Travel Writing in African American Literature:Reflecting Ethnicity and Reconstructing Spiritual Homeland
Travel literature,depicting spatial movement,recounts dynamic displacement and spiritual journey of the persona.African American writing of travel,with evident political implications,highlights the reflections of African American people on ethnicity and racial relationships while it deals with self-definition,identification,and"reconstruction"of history and"home-land".The writing,manifested usually in the genres of fiction,poetry and drama,teems with real movement accounts and factu-al descriptions despite its imaginary features.Such kind of writing reflects the social experiences of African diaspora in the Unit-ed States from the perspective of literature,embodies their reproaches and criticism on the Western colonialism,hegemony and ethnocentrism,and gives voices of African Americans who attempt to define themselves and reconstruct their spiritual homeland in literary forms.
African American literaturetravel writingethnicityspiritual homelandsocial political motives