Suffering in Modern African-American Literature
Postmodern Themes and Motifs in Black Works of Fiction
Although African-American literature has dealt with suffering directly in the past through explicit imagery and uprising in the past, modern and postmodern black literature deals with suffering in a less obvious, yet extremely real way by weaving suffering and its limitations deep within the story, showing how characters deal or cannot deal with their sufferings.
Some modern and postmodern African-American literature portrays how suffering can lead to failure and illusion while others demonstrate how suffering can lead to character, achievement and insight.
How Suffering Can Lead to Failure and Illusion
Much modern and postmodern literature deals with themes of suffering and how characters deal with suffering, especially African-American literature. It is Pecola’s suffering and self-hatred that are her demise in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. It is suffering that creates the illusion of invisibility in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Even Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father demonstrates that at the core of a person is his suffering and how he deals with it. These works of fiction develop an important theme in modern American literature: the authenticity of African-American suffering and the conflict between addressing and repressing the issues.
How Suffering Can Lead to Character, Achievement and Insight
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” best demonstrates this theme through its omnipotent suffering that leads to Sonny’s achievement and the narrator’s insight. The narrator of the story wants nothing more than to live a normal life, forgetting about the suffering of his past while Sonny wants to be a great jazz musician, something he wants and achieves even after the narrator told him he should focus on more serious things.
Through Baldwin’s narrative flow, readers not only learn of the narrator’s and Sonny’s suffering but they also experience it. The narrator relates to and understands Sonny in the final scene of the story when Sonny shares his suffering with the bar.
Though the brothers deal or choose not to deal in different ways, their suffering remains real and tangible throughout the story, and the greatest emotion and release of tension is experienced when the suffering is brought to the surface.
While African-American literature has many complex themes, one of the most consistent themes in African-American literature since its beginning has been suffering, and today's themes have taken the suffering and dealt with it. These themes demonstrate to suffering, history, and authenticity of African-American suffering to a new generation of readers.
Related Reading:
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Young Adult Dystopian Fiction and Its Impact
- O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge
African-American Literature Deals With Suffering
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