ABSTRACT
Students studying literature often either resist or have difficulties engaging with African-American writers’ literary texts, and, by failing to engage with the texts, they fail to evoke the lived-through experience that defines literature (Rosenblatt, 1983). Telling my students about the importance of African-American literature and the connection it has to their lives does not make it real to them. They have to experience it for themselves. As Janie tells Phoeby, “It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you [sic] got to go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh” (Hurston, 1937/1990, p. 183). Thus, a major goal of a teacher of an African-American literature class populated predominantly by White, middle-class students is to evolve strategies that will enable readers to engage with African-American literary text worlds. A large part of the problem in resistant reading is that many students are unable to respond to the vivid textual images and metaphors so characteristic of and so vital to literature in general and African-American literature in particular. Confused by the unfamiliarity of African-American imagery, they respond by either blocking the imagery or recasting images of difference as images of the same.
