ABSTRACT
Black Writers Abroad proposes to be an in-depth study of black American writers who, for whatever reasons, left the United States as expatriates or exiles, notwithstanding the fact that most of them eventually returned. Though travel writing, as a descriptive account of an author’s observation and activities while journeying, has always been integral to black American literature, slave narrative authors developed this literature to its most meaningful extent in the nineteenth century. Spirituals are additionally important because, despite their specifically Christian symbols and messages, they voiced the desire, among many African American slaves, to be released from subjugation and repatriated with their homeland. Since the nineteenth century, American race prejudice stemming from the slave past, provided the overwhelming reason or motive for why black authors fled their native environments, though some authors were forced to leave under conditions that did not allow choice, while others had more freedom to choose.
