Reading Across the Borders: Comparing Novels of the Black Arts Movement and Black Consciousness Movement Open Access

Abstract

Abstract

Reading Across the Borders: Comparing novels of the Black Arts Movement and Black Consciousness Movement

By Jacinta R. Saffold

I explore the intersection of literature and culture of oppressed people by comparing novels from the Black Arts Movement (the aesthetic and literary component of the Black Power Movement in the United States during the late 1960s and 1970s) and the Black Consciousness Movement (a 1970s South African multiracial Apartheid resistance movement). Scholars like George Frederickson and Pierre Van Den Burghe assert that the United States and South Africa in some ways mirror each other, in respect to racist tension in politics, law and general sentiment among citizens, namely during the 1960s and 1970s. Another area of transnational continuity between the United States and South Africa is within the anti-oppression literature derived from social movements that pervaded both countries during the 1960s and 1970s. Literature, and especially fiction, derived from specific movements has the capacity to make social commentaries on the cultural and historical events of political movements. This thesis draws strong parallels between these two protest movements through the historical and literary themes of violence, isolation and self-assurance. I evaluate a total of four novels. They include the Black Consciousness novel A Night of Their Own by Peter Abrahams, the Black Arts novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee. I also thematically evaluate Black Consciousness writer Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather and Kristin Lattany's Lakestown Rebellion. Understanding how protest impacts the fiction derived from militant Black power movements gives deeper insight to the everyday realties oppressed people face.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Power to the People 3
Chapter 2: Black Man, You Are On Your Own 31
Chapter 3: "I Am A Man" 55
Chapter 4: Say It Loud! I Am A Black Woman and I Am Proud 71
Conclusion 89
Appendix A 91
Appendix B 92
Appendix C 93
Appendix D 94
Works Cited 95
Selected Bibliography 99

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	African American Studies
Degree	BS
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, African Literature, American Black Studies
Keyword	Black fiction South Africa assurance violence Black Nationalism African American Studies Black Power protest novel civil rights isolation Black Consciousness Movement Black Arts Movement
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Warren, Nagueyalti, Emory University
Committee Members	Cochran, Casey, Emory University Sanders, Mark, Emory University

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