ABSTRACT
Nationalist literary works use art forms to translate theoretical concepts into human emotions, actions, and reactions. Nationalist literary works derive their ethos from the cultural context of black America, what Addison Gayle calls the artifacts of black life, rather than striving for cross-cultural appeal. Nationalist literary works parallel the ideology, ideals, agencies, and social theories of nationalist political philosophy. Nationalist literary works tend to parallel the ideology, ideals, agencies, and social theory of nationalist philosophy and to draw on the artifacts of black life. Individual proclivity attributes of form prompted nationalist writers to experiment with a range of artistic technique. Nationalist drama occasionally depended heavily on interpretation, but interpretative ambiguity could be mitigated by stage directions in the script. As a counterpart to urban theater, Baraka encouraged small communities to form drama companies of from three to ten members who would collectively write, act, and produce their own plays for political and social groups within the black community.
