African American Novels of the 1970s

Literary historians generally agree that in the 1970s, in the U.S., there was a significant increase in the publication of diverse forms of African American literature. The 1970s is also often described by scholars as a decade in which there was a renaissance of African American women’s writing as well as the publication of several experimental African American literary works. In this seminar, we will study this lively period in African American literary history primarily through novels, some of them recently republished or adapted into other forms. What idea of African American literature do we get when we read novels from this era? What questions were asked in 1970s African American novels that we continue to ask now? Novels we will likely read include detective fiction, diaristic fiction, satirical fiction, a love story, and historical fiction.