Unmasking Racism. A Study of Afro-American literature

Abstract or Introduction

The following essays analyzes Afro-American literature regarding cultural criticism.

Afro-American literature is, by its very nature, a social and cultural art whose study requires adopting cultural criticism. True, formalist critics, who claim that the literary text is all that matters, call for studying the text away from its cultural and social influences, which they accuse of corrupting the artistic experience, but this so-called separation is not suitable for minority literature such as Afro-American literature which is intimately connected to its cultural, historical, ideological conditions. “Black literature” as Henry L. Gates believes “came to be seen as a cultural artifact (the product of unique historical forces) or as a document that bore witness to the political and emotional tendencies of the Negro victim of white racism”.

It can be stated that Afro-American literature emanates from a discrete cultural condition which is marked by marginalization, racism, persecution and injustice because the experience of black American writers’ as a disenfranchised, oppressed group in America has its noticeable effect on their literary works. In other words, Afro-American literature and African Americans’ life have been directly interrelated because the black writers never “separate literature from life” (Fuller 264). Thus, critics of Afro-American literature should take into consideration the relations between the text and sociology, between aesthetic regards and cultural considerations, between fiction and ideology.