The 1960's is an important time for African American novels and their authors. It is a time when the authors finally had the ability to have their work read and appreciated by the literary nation. Before that most of the black authors in the nation were underappreciated and were not widely read. The civil rights movement, however, changed all of that. If you follow African American literature, you may have heard about one of the black authors who was unable to get her work widely read when she was alive, due to the stigma that was attached to being black. This author, however, still managed to get publish her novel, a feat that is considered by most to be amazing.
Phillis Wheatley was her name, and she was stolen from Africa when she was a very small child. When she moved to America she had no knowledge of the English language but was later taught it. She eventually learned to take her love of literature and to create her own stories. She wrote a collection of poems that was labeled as Poems on Various Subjects back in 1773, more than a hundred years before other African American authors were able to get their works published.
Now it's much easier for an African American writer to get their work published. The stigma that used to be attached to being an African American is no longer there, and anyone can write an ebook, making it much easier to get published than ever before.
