A literary history of black American women requires a search for the earliest expressions of a black and female identity. The articulation of a black and female culture is to be found in the early political writings of black women educators and orators and abolitionists; in the collected and uncollected narratives of black slave women; in the religious conversation narratives of black women, in the folklore passed on from mother to daughter. We must begin by putting together these scraps and pieces written and signed by black women in order to understand how they first struggled to name and order experience. In these rummagings through the past we can construct a useful and coherent framework for studying the development of black women writers.
There are many areas that need to be investigated as we begin the process of reconstructing the literary history of black women. We need to know: what rituals and symbols are essential to the black woman’s self-discovery? By what means does she come to know her own voice? What black and female stories are central to her history? What are the unique forms and purposes by which her literary tradition can be identified?
The task of this course is to begin the reconstruction of that history. You will be doing bibliographic work, searching for primary material, and critically analyzing the fiction of black women writers. Your major work will be to write a chapter in the history of black women writers, using any ten-year period from 1850 to 2000. You will decide what fiction is representative of the period and you will substantiate that claim with a literary and historical analysis of the work.

This course has been designed to serve the following objectives:
1) To provide opportunities for creative and critical analysis of selected works by Black American women writers.
2) To trace the aesthetic and social development of literature by Black women.
3) To identify and develop an awareness of major problems confronting, and peculiar to, Black literature.
4) To explore the process by which these writers express aspects of a Black and female experience and the relationship that experience has to the total culture.
To engender a greater appreciation for and understanding of this aspect of American literary history from a Black perspective.