Africa in the African American Literary Imagination
Fall 2008 Princeton University
In this course, we will explore how African Americans have written about and imagined Africa in their work, with a particular focus on writing about “Ethiopia.” Africa has appeared in African American literature in a variety of forms—as origin, possible homeland, longed-for utopia, and synecdoche of African American freedom and identity. We will explore the use of Africa to construct and question African American identity as well as representations of African music, art, literature, religion, sexuality, community, and family. We will pay particular attention to Ethiopianism, the belief that a new messiah would arise on the African continent to save those in the Diaspora, and will read across a wide variety of genres. The goals of this course are to aid you in thinking critically, writing argumentatively, working collaboratively, and solving problems in a way that will aid you in your future lives, regardless of field.
Primary Texts
Poetry
- Phyllis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773)
- Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s “Ode to Ethiopia” (1896)
- Claude McKay’s “Africa” and “Enslaved” (1922)
- Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” (1925)
- Nikki Giovanni’s “Ego Tripping” (1973)
- Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002) (portions)
- Elizabeth Alexander’s American Sublime (2005) (portions)
- Jayne Cortez’s Jazz Fan Looks Back (2002) (portions)
- Robert Hayden’s Collected Poems (1997) (portions)
Novels
- Pauline Hopkins’s pan-Africanist epic Of One Blood (1902-3) (reprinted 2004)
- Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel Wild Seed (1990)
Drama
- Shirley Graham’s pro-Africa opera Tom-Tom (1932) in The Roots of African American Drama: An Anthology of Early Plays (1990)
- Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1975)
Autobiography/Travelogue
- Harry Foster Dean’s seafaring narrative The Pedro Gorino: The Adventures of a Negro Sea-Captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in His Attempts to Found an Ethiopian Empire (1929)
- Langston Hughes’s autobiography The Big Sea (1940) (reprinted 1993)
- A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing, ed. Farah Griffin and Cheryl J. Fish
- Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2004)
- Marita Golden’s memoir Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography (1987)
Nonfiction
- Marcus Garvey Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans (1924)
Secondary Literature
