For courses focusing on African American Writers. These courses are offered in English Departments, Ethnic Studies Departments, and African-American Studies Departments. This comprehensive collection of Afro-American literature – from its beginnings to the 1970s – provides a generous selection of autobiographies, essays, speeches, letters, political pamphlets, histories, journals, and folk literature as well as poems, plays, and stories – all chosen for their artistic and social significance. A carefully structured organization and the scope and diversity of selections make the anthology suitable to a variety of approaches – chronological, by topic, by theme, or by genre.
The book is a comprehensive collection of Afro-American literature from the eighteenth-century beginnings to the present time.
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Over ten years ago, I took a course with Professor Barksdale, who at at the time was a traveling professor. The verison of this anthology that I have has Kinnamon as the co-editor/writer. What is extremely impressive about this collection is its variety; in addition to the standard fare of literature anthologies, poetry and fiction, this collection contains early blues lyrics and folk songs. Most of all, this collection is worthwhile due to the introductions to each author which are incredibly extensive, not just a few paragraphs like what one might see in a Norton, but pages of biography and background that set each work in a clear context and establishes a cohesive progression of the Black Writers of America.
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