@article{1478948,
      recid = {1478948},
      author = {Warren, Kenneth W., },
      title = {What Was African American Literature? /},
      pages = {1 online resource (192 p.)},
      abstract = {Warren argues, quite bluntly, that "African American  literature" has outlived its relevance as the dominant  category for poetry, fiction, and plays written by African  Americans. Contradicting an influential portion of the  field, which regards this literature as an emanation of  vernacular expression going back to slavery, and even to  Africa, Warren asserts that African American literature was  the body of literature and criticism written by black  Americans within and against the strictures of Jim Crow  America. In arguing against the continued relevance of the  category of African American literature, Warren is  certainly not claiming that racism has ceased to exist.  Rather, he says that while it continues to make a great  difference in African American life, other social and  political factors weigh heavily also - so much so that  categories which take race as the fundamental unifying  category of black expression no longer serve well in  meeting the challenges of the moment. In this respect,  Warren shows that "African American literature" is a  category that has not sufficiently adjusted with our  current material and ideological circumstances to warrant  claims to a changing present or a provisional futurity.  Warren argues that the presumptions and protocols of the  category remain ossified within the past, within a  definition that only shows how its primary arbiters and  practitioners were themselves ossified as contradictory or  compromised men of their time.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1478948},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674059566},
}