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Group XI: African American Literature Group XI: African American Literature Students using this list as a guide in preparing for the doctoral examination in African American literature should understand that it is not exhaustive. PART I: Primary Reading, the MUST LIST for all students SLAVE NARRATIVE Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) Olaudah Equiano, Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa (1789) Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) FICTION James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and Another Country (1962) William Wells Brown, Clotel: or, The President's Daughter (1853) Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman and Other Tales (1899) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901) Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Ernest Gaines, Bloodline (1968) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy (1892) Langston Hughes, The Best of Simple (1961) Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Charles R. Johnson, Middle Passage (1990) James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928) Paule Marshall, Brown Girl. Brownstones (1959) Toni Morrison, Sula (1974) and Beloved (1987) Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place (1982) and Mama Day (1988) Ann Petry, The Street (1946) Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and Flight to Canada (1976) Jean Toomer, Cane (1923) Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973) and The Color Purple (1982) Margaret Walker, Jubilee (1966) John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (1990) John A. Williams, The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose (1986) Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859) Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Native Son (1940) Students interested in pursuing research and writing in Fiction should proceed immediately to including the second tier of readings in Fiction in PART ll; the same would be true for those interested primarily in Drama or Poetry. DRAMA James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie (1964) Amiri Baraka, Dutchman and The Slave (1964) Ed Bullins, In the Wine Time (1968) and Goin' a Buffalo (1968) Alice Childress, Trouble in Mind (1955) S. Randolph Edmonds, Six Plays for a Negro Theatre (1934) Lonne Elder, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (1965) Charles H. Fuller, Jr., A Soldier's Play (1982) Charles Gordone, No Place to be Somebody (1970) Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro (1962) and Rat's Mass (1965) Willis Richardson, The Chip Woman's Fortune (1923) and The Broken Banjo (1925) Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (1976) Joseph A. Walker, The River Niger (1973) Douglas Turner Ward, Happy Endina (1965) and Day of Absence (1965) August Wilson, Fences (1986) and The Piano Lesson (1990) POETRY Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note (1961) Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and Annie Allen (1949) Sterling A. Brown, Collected Poems (1983) Countee Cullen, Color (1925) Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah (1986) Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) Robert Hayden, Selected Poems (1966) Langston Hughes, Selected Poems (1959) James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones (1927) Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows (1922) Melvin Tolson, Harlem Gallerv (1965) Margaret Walker, For My People (1942) Students should also be familiar with a representative sampling of poems by the following poets: Nikki Giovanni AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maya Angelou, l Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (1940) Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (1933) Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Ann Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) Richard Wright, Black Boy (1945) ESSAYS James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963) W. E. B. Bu Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (1964) Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1964) Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983) ANTHOLOGY Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro (1925) FOLKLORE Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Intepretation of Afro-American Folklore (1973; 1991) Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, The Book of Negro Folklore (1959) Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) BIOGRAPHY We expect students to be familiar with the definitive biographies of major writers. PART ll: Second Tier of Readings; recommended for enhancement in particular genres. SLAVE NARRATIVE William Wells Brown, Narrative (1847) (Collections of slave narratives from the Schomburg Library, as well as those edited by William L. Andrews, Arna Bontemps, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) FICTION Raymond Andrews, Acpalachee Red (1978, 1987), Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee (1980) James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man (1965), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla. My Love and Other Stories (1972), The Salt Eaters (1980) Arna Bontemps, God Sends Sunday (1931), Black Thunder (1936) David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident 1981) Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979), Wild Seed (1980) Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) Alice Childress, Like One of the Family ... Conversations from a domestic's life, (1956) William Demby, Bettlecreek (1950) Henry Dumas, Jonoah and the Green Stone (1976), "Ark of Bones" and Other Stories (1970) Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods (1902) Jessie Redmond Fauset, There is Confusion (1924) Rudolph Fisher, The Walls of Jericho (1928), The Conjure Man Dies (1932) Ernest Gaines, The Autobiographv of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), A Gathering of Old Men (1983) Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces (1900) Langston Hughes, The Wavs of White Folks (1933), Something in Common and Other Stories (1963), Not Without Laughter (1930) Kristin Hunter, God Bless the Child (1964), The Landlord (1966), Guests in the Promised Land (1973) Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (1985) Charles R. Johnson, Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Oxherding Tale (1982), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986) Gayl Jones, Corregidora (1975), Eva's Man (1976) William Melvin Kelley, A Different Drummer (1962), Dem (1964) Randall Kenan, A Visitation of Spirits (1989), Let the Dead Burv Their Dead (1991) John Oliver Killens, 'Sippi (1967), Youngblood (1954), The Cotillion (1971) Nella Larsen, Passing (1929), An Intimation of Things Distant: The Collected Short Fiction of Nella Larsen (1992) Clarence Major, All-Night Visitors (1969), Reflex and Bone Structure (1975) Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (1928), Banjo (1929), Banana Bottom (1933), Gingertown (1932), Harlem Glory (first published 1990) Terry McMillan, Disappearing Acts (1989), Waiting to Exhale (1992) James Alan McPherson, Hue and Cry (1968), Elbow Room (1977) Paule Marshall, Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), The Chosen Place. The Timeless People (1969), Praisesona for the Widow (1983), Daughters (1991) Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992) Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar (1974) Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills (1985), Bailey's Cafe (1992) Ann Petry, The Narrows (1953), Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971) Ishmael Reed, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), The Terrible Twos (1982) George Schuyler, Black No More (1931) Ann Allen Shockley, Loving Her (1974), Say Jesus and Come to Me (1983) Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berrv (1929), Infants of the Spring (1932) Alice Walker, The Third Life of Granqe Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Jov (1992) Dorothy West, The Living is Easy (1948; 1982) John Edgar Wideman, The Lynchers (1973), Sent for You Yesterday (1983), Reuben (1987) John A. Williams, Captain Blackman (1972) Richard Wright, The Outsider (1953), Eight Men (1961) Sarah E. Wright, This Child's Gonna Live (1969) DRAMA James Baldwin, The Amen Corner (1954) Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History and Other Plays (1978), The Baptism and The Toilet (1964) Arna Bontemps, St. Louis Woman (with Countee Cullen-- 1946) William Branch, A Medal for Willie (1951), In Splendid Error (1954) William Wells Brown, The Escape: Or, A Leap for Freedom (1858) Ed Bullins, A Son. Come Home (1968), Clara's Old Man (1968), The Gentleman Caller (1969), In New England Winter (1971) Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness (1969), Mojo and String (1971), Wedding Band (1973) Ossie Davis, Purlie Victorious (1961) Angelina Grimke, Rachel (1916) Lorraine Hansberry, The Siqn in Sidnev Brustein's Window (1964), To Be Young, Gifted and Black (edited by Robert Nemiroff, 1969), The Collected Last Plays (edited by Nemiroff, 1972; 1983) Langston Hughes, Mulatto (1935) Adrienne Kennedy, The Owl Answers (1963-), A Lesson in a Dead Language (1964), A Beast's Story (1966) Louis S. Peterson, Take A Giant Step (1953) Theodore Ward, Biq White Fog (1938), Our Lan' (1947) Samm-Art Williams, Home (1980) August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988) POETRY Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Black Magic Poetry 1961 - 1967 (1969) Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters (1960), In the Mecca (1968) Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) Mari Evans, I Am a Black Woman (1970) Nikki Giovanni, Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement (1968; 1970), My House (1972), Ego Tripping and Other Poems for Young Readers (1973) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) Michael S. Harper, Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970), History is Your Own Heartbeat (1971), Nightmare Begins Responsibility (1974) Robert Hayden, Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), Words in the Mourning Time (1971) George Moses Horton, The Hope of Liberty (1829) Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1926), Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), One-Way Ticket (1949), Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), Ask Your Mama (1961), The Panther and the Lash (1967) Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928) James Weldon Johnson, St. Peter Relates An Incident (1935) Gayl Jones, Song for Anninho (1981) June Jordan, New Poems: Poems of Exile and Return (1974), Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980 (1980) Etheridge Knight, Poems from Prison (1968), Belly Sona and Other Poems (1973) Audre Lorde, The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), The Black Unicorn (1978), Chosen Poems (1982) Naomi Long Madgett, Songs to a Phantom Nightingale (1941), Star by Star (1970), Pink Ladies in the Afternoon: New Poems, 1965-1971 (1972), Octavia and Other Poems (1988) Claude McKay, Constab Ballads (1912), Songs of Jamaica (1912) Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), Think Black! (1967), Black Pride (1968), Don't Cry, Scream (1969) Dudley Randall, Poem Counterpoem (1966), Cities Burning (1970) Ishmael Reed, Chattanooga (1973), Conjure (1972) Sonia Sanchez, Homecoming (1969), We A Baddddd People (1970), A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973), I've Been A Woman (1978), Under a Soprano Sky (1987) Ntozake Shange, Natural Disasters and Other Festive Occasions (1977), Nappy Edges (1978), Three Pieces (1981) Melvin Tolson, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953) Alice Walker, Once (1968), Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979), Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1984), Her Blue Body Everything We Know (1991) Margaret Walker, Prophets For a New Day (1966), October Journey (1973) Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) Sherley Anne Williams, The Peacock Poems (1975), Someone Sweet Angel Chile (1982) Al Young, Dancing (1969), The Song Turning Back into Itself (1971) AUTOBIOGRAPHY Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander (1956) Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home (1937) ESSAYS Ralph Ellison, Going to the Territory (1986) James Weldon Johnson, Introduction to The Book of American Negro Poetry, (1922); introductions to the first and second Books of Negro, Spirituals June Jordan, Civil Wars (1981) Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (1980) Ishmael Reed, Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (1978), Writin' is Fightin' (1988) Alice Walker, Living by the Word (1988) Mary Helen Washington, Introductions to Black-Eyed Susans (1975),, Midnight Birds (1980), and Invented Lives (1987) ANTHOLOGY Larry Neal, ed. Black Fire PART lll: CRITICISM and JOURNALS We expect students to read in a wide variety of critical volumes and journals as they develop a knowledge of authors, directions, patterns, periods, and movements in the literature. Following is a representative selection. CRITICISM William L. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American, Autobiography, 1760-1865 Houston A. Baker, Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance Bernard Bell, The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America, Down Home: A History of Afro-American Short Fiction from Its, Beginnings to the End of the Harlem Renaissance Sterling Brown, Negro Poetry and Drama, The Negro in American Fiction Stephen Butterfield, Black Autobiography in America Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American, Woman Novelist Barbara Christian , Black Feminist Criticism, Black Women Novelists, The Development of a Tradition. 1892-1976 Arthur P. Davis, From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers 1900-1960 Mari Evans, ed., Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black Literature and Literary Theory, Figures in Black, Reading Black. Reading Feminist, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, (Gates is General Editor of the Schomburg Library of 19th Century, Black Women Writers, with which students should be familiar.) Addison Gayle, The Black Aesthetic Donald B. Gibson, Five Black Writers: Essays on Wright. Ellison. Baldwin, Hughes and, LeRoi Jones, The Politics of Literary Expression: A Study of Major Black Writers Hugh Gloster, Negro Voices in American Fiction , Stephen Henderson, Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech & Black Music as, Poetic References Errol Hill, ed., The Theatre of Black Americans (2 vols.) bell hooks, Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism Gloria Hull, Color. Sex. and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance Gayl Jones, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature George E. Kent, Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author in America R. Baxter Miller, ed., Black American Poets Between Worlds, 1940-1960 Loften Mitchell, Black Drama: The Story of the American Negro in the Theatre Toni Morrison, Plaving in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination J. Saunders Redding , To Make a Poet Black Eugene B. Redmond, Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry. A Critical History William H. Robinson, Jr., Early Black American Poets Leslie Sanders, The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves Robert Stepto, From Behind the Veil Joan Sherman, Invisible Poets Hortense Spillers and Marjorie Pryse, eds., Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction. and Literary Tradition Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work Jean Wagner, Black Poets of the United States JOURNALS African American Review (formerly Black American Literature Forum;, formerly Negro American Literature Forum) Black Drama Review The Black Scholar Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters CLA Journal The Colored American Crisis Drumvoices Review First World (formerly Black World; formerly Negro Digest) Journal of Negro History The Langston Hughes Review MAWA Review Obsidian Opportunity Phylon The Voice of the Negro Western Journal of Black Studies The Zora Neale Hurston Forum
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