Download or read book The City in African-American Literature written by Yoshinobu Hakutani and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More recent African-American literature has also been noteworthy for its largely affirmative vision of urban life. Amiri Baraka's 1981 essay "Black Literature and the Afro-American Nation: The Urban Voice" argues that, from the Harlem Renaissance onward, African-American literature has been "urban shaped," producing a uniquely "black urban consciousness." And Toni Morrison, although stressing that the American city in general has often induced a sense of alienation in many African-American writers, nevertheless adds that modern African-American literature is suffused with an "affection" for "the village within" the city.