African-American literature

Considered one of the greatest pieces of literature in history, To Kill a Mockingbird won several prestigious awards such as the Pulitzer Prize Award. The mastermind of this masterpiece, Harper Lee, is praised as one of the best American authors in the history of literature. Throughout her book, Harper Lee exposed many injustice that she had witnessed in her childhood. Lee expresses various underlying themes throughout the book through the masterful use of dialogue and narration. Some of the…

Huckleberry Finn has more symbolism than most American literature. Huck symbolizes America 's hope, spirit and future. He questions society and has an innocence to him that most of the other characters do not have. Like Huck 's best friend, Tom Sawyer, he symbolizes the cruelty of the south, the past. Tom 's ignorant view prevent him from having any development in the story. While Jim symbolizes African American slaves, Jim is the struggle, the divide between Huck and society.…

The book “Things Fall Apart” tells a story of a man, Okonkwo who was very well respected in his clan called the Umuofia clan from an Ibo village in Nigeria. Okonkwo comes from a father called Unoka who was a laughing stock throughout the entire village, and died leaving many debts unpaid. Becoming his father is something that Okonkwo never wants for himself or his twelve year old son. Okonkwo falls from a place of high respect in his village and this book follows his story. It also tells of how…

Annotated Bibliography Broome, Barbara A. “Perseverance.” Journal Of Cultural Diversity, vol. 19, no. 3, 2012, pp.71. Academic Search Complete. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=19&sid= e28117c3-d519-4ac1-9590 Erich Maria Remarque shows a great deal of perseverance in his writing of All Quiet on the Western Front. Broome says, “Consider for a moment the perseverance of the author Dr. Suess. His first children's book was rejected by twenty-three publishers.” Dr. Suess would…

Only a short while ago did the world figure out how devastating colonialism was; to the land, and the people who inhabit it. We hear a lot of stereotypes about the natives of Africa pertaining to cleanliness and intelligence. Nervous Conditions a “coming of age” novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga challenges these stereotypes with the story of two young girls. Though, her family portrays the opposite of these stereotypes it doesn’t mean that it comes without problems. We see a lot of psychological…

How does the author use diction to achieve this passage’s tone? This quote has significant meaning because of how Okonkwo’s life was “dominant by the fear of failure and weakness” (13). Dismay is able to solidify the tone of this quote due to his family's fear of Okonkwo and his fear of himself. The word “temper” is able to reveal an abstract side toward Okonkwo as throughout the book, Okonkwo had a whirlpool of emotions and his temper always got the better of him. Overall, this quote sounds…

chapter in American history, just as the next chapter began. In today’s world, issues with race are still prevalent. The ever-important context of these issues, however, and their consequences are profoundly different from the world of 1885. Over 130 years have past since the close of the Civil War. Those legislative remedies that were combating tradition and personal bias have become the new social norm. Slavery is obviously no longer a part of the nation’s culture. African Americans and other…

In Umuofia, a city in the novel Things Fall Apart, masculinity is highly regarded as a moral. It’s comparable with words such as courage and power, and with just about any other quality that proves a person in being self-reliant. Actually, it’s considered an insult if a man is called an agbala, a woman. In the novel it says, “no matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children he was not really a man”. There is a sharp contrast between femininity and…

Did Okonkwo’s actions help him or did his actions hinder him? I can say that his actions had consequences for these reasons: He killed someone after he was told not to, Accidentally shot someone and was punished, White missionaries drove Okonkwo to commit suicide. Ikemefuna was from a different village than Okonkwo but one day Ikemefuna’s family was punished for doing something horrific. The punishment was that the boy shall live with another family from a different village, so Ikemefuna was…

approach that we choose to study African Literature enables us to make consideration between the complex realities of African literature. In the article Reading Through Western Eyes by Christopher L. Miller, the author describes much about how Westerners read African literature from their culture perspective; since most Westerners don’t really know the culture they read what the western scholars critique. In order to critique and better understand African literature, the following paragraphs…