Given that much contemporary immigration from the Caribbean and West Africa was in part a product of the Civil Rights Movement, an increasing amount of “African-American” literature is actually being produced by writers whose relationship to America is as complex as their relationship to this always strange commodity and unstable category called “black.” This is not entirely unprecedented considering the presence and impact of West Indian literature and politics on early 20th Century New York City. But with new generations arriving since middle of the last century, and the decisive presence of continental Africans who’ve been arriving also as refugees, the political context and the aesthetic terms of this new writing requires an entirely new orientation. This new orientation is one that must engage however controversially the older histories of black writing and the political and theoretical expectations of what “black” writing is or could be for what is arguably an entirely new race of American people.

Paule Marshall: Brown Girl, Brownstones, Dover Publications, ISBN-10: 0486468321
Edwidge Danticat: The Dew Breaker, Vintage; ISBN-10: 1400034299
Jamaica Kincaid: Lucy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN-10: 0374527350
Chris Abani: The Virgin of Flames, penguin non-classics, ISBN-10: 014303877X
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: That Thing Around Your Neck, Anchor Books, ISBN-10:
0307455912
Dinaw Mengistu: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Riverhead Trade, ISBN-10:
1594482853
Dave Eggers: What is the What, Vintage Books, ISBN-10: 0307385906