Norton Anthology of African American Literature (3rd ed.)
Item
Title
Norton Anthology of African American Literature (3rd ed.)
Uniform title
Norton Anthology of African American Literature
This edition
"The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" . Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Valerie A. Smith. 3rd ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2014. xlvii+1,418+xlv+1,574 pp.
Other editions, reprints, and translations
• 1st ed. New York: Norton, 1996. xliv+2,665 pp. + CD disc
• 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2004. xlvii+2,776 pp.+ 2 audio discs.
Online access
Table of contents
Outline Contents (2014, third edition):
Volume 1: Beginnings through the Harlem Renaissance.
The vernacular tradition, part 1. Spirituals ; Secular rhymes and songs ; Ballads ; Work songs ; The blues ; Folktales --
The literature of slavery and freedom 1476-1865. Jupiter Hammon ; Venture Smith ; Lucy Terry ; Olaudah Equiano ; Phillis Wheatley ; S (early 19th century) ; David Walker ; George Moses Horton ; Sojourner Truth ; Maria W. Stewart ; Solomon Northup ; Martin R. Delany ; Harriet Jacobs ; William Wells Brown ; Henry Highland Garnet ; Victor Sejour ; Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley ; Frederick Douglass ; James M. Whitfield ; William Craft and Ellen Craft ; Frances E.W. Harper ; Harriet E. Wilson ; Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) --
Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance. 1865-1919. Nicholas Said ; Charlotte Forten Grimké ; Booker T. Washington ; Charles W. Chesnutt ; Anna Julia Cooper ; Pauline E. Hopkins ; Ida B. Wells-Barnett ; W.E.B. Du Bois ; James D. Corrothers ; James Weldon Johnson ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson ; William Stanley Braithwaite ; Fenton Johnson --
Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940. Arthur A. Schomburg ; Angelina Weld Grimké ; Anne Spencer ; Hubert Harrison ; Jessie Redmon Fauset ; Alain Locke ; Georgia Douglas Johnson ; Marcus Garvey ; René Maran ; Claude McKay ; Zora Neale Hurston ; Nella Larsen ; Jean Toomer ; George Samuel Schuyler ; Rudolph Fisher ; Eric Walrond ; Paul Robeson ; Marita Bonner ; Sterling A. Brown ; Gwendolyn B. Bennett ; Wallace Thurman ; Langston Hughes ; Nicolás Guillén ; Countee Cullen ; Richard Bruce Nugent ; Helene Johnson --
Timeline.
Volume 2. Realism, nautralism, modernism to the present.
The vernacular tradition, part 2. Gospel ; Songs of social change ; Jazz ; Rhythm and blues ; Hip-hop ; Sermons and prayers --
Realism, naturalism, modernism, 1940-1960. Melvin B. Tolson ; Dorothy West ; Richard Wright ; Chester B. Himes ; Ann Petry ; Alice Childress ; Robert Hayden ; Ralph Ellison ; Margaret Walker ; Gwendolyn Brooks ; James Baldwin ; Bob Kaufman ; Lorraine Hansberry --
The Black arts era, 1960-1975 [ed. Kimberly W. Benstock] (pp. 533-910). Mari Evans ; Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) ; John Alfred Williams ; Martin Luther King Jr. ; Raymond Patterson ; Etheridge Knight ; Adrienne Kennedy ; Calvin Hernton ; Audre Lorde ; Henry Dumas ; Amiri Baraka ; Sonia Sanchez ; Ed Bullins ; Eldridge Cleaver ; A.B. Spellman ; June Jordan ; Jayne Cortez ; Larry Neal ; Ishmael Reed ; Michael S. Harper ; Toni Cade Bambara ; Carolyn M. Rodgers ; Haki R. Madhubuti ; David Henderson ; Nikki Giovanni ; James Alan McPherson ; Amus Mor ; James T. Stewart --
The contemporary period. Albert Murray ; Maya Angelou ; Paule Marshall ; Toni Morrison ; Ernest J. Gaines ; Lucille Clifton ; John Edgar Wideman ; Samuel R. Delany ; Sherley Anne Williams ; Alice Walker ; August Wilson ; Octavia Butler ; Yusef Komunyakaa ; Nathaniel Mackey ; Charles Johnson ; Ntozake Shange ; Gayl Jones ; Jamaica Kincaid ; Gloria Naylor ; Edward P. Jones ; Rita Dove ; Walter Mosley ; Harryette Mullen ; Essex Hemphill ; Caryl Phillips ; Barack Obama ; Elizabeth Alexander ; Suzan-lori Parks ; Natasha Trethewey ; Edwidge Danticat ; Colson Whitehead ; Kevin Young ; Tracy K. Smith --
Timeline.
Volume 1: Beginnings through the Harlem Renaissance.
The vernacular tradition, part 1. Spirituals ; Secular rhymes and songs ; Ballads ; Work songs ; The blues ; Folktales --
The literature of slavery and freedom 1476-1865. Jupiter Hammon ; Venture Smith ; Lucy Terry ; Olaudah Equiano ; Phillis Wheatley ; S (early 19th century) ; David Walker ; George Moses Horton ; Sojourner Truth ; Maria W. Stewart ; Solomon Northup ; Martin R. Delany ; Harriet Jacobs ; William Wells Brown ; Henry Highland Garnet ; Victor Sejour ; Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley ; Frederick Douglass ; James M. Whitfield ; William Craft and Ellen Craft ; Frances E.W. Harper ; Harriet E. Wilson ; Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) --
Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance. 1865-1919. Nicholas Said ; Charlotte Forten Grimké ; Booker T. Washington ; Charles W. Chesnutt ; Anna Julia Cooper ; Pauline E. Hopkins ; Ida B. Wells-Barnett ; W.E.B. Du Bois ; James D. Corrothers ; James Weldon Johnson ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson ; William Stanley Braithwaite ; Fenton Johnson --
Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940. Arthur A. Schomburg ; Angelina Weld Grimké ; Anne Spencer ; Hubert Harrison ; Jessie Redmon Fauset ; Alain Locke ; Georgia Douglas Johnson ; Marcus Garvey ; René Maran ; Claude McKay ; Zora Neale Hurston ; Nella Larsen ; Jean Toomer ; George Samuel Schuyler ; Rudolph Fisher ; Eric Walrond ; Paul Robeson ; Marita Bonner ; Sterling A. Brown ; Gwendolyn B. Bennett ; Wallace Thurman ; Langston Hughes ; Nicolás Guillén ; Countee Cullen ; Richard Bruce Nugent ; Helene Johnson --
Timeline.
Volume 2. Realism, nautralism, modernism to the present.
The vernacular tradition, part 2. Gospel ; Songs of social change ; Jazz ; Rhythm and blues ; Hip-hop ; Sermons and prayers --
Realism, naturalism, modernism, 1940-1960. Melvin B. Tolson ; Dorothy West ; Richard Wright ; Chester B. Himes ; Ann Petry ; Alice Childress ; Robert Hayden ; Ralph Ellison ; Margaret Walker ; Gwendolyn Brooks ; James Baldwin ; Bob Kaufman ; Lorraine Hansberry --
The Black arts era, 1960-1975 [ed. Kimberly W. Benstock] (pp. 533-910). Mari Evans ; Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) ; John Alfred Williams ; Martin Luther King Jr. ; Raymond Patterson ; Etheridge Knight ; Adrienne Kennedy ; Calvin Hernton ; Audre Lorde ; Henry Dumas ; Amiri Baraka ; Sonia Sanchez ; Ed Bullins ; Eldridge Cleaver ; A.B. Spellman ; June Jordan ; Jayne Cortez ; Larry Neal ; Ishmael Reed ; Michael S. Harper ; Toni Cade Bambara ; Carolyn M. Rodgers ; Haki R. Madhubuti ; David Henderson ; Nikki Giovanni ; James Alan McPherson ; Amus Mor ; James T. Stewart --
The contemporary period. Albert Murray ; Maya Angelou ; Paule Marshall ; Toni Morrison ; Ernest J. Gaines ; Lucille Clifton ; John Edgar Wideman ; Samuel R. Delany ; Sherley Anne Williams ; Alice Walker ; August Wilson ; Octavia Butler ; Yusef Komunyakaa ; Nathaniel Mackey ; Charles Johnson ; Ntozake Shange ; Gayl Jones ; Jamaica Kincaid ; Gloria Naylor ; Edward P. Jones ; Rita Dove ; Walter Mosley ; Harryette Mullen ; Essex Hemphill ; Caryl Phillips ; Barack Obama ; Elizabeth Alexander ; Suzan-lori Parks ; Natasha Trethewey ; Edwidge Danticat ; Colson Whitehead ; Kevin Young ; Tracy K. Smith --
Timeline.
Volume 1: Beginnings Through the Harlem Renaissance
Preface [to the Third Edition]
Acknowledgments
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay / Introduction: Talking Books
The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1
• Introduction [The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1]
Spirituals:
• Anon. / City Called Heaven
• Anon. / I Know Moon-Rise
• Anon. / Ezekiel Saw de Wheel
• Anon. / I'm A-Rollin'
• Anon. / Go Down, Moses
• Anon. / Been in the Storm So Long
• Anon. / Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• Anon. / Steal Away to Jesus
• Anon. / Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?
• Anon. / God's a-Gonna Trouble the Water
• Anon. / Soon I Will Be Done
• Anon. / Come Sunday
Secular Rhymes and Songs:
• Anon. / [We raise de wheat]
• Anon. / Me and My Captain
• Anon. / Promises of Freedom
• Anon. / No More Auction Block
• Anon. / Jack and Dinah Want Freedom
• Anon. / Run, Nigger, Run
• Anon. / Another Man Done Gone
• Anon. / You May Go But This Will Bring You Back
Ballads:
• Anon. / John Henry
• Anon. / Frankie and Johnny
• Anon. / Railroad Bill
• Anon. / The Signifying Monkey
• Anon. / Stackolee
• Anon. / Sinking of the 'Titanic'
• Anon. / Shine and the 'Titanic'
Work Songs:
• Anon. / Pick a Bale of Cotton
• Anon. / Go Down, Old Hannah
• Anon. / Can't You Line It?
The Blues
• Anon. / Good Morning, Blues
• Anon. / Hellhound on My Trail
• Anon. / C. C. Rider
• Anon. / Backwater Blues
• Anon. / Down-Hearted Blues
• Anon. / Prove It on Me Blues
• Anon. / Trouble in Mind
• Anon. / How Long Blues
• Anon. / Rock Me Mama
• Anon. / Yellow Dog Blues
• Anon. / St. Louis Blues
• Anon. / Beale Street Blues
• Anon. / The Hesitating Blues
• Anon. / Going to Chicago Blues
• Anon. / Fine and Mellow
• Anon. / Hoochie Coochie
• Anon. / Sunnyland
• Anon. / My Handy Man
Folktales:
• Anon. / All God's Chillen Had Wings
• Anon. / Big Talk
• Anon. / Deer Hunting Story
• Anon. / How to Write a Letter
• Anon. / "'Member Youse a Nigger"
• Anon. / "Ah'll Beatcher Makin' Money"
• Anon. / Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest
• Anon. / "De Reason Niggers Is Working So Hard"
• Anon. / The Ventriloquist
• Anon. / You Talk Too Much, Anyhow
• Anon. / A Flying Fool
• Anon. / Brer Rabbit Tricks Brer Fox Again
• Anon. / The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story
• Anon. / How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox
• Anon. / The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf
• Anon. / What the Rabbit Learned
The Literature of Slavery and Freedom : 1746-1865.
• Introduction [The Literature of Slavery and Freedom: 1746-1865]
• Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought
• Jupiter Hammon / An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly
• Venture Smith / A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America
• Lucy Terry / Bars Fight
• Olaudah Equiano / The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself: excerpts: Volume 1. Chapter I ; Chapter II ; Chapter III ; Chapter IV
• Phillis Wheatley / Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Mora: front matter: Preface; [Letter Sent by the Author's Master to the Publisher]; [To the Publick]
• Phillis Wheatley / To Mæcenas
• Phillis Wheatley / To the University of Cambridge, in New-England
• Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought from Africa to America
• Phillis Wheatley / On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770
• Phillis Wheatley / To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, Etc.
• Phillis Wheatley / On Imagination
• Phillis Wheatley / To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
• Phillis Wheatley / To Samson Occom
• Phillis Wheatley / To His Excellency General Washington
• David Walker / David Walker's Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World: excerpts: Preamble; Article I : Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery
• George Moses Horton / The Lover's Farewell
• George Moses Horton / On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet's Freedom
• George Moses Horton / Division of an Estate
• George Moses Horton / George Moses Horton, Myself
• Sojourner Truth / Ar'n't I a Woman? Speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851: version from The "Anti-Slavery Bugle", June 21, 1851
• Sojourner Truth / Ar'n't I a Woman? Speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851: version from The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878
• Maria W. Stewart / Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build: excerpt: Introduction
• Maria W. Stewart / Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832
• Martin R. Delany / The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States: excerpts: Chapter I. Condition of Many Classes in Europe Considered; Chapter II. Comparative Condition of the Colored People of the United States; Chapter V. Means of Elevation; Chapter XXIII. Things as They Are; Chapter XXIV. A Glance at Ourselves--Conclusion
• Harriet Jacobs / Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: excerpts: Preface; I. Childhood; II. The New Master and Mistress; V. The Trials of Girlhood; X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life; XII. Fear of Insurrection; XIV. Another Link to Life; XVII: The Flight; XXI. The Loophole of Retreat; XXIX. Preparations for Escape; XXXIX. The Confession; XL. The Fugitive Slave Law; XLI. Free at Last
• William Wells Brown / Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave: excerpts: Chapter V; from Chapter VI
• William Wells Brown / Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: excerpts: Chapter 1. The Negro Sale; Chapter II. Going to the South; Chapter IV. The Quadroon's Home; Chapter XV. To-day a Mistress, Tomorrow a Slave; Chapter XIX. Escape of Clotel
• Henry Highland Garnet / An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
• Victor Séjour / The Mulatto
• Elizabeth Keckley / Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House: excerpts: Preface; Chapter I. Where I Was Born; Chapter II. Girlhood and Its Sorrows; Chapter III. How I Gained My Freedom; Chapter IV. In the Family of Senator Jefferson Davis
• Frederick Douglass / Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
• Frederick Douglass / My Bondage and My Freedom: excerpts: Chapter XXIII. Introduced to the Abolitionists; Chapter XXIV. Twenty-one Months in Great Britain
• Frederick Douglass / What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? : An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852: excerpt
• Frederick Douglass / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: excerpts: Second Part: from Chapter XV : Weighed in the Balance; Third Part: Chapter I. Later Life
• James M. Whitfield / America
• James M. Whitfield / Self-Reliance
• William Craft / Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
• Frances E. W. Harper / Ethiopia
• Frances E. W. Harper / Eliza Harris
• Frances E. W. Harper / The Slave Mother
• Frances E. W. Harper / Vashti
• Frances E. W. Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land
• Frances E. W. Harper / Aunt Chloe's Politics
• Frances E. W. Harper / Learning to Read
• Frances E. W. Harper / A Double Standar
• Frances E. W. Harper / Songs for the People
• Frances E. W. Harper / An Appeal to My Country Women
• Frances E. W. Harper / The Two Offers
• Frances E. W. Harper / Our Greatest Want
• Frances E. W. Harper / Fancy Etchings: [Enthusiasm and Lofty Aspirations]
• Frances E. W. Harper / Woman's Political Future
• Anon. / Theresa: A Haytien Tale
• Harriet E. Wilson / Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North: excerpts: Preface; Chapter I. Mag Smith, My Mother; Chapter II. My Father's Death; Chapter III. A New Home for Me; from Chapter VIII. Visitor and Departure; Chapter X. Perplexities--Another Death; Chapter XII. The Winding Up of the Matter
• Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) / The Bondwoman's Narrative: excerpts: from Chapter 1 [Learning to Read]; from Chapter 12 [A New Mistress]; from Chapter 13 [The 'Beautifying Powder']; from Chapter 21 [Freedom]
Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance: 1865-1919
• Introduction [Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance 1865-1919]
• Nicholas Said / A Native of Bornoo
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / A Parting Hymn
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / Journals: excerpts: from Journal One; from Journal Three
• Booker T. Washington / Up from Slavery: excerpts: Chapter I. A Slave among Slaves; Chapter II. Boyhood Days; Chapter III. The Struggle for an Education; Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Goopherd Grapevine
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Passing of Grandison
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Wife of His Youth
• Charles W. Chesnutt / Dave's Neckliss
• Anna Julia Cooper / Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Talma Gordon
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Bro'r Abr'm Jimson's Wedding
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Famous Men of the Negro Race: excerpt: Booker T. Washington
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Famous Women of the Negro Race: excerpt: V. Literary Workers (Concluded)
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Letter from Cordelia A. Condict and Pauline Hopkins's Reply (March 1903)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / A Red Record: excerpts: Chapter I. The Case Stated; Chapter X. The Remedy
• W. E. B. Du Bois / A Litany of Atlanta
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Song of the Smoke
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Souls of Black Folk: excerpts: The Forethought; I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings; III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others; IV. Of the Meaning of Progress; V. Of the Wings of Atalanta; VI. Of the Training of Black Men; X. Of the Faith of the Fathers; XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born; XII. Of Alexander Crummell; XIII. Of the Coming of John; XIV. The Sorrow Songs; The After-Thought
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Damnation of Women
• W. E. B. Du Bois / Criteria of Negro Art
• James D. Corrothers / The Snapping of the Bow
• James D. Corrothers / Me 'n' Dunbar
• James D. Corrothers / Paul Laurence Dunbar
• James Weldon Johnson / Sence You Went Away
• James Weldon Johnson / Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing
• James Weldon Johnson / O Black and Unknown Bards
• James Weldon Johnson / Fifty Years
• James Weldon Johnson / Brothers
• James Weldon Johnson / The Creation
• James Weldon Johnson / My City
• James Weldon Johnson / The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
• James Weldon Johnson / The Book of American Negro Poetry: Preface
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ode to Ethiopia
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Worn Out
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Negro Love Song
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Colored Soldiers
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / An Ante-Bellum Sermon
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Not They Who Soar
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / When Malindy Sings
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Little Brown Baby
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Her Thought and His
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Cabin Tale
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Sympathy
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Dinah Kneading Dough
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Haunted Oak
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Douglass
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Philosophy
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Black Samson of Brandywine
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Poet
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Fourth of July and Race Outrages
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / Violets
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / I Sit and Sew
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / April Is on the Way
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / Violets
• William Stanley Braithwaite / The Watchers
• William Stanley Braithwaite / The House of Falling Leaves
• William Stanley Braithwaite / Sic Vita
• Fenton Johnson / Tired
• Fenton Johnson / The Scarlet Woman
Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940.
• Introduction [Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940]
• Arthur A. Schomburg / The Negro Digs Up His Past
• Angelina Weld Grimké / A Winter Twilight
• Angelina Weld Grimké / The Black Finger
• Angelina Weld Grimké / When the Green Lies over the Earth
• Angelina Weld Grimké / Tenebris
• Anne Spencer / Before the Feast of Shushan
• Anne Spencer / The Wife-Woman
• Hubert Harrison / The East Louisville Horror
• Hubert Harrison / Two Negro Radicalisms
• Jessie Redmon Fauset / Plum Bun : A Novel Without a Moral: excerpt: from Home: Chapter I [Black Philadelphia]
• Alain Locke / Apropos of Africa (excerpt)
• Alain Locke / The New Negro
• Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Heart of a Woman
• Georgia Douglas Johnson / I Want to Die While You Love Me
• Marcus Garvey / Africa for the Africans
• Marcus Garvey / The Future as I See It
• René Maran / Batouala: excerpts: Preface; from Chapter 1
• Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer
• Claude McKay / Harlem Shadows
• Claude McKay / If We Must Die
• Claude McKay / To the White Fiends
• Claude McKay / Africa
• Claude McKay / America
• Claude McKay / The White House
• Claude McKay / Outcast
• Claude McKay / Home to Harlem: excerpt: Chapter XVII. He Also Loved
• Claude McKay / Banjo: excerpts: Chapter VI. Meeting Up; from Chapter XVI. The 'Blue Cinema.'
• Zora Neale Hurston / Sweat
• Zora Neale Hurston / How It Feels to Be Colored Me
• Zora Neale Hurston / The Gilded Six-Bits
• Zora Neale Hurston / Characteristics of Negro Expression
• Zora Neale Hurston / Mules and Men: excerpt: [Negro Folklore]
• Zora Neale Hurston / Their Eyes Were Watching God: excerpts: Chapter 1 [The Return]; Chapter 2 [Pear Tree]
• Nella Larsen / Passing
• Jean Toomer / Cane
• George Samuel Schuyler / The Negro-Art Hokum
• George Samuel Schuyler / Black No More: excerpts: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
• Rudolph Fisher / The City of Refuge
• Eric Wolrond / The Wharf Rats
• Paul Robeson / I Want to Be African
• Marita Bonner / On Being Young, a Woman, and Colored
• Sterling A. Brown / Odyssey of Big Boy
• Sterling A. Brown / When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home
• Sterling A. Brown / Long Gone
• Sterling A. Brown / Southern Road
• Sterling A. Brown / Strong Men
• Sterling A. Brown / Memphis Blues
• Sterling A. Brown / Slim Greer
• Sterling A. Brown / Slim in Atlanta
• Sterling A. Brown / Ma Rainey
• Sterling A. Brown / Cabaret
• Sterling A. Brown / Break of Day
• Sterling A. Brown / Sam Smiley
• Gwendolyn B. Bennett / Heritage
• Gwendolyn B. Bennett / To a Dark Girl
• Wallace Thurman / Infants of the Spring: excerpt: Chapter XXI [Harlem Salon]
• Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• Langston Hughes / Mother to Son
• Langston Hughes / Danse Africaine
• Langston Hughes / Jazzonia
• Langston Hughes / Dream Variations
• Langston Hughes / The Weary Blues
• Langston Hughes / I, Too
• Langston Hughes / Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret
• Langston Hughes / Johannesburg Mines
• Langston Hughes / Homesick Blues
• Langston Hughes / Mulatto
• Langston Hughes / Red Silk Stockings
• Langston Hughes / Song for a Dark Girl
• Langston Hughes / Gal's Cry for a Dying Lover
• Langston Hughes / Dear Lovely Death
• Langston Hughes / Afro-American Fragment
• Langston Hughes / Negro Servant
• Langston Hughes / Christ in Alabama
• Langston Hughes / Cubes
• Langston Hughes / Ballad of the Landlord
• Langston Hughes / Madam and the Rent Man
• Langston Hughes / Trumpet Player
• Langston Hughes / Song for Billie Holiday
• Langston Hughes / Dream Boogie
• Langston Hughes / Harlem (2)
• Langston Hughes / Motto
• Langston Hughes / Theme for English B
• Langston Hughes / The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
• Langston Hughes / The Big Sea: excerpt: When the Negro Was in Vogue; Harlem Literati; Downtown
• Langston Hughes / Bop
• Nicolás Guillén / Little Ode
• Nicolás Guillén / My Last Name
• Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel
• Countee Cullen / Tableau
• Countee Cullen / Incident
• Countee Cullen / Saturday's Child
• Countee Cullen / The Shroud of Color
• Countee Cullen / Heritage
• Countee Cullen / To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
• Countee Cullen / From the Dark Tower
• Richard Bruce Nugent / Smoke, Lillies, and Jade
• Helene Johnson / Poem
• Helene Johnson / Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem
• Helene Johnson / Invocation
Timeline
Selected Bibliographies
Index
Preface [to the Third Edition]
Acknowledgments
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay / Introduction: Talking Books
The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1
• Introduction [The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1]
Spirituals:
• Anon. / City Called Heaven
• Anon. / I Know Moon-Rise
• Anon. / Ezekiel Saw de Wheel
• Anon. / I'm A-Rollin'
• Anon. / Go Down, Moses
• Anon. / Been in the Storm So Long
• Anon. / Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• Anon. / Steal Away to Jesus
• Anon. / Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?
• Anon. / God's a-Gonna Trouble the Water
• Anon. / Soon I Will Be Done
• Anon. / Come Sunday
Secular Rhymes and Songs:
• Anon. / [We raise de wheat]
• Anon. / Me and My Captain
• Anon. / Promises of Freedom
• Anon. / No More Auction Block
• Anon. / Jack and Dinah Want Freedom
• Anon. / Run, Nigger, Run
• Anon. / Another Man Done Gone
• Anon. / You May Go But This Will Bring You Back
Ballads:
• Anon. / John Henry
• Anon. / Frankie and Johnny
• Anon. / Railroad Bill
• Anon. / The Signifying Monkey
• Anon. / Stackolee
• Anon. / Sinking of the 'Titanic'
• Anon. / Shine and the 'Titanic'
Work Songs:
• Anon. / Pick a Bale of Cotton
• Anon. / Go Down, Old Hannah
• Anon. / Can't You Line It?
The Blues
• Anon. / Good Morning, Blues
• Anon. / Hellhound on My Trail
• Anon. / C. C. Rider
• Anon. / Backwater Blues
• Anon. / Down-Hearted Blues
• Anon. / Prove It on Me Blues
• Anon. / Trouble in Mind
• Anon. / How Long Blues
• Anon. / Rock Me Mama
• Anon. / Yellow Dog Blues
• Anon. / St. Louis Blues
• Anon. / Beale Street Blues
• Anon. / The Hesitating Blues
• Anon. / Going to Chicago Blues
• Anon. / Fine and Mellow
• Anon. / Hoochie Coochie
• Anon. / Sunnyland
• Anon. / My Handy Man
Folktales:
• Anon. / All God's Chillen Had Wings
• Anon. / Big Talk
• Anon. / Deer Hunting Story
• Anon. / How to Write a Letter
• Anon. / "'Member Youse a Nigger"
• Anon. / "Ah'll Beatcher Makin' Money"
• Anon. / Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest
• Anon. / "De Reason Niggers Is Working So Hard"
• Anon. / The Ventriloquist
• Anon. / You Talk Too Much, Anyhow
• Anon. / A Flying Fool
• Anon. / Brer Rabbit Tricks Brer Fox Again
• Anon. / The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story
• Anon. / How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox
• Anon. / The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf
• Anon. / What the Rabbit Learned
The Literature of Slavery and Freedom : 1746-1865.
• Introduction [The Literature of Slavery and Freedom: 1746-1865]
• Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought
• Jupiter Hammon / An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly
• Venture Smith / A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America
• Lucy Terry / Bars Fight
• Olaudah Equiano / The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself: excerpts: Volume 1. Chapter I ; Chapter II ; Chapter III ; Chapter IV
• Phillis Wheatley / Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Mora: front matter: Preface; [Letter Sent by the Author's Master to the Publisher]; [To the Publick]
• Phillis Wheatley / To Mæcenas
• Phillis Wheatley / To the University of Cambridge, in New-England
• Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought from Africa to America
• Phillis Wheatley / On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770
• Phillis Wheatley / To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, Etc.
• Phillis Wheatley / On Imagination
• Phillis Wheatley / To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
• Phillis Wheatley / To Samson Occom
• Phillis Wheatley / To His Excellency General Washington
• David Walker / David Walker's Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World: excerpts: Preamble; Article I : Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery
• George Moses Horton / The Lover's Farewell
• George Moses Horton / On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet's Freedom
• George Moses Horton / Division of an Estate
• George Moses Horton / George Moses Horton, Myself
• Sojourner Truth / Ar'n't I a Woman? Speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851: version from The "Anti-Slavery Bugle", June 21, 1851
• Sojourner Truth / Ar'n't I a Woman? Speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851: version from The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878
• Maria W. Stewart / Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build: excerpt: Introduction
• Maria W. Stewart / Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832
• Martin R. Delany / The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States: excerpts: Chapter I. Condition of Many Classes in Europe Considered; Chapter II. Comparative Condition of the Colored People of the United States; Chapter V. Means of Elevation; Chapter XXIII. Things as They Are; Chapter XXIV. A Glance at Ourselves--Conclusion
• Harriet Jacobs / Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: excerpts: Preface; I. Childhood; II. The New Master and Mistress; V. The Trials of Girlhood; X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life; XII. Fear of Insurrection; XIV. Another Link to Life; XVII: The Flight; XXI. The Loophole of Retreat; XXIX. Preparations for Escape; XXXIX. The Confession; XL. The Fugitive Slave Law; XLI. Free at Last
• William Wells Brown / Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave: excerpts: Chapter V; from Chapter VI
• William Wells Brown / Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: excerpts: Chapter 1. The Negro Sale; Chapter II. Going to the South; Chapter IV. The Quadroon's Home; Chapter XV. To-day a Mistress, Tomorrow a Slave; Chapter XIX. Escape of Clotel
• Henry Highland Garnet / An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
• Victor Séjour / The Mulatto
• Elizabeth Keckley / Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House: excerpts: Preface; Chapter I. Where I Was Born; Chapter II. Girlhood and Its Sorrows; Chapter III. How I Gained My Freedom; Chapter IV. In the Family of Senator Jefferson Davis
• Frederick Douglass / Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
• Frederick Douglass / My Bondage and My Freedom: excerpts: Chapter XXIII. Introduced to the Abolitionists; Chapter XXIV. Twenty-one Months in Great Britain
• Frederick Douglass / What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? : An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852: excerpt
• Frederick Douglass / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: excerpts: Second Part: from Chapter XV : Weighed in the Balance; Third Part: Chapter I. Later Life
• James M. Whitfield / America
• James M. Whitfield / Self-Reliance
• William Craft / Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
• Frances E. W. Harper / Ethiopia
• Frances E. W. Harper / Eliza Harris
• Frances E. W. Harper / The Slave Mother
• Frances E. W. Harper / Vashti
• Frances E. W. Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land
• Frances E. W. Harper / Aunt Chloe's Politics
• Frances E. W. Harper / Learning to Read
• Frances E. W. Harper / A Double Standar
• Frances E. W. Harper / Songs for the People
• Frances E. W. Harper / An Appeal to My Country Women
• Frances E. W. Harper / The Two Offers
• Frances E. W. Harper / Our Greatest Want
• Frances E. W. Harper / Fancy Etchings: [Enthusiasm and Lofty Aspirations]
• Frances E. W. Harper / Woman's Political Future
• Anon. / Theresa: A Haytien Tale
• Harriet E. Wilson / Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North: excerpts: Preface; Chapter I. Mag Smith, My Mother; Chapter II. My Father's Death; Chapter III. A New Home for Me; from Chapter VIII. Visitor and Departure; Chapter X. Perplexities--Another Death; Chapter XII. The Winding Up of the Matter
• Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) / The Bondwoman's Narrative: excerpts: from Chapter 1 [Learning to Read]; from Chapter 12 [A New Mistress]; from Chapter 13 [The 'Beautifying Powder']; from Chapter 21 [Freedom]
Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance: 1865-1919
• Introduction [Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance 1865-1919]
• Nicholas Said / A Native of Bornoo
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / A Parting Hymn
• Charlotte Forten Grimké / Journals: excerpts: from Journal One; from Journal Three
• Booker T. Washington / Up from Slavery: excerpts: Chapter I. A Slave among Slaves; Chapter II. Boyhood Days; Chapter III. The Struggle for an Education; Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Goopherd Grapevine
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Passing of Grandison
• Charles W. Chesnutt / The Wife of His Youth
• Charles W. Chesnutt / Dave's Neckliss
• Anna Julia Cooper / Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Talma Gordon
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Bro'r Abr'm Jimson's Wedding
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Famous Men of the Negro Race: excerpt: Booker T. Washington
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Famous Women of the Negro Race: excerpt: V. Literary Workers (Concluded)
• Pauline E. Hopkins / Letter from Cordelia A. Condict and Pauline Hopkins's Reply (March 1903)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett / A Red Record: excerpts: Chapter I. The Case Stated; Chapter X. The Remedy
• W. E. B. Du Bois / A Litany of Atlanta
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Song of the Smoke
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Souls of Black Folk: excerpts: The Forethought; I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings; III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others; IV. Of the Meaning of Progress; V. Of the Wings of Atalanta; VI. Of the Training of Black Men; X. Of the Faith of the Fathers; XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born; XII. Of Alexander Crummell; XIII. Of the Coming of John; XIV. The Sorrow Songs; The After-Thought
• W. E. B. Du Bois / The Damnation of Women
• W. E. B. Du Bois / Criteria of Negro Art
• James D. Corrothers / The Snapping of the Bow
• James D. Corrothers / Me 'n' Dunbar
• James D. Corrothers / Paul Laurence Dunbar
• James Weldon Johnson / Sence You Went Away
• James Weldon Johnson / Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing
• James Weldon Johnson / O Black and Unknown Bards
• James Weldon Johnson / Fifty Years
• James Weldon Johnson / Brothers
• James Weldon Johnson / The Creation
• James Weldon Johnson / My City
• James Weldon Johnson / The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
• James Weldon Johnson / The Book of American Negro Poetry: Preface
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ode to Ethiopia
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Worn Out
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Negro Love Song
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Colored Soldiers
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / An Ante-Bellum Sermon
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Not They Who Soar
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / When Malindy Sings
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Little Brown Baby
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Her Thought and His
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Cabin Tale
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Sympathy
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Dinah Kneading Dough
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Haunted Oak
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Douglass
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Philosophy
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / Black Samson of Brandywine
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Poet
• Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Fourth of July and Race Outrages
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / Violets
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / I Sit and Sew
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / April Is on the Way
• Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson / Violets
• William Stanley Braithwaite / The Watchers
• William Stanley Braithwaite / The House of Falling Leaves
• William Stanley Braithwaite / Sic Vita
• Fenton Johnson / Tired
• Fenton Johnson / The Scarlet Woman
Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940.
• Introduction [Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940]
• Arthur A. Schomburg / The Negro Digs Up His Past
• Angelina Weld Grimké / A Winter Twilight
• Angelina Weld Grimké / The Black Finger
• Angelina Weld Grimké / When the Green Lies over the Earth
• Angelina Weld Grimké / Tenebris
• Anne Spencer / Before the Feast of Shushan
• Anne Spencer / The Wife-Woman
• Hubert Harrison / The East Louisville Horror
• Hubert Harrison / Two Negro Radicalisms
• Jessie Redmon Fauset / Plum Bun : A Novel Without a Moral: excerpt: from Home: Chapter I [Black Philadelphia]
• Alain Locke / Apropos of Africa (excerpt)
• Alain Locke / The New Negro
• Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Heart of a Woman
• Georgia Douglas Johnson / I Want to Die While You Love Me
• Marcus Garvey / Africa for the Africans
• Marcus Garvey / The Future as I See It
• René Maran / Batouala: excerpts: Preface; from Chapter 1
• Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer
• Claude McKay / Harlem Shadows
• Claude McKay / If We Must Die
• Claude McKay / To the White Fiends
• Claude McKay / Africa
• Claude McKay / America
• Claude McKay / The White House
• Claude McKay / Outcast
• Claude McKay / Home to Harlem: excerpt: Chapter XVII. He Also Loved
• Claude McKay / Banjo: excerpts: Chapter VI. Meeting Up; from Chapter XVI. The 'Blue Cinema.'
• Zora Neale Hurston / Sweat
• Zora Neale Hurston / How It Feels to Be Colored Me
• Zora Neale Hurston / The Gilded Six-Bits
• Zora Neale Hurston / Characteristics of Negro Expression
• Zora Neale Hurston / Mules and Men: excerpt: [Negro Folklore]
• Zora Neale Hurston / Their Eyes Were Watching God: excerpts: Chapter 1 [The Return]; Chapter 2 [Pear Tree]
• Nella Larsen / Passing
• Jean Toomer / Cane
• George Samuel Schuyler / The Negro-Art Hokum
• George Samuel Schuyler / Black No More: excerpts: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
• Rudolph Fisher / The City of Refuge
• Eric Wolrond / The Wharf Rats
• Paul Robeson / I Want to Be African
• Marita Bonner / On Being Young, a Woman, and Colored
• Sterling A. Brown / Odyssey of Big Boy
• Sterling A. Brown / When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home
• Sterling A. Brown / Long Gone
• Sterling A. Brown / Southern Road
• Sterling A. Brown / Strong Men
• Sterling A. Brown / Memphis Blues
• Sterling A. Brown / Slim Greer
• Sterling A. Brown / Slim in Atlanta
• Sterling A. Brown / Ma Rainey
• Sterling A. Brown / Cabaret
• Sterling A. Brown / Break of Day
• Sterling A. Brown / Sam Smiley
• Gwendolyn B. Bennett / Heritage
• Gwendolyn B. Bennett / To a Dark Girl
• Wallace Thurman / Infants of the Spring: excerpt: Chapter XXI [Harlem Salon]
• Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• Langston Hughes / Mother to Son
• Langston Hughes / Danse Africaine
• Langston Hughes / Jazzonia
• Langston Hughes / Dream Variations
• Langston Hughes / The Weary Blues
• Langston Hughes / I, Too
• Langston Hughes / Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret
• Langston Hughes / Johannesburg Mines
• Langston Hughes / Homesick Blues
• Langston Hughes / Mulatto
• Langston Hughes / Red Silk Stockings
• Langston Hughes / Song for a Dark Girl
• Langston Hughes / Gal's Cry for a Dying Lover
• Langston Hughes / Dear Lovely Death
• Langston Hughes / Afro-American Fragment
• Langston Hughes / Negro Servant
• Langston Hughes / Christ in Alabama
• Langston Hughes / Cubes
• Langston Hughes / Ballad of the Landlord
• Langston Hughes / Madam and the Rent Man
• Langston Hughes / Trumpet Player
• Langston Hughes / Song for Billie Holiday
• Langston Hughes / Dream Boogie
• Langston Hughes / Harlem (2)
• Langston Hughes / Motto
• Langston Hughes / Theme for English B
• Langston Hughes / The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
• Langston Hughes / The Big Sea: excerpt: When the Negro Was in Vogue; Harlem Literati; Downtown
• Langston Hughes / Bop
• Nicolás Guillén / Little Ode
• Nicolás Guillén / My Last Name
• Countee Cullen / Yet Do I Marvel
• Countee Cullen / Tableau
• Countee Cullen / Incident
• Countee Cullen / Saturday's Child
• Countee Cullen / The Shroud of Color
• Countee Cullen / Heritage
• Countee Cullen / To John Keats, Poet at Spring Time
• Countee Cullen / From the Dark Tower
• Richard Bruce Nugent / Smoke, Lillies, and Jade
• Helene Johnson / Poem
• Helene Johnson / Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem
• Helene Johnson / Invocation
Timeline
Selected Bibliographies
Index
Volume 2: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism to the Present
Preface
Acknowledgments
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay / Introduction: Talking Books
The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2
• Introduction [The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2]
Gospel:
• Anon. / This Little Light of Mine
• Anon. / Down by the Riverside
• Anon. / Freedom in the Air
• Anon. / Take My Hand, Precious Lord
• Anon. / Peace Be Still
• Anon. / Stand by Me
Songs of Social Change
• Anon. / Oh, Freedom
• Anon. / Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round
• Abel Meeropol / Strange Fruit
• Anon. / We Shall Overcome
• Langston Hughes / Backlash Blues
• Nina Simone / Four Women
Jazz:
• Duke Ellington / It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
• Andy Razaf / (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue
• King Pleasure / Parker's Mood
Rhythm and Blues:
• Sam Cooke / A Change Is Gonna Come
• Smokey Robinson et al. / The Tracks of My Tears
• Marvin Gaye et al. / Dancin' in the Street
• Otis Redding / Respect
• Marvin Gaye / What's Goin' On?
• Stevie Wonder / Living for the City
• Curtis Mayfield / We're a Winner
Hip Hop:
• Gil Scott-Heron / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
• Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five / The Message
• Public Enemy / Don't Believe the Hype
• Queen Latifah / The Evil That Men Do
• Eric B. & Rakim / I Ain't No Joke
• Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) / Things Done Changed
• Nas / N.Y. State of Mind
• Jay-Z / Song Cry
• Jean Grae / Don't Rush Me
Sermons and Prayers:
• Anon. / God
• James Weldon Johnson / Listen Lord, a Prayer
• C. L. Franklin / The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest
• Howard Thurman / O God, I Need Thee
• G. I. Townsel / The Way Out Is to Pray Out
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / I Have a Dream
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / I've Been to the Mountaintop
• Malcolm X / The Ballot or the Bullet
• Bert Williams / Elder Eatmore's Sermon on Generosity
Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960.
• Introduction [Realism, Naturalism, Modernism 1940-1960]
• Melvin B. Tolson / Dark Symphony
• Melvin B. Tolson / The Birth of John Henry
• Melvin B. Tolson / Satchmo
• Dorothy West / The Living is Easy: excerpt: Part One: Chapter 1 [Cleo]
• Richard Wright / Blueprint for Negro Writing
• Richard Wright / The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, an Autobiographical Sketch
• Richard Wright / Black Boy: excerpts: Chapter XIII. [Booklist]; Chapter XVI. [Chicago]
• Richard Wright / Tradition and Industrialization: The Plight of the Tragic Elite in Africa
• Chester B. Himes / Cotton Gonna Kill Me Yet
• Ann Petry / The Street: excerpt: Chapter 1 [The Apartment]
• Alice Childress / Trouble in Mind
• Robert Hayden / The Diver
• Robert Hayden / Homage to the Empress of the Blues
• Robert Hayden / Middle Passage
• Robert Hayden / Those Winter Sundays
• Robert Hayden / O Daedalus, Fly Away Home
• Robert Hayden / Runagate Runagate
• Robert Hayden / Frederick Douglass
• Robert Hayden / A Ballad of Remembrance
• Robert Hayden / Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday
• Robert Hayden / Soledad
• Robert Hayden / El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
• Robert Hayden / A Letter from Phillis Wheatley
• Ralph Ellison / Richard Wright's Blues
• Ralph Ellison / Invisible Man: excerpts: Prologue; Chapter 1 [Battle Royal]; Epilogue
• Ralph Ellison / Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke
• Ralph Ellison / The World and the Jug
• Ralph Ellison / Remembering Richard Wright
• Margaret Walker / For My People
• Margaret Walker / Poppa Chicken
• Margaret Walker / For Malcolm X
• Margaret Walker / Prophets for a New Day
• Gwendolyn Brooks / kitchenette building
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the mother
• Gwendolyn Brooks / a song in the front yard
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Sadie and Maud
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the vacant lot
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Rites for Cousin Vit
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Children of the Poor
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Lovers of the Poor
• Gwendolyn Brooks / We Real Cool
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Chicago 'Defender' Sends a Man to Little Rock
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Malcolm X
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Riot
• Gwendolyn Brooks / A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Maud Martha
• James Baldwin / Everybody's Protest Novel
• James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son
• James Baldwin / Sonny's Blues
• James Baldwin / Princes and Powers
• James Baldwin / Going to Meet the Man
• Bob Kaufman / Jail Poems
• Lorraine Hansberry / A Raisin in the Sun
The Black Arts Era : 1960-1975
• Introduction [The Black Arts Era 1960-1975]
• Mari Evans / Vive Noir!
• Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) / The Autobiography of Malcolm X: excerpts: from Chapter One. Nightmare; from Chapter Four. Laura; from Chapter Six. Detroit Red; from Chapter 11. Saved; from Chapter Nineteen. 1965
• John Alfred Williams / The Man Who Cried I Am: excerpt: Chapter 3 [Picture of the Writer]
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Raymond Patterson / Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman
• Etheridge Knight / The Idea of Ancestry
• Etheridge Knight / Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
• Etheridge Knight / Ilu, the Talking Drum
• Adrienne Kennedy / Funnyhouse of a Negro
• Calvin Hernton / Jitterbugging in the Streets
• Audre Lorde / New York City 1970
• Audre Lorde / Coal
• Audre Lorde / Power
• Audre Lorde / Poetry Is Not a Luxury
• Audre Lorde / 125th and Abomey
• Audre Lorde / Walking Our Boundaries
• Audre Lorde / Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: excerpt: Epilogue
• Audre Lorde / Inheritance--His
• Henry Dumas / Black Star Line
• Henry Dumas / Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
• Henry Dumas / The Zebra Goes Wild Where the Sidewalk Ends
• Amiri Baraka / Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
• Amiri Baraka / Notes for a Speech
• Amiri Baraka / A Poem for Willie Best
• Amiri Baraka / BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS
• Amiri Baraka / Dutchman
• Amiri Baraka / The Revolutionary Theatre
• Amiri Baraka / Prologue to "The Slave"
• Amiri Baraka / A Poem for Black Hearts
• Amiri Baraka / Ka 'Ba'
• Amiri Baraka / Slave Ship
• Amiri Baraka / Black Art
• Amiri Baraka / It's Nation Time
• Amiri Baraka / Wailers
• Sonia Sanchez / homecoming
• Sonia Sanchez / poem at thirty
• Sonia Sanchez / Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict
• Sonia Sanchez / Blk/Rhetoric
• Sonia Sanchez / Sister Son/ji
• Sonia Sanchez / A/Coltrane/Poem
• Sonia Sanchez / TCB
• Sonia Sanchez / A Poem for My Brother
• Ed Bullins / Clara's Ole Man
• Eldridge Cleaver / Soul on Ice: excerpt: Convalescence
• A. B. Spellman / Did John's Music Kill Him?
• June Jordan / In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
• June Jordan / Getting Down to Get Over
• June Jordan / The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem #1
• June Jordan / Poem about Police Violence
• June Jordan / Poem for South African Women
• June Jordan / Poem about My Rights
• Jayne Cortez / How Long Has Trane Been Gone
• Larry Neal / Harlem Gallery: From the Inside
• Larry Neal / The Black Arts Movement
• Ishmael Reed / The Ghost in Birmingham
• Ishmael Reed / I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra
• Ishmael Reed / Neo-HooDoo Manifesto
• Ishmael Reed / Mumbo Jumbo: excerpt: Chapter I; from Chapter II; Epilogue
• Michael S. Harper / Dear John, Dear Coltrane
• Michael S. Harper / Trays: A Portfolio
• Michael S. Harper / History as Apple Tree
• Michael S. Harper / Psychophotos of Hampton
• Toni Cade Bambara / Gorilla, My Love
• Toni Cade Bambara / The Salt Eaters (excerpt)
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Introduction [to "Think Black"]
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Two Poems
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Gwendolyn Brooks
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Don't Cry, Scream
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Move Un-Noticed to Be Noticed: A Nationhood Poem
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Killing Memory
• David Henderson / Keep on Pushing (Harlem Riots/Summer/1964)
• Nikki Giovanni / For Saundra
• Nikki Giovanni / Beautiful Black Men
• Nikki Giovanni / Nikki-Rosa
• Nikki Giovanni / Revolutionary Music
• Nikki Giovanni / All I Gotta Do
• Nikki Giovanni / Ego Tripping
• James Alan McPherson / Problems of Art
• Carolyn Rodgers / For Sistuhs Wearin' Straight Hair
• Carolyn Rodgers / The Last M. F.
• Carolyn Rodgers / Poem for Some Black Women
• Carolyn Rodgers / U Name This One
• Carolyn Rodgers / I Have Been Hungry
• Amos Mor / Poem to the Hip Generation
• James T. Stewart / The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist
The Contemporary Period
• Introduction [The Contemporary Period]
• Albert Murray / Train Whistle Guitar: excerpt: [History Lessons]
• Maya Angelou / Still I Rise
• Maya Angelou / My Arkansas
• Maya Angelou / I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: excerpts: Chapter 15 [Mrs. Flowers]; Chapter 16 ["Mam"]
• Paule Marshall / Reena
• Paule Marshall / To Da-Duh, in Memoriam
• Paule Marshall / The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen
• Toni Morrison / Sula
• Toni Morrison / Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation
• Toni Morrison / The Site of Memory
• Toni Morrison / Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature
• Ernest J. Gaines / The Sky Is Gray
• Lucille Clifton / in the inner city
• Lucille Clifton / good times
• Lucille Clifton / malcolm
• Lucille Clifton / homage to my hips
• Lucille Clifton / what the mirror said
• Lucille Clifton / [the light that came to lucille clifton]
• Lucille Clifton / blessing the boats
• Lucille Clifton / study the masters
• John Edgar Wideman / Brothers and Keepers: excerpt: [Robby's Version]
• John Edgar Wideman / Damballah
• Samuel R. Delany / Atlantis: Model 1924 (excerpt)
• Sherley Anne Williams / The Peacock Poems: 1
• Sherley Anne Williams / I Want Aretha to Set This to Music
• Sherley Anne Williams / Tell Martha Not to Moan
• Alice Walker / Women
• Alice Walker / Outcast
• Alice Walker / "Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning"
• Alice Walker / In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
• Alice Walker / Everyday Use
• Alice Walker / Advancing Luna--and Ida B. Wells
• August Wilson / Joe Turner's Come and Gone
• Octavia Butler / Bloodchild
• Yusef Komunyakaa / February in Sydney
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Facing It
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Sunday Afternoons
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Banking Potatoes
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Birds on a Powerline • Nathaniel Mackey / Falso Brilhante
• Nathaniel Mackey / Song of the Andoumboulou: 8
• Nathaniel Mackey / Djbot Baghostu's Run: excerpt: 26. IX. 81
• Charles Johnson / The Education of Mingo
• Ntozake Shange / for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (excerpt)
• Ntozake Shange / Nappy Edges
• Ntozake Shange / Bocas : A Daughter's Geography
• Gayl Jones / Corregidora (excerpt)
• Jamaica Kincaid / Annie John: excerpt: Chapter Two: The Circling Hand
• Edward P. Jones / The Girl Who Raised Pigeons
• Gloria Naylor / The Women of Brewster Place: excerpt: The Two
• Rita Dove / David Walker (1785-1830)
• Rita Dove / Parsley
• Rita Dove / Receiving the Stigmata
• Rita Dove / The Event (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Motherhood (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Daystar (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / The Oriental Ballerina (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Pastoral
• Rita Dove / American Smooth
• Rita Dove / The Return of Lieutenant James Reese Europe
• Rita Dove / Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove
• Walter Mosley / Equal Opportunity
• Harryette Mullen / [Sapphire's lyre styles] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [country clothes hung on her all and sundry] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [odds meeting on a bus] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [why these blues come from us] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [go on sister sing your song] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [tomboy girl with cowboy boots] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [sauce squandering sassy cook] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [marry at a hotel, annul 'em] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [precious cargo up cooked alleys] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [with all that rope they gave us] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [the royal yellow sovereign] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [tom-tom can't catch] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [massa had a yeller] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [cough drops prick thick] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [ain't cut drylongso] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [soulless diavism] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [moon, whoever you knew] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Essex Hemphill / Conditions: excerpts: XXI; XXII; XXIV
• Caryl Phillips / Crossing the River: excerpt: II. West
• Barack Obama / A More Perfect Union
• Elizabeth Alexander / The Venus Hottentot
• Elizabeth Alexander / When
• Elizabeth Alexander / Ars Poetic 100: I Believe
• Suzan-Lori Parks / Topdog/Underdog
• Natasha Trethewey / Liturgy
• Natasha Trethewey / Witness
• Natasha Trethewey / Tower
• Natasha Trethewey / Watcher
• Natasha Trethewey / Believer
• Natasha Trethewey / Prodigal
• Edwidge Danticat / Breath, Eyes, Memory: excerpt: Chapter 1, Chapter 35
• Colson Whitehead / John Henry Days: excerpts: [1], [2], [3]
• Kevin Young / Langston Hughes
• Kevin Young / Jook
• Kevin Young / Anthem
• Kevin Young / Exodus
• Tracy K. Smith / Sci-Fi
• Tracy K. Smith / My God, It's Full of
Timeline
Selected Bibliographies
Index
Preface
Acknowledgments
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay / Introduction: Talking Books
The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2
• Introduction [The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2]
Gospel:
• Anon. / This Little Light of Mine
• Anon. / Down by the Riverside
• Anon. / Freedom in the Air
• Anon. / Take My Hand, Precious Lord
• Anon. / Peace Be Still
• Anon. / Stand by Me
Songs of Social Change
• Anon. / Oh, Freedom
• Anon. / Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round
• Abel Meeropol / Strange Fruit
• Anon. / We Shall Overcome
• Langston Hughes / Backlash Blues
• Nina Simone / Four Women
Jazz:
• Duke Ellington / It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
• Andy Razaf / (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue
• King Pleasure / Parker's Mood
Rhythm and Blues:
• Sam Cooke / A Change Is Gonna Come
• Smokey Robinson et al. / The Tracks of My Tears
• Marvin Gaye et al. / Dancin' in the Street
• Otis Redding / Respect
• Marvin Gaye / What's Goin' On?
• Stevie Wonder / Living for the City
• Curtis Mayfield / We're a Winner
Hip Hop:
• Gil Scott-Heron / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
• Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five / The Message
• Public Enemy / Don't Believe the Hype
• Queen Latifah / The Evil That Men Do
• Eric B. & Rakim / I Ain't No Joke
• Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) / Things Done Changed
• Nas / N.Y. State of Mind
• Jay-Z / Song Cry
• Jean Grae / Don't Rush Me
Sermons and Prayers:
• Anon. / God
• James Weldon Johnson / Listen Lord, a Prayer
• C. L. Franklin / The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest
• Howard Thurman / O God, I Need Thee
• G. I. Townsel / The Way Out Is to Pray Out
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / I Have a Dream
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / I've Been to the Mountaintop
• Malcolm X / The Ballot or the Bullet
• Bert Williams / Elder Eatmore's Sermon on Generosity
Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960.
• Introduction [Realism, Naturalism, Modernism 1940-1960]
• Melvin B. Tolson / Dark Symphony
• Melvin B. Tolson / The Birth of John Henry
• Melvin B. Tolson / Satchmo
• Dorothy West / The Living is Easy: excerpt: Part One: Chapter 1 [Cleo]
• Richard Wright / Blueprint for Negro Writing
• Richard Wright / The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, an Autobiographical Sketch
• Richard Wright / Black Boy: excerpts: Chapter XIII. [Booklist]; Chapter XVI. [Chicago]
• Richard Wright / Tradition and Industrialization: The Plight of the Tragic Elite in Africa
• Chester B. Himes / Cotton Gonna Kill Me Yet
• Ann Petry / The Street: excerpt: Chapter 1 [The Apartment]
• Alice Childress / Trouble in Mind
• Robert Hayden / The Diver
• Robert Hayden / Homage to the Empress of the Blues
• Robert Hayden / Middle Passage
• Robert Hayden / Those Winter Sundays
• Robert Hayden / O Daedalus, Fly Away Home
• Robert Hayden / Runagate Runagate
• Robert Hayden / Frederick Douglass
• Robert Hayden / A Ballad of Remembrance
• Robert Hayden / Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday
• Robert Hayden / Soledad
• Robert Hayden / El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
• Robert Hayden / A Letter from Phillis Wheatley
• Ralph Ellison / Richard Wright's Blues
• Ralph Ellison / Invisible Man: excerpts: Prologue; Chapter 1 [Battle Royal]; Epilogue
• Ralph Ellison / Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke
• Ralph Ellison / The World and the Jug
• Ralph Ellison / Remembering Richard Wright
• Margaret Walker / For My People
• Margaret Walker / Poppa Chicken
• Margaret Walker / For Malcolm X
• Margaret Walker / Prophets for a New Day
• Gwendolyn Brooks / kitchenette building
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the mother
• Gwendolyn Brooks / a song in the front yard
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Sadie and Maud
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the vacant lot
• Gwendolyn Brooks / the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Rites for Cousin Vit
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Children of the Poor
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Lovers of the Poor
• Gwendolyn Brooks / We Real Cool
• Gwendolyn Brooks / The Chicago 'Defender' Sends a Man to Little Rock
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Malcolm X
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Riot
• Gwendolyn Brooks / A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
• Gwendolyn Brooks / Maud Martha
• James Baldwin / Everybody's Protest Novel
• James Baldwin / Notes of a Native Son
• James Baldwin / Sonny's Blues
• James Baldwin / Princes and Powers
• James Baldwin / Going to Meet the Man
• Bob Kaufman / Jail Poems
• Lorraine Hansberry / A Raisin in the Sun
The Black Arts Era : 1960-1975
• Introduction [The Black Arts Era 1960-1975]
• Mari Evans / Vive Noir!
• Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) / The Autobiography of Malcolm X: excerpts: from Chapter One. Nightmare; from Chapter Four. Laura; from Chapter Six. Detroit Red; from Chapter 11. Saved; from Chapter Nineteen. 1965
• John Alfred Williams / The Man Who Cried I Am: excerpt: Chapter 3 [Picture of the Writer]
• Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter from Birmingham Jail
• Raymond Patterson / Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman
• Etheridge Knight / The Idea of Ancestry
• Etheridge Knight / Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
• Etheridge Knight / Ilu, the Talking Drum
• Adrienne Kennedy / Funnyhouse of a Negro
• Calvin Hernton / Jitterbugging in the Streets
• Audre Lorde / New York City 1970
• Audre Lorde / Coal
• Audre Lorde / Power
• Audre Lorde / Poetry Is Not a Luxury
• Audre Lorde / 125th and Abomey
• Audre Lorde / Walking Our Boundaries
• Audre Lorde / Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: excerpt: Epilogue
• Audre Lorde / Inheritance--His
• Henry Dumas / Black Star Line
• Henry Dumas / Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
• Henry Dumas / The Zebra Goes Wild Where the Sidewalk Ends
• Amiri Baraka / Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
• Amiri Baraka / Notes for a Speech
• Amiri Baraka / A Poem for Willie Best
• Amiri Baraka / BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS
• Amiri Baraka / Dutchman
• Amiri Baraka / The Revolutionary Theatre
• Amiri Baraka / Prologue to "The Slave"
• Amiri Baraka / A Poem for Black Hearts
• Amiri Baraka / Ka 'Ba'
• Amiri Baraka / Slave Ship
• Amiri Baraka / Black Art
• Amiri Baraka / It's Nation Time
• Amiri Baraka / Wailers
• Sonia Sanchez / homecoming
• Sonia Sanchez / poem at thirty
• Sonia Sanchez / Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict
• Sonia Sanchez / Blk/Rhetoric
• Sonia Sanchez / Sister Son/ji
• Sonia Sanchez / A/Coltrane/Poem
• Sonia Sanchez / TCB
• Sonia Sanchez / A Poem for My Brother
• Ed Bullins / Clara's Ole Man
• Eldridge Cleaver / Soul on Ice: excerpt: Convalescence
• A. B. Spellman / Did John's Music Kill Him?
• June Jordan / In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
• June Jordan / Getting Down to Get Over
• June Jordan / The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem #1
• June Jordan / Poem about Police Violence
• June Jordan / Poem for South African Women
• June Jordan / Poem about My Rights
• Jayne Cortez / How Long Has Trane Been Gone
• Larry Neal / Harlem Gallery: From the Inside
• Larry Neal / The Black Arts Movement
• Ishmael Reed / The Ghost in Birmingham
• Ishmael Reed / I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra
• Ishmael Reed / Neo-HooDoo Manifesto
• Ishmael Reed / Mumbo Jumbo: excerpt: Chapter I; from Chapter II; Epilogue
• Michael S. Harper / Dear John, Dear Coltrane
• Michael S. Harper / Trays: A Portfolio
• Michael S. Harper / History as Apple Tree
• Michael S. Harper / Psychophotos of Hampton
• Toni Cade Bambara / Gorilla, My Love
• Toni Cade Bambara / The Salt Eaters (excerpt)
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Introduction [to "Think Black"]
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Two Poems
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Gwendolyn Brooks
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Don't Cry, Scream
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Move Un-Noticed to Be Noticed: A Nationhood Poem
• Haki R. Madhubuti / Killing Memory
• David Henderson / Keep on Pushing (Harlem Riots/Summer/1964)
• Nikki Giovanni / For Saundra
• Nikki Giovanni / Beautiful Black Men
• Nikki Giovanni / Nikki-Rosa
• Nikki Giovanni / Revolutionary Music
• Nikki Giovanni / All I Gotta Do
• Nikki Giovanni / Ego Tripping
• James Alan McPherson / Problems of Art
• Carolyn Rodgers / For Sistuhs Wearin' Straight Hair
• Carolyn Rodgers / The Last M. F.
• Carolyn Rodgers / Poem for Some Black Women
• Carolyn Rodgers / U Name This One
• Carolyn Rodgers / I Have Been Hungry
• Amos Mor / Poem to the Hip Generation
• James T. Stewart / The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist
The Contemporary Period
• Introduction [The Contemporary Period]
• Albert Murray / Train Whistle Guitar: excerpt: [History Lessons]
• Maya Angelou / Still I Rise
• Maya Angelou / My Arkansas
• Maya Angelou / I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: excerpts: Chapter 15 [Mrs. Flowers]; Chapter 16 ["Mam"]
• Paule Marshall / Reena
• Paule Marshall / To Da-Duh, in Memoriam
• Paule Marshall / The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen
• Toni Morrison / Sula
• Toni Morrison / Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation
• Toni Morrison / The Site of Memory
• Toni Morrison / Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature
• Ernest J. Gaines / The Sky Is Gray
• Lucille Clifton / in the inner city
• Lucille Clifton / good times
• Lucille Clifton / malcolm
• Lucille Clifton / homage to my hips
• Lucille Clifton / what the mirror said
• Lucille Clifton / [the light that came to lucille clifton]
• Lucille Clifton / blessing the boats
• Lucille Clifton / study the masters
• John Edgar Wideman / Brothers and Keepers: excerpt: [Robby's Version]
• John Edgar Wideman / Damballah
• Samuel R. Delany / Atlantis: Model 1924 (excerpt)
• Sherley Anne Williams / The Peacock Poems: 1
• Sherley Anne Williams / I Want Aretha to Set This to Music
• Sherley Anne Williams / Tell Martha Not to Moan
• Alice Walker / Women
• Alice Walker / Outcast
• Alice Walker / "Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning"
• Alice Walker / In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
• Alice Walker / Everyday Use
• Alice Walker / Advancing Luna--and Ida B. Wells
• August Wilson / Joe Turner's Come and Gone
• Octavia Butler / Bloodchild
• Yusef Komunyakaa / February in Sydney
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Facing It
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Sunday Afternoons
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Banking Potatoes
• Yusef Komunyakaa / Birds on a Powerline • Nathaniel Mackey / Falso Brilhante
• Nathaniel Mackey / Song of the Andoumboulou: 8
• Nathaniel Mackey / Djbot Baghostu's Run: excerpt: 26. IX. 81
• Charles Johnson / The Education of Mingo
• Ntozake Shange / for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (excerpt)
• Ntozake Shange / Nappy Edges
• Ntozake Shange / Bocas : A Daughter's Geography
• Gayl Jones / Corregidora (excerpt)
• Jamaica Kincaid / Annie John: excerpt: Chapter Two: The Circling Hand
• Edward P. Jones / The Girl Who Raised Pigeons
• Gloria Naylor / The Women of Brewster Place: excerpt: The Two
• Rita Dove / David Walker (1785-1830)
• Rita Dove / Parsley
• Rita Dove / Receiving the Stigmata
• Rita Dove / The Event (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Motherhood (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Daystar (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / The Oriental Ballerina (from "Thomas and Beulah")
• Rita Dove / Pastoral
• Rita Dove / American Smooth
• Rita Dove / The Return of Lieutenant James Reese Europe
• Rita Dove / Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove
• Walter Mosley / Equal Opportunity
• Harryette Mullen / [Sapphire's lyre styles] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [country clothes hung on her all and sundry] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [odds meeting on a bus] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [why these blues come from us] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [go on sister sing your song] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [tomboy girl with cowboy boots] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [sauce squandering sassy cook] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [marry at a hotel, annul 'em] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [precious cargo up cooked alleys] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [with all that rope they gave us] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [the royal yellow sovereign] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [tom-tom can't catch] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [massa had a yeller] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [cough drops prick thick] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [ain't cut drylongso] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [soulless diavism] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Harryette Mullen / [moon, whoever you knew] (from "Muse & Drudge")
• Essex Hemphill / Conditions: excerpts: XXI; XXII; XXIV
• Caryl Phillips / Crossing the River: excerpt: II. West
• Barack Obama / A More Perfect Union
• Elizabeth Alexander / The Venus Hottentot
• Elizabeth Alexander / When
• Elizabeth Alexander / Ars Poetic 100: I Believe
• Suzan-Lori Parks / Topdog/Underdog
• Natasha Trethewey / Liturgy
• Natasha Trethewey / Witness
• Natasha Trethewey / Tower
• Natasha Trethewey / Watcher
• Natasha Trethewey / Believer
• Natasha Trethewey / Prodigal
• Edwidge Danticat / Breath, Eyes, Memory: excerpt: Chapter 1, Chapter 35
• Colson Whitehead / John Henry Days: excerpts: [1], [2], [3]
• Kevin Young / Langston Hughes
• Kevin Young / Jook
• Kevin Young / Anthem
• Kevin Young / Exodus
• Tracy K. Smith / Sci-Fi
• Tracy K. Smith / My God, It's Full of
Timeline
Selected Bibliographies
Index
About the anthology
In Volume One:
• In "The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1," the sub-section on Spirituals drops "Walk Together Children"; the sub-section on The Blues retitles "Rock Me Baby" to "Rock Me Mama."
• In the section on "The Literature of Slavery and Freedom, 1746-1865," the selection from Olaudah Equiano's "Narrative of the Life" is expanded and an additional chapter ("XII. Fear of Insurrection") is included from Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Drops George Moses Horton's "The Creditor to His Proud Debtor," James M. Whitfield's "Yes! Strike Again That Sounding String," and Frances E. W. Harper's "Fancy Etchings: [Dangerous Economies ]."
Adds William Craft's "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom," the anonymous "Theresa: A Haytien Tale," and excerpts from "The Bondwoman's Narrative" by Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) (from Chapter 1 [Learning to Read]; from Chapter 12 [A New Mistress]; from Chapter 13 [The 'Beautifying Powder']; from Chapter 21 [Freedom]).
• The section on "Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance 1865-1919" adds Nicholas Said's "A Native of Bornoo" and Pauline E. Hopkins's "Bro'r Abr'm Jimson's Wedding." The section drops the excerpts from "The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt" but adds Chesnutt's "Dave's Neckliss." It also drops W. E. B. Du Bois's "Two Novels"; James D. Corrothers's "At the Closed Gate of Justice" and "An Indignation Dinner"; the excerpts from Sutton E. Griggs's "The Hindered Hand, or, The Reign of the Repressionist" (Chapter XIX. The Fugitives Flee Again; Chapter XX. The Blaze); William Stanley Braithwaite's "Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves" and "Quiet Has a Hidden Sound"; Fenton Johnson's "Singing Hallelujia," "Song of the Whirlwind," "My God in Heaven Said to Me," and "The Lonely Mother."
• The section on the "Harlem Renaissance 1919-1940," drops Anne Spencer's "Dunbar" and "At the Carnival"; one of the excerpts from Jessie Redmon Fauset's "Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral" (Chapter II [Sundays]); two items by Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Youth" and "Lost Illusions"; the excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston's "Dust Tracks on a Road" (Chapter X. Research); Rudolph Fisher's "The Caucasian Storms Harlem"; two items by Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Sonnet, 2" and "Hatred"; all five items by Arna Bontemps ("A Black Man Talks of Reaping," "Nocturne at Bethesda," "Southern Mansion," "Miracles," and "A Summer Tragedy"); and Helene Johnson's "Remember Not." It adds two items by Hubert Harrison, "The East Louisville Horror" and "Two Negro Radicalisms"; an excerpt from Alain Locke's "Apropos of Africa"; excerpts from René Maran's "Batouala" (Preface; from Chapter 1); excerpts from George Samuel Schuyler's "Black No More" (Chapter 1, Chapter 2); Eric Wolrond's "The Wharf Rats"; Paul Robeson's "I Want to Be African"; two items by Nicolás Guillén, "Little Ode" and "My Last Name"; Richard Bruce Nugent's "Smoke, Lillies, and Jade." It also adds Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer" and excerpts from "Banjo" (Chapter VI. Meeting Up; from Chapter XVI. The "Blue Cinema"), but drops four items by him: "My Mother," "Enslaved," "St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd," and "Harlem Runs Wild." Nella Larsen's "Passing" replaces her "Quicksand." Also new are three items by Sterling A. Brown ("When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home," "Slim in Atlanta," and "Break of Day"), but it also drops three items by him: "Tin Roof Blues," "Sporting Beasley," and "Old Lem." It adds three items by Langston Hughes ("Johannesburg Mines," "Cubes," and "Bop"), but drops eight items ("When Sue Wears Red," "Po' Boy Blues," "Letter to the Academy," "Merry-Go-Round," "Madam and the Phone Bill," "Juke Box Love Song," "Not What Was," "The Blues I'm Playing").
In Volume Two
• In The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2, the sub-section on Hip Hop adds Jay-Z's "Song Cry" and Jean Grae's "Don't Rush Me." The sub-section on Sermons and Prayers drops James Alexander Forbes Jr. "O God of Love, Power and Justice."
• In the section on Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, 1940-1960, three items by Melvin B. Tolson are dropped: "An Ex-Judge at the Bar," "A Legend of Versailles," and "Libretto for the Republic of Liberia" (excerpt); some excerpts from Dorothy West's "The Living Is Easy" are also dropped (Chapter 2 [Cleo's High Jinks]; Chapter 3 [Cleo Goes North]); likewise, Ann Petry's "Like a Winding Sheet" is dropped; Ralph Ellison's "Letter to Stanley Edgar Hyman"; and two items by Bob Kaufman, "Walking Parker Home" and "Grandfather Was Queer, Too." Also dropped are two items by Richard Wright, "Long Black Song" and "The Man Who Lived Underground," while one new item is added ("Tradition and Industrialization: The Plight of the Tragic Elite in Africa"). Several items by Gwendolyn Brooks are dropped--"Maxie Allen," "A Lovely Love," "Two Dedications," "The Third Sermon on the Warpland," "Young Heroes," "when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story"--while one new item by her is added ("A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon"). Two items by James Baldwin are dropped, "Many Thousands Gone" and "Stranger in the Village," while his "Princes and Powers" is added. Chester B. Himes's "Cotton Gonna Kill Me Yet" replaces his "To What Red Hell." Newly added is Alice Childress with "Trouble in Mind."
• The section on The Black Arts Era, 1960-1975, drops two items by Mari Evans, "Status Symbol" and "I Am a Black Woman" and adds her "Vive Noir!" Also dropped are Hoyt Fuller's "Towards a Black Aesthetic"; two of the excerpts from John Alfred Williams's "The Man Who Cried I Am" (Chapter 1 [In an Outdoor Cafe]; Chapter 2 [Memories, Margrit, and Morphine]); the excerpt from Addison Gayle Jr.'s "The Black Aesthetic" (Introduction); Maulana Karenga's "Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function"; the three items by Quincy Troupe ("In Texas Grass," "Conversation Overheard," and "Impressions / of Chicago, For Howlin' Wolf"). Newly added are additional excerpts from "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (from Chapter One. Nightmare; from Chapter Four. Laura; from Chapter Six. Detroit Red; from Chapter Nineteen. 1965); Raymond Patterson's "Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman"; Adrienne Kennedy's "Funnyhouse of a Negro" (replacing her "A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White," formerly in the next section); Calvin Hernton's "Jitterbugging in the Streets"; Henry Dumas's three items ("Black Star Line," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" and "The Zebra Goes Wild Where the Sidewalk Ends"); David Henderson's "Keep on Pushing (Harlem Riots/Summer/1964)"; Amos Mor's "Poem to the Hip Generation"; and James T. Stewart's "The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist." Etheridge Knight's "Ilu, the Talking Drum" replaces his "For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide." Three items from Audre Lorde are dropped ("Equinox," "Now That I Am Forever with Child," and "A Litany for Survival"), while five new items are added ("New York City 1970," "Power," "125th and Abomey," "Walking Our Boundaries," and "Inheritance--His"). Five items by Amiri Baraka are dropped ("In Memory of Radio," "I don't love you," "Three Movements and a Coda," "SOS," and "The Invention of Comics"), while seven new items by him are added ("Notes for a Speech," "A Poem for Willie Best," "BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS," "Prologue to 'The Slave,'" "Ka 'Ba'," "Slave Ship," "It's Nation Time"). Two items by Sonia Sanchez are dropped ("for our lady" and an excerpt from "A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women" [Part Three: Present]), while five new items by her are included ("Blk/Rhetoric," "Sister Son/ji," "A/Coltrane/Poem." "TCB," and "A Poem for My Brother"). Ed Bullins's "Clara's Ole Man" replaces his "Goin' a Buffalo: A Tragifantasy." A new extract from Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" ("Convalescence") replaces an earlier extract ("The Primeval Mitosis"). Four items by June Jordan are omitted ("Poem for Guatemala," "Intifada," and excerpts from "Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America" and from "Soldier: A Poet's Childhood") and four new items are added ("Getting Down to Get Over," "The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem #1," "Poem about Police Violence," and "Poem for South African Women"). Four items by Ishmael Reed are dropped ("Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," "Railroad Bill, a Conjure Man," "Dualism," and "Chattanooga") and three new items are added ("The Ghost in Birmingham," and "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," and a new excerpt [Epilogue] from "Mumbo Jumbo"). Three items by Michael S. Harper are dropped ("Deathwatch," "Br'er Sterling and the Rocker," and "Grandfather") and three new ones added ("Trays: A Portfolio," "History as Apple Tree," and "Psychophotos of Hampton"). Toni Cade Bambara's "Gorilla, My Love" replaces "Raymond's Run." Four items by Haki R. Madhubuti are dropped ("Back Again, Home," "The Long Reality," "Malcolm Spoke/who listened?," and "a poem to complement other poems") and five new items are added ("Two Poems," "Gwendolyn Brooks," "Don't Cry, Scream," "Move Un-Noticed to Be Noticed: A Nationhood Poem," and "Killing Memory"). Two items by Nikki Giovanni are dropped ("Knoxville, Tennessee" and "From a Logical Point of View") and three new items are added ("Revolutionary Music," "All I Gotta Do," and "Ego Tripping"). James Alan McPherson's "Problems of Art" replaces "A Solo Song: For Doc." Two items by Carolyn M. Rodgers are dropped ("Jesus Was Crucified" and "It Is Deep") and four new items are included ("The Last M. F.," "Poem for Some Black Women," "U Name This One," and "I Have Been Hungry").
• In the section on the Contemporary Period, Adrienne Kennedy's "A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White" is dropped (replaced by her "Funnyhouse of a Negro" in the section on The Black Arts Era, 1940-1960). Also dropped are the four items by Clarence Major ("Swallow the Lake," "Round Midnight," "On Watching a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly," and "Chicago Heat"); the one item by Leon Forrest ("The Epistle of Sweetie Reed" excerpted from "There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden"); the two items by Michelle Cliff ("Within the Veil" and "Columba"); the one extract ("[Old Jack]") from David Bradley's "The Chaneysville Incident." Also dropped are two items by Alice Walker ("On Stripping Bark from Myself" and the excerpt "[God Love All Them Feelings]" from "The Color Purple"). The extracts from Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" (Part II: Chapters 10-15) are replaced by her "Sula" (complete) (returning to what was included in the 1st edition of this Norton Anthology). Lucille Clifton is moved to this section (from the one on The Black Arts Era, 1960-1975) and four items by her are dropped ("the lost baby poem," "(later i'll say)," "wishes for sons," and "move") while six new items by her are added ("in the inner city," "good times," "what the mirror said," "[the light that came to lucille clifton]," "blessing the boats," and "study the masters"). Six items by Rita Dove are dropped ("Persephone Abducted," "Statistic: The Witness," "Mother Love," "Demeter Mourning," "History," "Demeter's Prayer to Hades"), while three new items by her are added ("American Smooth," "The Return of Lieutenant James Reese Europe," and "Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove").
Newly added is an item by Edward P. Jones ("The Girl Who Raised Pigeons"); an item by Barack Obama ("A More Perfect Union"); three items by Elizabeth Alexander ("The Venus Hottentot," "When," and "Ars Poetic 100: I Believe"); one item by Suzan-Lori Parks ("Topdog/Underdog"); six items by Natasha Trethewey ("Liturgy," "Witness," "Tower," "Watcher," "Believer," "Prodigal"); three excerpts from Colson Whitehead's "John Henry Days"; four items by Kevin Young ("Langston Hughes," "Jook," "Anthem," "Exodus"); two items by Tracy K. Smith ("Sci-Fi" and "My God, It's Full of Stars").
• In "The Vernacular Tradition, Part 1," the sub-section on Spirituals drops "Walk Together Children"; the sub-section on The Blues retitles "Rock Me Baby" to "Rock Me Mama."
• In the section on "The Literature of Slavery and Freedom, 1746-1865," the selection from Olaudah Equiano's "Narrative of the Life" is expanded and an additional chapter ("XII. Fear of Insurrection") is included from Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Drops George Moses Horton's "The Creditor to His Proud Debtor," James M. Whitfield's "Yes! Strike Again That Sounding String," and Frances E. W. Harper's "Fancy Etchings: [Dangerous Economies ]."
Adds William Craft's "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom," the anonymous "Theresa: A Haytien Tale," and excerpts from "The Bondwoman's Narrative" by Hannah Crafts (Hannah Bond) (from Chapter 1 [Learning to Read]; from Chapter 12 [A New Mistress]; from Chapter 13 [The 'Beautifying Powder']; from Chapter 21 [Freedom]).
• The section on "Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance 1865-1919" adds Nicholas Said's "A Native of Bornoo" and Pauline E. Hopkins's "Bro'r Abr'm Jimson's Wedding." The section drops the excerpts from "The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt" but adds Chesnutt's "Dave's Neckliss." It also drops W. E. B. Du Bois's "Two Novels"; James D. Corrothers's "At the Closed Gate of Justice" and "An Indignation Dinner"; the excerpts from Sutton E. Griggs's "The Hindered Hand, or, The Reign of the Repressionist" (Chapter XIX. The Fugitives Flee Again; Chapter XX. The Blaze); William Stanley Braithwaite's "Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves" and "Quiet Has a Hidden Sound"; Fenton Johnson's "Singing Hallelujia," "Song of the Whirlwind," "My God in Heaven Said to Me," and "The Lonely Mother."
• The section on the "Harlem Renaissance 1919-1940," drops Anne Spencer's "Dunbar" and "At the Carnival"; one of the excerpts from Jessie Redmon Fauset's "Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral" (Chapter II [Sundays]); two items by Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Youth" and "Lost Illusions"; the excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston's "Dust Tracks on a Road" (Chapter X. Research); Rudolph Fisher's "The Caucasian Storms Harlem"; two items by Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "Sonnet, 2" and "Hatred"; all five items by Arna Bontemps ("A Black Man Talks of Reaping," "Nocturne at Bethesda," "Southern Mansion," "Miracles," and "A Summer Tragedy"); and Helene Johnson's "Remember Not." It adds two items by Hubert Harrison, "The East Louisville Horror" and "Two Negro Radicalisms"; an excerpt from Alain Locke's "Apropos of Africa"; excerpts from René Maran's "Batouala" (Preface; from Chapter 1); excerpts from George Samuel Schuyler's "Black No More" (Chapter 1, Chapter 2); Eric Wolrond's "The Wharf Rats"; Paul Robeson's "I Want to Be African"; two items by Nicolás Guillén, "Little Ode" and "My Last Name"; Richard Bruce Nugent's "Smoke, Lillies, and Jade." It also adds Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer" and excerpts from "Banjo" (Chapter VI. Meeting Up; from Chapter XVI. The "Blue Cinema"), but drops four items by him: "My Mother," "Enslaved," "St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd," and "Harlem Runs Wild." Nella Larsen's "Passing" replaces her "Quicksand." Also new are three items by Sterling A. Brown ("When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home," "Slim in Atlanta," and "Break of Day"), but it also drops three items by him: "Tin Roof Blues," "Sporting Beasley," and "Old Lem." It adds three items by Langston Hughes ("Johannesburg Mines," "Cubes," and "Bop"), but drops eight items ("When Sue Wears Red," "Po' Boy Blues," "Letter to the Academy," "Merry-Go-Round," "Madam and the Phone Bill," "Juke Box Love Song," "Not What Was," "The Blues I'm Playing").
In Volume Two
• In The Vernacular Tradition, Part 2, the sub-section on Hip Hop adds Jay-Z's "Song Cry" and Jean Grae's "Don't Rush Me." The sub-section on Sermons and Prayers drops James Alexander Forbes Jr. "O God of Love, Power and Justice."
• In the section on Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, 1940-1960, three items by Melvin B. Tolson are dropped: "An Ex-Judge at the Bar," "A Legend of Versailles," and "Libretto for the Republic of Liberia" (excerpt); some excerpts from Dorothy West's "The Living Is Easy" are also dropped (Chapter 2 [Cleo's High Jinks]; Chapter 3 [Cleo Goes North]); likewise, Ann Petry's "Like a Winding Sheet" is dropped; Ralph Ellison's "Letter to Stanley Edgar Hyman"; and two items by Bob Kaufman, "Walking Parker Home" and "Grandfather Was Queer, Too." Also dropped are two items by Richard Wright, "Long Black Song" and "The Man Who Lived Underground," while one new item is added ("Tradition and Industrialization: The Plight of the Tragic Elite in Africa"). Several items by Gwendolyn Brooks are dropped--"Maxie Allen," "A Lovely Love," "Two Dedications," "The Third Sermon on the Warpland," "Young Heroes," "when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story"--while one new item by her is added ("A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon"). Two items by James Baldwin are dropped, "Many Thousands Gone" and "Stranger in the Village," while his "Princes and Powers" is added. Chester B. Himes's "Cotton Gonna Kill Me Yet" replaces his "To What Red Hell." Newly added is Alice Childress with "Trouble in Mind."
• The section on The Black Arts Era, 1960-1975, drops two items by Mari Evans, "Status Symbol" and "I Am a Black Woman" and adds her "Vive Noir!" Also dropped are Hoyt Fuller's "Towards a Black Aesthetic"; two of the excerpts from John Alfred Williams's "The Man Who Cried I Am" (Chapter 1 [In an Outdoor Cafe]; Chapter 2 [Memories, Margrit, and Morphine]); the excerpt from Addison Gayle Jr.'s "The Black Aesthetic" (Introduction); Maulana Karenga's "Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function"; the three items by Quincy Troupe ("In Texas Grass," "Conversation Overheard," and "Impressions / of Chicago, For Howlin' Wolf"). Newly added are additional excerpts from "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (from Chapter One. Nightmare; from Chapter Four. Laura; from Chapter Six. Detroit Red; from Chapter Nineteen. 1965); Raymond Patterson's "Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman"; Adrienne Kennedy's "Funnyhouse of a Negro" (replacing her "A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White," formerly in the next section); Calvin Hernton's "Jitterbugging in the Streets"; Henry Dumas's three items ("Black Star Line," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" and "The Zebra Goes Wild Where the Sidewalk Ends"); David Henderson's "Keep on Pushing (Harlem Riots/Summer/1964)"; Amos Mor's "Poem to the Hip Generation"; and James T. Stewart's "The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist." Etheridge Knight's "Ilu, the Talking Drum" replaces his "For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide." Three items from Audre Lorde are dropped ("Equinox," "Now That I Am Forever with Child," and "A Litany for Survival"), while five new items are added ("New York City 1970," "Power," "125th and Abomey," "Walking Our Boundaries," and "Inheritance--His"). Five items by Amiri Baraka are dropped ("In Memory of Radio," "I don't love you," "Three Movements and a Coda," "SOS," and "The Invention of Comics"), while seven new items by him are added ("Notes for a Speech," "A Poem for Willie Best," "BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS," "Prologue to 'The Slave,'" "Ka 'Ba'," "Slave Ship," "It's Nation Time"). Two items by Sonia Sanchez are dropped ("for our lady" and an excerpt from "A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women" [Part Three: Present]), while five new items by her are included ("Blk/Rhetoric," "Sister Son/ji," "A/Coltrane/Poem." "TCB," and "A Poem for My Brother"). Ed Bullins's "Clara's Ole Man" replaces his "Goin' a Buffalo: A Tragifantasy." A new extract from Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" ("Convalescence") replaces an earlier extract ("The Primeval Mitosis"). Four items by June Jordan are omitted ("Poem for Guatemala," "Intifada," and excerpts from "Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America" and from "Soldier: A Poet's Childhood") and four new items are added ("Getting Down to Get Over," "The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem #1," "Poem about Police Violence," and "Poem for South African Women"). Four items by Ishmael Reed are dropped ("Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," "Railroad Bill, a Conjure Man," "Dualism," and "Chattanooga") and three new items are added ("The Ghost in Birmingham," and "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem," and a new excerpt [Epilogue] from "Mumbo Jumbo"). Three items by Michael S. Harper are dropped ("Deathwatch," "Br'er Sterling and the Rocker," and "Grandfather") and three new ones added ("Trays: A Portfolio," "History as Apple Tree," and "Psychophotos of Hampton"). Toni Cade Bambara's "Gorilla, My Love" replaces "Raymond's Run." Four items by Haki R. Madhubuti are dropped ("Back Again, Home," "The Long Reality," "Malcolm Spoke/who listened?," and "a poem to complement other poems") and five new items are added ("Two Poems," "Gwendolyn Brooks," "Don't Cry, Scream," "Move Un-Noticed to Be Noticed: A Nationhood Poem," and "Killing Memory"). Two items by Nikki Giovanni are dropped ("Knoxville, Tennessee" and "From a Logical Point of View") and three new items are added ("Revolutionary Music," "All I Gotta Do," and "Ego Tripping"). James Alan McPherson's "Problems of Art" replaces "A Solo Song: For Doc." Two items by Carolyn M. Rodgers are dropped ("Jesus Was Crucified" and "It Is Deep") and four new items are included ("The Last M. F.," "Poem for Some Black Women," "U Name This One," and "I Have Been Hungry").
• In the section on the Contemporary Period, Adrienne Kennedy's "A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White" is dropped (replaced by her "Funnyhouse of a Negro" in the section on The Black Arts Era, 1940-1960). Also dropped are the four items by Clarence Major ("Swallow the Lake," "Round Midnight," "On Watching a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly," and "Chicago Heat"); the one item by Leon Forrest ("The Epistle of Sweetie Reed" excerpted from "There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden"); the two items by Michelle Cliff ("Within the Veil" and "Columba"); the one extract ("[Old Jack]") from David Bradley's "The Chaneysville Incident." Also dropped are two items by Alice Walker ("On Stripping Bark from Myself" and the excerpt "[God Love All Them Feelings]" from "The Color Purple"). The extracts from Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" (Part II: Chapters 10-15) are replaced by her "Sula" (complete) (returning to what was included in the 1st edition of this Norton Anthology). Lucille Clifton is moved to this section (from the one on The Black Arts Era, 1960-1975) and four items by her are dropped ("the lost baby poem," "(later i'll say)," "wishes for sons," and "move") while six new items by her are added ("in the inner city," "good times," "what the mirror said," "[the light that came to lucille clifton]," "blessing the boats," and "study the masters"). Six items by Rita Dove are dropped ("Persephone Abducted," "Statistic: The Witness," "Mother Love," "Demeter Mourning," "History," "Demeter's Prayer to Hades"), while three new items by her are added ("American Smooth," "The Return of Lieutenant James Reese Europe," and "Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove").
Newly added is an item by Edward P. Jones ("The Girl Who Raised Pigeons"); an item by Barack Obama ("A More Perfect Union"); three items by Elizabeth Alexander ("The Venus Hottentot," "When," and "Ars Poetic 100: I Believe"); one item by Suzan-Lori Parks ("Topdog/Underdog"); six items by Natasha Trethewey ("Liturgy," "Witness," "Tower," "Watcher," "Believer," "Prodigal"); three excerpts from Colson Whitehead's "John Henry Days"; four items by Kevin Young ("Langston Hughes," "Jook," "Anthem," "Exodus"); two items by Tracy K. Smith ("Sci-Fi" and "My God, It's Full of Stars").
Item Number
A0305c
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| Title | Alternate label | Class |
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 Norton Anthology of African American Literature |
Other editions, reprints, and translations | Bibliographic Resource |
 Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2nd ed. |
Other editions, reprints, and translations | Bibliographic Resource |