest known song” in cuneiform, 4,000 years old from Ur, deciphered by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer (University of Calif. at Berkeley), was demonstrated to be composed in harmonies of thirds, like ancient English gymel, and also was written using the diatonic scale. Neither harmony nor the diatonic scale can still be considered developments belonging only to “Western” music.”
Same Old Song
–Cobra