The Literature of the Middle Passage: Background Reading and Syllabus

Background Reading and Syllabus
The following books will be among the literary texts to be studied during the course. Where indicated, please be careful to acquire the correct edition.
	The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings Olaudah Equiano (Edited by Vincent Caretta, Penguin 1998) An exciting and often terrifying adventure story, as well as an important precursor to such famous nineteenth-century slave narratives as Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, Olaudah Equiano's Narrative recounts his kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766, and his life afterward as a leading and respected figure in the antislavery movement in England. A spirited autobiography, a tale of spiritual quest and fulfillment, and a sophisticated treatise on religion, politics, and economics, The Interesting Narrative is a work of enduring literary and historical value.
	Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (Introduction by Caryl Phillips, Modern Library 1999) Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring - and harrowing - works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz Rich in irony and spellbinding prose. Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890 - the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade.
	Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays Chinua Achebe One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, turns from fiction to address his concerns in literature and the arts, relating them with brilliant clarity to larger issues of race, social justice and the future of Africa.
	Crossing the River Caryl Phillips From the acclaimed author of Cambridge comes an ambitious, formally inventive, and intensely moving evocation of the scattered offspring of Africa. It begins in a year of failing crops and desperate foolishness, which forces a father to sell his three children into slavery. Employing a brilliant range of voices and narrative techniques, Caryl Phillips folows these exiles across the river that separates continents and centuries.
	The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B.Du Bois (Edited by Donald B. Gibson, Penguin 1996) When first published in 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk struck like a thunderclap, quickly establishing itself as a work that wholly redefined the history of the black experience in America, introducing the now famous "problem of the color line." In decades since, its stature has only grown, and today it ranks as one of the most influential and resonant works in the history of American thought.
	Changes: A Love Story by Ama Ata Aidoo In a novel from the prize-winning author Ama Ata Aidoo, the protagonist Esi Sekyi confronts traditional values in marriage, love, careers, and family in contemporary Ghana. Esi's life is in several ways a symbol of the modern woman-- she is educated, has a career, and is financially independent from her husband-- yet she finds that her gender imposes a limit on her freedom. Aidoo creates a moving portrait of womens' lives in Africa and the problems that are all too familiar in almost every culture. Changes won the 1993 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region.
	The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism.
	The Atlantic Sound by Caryl Phillips In this fascinating inquiry into the African Diaspora, Caryl Phillips embarks on a soul-wrenching journey to the three major ports of the transatlantic slave trade. Juxtaposing stories of the past with his own present-day experiences, Phillips combines his remarkable skills as a travel essayist with an astute understanding of history. From a West African businessman's interactions with white Methodists in nineteenth-century Liverpool to an eighteenth-century African minister's complicity in the selling of slaves to a fearless white judge's crusade for racial justice in 1940s Charleston, South Carolina, Phillips reveals the global the impact of being uprooted from one's home through resonant, powerful narratives.
Additional background materials:
	Home and Exile (Essays) by Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe is Africa's most prominent writer, the author of Things Fall Apart, the best known--and best selling--novel ever to come out of Africa. His fiction and poetry burn with a passionate commitment to political justice, bringing to life not only Africa's troubled encounters with Europe but also the dark side of contemporary African political life. In Home and Exile, Achebe explores the European impact on African culture, viewed through the most vivid experience available to the author--his own life.
	Nigger: The History of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy It’s “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets,” a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it.
	Always Elsewhere: Travels of the Black Atlantic by Alasdair Pettinger This anthology of 50 travel pieces by African American, Caribbean, and African writers spans the the last three centuries. Among the writers included are Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Edwidge Danticat. The book is divided by theme: the Middle Passage, the upheavals of migration and exile, impressions of Europe, journeys to Africa, official tours, and the concept of home. Each selection is preceded by a brief biography, and a bibliography and suggestions for further reading are included.
	Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White by David R. Roediger From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior, but until now much of this writing has been ignored. Black on White reverses this trend by presenting the work of more than fifty major figures, including James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker to take a closer look at the many meanings of whiteness in our society.
	Exodus (CD) by Bob Marley In 1999, Exodus was voted by the most important album of the 20th century by Time magazine. This is the visionary Bob Marley's masterpiece, a concept album that distills the myriad experiences of both our daily lives and collective unconsciousness into 46 minutes of aural perfection. The first half of Exodus bears witness to Marley's shift in focus away from the mundane problems of Babylon existence and toward a greater understanding of vital universal truths. The second half features songs such as "Jamming" and "Waiting in Vain," which take a gently wistful look at the more interpersonal aspects of human relations.