| African-Americans' response to American cultural hegemony has been varied. The period between 1950 and 1970 marks a turning point in the political lives of Africans and African-Americans and increases political, cultural, and oil interactions between the two peoples. In Africa, the period witnesses the recrudescence of anti-colonial sentiments and movements for independence which culminated in the sixties with the independence of almost all European colonies in Africa. In the United States, these decades are known as the civil rights movement, a period of sustained political actions by blacks in the U.S. wherein demands were pressed upon the dominant group for the recognition of the fundamental rights of the black population. The present dissertation focuses on the images of Africa in African-American literature during that period. Examining three novels, The Long Dream by Richard Wright, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest Gaines, and A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley, the dissertation studies the (re)presentation of Africa as the "homeland" for African-Americans in the socio-political context of the civil right and black nationalist movements. It further shows how these authors articulate rhetorically and creatively the questions of racial and cultural conciousness. The study examines the two most important "resistance theories" traditionally encountered in African-American counter hegemonic discourse, i.e., intergration and separation. |
