Briefly discuss some of the literary achievements by African Americans in the late twentieth century. How are some of these works different from, or similar to, black literary works in other periods (the Chicago Renaissance or the 1960s, for example)?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ideal Answer: The ideal answer should:
1. Explain that the new cultural renaissance differed from the black arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The contemporary flowering was more inclusive and more appreciative of women artists. It also included the work of openly gay and lesbian artists, such as documentary filmmaker Marion Riggs, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and novelist E. Lynn Harris.
2. Note that whereas poets and dramatists dominated earlier movements, novelists took center stage in the 1980s. Much of the new work in all fields appeal as much to white audiences as to black, providing insights into the lives of people of African heritage in a predominantly Eurocentric society.
3. Point out that a new wave of African-American women novelists emerged as early as 1977 when Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon became a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, the first by a black author since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940.
4. Note that Barbara Chase-Riboud made waves with Sally Hemings (1979), a fictional account of a real-life woman who was both slave to and mistress of President Thomas Jefferson. Then, in 1982, Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for The Color Purple. In 1993 Rita Dove became America's poet laureate, and in the same year Toni Morrison became the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
5. Note that President Bill Clinton invited Maya Angelou to read one of her poems at his first inauguration. In 2009 President Obama invited Elizabeth Alexander to read a poem at his inauguration.
6. Conclude that in 1992 three African-American women novelists—Morrison, Walker, and Terry McMillan—made the New York Times best-seller list simultaneously. In 2001 the works of four African Americans made the Times best-seller list and revealed the growing appreciation of black literature, biography, and history across the racial spectrum.