Afro-American Literature

It was left to Ralph Ellison to develop the Afro-American in all of his indivisible and invisible wholeness. In the tradition of the classical epic of Western literature, an unnamed protagonist, neither naturalist demigod nor realist picaresque, sets out on a journey on which depends the future of his race or his nation. He sets out to achieve his identity in the most widely accepted tradition of Western literature: the journey. From the Odyssey to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, amidst the background of superhuman danger, virtue came in the struggle of the hero and his triumph over evil forces.

At the end of this quixotic journey, however, Ellison's unnamed protagonist had not yet resolved the paradox of his American identity. Even though he discovers the roots of his identity in Harlem ("I yam what I yam!" he says), at the end of his journey, he still has not yet discovered "the next phase," as he puts it, and so can only

...denounce and defend, or feel prepared to defend. I condemn and affirm, say no and yes, say yes and no. I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love.

And of course he returned underground to contemplate the chaos of his being. Yet the realism of Ralph Ellison is critical in that it seems to examine the causal factors which result in the nexus of relationships which seek to determine our reality. This reality, however, is problematic, as presumably it is uncertain and invisible within the context of the reality of the USA.

Yet it is the only home he knows. This attempt to reconcile this seemingly violent contradiction of what it means to be negroid and to be American becomes the painful burden of the cutting essays of James Baldwin; a master of form, if ever there was one in America. In this peculiar adaptation of form, Baldwin uses his peculiar gift of language, comingling the art of rapping with the terror and brimstone of the Afro-American sermon which possesses its own peculiar cadences, to orchestrate in an intensely personal manner the intense emotional experiences of Afro-Americans. For Baldwin, of course, this violent synthesis of being negroid and American can only be negotiated in a successful manner if one, as he says, "makes a truce with reality."

But what is the paradoxical nature of the reality of which he speaks? Is it the fawning of a placcid acceptance of bourgeois reality or is it the violent reaction of things white which the aestheticians of the Black Aesthetic found so debilitating? Writing in the 1960's Hoyt Fuller suggested that "The young writers of the black ghetto have set out in search of a black aesthetic, a system of isolating and evaluating the artistic works of black people which reflect the special character and imperatives of black experiences." This was an important movement which attempted to excoriate the whiteness that blackened out souls and to fashion new ideals and idols of beauty. More importantly, the Movement sought to articulate the fact that Afro-American peoples were beautiful and capable of creating beautiful artifacts.

But the excoriation of whiteness was not a thing to sneer at. In the portals of ivy, Afro-American literature was not a subject to be studied or even understood. After all, what did Afro-Americans know about versification, the strophe or the periphrase? How else could one explain the fact that The American Tradition in Literature by Bradley, Beatty and Long, one of the standard texts used in American colleges during the 1960's, devoted only two-and-one-half of its 1734 pages to Afro-American literature?

Let me clarify. Here was an anthology which was used by most of the universities and colleges of the USA. Some of the men who edited this text possessed some of the most enviable credentials the Euro-American world could confer upon them. Yet they could only find one Afro-American poet worthy of being anthologized. Was this racism? I leave the audience to decide. Yet these are some of the same people who tell us today that we do not need Afro-American literature courses, that the quality of Afro-American literature cannot be compared with that of Euro-American literature, and further, that if a man decides to teach the literature of his people, he is not a serious scholar. That in fact if he were a serious scholar he would teach and study the works of Pirandello or Beckett, Shakespeare or Dante, Milton or Chaucer.

As for me. I find this attitude rather remarkable. An American scholar is lauded if he studies the works of Euro-American authors: an Irish critic is honored if he knows the intricacies of Mr. Joyce. One is called perceptive if he can fathom why Beckett is waiting for Godot, of if indeed Pirandello's characters are really in search of an author or vice-versa. Indeed, one admires Pirandello's technical brilliance and his choice of metaphysical subject matter. Yet if and when one decides that the socio-psychological realism of Toni Morrison is indeed of tremendous literary significance or that Margaret Walker's fusion of history and literature poses some rather interesting questions of epistemological significance, one is told that he/she is not a serious scholar and that even the most pedantic and empty scholasticism is superior to that of Afro-American scholarship if it deals with anything other than the Afro-American experience.

This, of course, brings me to another question--not the what or why I teach, but the where. In Afro-American studies the where seems always to take precedence over all other questions. At each moment of my academic life. I find myself having to explain why I teach in the "refuse heap of academia." Sometimes, overwhelmed by evidences of the most "objective" kind. I, like Aime Cesaire, am forced to "declare my crimes" and confess that "the expanse of my perversity confounds me." Yet, I must make a further confession. I must confess that I love my people and find no other salvation but writing for my people, studying with my people, and attempting to share my knowledge with my people.

But yet the haunting question lingers: Why Afro-American Studies? Afro-American Studies, because I believe that Afro-American Studies has an especial perspective in terms of the quality of our humanity. And was it not Aime Cesaire who, after spending two weeks in New York, exclaimed:

New York! I say to you: New York let black

blood flow into your blood

That it many rub the rust from your steel

joints, like an oil of life,

That it may give to your bridges the bend of

buttocks and the

suppleness of creepers.

More specifically, I teach Afro-American literature because I like to believe that I bring to my students life-giving thoughts. I teach them to hate the shameful exploitation of man by man and the man-hating ideology or racial exclusiveness. I teach my students that life is the highest principle and therefore should not be bought or sold for even the choicest pieces of silver.

I teach Afro-American Literature because I believe that when one removes the iron armor of racial identity, all that one finds beneath is man: puny yet powerful; fragile yet fecund; humble yet humane. Man in all of his wonderous and multifarious beauty. Afro-American man shares in this brotherhood of man and so it is that through a statement of our images, metaphors, symbols, and the subtle nuances that have been the province of literature from time immemorial we express the peculiar and distinctive nuances of our humanity.

I teach Afro-American Literature because it makes a profound statement about our people and our heritage as it makes itself manifest in historical time.

I teach Afro-American Literature because, in spite of our shortcomings, we are one of the most profoundly creative of all contemporary peoples. In spite of our innocence, we are truly the elders of the world and when the morrow comes and our adversaries look upon our countenance, they will be truly ashamed and be constrained to say: "Indeed, you, too are America." A luta continua.

Selwyn R. Cudjoe is assistant professor of Afro-American History.