How Did Slavery Affect American Literature

How did slave narrative effect American Literature? NO 2ND PERSON “YOU” Slavery has always been a touchy subject that people don’t like to talk about. It’s a pivotal part of American history. Even in literature, played an important role in developing it. Slaves would write personal or fictional about the horrific things they encountered. These records showed what a black man had to endure during his time, and called for the end of slavery as a whole. So of course these documents should be considered as American literature, not only because of its unique use of grammar and punctuation but also it shows a side that many would have never experienced. Slave narratives have been showing people the lives of slaves for hundreds of years. With its gritty imagery and descriptive wording, these stories were not afraid to make you feel sick. Primarily written in the American south, these stories gave people a way to see what really was going on in their country, “In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, slave narratives were an important means of opening a
Before these narratives gained popularity, black people weren’t really allowed to speak what was on their minds. If they ever spoke at the wrong time they would be beaten, if they ever tried to stand up to their owner they would be whipped. These stories let black people speak up and say what was on their mind. At least for the ones that could read and write: it let them feel more free because they could write down all their thoughts. It was all original as well “This dialogue is implicit in the very structure of the antebellum slave narrative, which generally centers on an African American's narrative but is prefaced by a white-authored text and often is appended by white authenticating documents” (Andrews). So other than a white author writing stories about slaves, slaves wrote down things they had experienced other than just making