on WHAT WAS AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

"The dialogue that is African American literature really gets going with the slave narrative, the first book-length manuscript of which was published by Olaudah Equiano in 1789." --Chris Jaynes

Professor Jaynes, recently ejected from a tenure track position, goes on to make clear that he does not confuse the goals to which African American literature might be directed with its ontological status as a literature, and writes of it, I note, in the present tense. But then what would he know; he couldn't even hang on to a tenure track in a literature department. Worse still, he is a fictional character, an African American fictional character inhabiting the dialogue that constitutes a literature called "African American." See PYM, by Mat Johnson.