Since it is Valentine’s Day, I dare to say that I have an ongoing love affair with African American literature.  And, once again, I am teaching African American Literature in the 20^th Century for another college.  (I previously taught it at Bennington College.)  The primary texts are The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 3d edition, volumes 1 and 2, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Valerie A. Smith.  The other primary text is Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America – An Anthology, edited by Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen.

I normally begin this course with someone reading James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black National Anthem.  Indeed, just this past Superbowl Sunday, Andra Day beautifully sang it to the millions of people tuned in.  Of course, some MAGAites (pronounced maggots) pushed back, because anything that uplifts Black folk and Black voices is anathema to white supremacists.  This is not surprising, in light of the attacks on Critical Race Theory (only taught in law schools), and what some white folk like to scream and shout, “cancel culture!” when they can’t sound off, mostly on people of color, in the most disrespectful ways, and not be held accountable.  Ironically, the pushback on singing the Black National Anthem to the world is a pernicious form of cancel culture.  Note that I attended a Superbowl party, and during the singing of both the Black National Anthem and the National Anthem that the majority of the Black audience was on their feet with their hands on their hearts.  (Eat your hearts out, MAGAites!)

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” (1925)

I enjoy teaching this course, because it has me revisit Black classics – Three Negro Classics, with an introduction by James Weldon Johnson, one of the other assigned texts — including Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington, The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois, and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson.

The first in-class assignment during the first class was having students reflect on and write about the theme of Black History Month – I utilize the Amherst method.  I also asked students to share their favorite Black author and their favorite book by a Black author.  I was surprised that one of the students said that his favorite Black author is Alexander Dumas, and that his favorite book by a Black author is The Count of Monte Cristo, which was my favorite book as a teenager!  I keep saying that one of these days I’ll watch one of the movies made about the book!

The reading assignment for the following class included various authors articulating what I call “Black Poetics.”  My talk – I prefer “talk” to “lecture” – preceding the assignment was a brief description of Aristotle’s Poetics, counterbalanced by an excerpt from Larry Neal’s “The Black Arts Movement,” and “Some Reflections on the Black Aesthetic.”  Neal rejects the Eurocentric approach in Black Art, that Black Art must be created from the Black experience.

The next reading assignment will include Toni Morrison’s essay, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The African American Presence in American Literature.” In this essay, Morrison’s brilliance shines. One of my takeaways from Morrison is, why should only dead white men be on the bookshelves when we talk about American literature?  As I’ve stated elsewhere, we cannot talk anything American without talking about Black America. Whether white folk like it or not, the reality is that there is no America as we know it without Black folk.