Gisele Fiorote Santos – 180052951

Review about the text:

Peter B High – An outline of American Literature,
Capítulo XV: The Twentieth-Century Black Writer

High, Peter B, “An outline of American Literature”, Longman Group, 1984.

In the fifteenth chapter, The Twentieth-Century Black Writer, throughout twelve
pages, the author writes about the main challenges that black people had to face, in
the United States, in the twentieth century and how it impacted on the “black
literature” from that time; furthermore, he cites some of the main authors. For the
whole chapter, High gives some historical background, talks about the life of the
authors, their political view, their way of writing and even cite some of their most
important works.

Taking in consideration the chapter read and what was taught in class, it
was easy to perceive that a good number of the artistic works were inspired by the
marginalisation of the African Americans and by the rejection produced by a society
that still segregated people based on the colour of their skin, even though the slavery
was already abolished. We can see that, at the same time that those authors wrote
to catch people’s attention to the situation of former slavers and their descendants,
they were fighting for their rights, as it is shown in I, too (1925) written by Langston
Hughes:

“I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes...”

Yet, not all writers protested in a smooth way as Hughes did at the
beginning of his career, some of them prefered more extreme approaches. Actually,
even Hughes changed his way of protesting at the end of his life. An example of a
more radical approach is the the book Invisible Man, written by Ralph Ellison, that
describes the way that people of colour are trated as invible, how white people can
not see them as equals and the wrong idea they have about black people. After
watching all that injustice arround, the main character decides to hide in a hole under
the city.

It is noticed that those authors acted in different ways, some of them, such
as Martin Luther King, believed that the only way they could change black people’s
situation was changing the whole government system inside. Others, such as
Malcom X, believed that the only way of changing their situation was by destroying
the current system and building a new one. As for me, both are necessary because a
pacific fight or a aggressive fight alone will not work. The two sides of the same coin
need to coexist so they can complement each other.

One of the most remarkable events of the twentieth century was the Civil
Rights movements led by Martin Luther King, who promoted nonviolent tactics, such
as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. The march was
not universally embraced. It was condemned by the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X
who referred to it as “the Farce on Washington,” although he attended nonetheless.
The agitation of the march produced a strong effect on national opinion and resulted
in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to
enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in
publicly owned facilities, as well as in employment. By 1963, the centennial of the
Emancipation Proclamation, most of the goals of these earlier protests, unfortunately,
still had not been realized.

In conclusion, Peter B. High, at the end of the chapter says: “We cannot
really say that the years of ‘black anger’ are over.” and if the United States maintain
the same racist mentality, there is a high probability of new protests being started
there. In the twenty-first century the discrimination based on the colour of people’s
skin and the violence against black people is not over yet. And it is not near to end. In
a country as the United States, where the President has made racist statements
several times, that sort of violence is still frequent, for that reason, the black author of
the twentieth century must be read and studied, that way the past will not be
repeated and the present can be as those authors wished. A world where everyone
can be treated as equals. Therefore, the “black literature” must be stimulated and
studied until the literature became what Countee Cullen wished for the poetry,
“without race”.
Bibliography

• High, Peter B, “An outline of American Literature”, Longman Group,

1984.

• FONSECA, Maria Nazareth Soares. “Literatura negra: os sentidos e as

ramificações”. Editora UFMG. Belo Horizonte, 2014.

• “Goals of Rights March” New York Times, 29 August 1963.

• Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 1998.