Issues of assimilation in African American literarure in selected works by Richard wright and Amiri Baraka.

Abstract

The present work ‘Issues of Assimilation of African American Literature in Selected Works by Richard Wright and Amiri Baraka’ examines three major points; the obstacles that African American writers face in their attempt to assimilate into the white mainstream. It also investigates whether attempts of assimilation are worth making compromises from the African American side with particular inclination to Richard Wright and Amiri Baraka as proletarian writers. Besides the multiples challenges that face African Americans in their attempt to reach assimilation. A lot of attention was given to study Wright and Baraka works through connecting them with race issues. The present work concentrates on examining African American dealing with the idea of assimilation in two different periods, 1930s and 1940s. African Americans of the 1930s were known of having no self-esteem that can help them look for more than what Booker T. Washington or Marcus Garvey called for, but African Americans of the 1960s accepted their difference from the white majority and became more aware of their own distinct identity which made them question the idea of assimilation.