African American literature is over. With this provocative claim Kenneth Warren sets out to identify a distinctly African American literatureÑand to change the

The first African American to publish a book in the South, the author of the first female slave narrative in the United States, the father of black nationalism

From the earliest texts of the colonial period to works contemporary with Emancipation, African American literature has been a dialogue across color lines, and

This essential volume provides an overview of and introduction to African American writers and literary periods from their beginnings through the 21st century.