Flying African Americans: the trope of Black flight in 20th century literature

The myth of the flying African—who breaks the shackles of slavery, leaps into the air, and flies back to Africa—is a foundational story in the Black imagination and the African American literary tradition. Scholars read flight as movement away from a degrading, racist American society and towards a reestablished connection with the enslaved African’s indigenous roots. This interpretation is fitting for mid-nineteenth century narratives, but writers throughout the twentieth century have incorporated the image of Black flight in their own contemporary settings, demanding a reframing of the myth’s—and the sky’s—promises.

Relying on American social and literary history throughout the twentieth century and the role—and evolution—of folklore within the Black American literary tradition, my dissertation explores how Black writers have revised and renegotiated the trope of embodied flight to address forms of unfreedom in each author’s unique historical moment, focusing specifically on systems that attempt to delimit acceptable forms of Black masculinity. The texts examined here offer a feminist revision of the trope that calls for a more expansive construction of Black masculinity, while simultaneously redefining flight from a means of escape from the United States to a method of rising above the racist legacies of the Plantation. Ultimately, this project elucidates how these writers rely on the trope of embodied flight to rewrite hegemonic narratives of race, sexuality, and national belonging encoded in state power and cultural institutions, showing readers the possibility for a better, freer world.