How to Use This Text

Reading African American Literature is meant to accompany book length explorations of Black literature.  In my community-college course, I would pair this OER resource with drama, as well as a novel such as William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge, an account of the Great Migration and Pittsburgh steel strikes.  The text’s aim is not to cover every major voice, but to present enough genres and figures that the arc of African-American literary history could be covered sufficiently well.  For example, early in a course, I might focus heavily on mythology from Africa, the origins of rap and hip hop, and how openly political art can compromise its quality.  This in turn would bring up discussions of quality, Western literary standards, and binaries.  The OER has only slight coverage of those matters, but enough with which to begin a course.  Different instructors can use the readings as a sort of skeletal structure on which to build their own approaches.  There are numerous Creative Commons images in the book which may be useful for discussion or classroom activities.

Inclusion of Jean Toomer’s book Cane works well for students, since it includes poetry and explicit use of the blues.  Other works are linked.  If any of the links fails to function, users can search for the work on the web, often by adding “PDF” to a query.  There are several chapters focused on the conventions of academic writing and literary analysis.

I adopt The New York Times editorial convention of capitalizing Black.  Following recent convention, I use African American without the hyphen unless the words are part of a compound adjective.

Genre chapters could be broken up into a theme-based course, as there are many obvious thematic connections among them.  Alternately, a historical organization could be fashioned from them.  The more thorough slave narrative selection brings up questions of authorship, identity, and representation that can be applied to any of the later readings.  This OER is being created for a recently-approved class at Jefferson Community College, so it is going to reflect the strengths and weak points of that newness.

Users of Open Educational Resources often find navigation of the books to be difficult, especially if the OER is included in a learning management system like Blackboard.  Electronic use of the book as a PDF allows for easy navigation using CNTRL F (find command) searches.  Instructors should be aware that page numbering can differ among texts due to text sizing.  Most OERs are also available in both print or EPUB formats.  The latter can be used easily on tablets.

Since the goals of OER include making quality materials accessible to more students and encouraging adaptation, I would welcome any feedback on the text, its blind spots, or usability issues.  Contact me at jdickinson@sunyjefferson.edu or by calling (315) 786-2221.  Thanks!