According to Examiner.com

According to Examiner.com
According to the Examiner.com---since 01/09/11

Friday, August 9, 2013

Oh Daddy!

The dictionary defines daddy as the following:

daddy- noun, plural daddies, verb- daddied, daddying

1. A diminutive of dad
2. Slang- sugar daddy
Origin 1490-1500
3. An informal word for father.
4.Slang chiefly-- the daddy the supreme or finest example: the daddy of them all.
5. The dominant male in a group; boss, top man.
6. In gay terminology- an older gay man who often seeks younger boys.
     A. Dominating or aggressive gay men with experience.

What brought this post about, well its a few things.  I realized recently that if I had fathered a child when I was eighteen, my child would be approaching thirty and in all reality if that child produced an heir at eighteen, I would be the grandfather of a twelve year old.  Granted scenarios like this only play out in stereotypes of the deep South, but it is partly what got me thinking.

The other thing, and the year element is Gay Pride, Cleveland, Ohio this year. I was walking beside a friend who was in drag, in a convertible and I have known for nearly twenty-five years (see picture to the side) and working that flag to a frenzy waving it all around my body.  Girl, I was spinning around in circles dancing to the music and, well, just having a big gay ole time.

Anyhow, when the parade turned unto West Ninth Street, this hot young man comes running off the sidewalk right to me and into my arms.  He gives me this huge hug, a kiss on the side of my check and says "I just love a daddy full of pride and daddy your working it-Woof".  Honest to good, I 'm not making this up.

Well, first of all I was flattered that this boy who I was old enough to be his father--he was mid-to-late-twenties found me hot!  Granted I have lost 50 pounds since last year, and granted I have new, and incredible teeth--thank you dentures but me a HOT Daddy?!

As you may imagine, this is the first time I have ever been called a daddy, and granted I have my share of hot guys-- hello'er how else did I end up in the situation that is my life that is HIV-- and honey the list is rather long--anywhore-- opps, anyhow where was I.  Oh yeah <lol> being called a daddy.  I had my looks in my twenties, maybe early thirties but I was never a Abercrombie & Fitch model, but I thought considering all of the facts:

1. I am 47years old.
2. I have had AIDS twenty-three years
3. I'm bald
4. Still slight chubby, by gay standards of true beauty
5. I have false teeth and bifocals

I have days where I do feel at the least cute, in a passable way, and I do dress a good portion of the time to kill. But, kittens, I can't tell you the last time anyone made a pass at me.  Sad but true.  Frankly I was flattered as hell, and well the "boy" went back to the sidewalk, the parade and I --- well  kept moving.  I know stupid me.

Anyhow, it wasn't until recently that I got to thinking; OK, Charlie when did you go from being a boy yourself to being a "Daddy"?  Have I now become old enough to have the younger lover, and not the older one anymore?  Is it considered passe to still have the older lover at this stage of my life or is being a daddy expected?

Then I got to thinking, OK, my partner, of 10 wonderful years, who died in 2002 would now be 65.  So he was 55 when he died and I was 36.  Means he was 45 when he met me and I was 26.  WOW! two years younger than what I am right now!  Talk about the wheels beginning to spin.

I never called him Daddy, never treated him like a daddy; but in many ways  he could have passed for my Dad, who is 72 and my mother who is 66.  He was my best friend, besides my lover--someone who knew everything about me and still loved me no matter what.  Trusted him completely, could complete his sentences---but, now I wonder did the gay community see him as my daddy?  Not that I really care, but I do wonder about it.

I've always dated or been in relationships with older men.  Sure I've slept with my share of younger ones (always legal of course,so don't get any stereotypical ideas there), and guys my same age but anything worth while has been an age span of at least 16 years or more.

What if that rule was flipped and I dated 31 year-old guys?  Would gay society then view me as the daddy?  Would I care? Does it even matter?


What qualifies as a change from "boyhood", if you will, to daddyhood?  Is it merely age, is it merely appearance or is it something more?  Maybe character, experience, the you carry yourself, they way you're perceived, they way you dress?  Exactly what is it and who defines it?  Is it we ourselves who make the transition and call ourselves daddy or is it some hot "boy"?  Can "boyhood" still be embraced as you approach  50, 60?  Is it even possible? Or is boyhood something you discard like your childhood toys; or can it be determined just like being a daddy?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and in the mean time I think I  am going to try and figure out if I am truly a Daddy after all?

Good bye, BOYS! <smirk>

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Survival

     I know it's been a while since my last post.  College life as a senior has taken up so much time, energy and effort that this blog has really suffered and for that I am deeply sorry.  It is after all my outlet to openly speak, and bring awareness to topics I think we should know about.

     I sit here today, realizing that somehow, someway I have been deeply blessed to say that as of today I have survived AIDS for 23 years.  Now, I know what you maybe thinking, especially those who were reading regularly, "Charlie you have only 22 years".  Well, I met a friend recently with photographs, that I also happen to have, and we got to digging about information for the Cleveland Gay Pride event, which is where the photographs were taken and its 23 years ago not 22.  It is those photographs in June that for me mark the year as it was in July I got my diagnosis.

     You can imagine my surprise that I had made that simple mistake.  Maybe some of you think "Well  it's only one year what's the big deal?"  The big deal is it finally sunk in that my being diagnosed with AIDS has been half my life and beginning next year it will be over half of my lifetime.

     I know, a miracle into itself that somehow, someway I was able to pull through the early days of the gay holocaust, when nothing but death was around us.  Somehow, I managed to survive through only having one medication that was available to treat us.  Somehow, I survived losing over 600 friends, acquaintances, fellow gay men who in many cases I saw die before my very eyes; while some of those deaths were filled with medical violence--side effects, over use of drug induced comfort and families who in some cases were down right horrible.

     That I was a witness to a "funeral" in front of the White House, with the deceased in a wooden coffin, with the lid off and the young man in that coffin that day was just a few years older than I was.

     Somehow, I have survived where everyone, at every moment was talking simply safe sex.   Now, we as gay men live in an environment were there is the discussion about "safe" barebacking.  We live in an environment now, thankfully where we are living longer, but for those of us who have lived as long or longer than I have how do create a full, enriching and satisfying life when we have literally seen the monstrous eyes of the plague itself?

     This is something I struggle with a fair amount of the time.  It is why I am in college in the first place.  To try to create a life off Medicaid, Medicare, and Food Stamps.  To finally have a career, a life where I can possibly own something, buy something without worrying about how am I going to buy food. To be a contributing member to society.  To be able to work to build an IRA and retirement.  To give voice to the stories I want to tell, to give focus to the research I want to do and finally and most importantly, in my opinion, give at least one voice to those of us who have survived the earliest years.

     My awareness to AIDS came as early as 1986, when I was a mere 19 year boy.  I lost a very good friend to what was then called GRID.   Actually to be honest with you he was a boyfriend.  As a 19 yer old boy, I loved him deeply and when he died I stumbled head first into a world of pills and booze.  Pills and booze, it was a battle for years with two trips into rehab.  But as in all cases time marches on and I fell in love again and by October 1988  I was burying a second lover to AIDS.

     That event lead to my first suicide attempt and my falling "off the wagon" and falling even further into the abyss by frequenting gay bath houses.  It is something I am not proud of, I rarely admit it, but I think for many gay men--- my self included-- it was a part of our lives and our darkest days.

     I was then in an 11 month relationship, that ended with my being thrown down an entire flight of stairs.  It had been violent all along and it took cement stairs to bring me to finally leaving that relationship.  Once again "off the wagon" and back to the baths.

     By 1992 I met an incredible man named Ron Rooy Sr.  who simply turned my world upside down.  I dried out completely.  I stop the cycle of the baths.  I was madly in love with a phenomenal man.  We were together four short months of 10 years when he died in our home in 2002.  I have loved him like no other.

     I think about him a lot these days.  Would he be proud of what I 'm trying to do today?   Would he approve of the man I have become?  What would he say about my Honors Thesis work, a Creative Nonfiction piece on gays in the Holocaust?  Would we really enjoy my trying to become a teacher and author?

     I know at my core, if given the chance I would still be with him. today  In many ways I still am.  He was able to finish my sentences, he knew me inside and out.  He was not only my lover, my husband---he was my best friend.  I lost so much when he died, and honestly at times I wonder if I have ever recovered.

   I sit here today knowing how blessed I have been.  Sometimes I wonder why.  Why me?  Why did I survive the horrors of the gay holocaust? Why am I now thinking about my "old age" when 23 years ago that wasn't even an option.  A career with Full Blown AIDS, 23 years ago was damn near impossible and now it is a reality.  So much has changed; and I wonder have I changed enough with the times?

     Am I still living in the past?  Has the past overshadowed everything else?  What will the next 25 years of living with AIDS be like?  By that time I will be 72 years old, and living with AIDS for 50 of them.  Is that even a possibility?  Will our pharmaceuticals make that a reality?  Will our society as a whole change even more dramatically in acceptance or will we still be bogged in ignorance and bigotry?

     For now I am thankful for what I do have.  I am, if I have to be honest, thankful for even the struggles because without them I wouldn't be the man I am today.  I met a Hindu swami recently and asked his advice for someone living this long with AIDS.  He first said in his country my story would more than likely never happen.  He felt I was looking at my diagnosis with AIDS all wrong.  Maybe G-d chose to come and manifest him/herself as AIDS so I could literally see the face of G-d.  That through this "disease" not only see G-d but feel his/her presence all around me; that I may have missed the appearance of G-d in my life because I chose to see it the way I did.

     I know he didn't mean it as G-d's curse on me, as Hindus do not believe that is even possible.  He saw G-d in the disease.  That G-d is in everything, everyone, and everywhere; we however simply have to see it.  That simple thought has changed my life.

     I want to leave you on that thought---can we see G-d in everything, everyone and everywhere or do we chose not see it that way?

Namaste

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Themes of African American Literature



            

The following is for a Modern African American Literature class I am in.  There was a lot of work and research into this so I hope all of you enjoy reading this and it is my hope that now i have inspired you to go boy a book or two or more by African American Authors!

 
        African American literature locates its beginnings to the latter half of the 18th century when the African American population was sadly still an enslaved one. Slaves were viewed, by the vast majority of society, as subhuman and incapable of mastering “the arts and sciences.” Their inferiority was even emphasized by prominent white philosophers of the time. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie McKay note in their introduction to The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Hume suspected “‘negroes . . . to be naturally inferior to the whites’” with no “ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences” (Gates). However, as Gates and McKay further note, “African American slaves, remarkably, sought to write themselves out of slavery by mastering the Anglo-American belletristic tradition” (Gates) and it is this thought that permeates early African American Literature. The main intention of early African American writing was to exhibit that they could create literature that matched or surpassed that of the white community, proving African Americans to be “full and equal members” of society (Gates).
            Even after African Americans began creating a body of creative literature, they still faced disparagement from prominent members of white society. Thomas Jefferson, for example, in his Notes on the State of Virginia made disparaging remarks about the poems of the first published African American female poet, Phillis Wheatley: 

"Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but not poetry. … Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Wheatley; but it could not produce a poet’" (Delpit).

            Moreover, African American writers strived for recognition as authors. Wheatley, for example, had to go to court in Boston in 1761 to prove that she was the author of her poems (Delpit). Unfortunately, having the court verify her authorship did not help because Boston printers continued to be dubious. Therefore, she had to get her work published in London first.
            Since Wheatley’s arrival on the literary scene, African American writers have continuously struggled to define themselves, their craft, and their culture, and to face resistance from a predominantly white reading public. Even as late as 1970, at our own Kent State University, a well-known,  respected scholar and member of a thesis committee resigned when Ralph Ellison became an approved dissertation topic. The nonconformist member stated that Ellison was not a literary heavyweight and that to focus an entire dissertation on him would be like addressing the “‘wings of a gnat’” (Delpit). Only in recent years have we met mainstream acceptance of African American authors, such as poet Maya Angelou, who spoke at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, or Toni Morrison, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 (Delpit).
            Despite the rising significance of African American literature, black authors have shared a common responsibility over time that of representing not only themselves but the African American race as well. Maintaining the position of what it means to be black in America permitted authors to establish an African American identity that transcended the individual. By cultivating what Carter G. Woodson referred to as “‘the public Negro mind’” (Gates), authors were able to prove the intellectual potential of blacks.
            In sum, African American history and literature are fundamentally connected. African American literature, as a genre, “testified against [African slaves’] captors,” “bore witness to the urge to be free and literate, [and] … embraced the European Enlightenment’s dream of reason and the American Enlightenment’s dream of civil liberty” (Smith). This growing body of work meant that the African was indeed human and should not be enslaved. African Americans today continue to write in an effort to honor and acknowledge that legacy. The “black voice” that Wheatley aimed to unearth is the same voice that is present in the works of artists like Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison (Smith). Regardless of changes in American culture and the passage of time, the themes that were present in the 18th century slave writings continue to be explored and discussed in contemporary works.
            Within the he Vernacular Tradition reside oral traditions that exert a strong influence on African American culture and literature in particular. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature defines the vernacular as that which:

“Refers to the church songs, blues, ballads, sermons, stories, and … hip hop songs that are part of the oral, not primarily the literate (or written-down) tradition of black expression” (Gates)
 
            Describing the scope of African American vernacular as well as its detailed aspects has generated much discussion and debate over the years. One main quality of the vernacular is its disregard for the rules of grammar and “high style” that was a key element to the Harlem Renaissance. Authoress Zora Neale Hurston, in her “Characteristics of Negro Expression”, which was written in 1934, describes African American vernacular as “angular” and “asymmetrical” (Delpit). Other traits of vernacular expression include a call-response pattern and meter that sound like a percussive dance-beat. Subject matter often involves facing the troubles and hardships of life and the possibility of overcoming them (Smith). Gates points out the competitive and subversive nature of the vernacular, using the term “signifying.” In his argument, writers like Toni Morrison signify by drawing on past traditions while reinventing them for their own purpose (Gates)itself the art of the vernacular.
            African American vernacular dates back to the oral and musical traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries (Wikipedia). Early anthologies of black literature, such as “The New Negro,” written in 1925, and “The Book of American Negro Poetry”, written in 1931, discuss the significance of black songs and stories to many black authors, especially poets (Gates). In the late 1930s, there was an attempt not only to imitate vernacular, but also to improve upon it. Authors such as Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison invited authors to do for black literature what T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein did for white culture—that is, to portray the essence of vernacular, enhance it, and turn it into something new (Gates). The Black Arts Movement reflected this interest in the vernacular in its re-discovery of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. Previously, the vernacular was viewed as superficially valuable only to the working class, but it now emerged as central to the creation of a self-contained African American nation.
            Keeping this history in mind, several questions remain to be answered. In an increasingly globalized world, is black vernacular any longer authentically, strictly African American? For example, hip-hop, vernacular that is African American in origin, now crosses racial lines easily. Thus, is it still a discourse shared only by African Americans? To what extent can an understanding of the black vernacular occur outside of the African American community? For some, answering these questions in the affirmative risks hampering new understandings of the cultural hybridity of the form.
            The Literature of Slavery and Freedom, written and produced between 1746-1865  in which early African American authors such as Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and James M. Whitfield “challenged the dominant culture’s attempt to segregate the religious from the political, and the spirit from the flesh” (Finn). Their literature was a mechanism used to voice the inequalities they experienced and observed, and written language, especially the slave narratives, was a valuable tool for black authors who struggled to end slavery through the dissemination of antislavery propaganda throughout the North and South. Ideals from the Bible along with America’s most sacred, prized documents and songs, the U.S. Constitution and “America the Beautiful,” to name two—were used by African American writers to prove the duplicitous standards, behaviors, and beliefs white Americans exhibited to African Americans (Finn). With regard to spirituality, writers like Wheatley and Equiano petitioned their readers to heed the Christian message of brotherhood regardless of race or ethnicity (Gates). Authors such as Walker and Whitfield pointed out the irony that white Americans, who fought and struggled against tyranny, subsequently imposed a tyrannical hold on African Americans (Finn). The rationalizations that white Americans used to impose slavery, that blacks were subhuman, unintelligent, pagan, and immoral, were difficulties that early African American writers sought to contradict. The writings of early African American writers proved that blacks were capable of “literary expression” and thus possessed “civilized minds” (Gates).
            Arising out of these conditions, beginning in the 1830s the fugitive slave narrative emerged as a popular literary form even amongst white audiences who were the primary target audience in the first place. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” was published after Nat Turner was hanged for leading a bloody uprising against white slave owners in Southampton, Virginia, in 1831, and was the most widely read African American personal narrative of its day (Gates). Although Turner’s revolt and Confessions led to even more repressive conditions for slaves, slave narratives continued to dominate the black literary landscape and counted among its leading figures Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and William Wells Brown  in the primarily male dominated genre. In 1845, Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, was written by himself and offered a significant break from tradition by not allowing his story to be written, transcribed, or edited by a white supporter as was often the practice during the time (Gates). This marked the beginning of a show of independence and self-reliance that had not been evident in the black literary community before and it would be this writer independence that would be decades away for African American women authors (Gates). The act showed that a black person could produce eloquent prose and could take part in the abolitionist press on his or her own terms. The era also saw the emergence of black women slave narrators such as Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. These authors gave new dimension to African American literature, bringing a black woman’s insight and perspective to the forefront in a way that male authors had previously failed to do as they were not women and unaware of how to capture that experience in a uniquely feminine voice and style (Smith).
            While the slave narrative was by far the most common form of African American literature of its day, fiction was and is also important, with the period between 1850 and 1860 being known as “the first African American literary renaissance” (Gates). Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published in 1852, and William Wells Brown is credited with publishing the first full-length African American novel, “Clotel”; or, “The President’s Daughter” in 1853. What’s more, Samuel Delaney offered readers “the first black nationalist culture hero in African American literature” in his novel “Blake”; or, “The Huts of America” written in 1859. While Frances E.W. Harper gave readers the first short story in African American literature, “The Two Offers” also written in 1859 (Gates). Hannah Crafts’s “The Bondwoman’s Narrative “ written between 1853-1861), Julia C. Collins’s “The Curse of Caste”; or “The Slave Bride  written in 1856, and Harriet E. Wilson’s “Our Nig”; or, “Sketches from the Life of a Free Black” written in 1859 all vied for the honor of being the first novel published by an African American woman.  Literature, whether autobiography, fiction, or journalism, was a key weapon in combating slavery during America’s antebellum era and it was literature that spoke for millions of African Americans who did not have a voice. Without the contributions of black authors such as Douglass, Brown, Jacobs, and others, the unjust realities of slavery might well have been kept in silence.
            Following the Civil War, many Americans grappled to acclimate to the aftermath of slavery and the influx of immigrants to the United States. Americans were trying to decide how best to achieve a greater and better United States of America that included equal rights for freed slaves, women, Native Americans, and recent immigrants (Delpit). Despite the unrelenting demand to make the nation whole, and notwithstanding the passage of important laws to protect African Americans, black people faced new oppressions and discriminations, problems that made the nourishment of an African American literary presence particularly difficult.
            After the abolition of slavery, the Republicans passed the Reconstruction Act in 1867 to protect freed slaves from the white supremacist ideologies and policies being enacted in the former Confederacy (Gates). The act also established the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency that, in addition to other efforts, opened 4,000 schools which include Fisk, Morehouse, Howard, Atlanta, Talladega, and Hampton between 1865 and 1870 to help educate the newly freed slaves (Gates). From 1865 to 1870, the Reconstruction Congress also passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Unfortunately the newly passed legislation making slavery illegal, establishing equal protection under the law for African Americans, and enfranchising black men was not imposed throughout all parts of the states, and the lives of many freed slaves differed little from when they were enslaved.
            In 1877, the Democrats regained power, and they did very little to protect the rights of the freed slaves. African Americans were then assaulted by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (Wikipedia). These violent acts and forms of oppressions were supported by the Jim Crow laws, which legalized segregation and racism. The decrease in rights for African Americans was also impacted by the fact that many abolitionists, though they condemned slavery, did not believe in equal rights for blacks (Finn). Furthermore, the deaths and illnesses of influential African American leaders such as Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Frances E.W. Harper cost blacks important national voices, losses that hampered the fight for equality (Gates).
            Although African Americans maintained to participate in the progress of the United States during this time, it was a time of dissatisfaction, prejudice, and jeopardy. For example, historian John Hope Franklin notes that more than 2,500 lynching’s occurred in the South in the last two decades of the 19th century (Gates). Despite this calamitous period in African American history, many black authors were still able to publish their work in magazines, newspapers, and occasionally through an established press (Gates). African American literature was marked by tales of overcoming trials and hardships while demonstrating the capabilities of African Americans as authors despite difficulties being published. Because African American authors had more difficulty getting their work published, many turned to the African American press, an institution heavily reliant on African American church leaders. Through these presses many writers published songs, poems, fiction, and autobiographies (Delpit).
            In slavery, African Americans overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to survive. During Reconstruction, former slaves drew on their past as motivation to overcome the current injustices which they suffered as free men and women and to inspire others to do the same. Whites could put up a wall, but blacks would climb over it again and again. They demonstrated perseverance in their lives and in their writing.
            By the 1920s in Harlem, New York, as well as in other northern metropolises, was blooming with African American creativeness. This era contrasted the poverty and racism African Americans faced with avant-garde advances in music, dance, art, and literature (Smith). Although the precise beginning of this artistic renaissance is unknown, many believe that New York City seduced frustrated African Americans who were fleeing from the segregation and violence of the South. In search of a better life that included superior housing and honest wages in the industrial factories, African Americans migrated in droves. The “Great Migration” exponentially enlarged black communities across the North, creating a bigger market for black culture. Jazz and blues, the black music of the South, came to the North with the migrants and were played in Harlem’s nightclubs and hotspots. At the same time, whites were becoming increasingly spellbound by black culture. As all Americans grew more interested in African American culture, Harlem was dubbed “the Negro capital of the world” (Smith).
            Alongside newly established cultural and political organizations African Americans worked hard for cultural awakening. Writers did their part to uplift black Americans and develop literary and artistic traditions in which African Americans could take pride. The author of the avant-garde “Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man “ written in 1912 encouraged black writers to extricate themselves from the stereotypes that had imprisoned African American literature (Gates). In Johnson’s anthology, “Book of American Negro Poetry” written in 1922, writers like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, who later would lead the movement that became the Harlem Renaissance, were showcased (Gates).
            In their work, African American writers challenged problematic struggles regarding black identity, black art, and the political role of culture. For example, writers taking part in the renaissance held conflicting views as to how important African heritage should be to African American writers. Langston Hughes, for example, suggested that “racial commitment on the part of the black artist” was an idea that black artists should not soon forget, whereas Cullen suggested “that Africa was a source of confusion and ambivalence” for black artists (Gates). Regardless of their opinions on the matter, both Hughes and Cullen believed that black writers should stay away from too much focus on “the political constraints that an older generation” (Smith) had emphasized.
            Although the Harlem Renaissance ended with the advent of the Great Depression, the Harlem Renaissance was a remarkable time when African American artists created positive and memorable standards in all the arts (Smith). Challenging white paternalism and racism, African-American artists and intellectuals disregarded mere replication of the styles of Europeans and white Americans and instead celebrated black pride and creativity. Declaring their freedom to express themselves as artists and intellectuals, they explored their identities as black Americans, celebrating the black culture that had emerged out of slavery and their cultural ties to Africa. The images created during the Harlem Renaissance and represented African American culture served as inspiration and comfort to the black artists that succeeded the movement.
            Many literary historians use the terms realism, naturalism and modernism to categorize the various writings produced during this time. “Realism” is defined as the “faithful reproduction” of reality while naturalism refers to the “franker, harsher treatment of that reality” (Finn). Modernism, at its most basic level, denotes “a break with purely representational aesthetics, with the familiar functions of language and conventions of form” (Finn). Before this time period, particularly during the 1930s, many black writers focused on the rural South still imprisoned by Jim Crow and racist violence. Now authors took a different approach with their writing, and it was clearly very northern and urban; cities like Chicago, Boston, and New York served as settings for much of this new writing (Smith).
            This period of writing generated a division in the African American literary circle. While the Harlem Renaissance had celebrated blackness in an age of debilitating segregation, mid-century writers wrestled with the production of art in an era moving toward desegregation; an era when black writing, many believed, could not disengage itself from politics. Many literary historians and critics credit Richard Wright’s “Native Son” written in 1940 with setting the tone of this period (Gates). They emphasize that Wright’s book transformed American culture and African American writing. Wright himself was judgmental of the African American writing of the past, especially the Harlem Renaissance. He believed that some black writers were more concerned with acceptance and doing what white America wanted them to do instead of social protest. Other writers of the time also voiced protest. William Attaway’s “Blood on the Forge” written in 1941, examined the Great Migration from the South to the North after World War I (Gates). The novel was deemed one of the most intricate looks at the exploitation of black American workers in northern steel mills. Chester Himes, in” If He Hollers Let Him Go “ written in 1945, illuminated the animosity an educated, northern-born black man faces from lower-class, southern-born whites as they struggle to work together in a Los Angeles shipyard at the height of World War II (Gates).
            Even though much of the writing of this time was popular in nature and wanted to increase social consciousness, many writers who grew up and lived during the Depression had an “integrationist” attitude and started writing on nonracial subjects. Zora Neale Hurston’s final novel, “Seraph on the Suwanee” written in 1948, was labeled as “non-Negro” simply because its characters are white and its setting is rural. Others, like James Baldwin, wrote essays attacking the protest form of writing. It was not until Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” written in 1952 that many critics believed African American writers were able to “liberate” themselves from naturalism and the protest narrative” (Gates). In writing “Invisible Man”, Ellison argued that his literary style was not simply influenced by other notable African American writers such as Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, but also by prominent white authors such as T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway (Gates). Because of his acknowledged inspiration by the “Western modernist tradition,” Ellison received severe disapproval from other African American writers for “failing to understand that ‘plight and protest’ … ‘are inseparable from Negro experience’” (Gates). Ellison combated these attacks by stating, “‘I am a human being, not just the black successor to Richard Wright’” (Gates).
            In a parallel vein, the poetry of the time sensationalizes the tensions. Many African American writers such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden combined technical skills formed in the modernist tradition with the themes of protest (Gates). As the 1960s began, more African American writers answered a resounding “No!” to his question, whether:

“It shall continue begging the question of the Negroes’ humanity and a resounding ‘Yes!’ to Wright’s question whether Negro writing shall be for the Negro masses, moulding the lives and consciousness of those masses toward new goals’” (Gates).
 
            The literary struggle that resulted during this period of history was provoked by the oppressive relationship between African Americans and European Americans, a relationship whose histories and realities emerge in today’s multiracial classrooms. The controversy highlights the hostility that some feel toward anything, literature included, that identifies or affiliates with the white majority. Educational researcher Patrick Finn echoes this idea in “Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest”. Finn states that many African Americans associate developing traits of the white majority as “adopting a characteristic of the enemy” (Finn). Therefore, well-known African American writers who execute traits of prominent white writers into their poems and prose get labeled as deserters. Some see this integration as a denial of their own culture and disapprove of those who veer too far into the already paved road of literary tradition. Likewise, some teachers believe that teaching African American students the literature and speech of the white majority would oppress them further. However, educational researcher Lisa Delpit argues that:

“Minority students must be exposed to the language of the majority in order to  compete with them and have access to the same economic opportunities” (Delpit)

            This is exactly what writers such as Ellison and Brooks , both winners of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize respectively,  have demonstrated in their works, a marriage of culture and convention. Their writings encompass the strength and pride of African Americans while embracing the style and technique of the distinguished literary figures of their time.
                The Black Arts Movement came out of the tempestuous 1960s when social commotion endured both at home and abroad. On the one hand were the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power agitation, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X; on the other hand, the Vietnam War and problems with Cuba. The Black Arts Movement generated writers who stimulated social revolution, even by violent means. There is perhaps no better example of this violent tone in black literature than these lines from Amiri Baraka’s signature poem, “Black Art” written in 1969: 

                                We want ‘poems that kill.’
                        Assassin poems, Poems that shoot” (Gates)

            The Black Arts Movement set the atmosphere for a new era in the lives of many African Americans. The main aim for African American writers was to write literature that enthroned blackness (Gates). Writers turned their pens into swords to depict the inequalities against the African American race and called for African Americans to unite as a strong force against white supremacy.
            In the Black Arts movement, it is vital to note several important figures. Fannie Lou Hamer, co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was an “unschooled” leader in the Black Arts Movement (Delpit). Prominent and powerful poets Amiri Baraka aka LeRoi Jones, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, and Quincy Troupe found expressive poetry as the best way to communicate a political message to an African American audience (Gates). While these key figures helped ignite the poetic flame, average, everyday Americans spread the message, as:

“Black poetry … was adopted by elementary school students, university professors, working wives and mothers, community activists, prison inmates, barber shop aficionados, [and] athletes” (Gates)
 
            The poet Baraka also turned to drama while Henry Dumas used fiction to spread the message for a newly invigorated identity, placing major emphasis on retaining African cultural roots within the black American community (Gates).
            One way to differentiate the Black Arts Movement from African American artistic and literary production before 1960 is in the different emphasis works have toward both Africa and America (Gates). Before 1960, black artists were not focused on Africa as a place of origin. Many black authors, such as Ralph Ellison, wanted to impersonate and surpass white artistic models that already existed. After 1960, black artists wanted a unique aesthetic that emphasized black personhood as different from that of white personhood. Africa often served as the foundation of inspiration for these artists. African Americans celebrated “Afrocentricity” by showing African pride through poetry, drama, and fiction, as well as through traditional African clothing and hairstyles (Smith).
            During the Black Arts Movement, writers improved the vernacular of the black community (Gates). Affirming Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, who, like their artistic ancestors, wrote using black vernacular and created themes of spiritual and political liberation, the leading voices of the Black Arts Movement were interested in building a black audience, not in pandering to a white audience. They found sustenance in the explosion of new publishing companies and periodicals that focused on the black experience. Established publishing companies began pulling from their archives out-of-print works by African American authors (Gates). The Black Arts Movement also was strengthened by the advent of black studies in American universities. There were now university-trained scholars reading, interpreting, and teaching works by African American artists (Smith)
            In February 1948 the black writer James Baldwin acknowledged how widespread anti-Semitism was in his community, writing: “Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew.” Baldwin later succumbed to such views himself when he wrote that while Christians made up America's true power structure, the Jew “is doing their dirty work.” He went on to denigrate Jewish financial support of civil rights organizations as mere “conscience money.”  To be sure, the Black Arts Movement was not exempt from controversy, for it suffered from the expression of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia. The negative dynamic between blacks and Jews is accredited to the unfriendly relationship that developed between working-class blacks and Jewish landlords; the term “Jew” became “a word marking a material and ideological manifestation of American whiteness” (Gates). 
            Anti-Semitism has had a long history among African Americans. In the 1920s, for instance, the “buy-black” campaign of the black-nationalist leader Marcus Garvey was explicitly targeted against Jews, and Garvey later spoke admiringly of Adolf Hitler (Muravchik).  In February 1948 the black writer James Baldwin recognized how extensive anti-Semitism was in his community, writing:  “Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew.” Baldwin later surrendered to such views himself when he wrote that while Christians made up America's true power structure, the Jew “is doing their dirty work” (Muravchik).  He went on to denigrate Jewish financial support of civil rights organizations as mere “conscience money.”
            Malcolm X, too, was a vociferous anti-Semite both publicly and privately. According to author Murray Friedman, when Malcolm met with representatives of the Ku Klux Klan to solicit their support for his project of black separatism, he "assured them" that "it was Jews who were behind the integration movement" (Muravchik). 
            The prominent role that Jews played in the American civil rights movement did little to diminish black anti-Semitism. When the movement first began to gain power in the late 1950s and early 60s, the front-line troops in the Montgomery bus boycott and then in the lunch-counter sit-ins were all blacks; but among the whites who soon rallied to the cause, a disproportionately large share were Jews. The Freedom Riders rode in integrated detachments, and two-thirds of the whites, Murray Friedman reports, were Jews (Muravchik).  A few years later, in 1964, came the “Mississippi Summer,” a black-voter-registration project conceived and organized by a Jew, Allard Lowenstein. According to Friedman, Jews made up from one-third to one-half of the white volunteers who took part. Of the three volunteers who lost their lives in the project, two -- Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman -- were Jews.
            In his book “Blacks and Jews”, Paul Berman reports that Jews contributed one-half to three-quarters of the financial support received by civil rights groups in the 1960s. The organizational support they provided was equally pronounced. All over the United States, Jewish organizations assigned staffers to work on civil rights initiatives. In those days, writes Berman, “It was almost as if to be Jewish and liberal were, by definition, to fly a flag for black America” (Muravchik).
            What’s more within the Black Arts Movement, negative attitudes toward women and homosexuals stemmed from the “paramilitary, social-realist bravado of male leaders in the Black Arts” (Gates).  In comparison to the voices of African American men involved with the Black Arts Movement and their work being “more political”, if you will, women and in particular Bulelwa Madekurozwa was at the forefront of being black, a woman and an out lesbian.
            One such artist is the painter Bulelwa Madekurozwa who was born in 1972, who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. While studying in Harare in the early 1990s, Madekurozwa realized that most of the artists in her school were men who painted portraits of stereotypically shy but proud African women tilling fields and toting babies. To oppose this representation, Madekurozwa painted portraits of strong black women with direct gazes (GLBTQ Inc.)  . Early in her career, Madekurozwa grappled with ways to express her thoughts and experiences as an African lesbian through her art. To put it mildly, lesbianism is not accepted in Zimbabwe. Although the country has an active women's rights movement, females are both socially and legally disadvantaged much like those of gay orientation in the United States.
            Since women traditionally were denied individual sexual identities, lesbians face horrifyingly violent anti-gay sentiments. As the country's gay community slowly takes shape, therefore, women are being left behind. While men who come out in Zimbabwe at least know that male homosexual relationships exist, the inability even to conceive of a lesbian relationship hinders the coming-out process for women (GLBTQ Inc.).
                It is therefore not surprising that Madekurozwa makes only veiled references to lesbianism in her paintings. In one early work, two figures--one clothed and androgynous, the other with the nude body of a black woman—embracing.
            Notwithstanding these problems of sexuality, anti-Semitism, however, African Americans through the Black Arts Movement triumphed through relentless efforts to prove that they were not ,and would never be, “merely white Americans in blackface” (Gates).
            Indeed, the Black Arts Movement would develop to be the provocative starting point for a new way of being considered an African American. The year 1975 is an arbitrary endpoint for the Black Arts Movement whose aesthetic and accompanying themes continue beyond 1975. Any black artist who, through the “construction of hybrid genres, mythic landscapes, vernacular styles, and revised genealogies of the Americas” (Gates), is finding ground-breaking ways to explore issues within the African American community follows in the footsteps of the Black Arts Movement.
            By the close of the 20th century, African American culture was represented in literature, theater, television, and film. In the 1990s, Toni Morrison became a Nobel Prize Laureate and August Wilson won a second Pulitzer Prize in drama for “The Piano Lesson(Gates). Writers of this period produced work that was “determined to cure what Morrison deemed the ‘national amnesia’ around the history of slavery” (Gates), and slave narratives finally became a part of the American canon. Other African American authors reshaping the canon included Pulitzer Prize winners such as Rita Dove and Yusef Komunyakaa in poetry, Charles Johnson and John Edgar Wideman in fiction, Ntozake Shange and George Wolfe in theater, and Alice Walker in fiction and nonfiction. These writers produced work distinguished by:
        (1) The acknowledgement of the multiplicity of African American identities.

        (2) A renewed interest in history, as writers imagine the psychological and spiritual lives of African Americans during slavery and segregation.

        (3) The emergence of a community of black women writing;

        (4) A continuing exploration of music and other forms of vernacular culture as springboards for literary innovation and theoretical analysis.

        (5) And showcase the influence of African American literary scholarship.” (Gates)

            Ultimately, the African American renaissance of the late 20th century grapples with the diversity of the African American experience and is motivated by their literary forefathers and foremothers, contemporary African American authors, while pioneering in their own respective ways, echo the conflict and painful emotion expressed by their predecessors. Alice Walker, for instance, comments that “The Color Purple” written in 1982 is her “‘love letter to Zora Neale Hurston’” (Gates). Gathering inspiration from those who came before them, African American authors of the contemporary generation frequently participate in scholarship, studying the past in their writings while simultaneously enriching it for future generations.
            Thus, present-day authors produce penetrating questions about African American identity. Their work reassesses racism and allows readers to view its social, economic, spiritual, psychological, emotional and political ramifications. Slavery, though abolished in the nineteenth century, is not an ideological construct barred from the American consciousness. Additionally, issues as recently as today leave many “divided substantially along racial lines.” African American society, as a whole, has evolved fruitfully over the past few decades, and the voices of African Americans are finally beginning to thankfully be heard. Many years have passed since the confirmations of Boston’s elite confirming Phillis Wheatley’s literary ingenuity, yet African American literature today still struggles with some of the very same anxieties and yearnings present in the 18th century. African American literature produced during this period thankfully rewrites the American narrative, creating a more complex and diverse view of what we call America.

Works Cited

Delpit, Lisa. The Politics of Teaching Literary Discourse. Boston, Mass.: St. Martins, 2001. Hardback.
Finn, Patrick J. Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children In Their Own Self-Interest. Albany, New York: University of New York, 1999. Hardback.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Norton Anthologyof African American Literature. New York City, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. Hardback.
GLBTQ Inc. African American Art Contemporary. 2012. www.glbtq.com/​arts/af_​art_​contemporary.html. 20 April 2013.
Muravchik, Joshua. Discover the Networks. December 1995. www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?​id=9. 20 April 2013.
Smith, Smith Dr. Brenda. Modern African American Literature Class Spring 2013 January- May 2013. Lecture.
Wikipedia. African American Vernacular English. 18 April 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English. 20 April 2013.
—. Ku Klux Klan. 19 April 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan. 20 April 2013.