The "American Negro," W.E.B. Du Bois writes in theSouls of Black Folk,

ever feels his twoness--an American, a Negro;two souls, two thoughts; two unreconciledstrivings...

The history of the American Negro is thehistory of this strife,--this longing to attain selfconscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self..,. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...

It is always important, then, to remember that African-American writing is American. The African-American classics gathered here--Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery...

An essential collection of some of the most influential and significant writings by African-American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume includes Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE [1845] and excerpts from W. E. B. Du Bois’s THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK [1903], Harriet A. Jacobs’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL: WRITTEN BY HERSELF [1861],Booker T. Washington"s UP FROM SLAVERY [1901], and James Weldon Johnson"s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN [1912].

In his provocative introductory essay, Anthony Appiah explores the roots of African-American literature. He points out that writing itself was an act of rebellion for a population that was assumed to be illiterate,and explains the distinctive American literary and cultural context of the time, without which these works cannot be fully understood.

Edited and with an Introduction by Anthony Appiah,professor of philosophy and literature at Duke University and co-editor of CRITICAL STUDIES IN AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Introduction

by Anthony Appiah

Prologue: A Selection from The Souls

of Black Folk

by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass, an American Slave

by Frederick Douglass, 1845

Selections from Incidents in the Life of

a Slave Girl: Written by Herself

by Harriet A. Jacobs, Edited by

L. Maria Child, 1861

Selections from Up from Slavery

by Booker T. Washington, 1901

Selections from The Autobiography of

an Ex-Coloured Man

by James Weldon Johnson, 1912