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To study African American literature is to contend with the complexity of identity and belonging—How do we understand, or not, a unitary racial identity? Who are the “We” that cohere identity? What is the collective, and what is the personal? Our study explores how mid-to-late 20th-century writers advance and rewrite the boundaries of genre, questioning, for example, the relationship between fiction and autobiography. This course explores the innovative ways that black writers have reimagined their places in the nation and responded to the efficacy of identity, of race, gender, and sexuality, as ways to understand the self and the collective. Texts will include Audre Lorde's Zami, Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah, selections from Essex Hemphill, and more.