Donald C. Goellnicht has written:
[...] the acceptance of black literature and criticism has paved the way for the introduction of a host of other ethnic and/or "minority" literatures -- Asian American, Chicano, Native American, gay, Third World -- into the academy.
The road still shows signs of construction. It may be hardy to use the past tense. The road is still being paved by many different writers, critics, readers and students. If writers, critics and readers can value (differently) verbal constructions as both art and as documentary, then the tension between aesthetic statement and politcal demand may slacken. If the double-voiced didactic is a condition of the diaspora, if the manifesto is the mode of the multicultural, are we, whoever we are, not like the poet, Essex Hemphill, wanting to remember "the exact practices/ of civility", to remember "the nobility of decency"?
Rituals of scrutiny, ceremonies of judgments, to know, to do, these are the components of a folklore practice, these are the themes and means of a body of literature. And that folklore and that literature continue to act as guiding objects. The question becomes who are they guiding where?
Ntozake Shange Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Octavia Butler Wild Seed
Alice Walker The Third Life of Grange Copeland
Nalo Hopkinson Brown Girl in the Ring
Toni Cade Bambera The Salt Eaters
Samuel Delany "Time Considered As A Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
Zora Neale Hurston The Sanctified Church
Ishamel Reed Mumbo Jumbo
Assotto Saint Spells of a Voodoo Doll
Bill T. Jones Last Night on Earth
Audre Lorde Zami
Julie Dash Daughters of the Dust
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