Shifting the Perception of Literature: Writing Color in to Existence

Dear Colleagues,

The recent outpouring of works by African and diaspora women signals the shifting perceptions of black women in literature. This issue is dedicated to the various perceptions they espouse and the issues they raise about modern society. It also interrogates efforts to combat historical erasures.

This Special Issue of the Humanities Journal is dedicated to an exploration of the current outpouring of works by contemporary African and African Diaspora women writers. The diversity and range of their works is evident in recent titles issuing from all across the continent of Africa and her diaspora. The authors tell stories that they wish to read and that situate black women as agents in affecting their own well-being. Their genres range from the memoir to science fiction and fantasy—the sum total of their efforts combat erasure. For the purposes of this issue, erasure is defined as the exclusion and/or marginalization of African and diaspora women from literary mainstream. Historically, Black women were, as characters, largely rendered invisible in literature. They may have served as props or nursemaids, but rarely were they given agency. It was a classic instance of art imitating life.

Beginning in the late 1960s, several important works were published that served to combat the disparity. Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing (1969), The Bluest Eye (1970), But Some of Us Were Brave (1982) Toni Cade Bambara’s Black Women: An Anthology (1970), Maryse Conde’s Heremakhonon (1976), and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter (1979), among others, signal the rise of what some critics termed a Black female literary renaissance. That it was a renaissance is less evident than the phenomenon of burgeoning publication opportunities.

It is appropriate that this 2020 issue address this concern in light of the 100th year celebration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution that gave American women the right to vote. After the National American Women Suffrage Association was formed (1890), the suffrage movement began to exclude black women participants in an effort to secure support from Southern white women and political leaders. This is a classic example of what social critic Claudia Jones called triple oppression. Nonetheless, black women worked tirelessly and without recognition for the right to vote and then had to work tirelessly and largely without recognition to secure their right to exercise this fundamental right.

This issue will feature analyses of works by African and diaspora women writers from the late Twentieth Century to the present. Preference will be given to approaches that emphasize the triple oppression of Black women or intersectionality, feminism, womanism, and even Marxist analyses, but submissions should address the theme of resisting erasure.

Prof. Dr. Adele Newson-Horst
Guest Editor

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