The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature

No truly canonical literary text has emerged from the civil rights movement, which is plausibly defined in chronological terms as 1954 to 1968. Therefore the relationship of literature to the social and political change promoting racial equality has to be elastic in the boundaries that critical scholarship formulates. Black identity and the struggle beyond formal civic rights therefore serve as markers for how fiction and poetry might be understood and appreciated in reflecting, if not necessarily promoting, a more just American society.