Important Sources: Annotated Bibliography

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1970.

Angelou recounts her early life, from the time she moves to the South to live with Momma Henderson until the birth of her first child. During this time, her life is disturbed many times as she is moved around the country, from household to household looking for acceptance. The road becomes a direct influence in the story when Angelou is forced to drive her unconscious father back from Mexico.

Beavers, Herman. “The Politics of Space: Southerness and Manhood in the Fictions of Toni Morrison.” Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 61-77.

This article explores a few of the masculine characters in Toni Morrison’s work, as well as the split feelings toward the South and toward the North experienced by characters who undergo this migration in her work. The author begins by explaining the motives for Northward migration, and continues to describe some of the relationships the migrants had with both their current places in the North and their homeland in the South, and how this affected the character’s sense of identity and community. The examples in this article are similar to and can be applied to Toni Morrison’s other works.

Gara, Larry. The Liberty Line: the Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1967.

This source is very helpful. It talks all about the Underground Railroad and what it represented to African Americans at the time. It really articulates how the road for African Americans at that time was not an easy one. It explains how the road was a place of fear, not always freedom. This is helpful is proving how the road for African Americans was very different from the road for others at that time.

Henri, Florette. Black Migration: Movement North, 1900-1920. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975.

Henri's book is a study of the major changes in African American culture from 1900-1920. He focuses on the migration of many blacks from southern farms towards heavily industrialized western and north-central cities. Henri examines the intense racism that accompanied this change in America and the effects of World War I and the Great Depression on the African American race.

Katznelson, Ira. Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900-30, and Britain, 1948-68. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Katznelson examines the Black Migration of 1900-30 in the United States and 1948-60 in the United Kingdom, and focuses on the political reactions to these periods in history and how racism has changed over time. This source will be used to examine the use of the road to escape racism, and the how the road has led African Americans to succeeding in cities (finding jobs, homes, flourishing creatively).

Malcolm, Douglas. “‘Jazz America’: Jazz and African American Culture in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” Contemporary Literature. 40.1 (Spring 1999): 85-110.

Douglas discusses the presence and influence of African American jazz music on Kerouac’s writing. He points out the social trend of white men like Kerouac and the Beat generation who considered themselves as outsiders, identifying themselves with the black culture, also on the margin of the societal structure.

Maloney, Thomas N. “African American Migration to the North: New Evidence for the 1910s.” Economic Inquiry. 40.1 (January 2002): 1-11.

Maloney studies the history and statistical data of African American migration from southern rural areas to the urban North during the twentieth century. He describes in detail many of the motivations that led African Americans to leave their homes in the South, the changes in these motivations throughout the century, and how it affected the African American groups and the northern areas in which they settled. This article is relevant as it gives a background for and portrayal of a unique image of traveling, movement, and the road from the perspective of an African American on the move to a new life.

Mason, Mary G. “Travel as a Metaphor and reality in Afro-American Women’s Autobiogtaphy, 1850-1972” Black American Literature Forum. Vol. 24 (Summer 1990): 337-356.

Mason traces the use of the road in African American autobiography, focusing on female authors. The article begins with the use of the road as a direct reference to escape in slave narratives and records how it changes and eventually becomes a metaphor in modern autobiography. Mason believes that women’s travel literature is falsely depicted as something belonging to white women. This article is relevant because it portrays the road as not exclusively white and masculine, and as an integral part of African-American literature.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1988.

Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, is centered on the friendship of two women in a predominately African-American community, but it also deals with issues of racism and community. These issues are seen in part during the continual cycle of leaving and returning from the Bottom that involves most of the characters in the novel.

Rodnon, Stewart. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man: Thematic and Structural Comparisons.” Negro American Literature Forum. Vol. 4 (July 1970): 45-51.

The article compares motifs and themes in The Adventures of Huckleberry, by Mark Twain, and Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. Rodnon pays special attention to the idea of a journey and the idea of a traveling protagonist. The author believes travel and how it relates to African-Americans to be an important factor in both novels. The article’s relevance is apparent as it attempts successfully to relate travel to what it means to be African-American in a white America.

Shannon, Sandra G., “A Transplant That Did Not Take: August Wilson’s views on the Great Migration.” African American Review. 31.4 (1997): 659-667.

In this article, Sandra Shannon discusses the views of the playwright August Wilson, whose writing was known for depicting African-Americans of the 20th century and who argues that the migration to the Northern United States was ill suited for African Americans. Examples of the idea of negative effects of northward migration in Wilson’s work are discussed, as well as interviews given by the playwright which contend that the illusion of better conditions in the North, a main reason for migration, did not hold true.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York, New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1982.

This source is good because it provides a fictionalized account of what it was really like to be “on the road” at such a trying time as the time of the Underground Railroad. It provides a look into the world of not only being a black person during this time, but what it was like to be a woman traveling the road at that time.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.

In this classic American novel, Huck Finn and Jim experience road travel from the perspective of a young white male and a black slave. Jim's journey comes to represent the experience of many African Americans during the 19th century as Twain focuses his discussion on the theme of slavery. This source focuses on a black man's travel on a mainly white road.

White, Debra Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman? New York, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 1990.

This nonfiction text describes what it was like to have been an African American traveling many different roads throughout the era of slavery. It spotlights on what it was like for people faced with the challenges of escaping and going along the Underground Railroad. This is helpful, because it depicts the hardships faced, not just the good aspects that were along the Underground Railroad.

Wideman, John Edgar. Brothers and Keepers. New York: Random House, Inc., 1984.

John Wideman, an African American man, describes in his memoir his struggle to get out of Homewood, an all-black section of Pittsburgh, and his younger brother Robby’s journey from home as well. The two men lead very different lives, as John gets an education and becomes a professor and a writer, while Robby deals in drugs, theft, and gangs, ultimately going to jail.