Improvised Africans: The Myth and Meaning of Africa in Nineteenth Century African American Thought; (Tunde Adeleke's UnAfrican Americans)

Abstract

The poetic genius of Richard Wright captures with sublime eloquence the tragicomic plight of the African American existential struggle. Wright’s supreme gift in articulating the African American dialectical struggle to attain self-conscious personhood while traversing a landscape littered with the remnants of chattel slavery and darkened by the shadow of prejudice and injustice echoes deeply in the natural imagery of “Between the World and Me.” The continual struggle for African Americans to strive and yet not yield in the face of overwhelming obstacles present in the social, cultural, political, and economic matrix of the United States hints of a natural order of things – something that is perennial as the coming of spring yet as harsh as the brisk winds of a New England winter.