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Glenda R. Carpio, What Comes After African-American Literature?, American Literary History, Volume 26, Issue 4, Winter 2014, Pages 824–835, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/aju060
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Much of the critical attention given to Kenneth Warren's What Was African American Literature? (2011) has focused on the question of periodization—on Warren's bold claim that African-American literature, as a product of Jim Crow American culture is over—and, to a lesser extent, on the much needed challenge he presents to academic work that claims a politically representative and galvanizing effect with respect to a broadly defined black community. It's to our disadvantage that the former point of focus has tended to obfuscate the latter for Warren's most productive provocation may just be a call to move the study of African-American literature in new directions. Responding to Mark Christian Thompson's assessment of his book in the pages of this journal, Warren concludes by stating: “If I have any reason for optimism about the future … it rests upon my hope that what might come after African-American literature might be a more fruitful study of African-American literature” (973).
