When does Contemporary African American Literature Begin?

As a grad student, I began my first serious studies in literature by examining this development known as “the new Black poetry” of the 1960s. It felt like a challenge, if not curse: I found myself repeatedly asking, "what’s so new about the new [insert just about anything]?”

 

I kinda feel bad for the students who enrolled in my classes in 2003, when I first started teaching at SIUE, because nearly every writing prompt was some version of, “what’s so new about the new [insert just about anything].”

 
In 2014, when the third edition of the Norton Anthology of African American literature was released, the editors referred to the last section as “the contemporary period,” and I was already primed to ask various questions about how they defined contemporary. 

Adding fuel to the fire, my new colleague Elizabeth Cali started at SIUE in 2014, and now I had an interlocutor who'd go back and forth with me on the question. 

 

Now, 10 years after the publication of the Norton, and about 25 years after I first started raising questions about what's new about the new this and that, I'm still wondering “when does contemporary African American literature begin?” or "What's new about the newest Black literature?" 

Related:

• Toward a Contemporary History of Black Persona Poems (2012)

• When did contemporary black poetry begin? (2014)

• Contemporary Black Poets vs. Contemporary Black Poetry (2014)

• The Norton and the challenge of covering the contemporary period of African American literature (2014)

• Toward Histories of Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (2016)

• When does contemporary African American literature begin? (2020)

• 1987 as a starting point for Contemporary African American Lit? (2020)