Celebration of Wilderness in Selected Afro-American Narratives

Abstract

The conception of wilderness established in the black American intellectual tradition poses a challenging and provocative option to the ecologist thought. In support of Afro-American writers, the wilderness is not completely divided from human society but has a vital historical and social aspect. Nor is it merely a quality of the external landscape; there is also a wilderness within, an imperative energy that draws from and connects one to the external wilderness. Wilderness is considered as the origin and root of culture; preserving it means preserving not merely the physical landscape but the whole collective memory of it. Other than this, the paper focuses on Afro-American writers who emphasize the slavery and racial essentialism that inculcates both their individual and traditional American ideas of the wild, giving us greater insight into why the wilderness celebrated by preservationists and a challenging worth for racial minorities.