A Note To The St. Bonaventure University English Department

If we wish to continue to use the term "American Literature," we must either admit that we mean white American Literature or construe it to include the literature of several peoples, including the Afro-American nation. The latter course leads to a fundamental redefinition of American Literature, its history, and the criteria appropriate to each and every American literary work. For the view-point of the oppressed people can then no longer be excluded from the criticism and teaching of American Literature.... The most distinctive feature of the United States history is Afro-American slavery and its consequences. This truth is at the heart of our political, economic, and social experience, and therefore the slave narrative, like Afro-American culture in general, is not peripheral but central to American culture and most definitely to American Literature.

Thank you!