For decades and even today, writing by people of color has been relegated to the Social Studies section of bookstores rather than the literature section.  Imagine Black Boy or House Made of Dawn in the African American Culture and Native American Culture sections rather than the fiction sections of stores.  Probably worse, writing by people of color has been dismissed as the confessional writing of complainers.  The writing is too autobiographical, too political, too much about reality and not artistic enough...after all, writing is an art.  Those who argue for a canon of dead white European males argue that "ethnic" writing is just that--ethnic.  It has everything to do with color and nothing to do with truth or beauty or art.

John F. Kennedy once said, "We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."  What happens when we ignore writing by those who may be different than us is that we ignore someone's truth.  For instance, for many of us in this class, it may be difficult to imagine the painful contemplation of how we will buy groceries for the next week or what it is like to be rejected because of an accent in our speaking.  I'm sure there are a few cases, but in general that truth of life is unknown.  Some will argue that if we were to take the work of the literary canon as truth, we would know that the serenity of nature can bring us to the meaning of life, that love can conquer all or will undoubtedly lead to our demise, and that art is for the few, not the many.

So, let's expand the canon to include the many and not just the few (who are too much alike in too many ways).  Let's endeavor to learn the many truths of experience that humans endure rather than the concerns of those who may have only one perspective to share, a perspective that may altogether be unknown to us.  And let's look at what Amiri Baraka suggests.  We need to figure out what literature is, how we criticize it, what affects writers, and what writers write.

--Amiri Baraka, 1998