Reading African American literature ranging from spirituals and slave narratives, to works written during and after the Civil Rights Movement provides readers and scholars with a rare insight into the minds and lives of African Americans at that time. Much of African American literature is realistic in nature, meaning that it tends to be about their personal experiences, especially the later works; therefore, readers are able to experience firsthand the struggles that African American people faced on a daily basis. ... This idea of double-consciousness comes through in almost any African A...

• Word Count: 3543
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

However, these intersecting ideas and groups meant that The New Negro movement was not a cohesive one, but was loosely bound together with hopes for racial assertion and self-definition. ... Toomer continually struggled with his own identity 'I wrote a poem called "The First American", the idea of which was that here in America we are in the process of forming a new race, that I was one of the first conscious members of this race'.7 Cane however, was still marketed by Waldo Frank as 'a book about Negroes by a Negro'8 and this slogan appeared in the New York Times and New...

• Word Count: 3347
• Approx Pages: 13