The origin of Black British Literature is in slave narratives of the 18th century, in which the most famous author was Olaudah Equiano, with “The Interesting Narrative” (1789).
Olaudah Equiano - http://www.afilmcanon.com/storage/
Equiano sold thousand of copies to sympathizers of the Abolition movement in Britain Britain and in Europe as a free man. His story is full of descriptions of the affliction of slavery which makes Equiano be known as a courageous man. By using a creative and artistic language, he wanted to prove the capacity of creative of African people and therefore, prove that they deserved the same rights of white people.
Ignatius Sancho was the first African to publish a book in England
Ignatius Sancho - http://www.norfolkblackhistorymonth.org.uk
Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic . His parents died very early and, then, he was brought to England
As Equiano and Sancho, many Black people who were born as slaves, used their articulate and creative to establish a new strand of English literary culture. Surrended by the male-dominated world of the British Empire , Mary Seacole’s “Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands” (1857) was a rare record of a Black Woman’s experience.
Mary Seacole - http://picses.eu/domain/diversemag.co.uk/
She was born in Jamaica and, being a nurse, she treated diseases such as cholera and yellow fever all over the Latin America . Then, she went to London 1857, a benefit festival in her honor was held in the Royal Surrey Gardens
In the 20th century, Black British literature continued being an autobiographical mode, based on self-confession. In 1963, however, the Trinidadian Sam Selvan’s “The Lonely Londoners” started a new mode of Black literature: he revisited the grand historical sites of London
Sam Selvon’s “The Lonely Londoners” - http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/caribbean
Using West Indian Creole language as a likeable manner, Selvan also inspired the followed generation of Black authors of asserting the qualities of difference through the language they used.
Contemporary Black British literature continues to write about slave experiences. Some notable examples are Grace Nichols's “I is a Long Memoried Woman” (1983), Caryl Phillips's “Cambridge” (1991), David Dabydeen's “Turner” (1994), Fred D'Aguiar's “Feeding the Ghosts” (1997) and V.S. “Naipaul (A house for Mr. Biswasl”) (1961), which reminds the life of thousands of laborers shipped from India to work in the Caribbean plantations during the 19th century.
Some authors, like Linton Kwesi Johnson write on historical racial violence, while some others, like Faustin Charles write on victories over English teams by the West Indies . Raising a different kind of violence against women, the famous Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” tells a sexual abuse of a young girl by a cruel father.
Alice Walker - http://www.nndb.com/people
Others common themes on contemporary Black British literature are: loneliness, harassment and exploitation within a still racially determined British society.
Here we have a ninterview with Alice Walker in which she tells about the creation of “The Color Purple”.
Whatch it on youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uALf_v0zxgE
As we have seen, her novel sold over 5 million copies around the world and she was the first African-American woman able to receive this prestigious award. “The Color Purple” was so successful that Steven Spielberg, the famous movie director, made a movie based on it. We could note also that her novel was partially based on real experiences, full of slavery and racial violence, as they are most of the experiences lived or witnessed by the Black authors cited.
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