Research Guides: African American Literature: Black Women's Renaissance

Black Women's Renaissance

Both a literary movement and form of literary criticism, the Black Women's Renaissance is a feminist perspective and mode of production within African-American literature. Similar to other genres which emerge during the 1970s and afterwards, a prominent theme in these works is an assessment of the successes of the Civil Rights movements. In addition, there are considerations of the potential for other activist efforts of the time to advance causes relevant to Black women. Bolstered by the minority studies movement, literature flourishes as cultural production by women and African-American writers gains legitimacy in academic environments. Academic reconsiderations and modern revision to the period have expanded this category to include historical and contemporary expressions of feminism in Black women's writings and transnational dialogues during the Third Wave movement.

Key Concepts

Terms and Themes

domestic fiction
womanism
women's autobiography

In Search of Our Mother's Gardens : womanist prose by Alice Walker
Publication Date: 1983
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, the author speaks out as a Black woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces ranging from the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter's healing words.
Sula by Toni Morrison
Publication Date: 1973
This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines -- from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation. The one, Nel Wright, chooses to stay in the place of her birth, to marry, to raise a family, to become a pillar of the tightly knit black community. The other, Sula Peace, rejects all that Nel has accepted. She escapes to college, submerges herself in city life, and when she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel, a mocker, a wanton sexual seductress. Both women must suffer the consequences of their choices; both must decide if they can afford to harbor the love they have for each other; and both combine to create an unforgettable rendering of what it means and costs to exist and survive as a black woman in America.

Terms and Themes

feminist perspective
sex and sexuality
women's issues in literature

Black Feminist Criticism by Barbara Christian
Publication Date: 1985
A collection of critical essays on African-American women writers.
Hunger by Roxane Gay
Publication Date: 2018
Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls 'wildly undisciplined.' She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties -- including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point at age 12 -- and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With candor, vulnerability, and authority, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen.