Invisibility In African American Novels

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Mannheim, course: African American Novels, language: English, abstract: Blindness is a topic in many African American novels published in the middle of the 20th century. However, this does not mean that black protagonists are over-averaged disabled. The inability of seeing refers more to a special type of blindness: a psychical one. This kind of disablement is "a matter of the construction of [the] inner eyes, those eyes with which [one] look[s] through [the] physical eyes upon reality" (Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. London: Penguin Books, 1965. p.7). It is a way of refusing to recognise people and their character traits, which African Americans were often confronted with. This ignorance of the - mainly - "white" society is picked out as a central theme in many African American novels and, therefore, it will be the topic of this publishing. To prove this thesis, the following analysis will examine some example scenes from Ralph Ellison's 1952 published novel Invisible Man. As one single book is not sufficient to establish a thesis for a whole genre, additionally scenes from Richard Wright's 1940 published novel Native Son and Ann Petry's 1946 published novel The Street will be briefly analysed. Even though a comparison between all three novels would have been interesting as well, this work will take its main focus on one single novel, to go as deeply into detail as the limited space allows, instead of giving only a cursory overview of different works. For the same reason, this work will not contain a summary of the discussed novels as these are expected to be known. As the title of the work probably raises the expectation of an analysis of the physical blindness, this topic will be worked out in the second chapter, concentrating on Invisible Man, and, later on, briefly on Native Son. The attempts to point out its metaphorical meaning and to connect this with th

The book is a comparative study of the invisibility trope in African American and Asian American literature. It distinguishes between various kinds of invisibility and offers a genealogy of the term while providing a theoretical dissection of the invisibility trope itself. Investigating the various ways of striving for visibility, the author places special emphasis on the need for cooperation among various racial groups. While the book explores invisibility in a variety of African American and Asian American literary texts, the main focus is on four novels: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey and Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker. The book not only sheds light on the oppressed but also exposes the structures of oppression and the apparatus of power, which often renders itself invisible. Throughout the study the author emphasizes that power is multi-directional, never flowing only in one direction. The book brings to light mechanisms of oppression within the dominant society as well as within and between marginalized racial groups.

From Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison to Colson Whitehead and Terry McMillan, Darryl Dickson-Carr offers a definitive guide to contemporary African American literature. This volume-the only reference work devoted exclusively to African American fiction of the last thirty-five years-presents a wealth of factual and interpretive information about the major authors, texts, movements, and ideas that have shaped contemporary African American fiction. In more than 160 concise entries, arranged alphabetically, Dickson-Carr discusses the careers, works, and critical receptions of Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, Leon Forrest, as well as other prominent and lesser-known authors. Each entry presents ways of reading the author's works, identifies key themes and influences, assesses the writer's overarching significance, and includes sources for further research. Dickson-Carr addresses the influence of a variety of literary movements, critical theories, and publishers of African American work. Topics discussed include the Black Arts Movement, African American postmodernism, feminism, and the influence of hip-hop, the blues, and jazz on African American novelists. In tracing these developments, Dickson-Carr examines the multitude of ways authors have portrayed the diverse experiences of African Americans. The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction situates African American fiction in the social, political, and cultural contexts of post-Civil Rights era America: the drug epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s and the concomitant "war on drugs," the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for gay rights, feminism, the rise of HIV/AIDS, and racism's continuing effects on African American communities. Dickson-Carr also discusses the debates and controversies regarding the role of literature in African American life. The volume concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography of African American fiction and criticism.

Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college “founder” is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution — one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.

Since its founding in 1801, African Americans have played an integral, if too often overlooked, role in the history of the University of South Carolina. Invisible No More seeks to recover that historical legacy and reveal the many ways that African Americans have shaped the development of the university. The essays in this volume span the full sweep of the university's history, from the era of slavery to Reconstruction, Civil Rights to Black Power and Black Lives Matter. This collection represents the most comprehensive examination of the long history and complex relationship between African Americans and the university. Like the broader history of South Carolina, the history of African Americans at the University of South Carolina is about more than their mere existence at the institution. It is about how they molded the university into something greater than the sum of its parts. Throughout the university's history, Black students, faculty, and staff have pressured for greater equity and inclusion. At various times they did so with the support of white allies, other times in the face of massive resistance; oftentimes, there were both. Between 1868 and 1877, the brief but extraordinary period of Reconstruction, the University of South Carolina became the only state-supported university in the former Confederacy to open its doors to students of all races. This "first desegregation," which offered a glimpse of what was possible, was dismantled and followed by nearly a century during which African American students were once again excluded from the campus. In 1963, the "second desegregation" ended that long era of exclusion but was just the beginning of a new period of activism, one that continues today. Though African Americans have become increasingly visible on campus, the goal of equity and inclusion—a greater acceptance of African American students and a true appreciation of their experiences and contributions—remains incomplete. Invisible No More represents another contribution to this long struggle. A foreword is provided by Valinda W. Littlefield, associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of South Carolina. Henrie Monteith Treadwell, research professor of community health and preventative medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine and one of the three African American students who desegregated the university in 1963, provides an afterword.

In this groundbreaking book Charles Scruggs identifies the black urban experience as a driving force behind the twentieth-century Afro-American novel, resulting in a rich fictional tradition that runs from Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Sport of the Gods" through Toni Morrison's "Beloved." Scruggs begins by discussing the treatment of the Great Migration to the city in Afro-American writing from W. E. B. DuBois and Dunbar through the Harlem writers, establishing both the continuities and breaks between that tradition and that of the writers coming after the Depression. He then considers how four post-Harlem Renaissance novelists--Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison--conceive of the modern city. Scruggs shows how these four writers see the Afro-American's relationship to elite, popular, and mass forms of culture in city life. He also explores the ways in which their writing presents "alternative spaces" that exist alongside of, and often counter to, the visible configurations of the dominant culture.

The bestselling author delves into his past and discovers the inspiring story of his grandmother’s extraordinary life She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s—and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male. Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who—together with his friend Dashiell Hammett—would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed. Moving, haunting, and as fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long forgotten story is once again visible.

A New York Times Bestseller An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent--for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.