SOURCE: “An Analysis of African-American Folklore and Literature.” In Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol. 126, edited by Linda Pavlovski. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002.

In the following original essay, Wilcots provides an overview of African-American folklore and literature, focusing on its history, representative writers, significant works, and critical response.

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The African Origins of Negro Folk Culture

Modern African peoples comprise more than eight hundred distinct ethnic and linguistic groups, many dating back thousands of years, and each with its own religious system and cultural heritage.¹ Historians estimate that 11.7 million Africans,² representing more than two hundred ethnic groups from Central and West Africa, were enslaved in the New World.³ Enslaved Africans brought with them a variety of languages, social structures, religions, and rituals. Consequently, no monolithic African or African-American culture exists. Some anthropologists and sociologists have used this diversity, as well as the argument that slavers forcibly divested slaves of...