Africana Studies 243 - Black Autobiography

This course examines the U.S. Black autobiographical tradition from the eighteenth century to the present. “Autobiography” is constituted broadly to include slave narratives, memoirs, travelogues, poems, speeches, sketches and essays. The class explores questions of form, genre, publication history, narrative voice, language, audience and other literary markers. Students examine the narratives' socio-political, historical and economic milieus. As students explore the tradition, they consider how Black autobiographers engage Carolyn Rodgers’ meditation-cum-query in, Breakthrough: “How do I put my self on paper/ The way I want to be or am and be/ Not like any one else in this/ Black world but me.”