SOURCE: "The Tentative, Poetic Lives of Black Women," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 4, 1982, p. 6.

An Excerpt from Give Birth to Brightness: a Thematic Study in Neo-black Literature

Throughout the course of this work, the term "Black hero" has been used in a limited and specialized sense to symbolize the distinctive fusion of rebellion and group consciousness which characterizes some of the central male figures—the streetmen—in Neo-Black literature. As in much contemporary European and American fiction, the protagonist is in rebellion against society. In Neo-Black fiction, however, society is always the dominant white society which oppresses and suppresses the humanity of Black people and their strivings toward positive self-definitions. The white man as aspiring hero has seldom been required to deny his humanity in order to achieve heroic status. Even in rebellion against his culture, the white man is distinguished from the rebellious Black man...