What is African American Literature?

<p>The idea of African American literature may be much more than literature written by authors who identify as black.<i> What is African American literature?</i> focuses on feeling as form in order to show that African American literature is an archive of feelings, a tradition of the tension between uncontainable black affect and rigid historical structure. Crawford argues that the textual production of affect (such as blush, vibration, shiver, twitch, and wink) reveals that African American literature keeps reimagining a black collective nervous system.</p>