African Americans in literature.

Much critical debate has surrounded William Faulkner's treatment of race relations in the South; indeed, it is difficult to believe that a white Southern male could transcend the psychosocial realities that led to racial divisions in the post-Civil War South. However, Faulkner, as the "well-endowed" Aristotelian poet, was able to involve himself in the emotions he sought to imitate, and thus was able to transcend racial issues in the compact fictive space he established. Intent upon mastering the intricacies of the short story, Faulkner, the self-admitted "failed poet," utilizes this genre to construct a subtle yet powerful critique of hypocritical racial divisions common in the postbellum South. The silences and subversive sympathies that abound in such short stories as "Dry September" and "That Evening Sun" are caught up within the confines of this fictive space, provoking the reader to resolve the discrepancies that purposefully exist.

Toni Morrison's purpose in her novels is to encourage her readers to imitate her heroes' journey in their own lives. Through her protagonists' successes and failures on their monomythic quests (to use the term of Joseph Campbell), Morrison educates her readers. Campbell states that a successful hero must complete three phases: separation, initiation, and return. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove's poor choices cause failure; she stays in the separation phase. Milkman Dead from Song of Solomon reaches the initiation stage but fails to return with his boon. Denver of Beloved is the only successful heroine; she returns to the world with a treasure, providing Morrison's readers with a fully heroic model.

If mid-twentieth-century African-American authors based discussions of race in America on the theories of prominent Franco-African writers, African-American writers such as Richard Wright were also highly influential in discussions of race in the French literary context. Wright's novel Native Son focuses on protagonist Bigger Thomas, a young black man who accidentally commits murder. After realizing how the white community has interpreted his act, Bigger tries without success to break free of "double consciousness," or fragmented subjectivity, first articulated by W. E. B. DuBois. Boris Vian's text J'irai cracher sur vos tombes problematizes Wright's literary analysis of race through protagonist Lee Anderson, an explicit literary reworking of Bigger. Lee, in deliberately passing as white in order to murder two women, displays a more deliberate subjectivity. The act of passing erodes the legal foundation of black segregation and highlights a more active subjectivity, yet it also displays the limitations encoded in that act.