ABSTRACT
The impact of black expatriate writers upon American society began to subside. Black Americans themselves began to criticize expatriates who chose to live abroad, even going so far as to view the words “exile” or “expatriate” as misnomers. The most devastating attack on black expatriate writers in the 1960s came from Larry Neale’s poem “For Black Writers and Artists in Exile”. The most well-known black expatriate living since the post-War generation—one who continues to live abroad —is James Emanuel, the poet. Reason for the demise of black expatriation is that black women writers have risen to occupy the centre of African American literature. One consequence of the women’s movement has been to de-emphasize or offset the expatriate tradition, perhaps unconsciously, since women writers as a group do not stress expatriate themes, ideas, or motifs. The rise of black women writers suggests the idea that black expatriation has been of primarily male interest.
