Black readers often enter an introductory African American literary studies course expecting to learn more about Black history, and that expectation can place instructors and texts in the position of redirecting attention toward the imaginative, formal, and aesthetic dimensions of the field.
I wanted to test whether the Literary Navigator Device might clarify the basis, and the limits, of this expectation concerning history and literary production. I began by selecting “Novel” as the reading form and “21st century” as the period of publication, maintaining these filters throughout the search. The Navigator yields 932 contemporary novels by Black writers.
Next, I selected “Historical fiction” as the genre, which yielded 57 titles. After clearing that genre filter, I selected “Neo-slave narrative,” which produced 18 results. These results suggest that while historically oriented narratives remain visible and influential, they constitute a relatively small portion of contemporary Black fiction.
The expectation that African American literature primarily revisits the past reflects a narrow slice of the field rather than its full range. The Literary Navigator Device makes it possible to see that a much larger number of novels fall outside of a literature-as-history framework.
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