Introduction

African American contributed towards literature which starts from the era of slavery towards the closure of nineteenth centre. Within the scope of literature comes poetry, books. This essay provides a comparative analysis of authors of the eras of slave Narratives, reconstruction and New Negro Movement and shows how with the change in period what topics did author focus primarily on.

Discussion

Slave narratives, started off in the early 17th century and the content in this era mostly talks about slavery in the United States. These works vary from book-length autobiographies, to pamphlets, to shorter accounts originally printed in newspapers and other periodicals from literatures perspective, slave narrations are the most command and important traditions of literature of African American. They have been a major contributor towards motivating numerous novels which include Huckleberry Finn of Mark Twain (1884), Beloved of Toni Morrison (1987) etc.

The first published author of slave narration, who deals with the narration unusual suffering and Briton Hammon's astonishing delivery, came out in 1760 in Boston. Olaudah Equiano who was a slave that was freed published in 1789 a narration of his life. In his autobiography not only provided an in depth information regarding the terror involved in slave trading but also took steps towards advancement of movement against slavery.

Earlier to the Civil War, most slave narratives were written by slaves who had managed to escape through bondage. The most famous is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written by Himself (1845) and is known as the eminent author of his time. This is because Douglass's narrative was well written and it took into account various hardships he bore under slavery (Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 1).

Reconstruction era starts from 1865-1877, the name commonly given to the period at the close of and immediately after the Civil ...