A CLOSER LOOK TO AMERICAN MINORITY LITERATURE: A DEFINITION TOWARD AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Maret 02, 2020
Oleh: Karina Hanum Luthfia
(Mahasiswi S3 Kajian Amerika UGM dan Dosen Sastra Inggris Universitas Negeri Semarang)
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| Source: studybreaks.com |
The definition of African American
literature is proposed as a studies concerning on the involuted African
American social issues through the work of African descendants. According
to Kenneth Warren (2011) that,
“African American literature was a
post-emancipation phenomenon that gained its coherence as an undertaking in the
social world defined by the system of Jim Crow segregation that ensued after
the nation’s retreat from Reconstruction.”
The origin of African American literature which was derived from the Africa
mainland authentically was portrayed on orality formation. Since the tradition
of orality is not able to be considered as a form of literature in accordance
to American cultural tendency, African American individuals attempted to usher
their social conflicts toward the White American by revealing in the written
form of literature as a narrative writing as “American letters have begun
to assay the work of these writers by the general literary standards and accord
it such appraisal as it might merrit” (Warren: 2011). Philip
Wheatley and Olaudah Equiao were nobled as the pioneers of eighteenth-century
African American narratives authors.
The development of African American
literature was depicted on being dynamic and polar. The emergence of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (Stowe: 1852) led the social group to break the
bounded definition of African American writer since Stowe was not an African
American or a Mulatto. According to that reason, the definition of African American
literature was escalated concerning on the social issues advanced, not on the
descendant background of the author. Subsequently, all literary works making
space for African American issues are appertained into African American
literature.
At present, the definition of African
American literature is severely associated to American minority literature. As
a writer, I urged a pronounced definition of the minority terminology which is
employed on this discipline as an account to elucidate the minority as locating
toward the social group, African American. In consequence, the terminology of
minority is not ethical to designate the African American literature in binary
opposition to the canonized White American literature. This consideration was
proposed in the ground of a paradigm explicated that literature is considered
as a mental evidence, yet it honoured an equality position to other literary
works. According to the articulation of African American literature’s
definition, the writer inferred that the substantial aspect on African American
literature is the issue depicted on the literary work from which in most case
urges the equal humanity of voice against the institutionalized slavery.
References
Stowe, Harriet Beetcher. 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company.
Warren, Kenneth. 2011. What was African American Literature. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
BIODATA PENULIS
Karina Hanum Luthfia atau biasa dipanggil Hanum, adalah seorang mahasiswi S3 Pengkajian Amerika yang juga mengajar di Universitas Negeri Semarang. Saat ini sedang menitikberatkan fokusnya ke kampus untuk mengajar dan penelitian mengenai gerakan literasi di Indonesia. Ia juga memiliki pengalaman menjadi volunteer dan researcher di salah satu locally run NGO di Yogyakarta.
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