African Quote by Chris Abani

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the…

— Chinua Achebe

Throughout African-American literature, the writer has, in a sense, been burdened by the necessity of pleading the case for the whole race. For example,…

— Glenn Ligon

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't…

— Toni Morrison

Literature has been a treacherous site for black Americans because literary production has been so tied with the project of proving our humanity through…

— Glenn Ligon

“African-American writers with an independent vision are often consigned to obscurity. The white critics can only tolerate one black writer at a time, usually…

— Ishmael Reed

I don't think there is any such thing as a black writer or a white writer. Ultimately, there is someone whom one reads.

— Derek Walcott

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has…

— James McBride

I started writing in the '90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what…

— Colson Whitehead

“Christianity,” Jones wrote, “encourages and orders” African people “to become more humble and better servants.” They should not learn to read and write, though.…

— Ibram X. Kendi

It is not quite true to say that I am not an advocate of writing in African languages. What I think is, one has…

— Chinua Achebe

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition.…

— Colson Whitehead

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

— Anonymous