Editing Western canon (section)

====African-American authors====
In the twentieth century, the Western literary canon started to include African writers not only from [[African-American literature|African-American writers]], but also from the [[African diaspora|wider African diaspora]] of writers in Britain, France, Latin America, and Africa. This correlated largely with the shift in social and political views during the [[civil rights movement]] in the United States.  The first global recognition came in 1950 when [[Gwendolyn Brooks]] was the first African American to win a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for Literature. American [[Toni Morrison]] was the first African-American woman to win the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], in 1993.

Some early African-American writers were inspired to defy ubiquitous [[Racism|racial prejudice]] by proving themselves equal to [[European American]] authors. As Henry Louis Gates Jr., has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture."<ref name = "Stryz_p140">"The Other Ghost in Beloved: The Specter of the Scarlet Letter" by Jan Stryz from ''The New Romanticism: a collection of critical essays'' by Eberhard Alsen, p. 140, {{ISBN|0-8153-3547-4}}.</ref>

African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity."<ref name = "Stryz_p140"/> This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the [[African diaspora]], African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and [[patriarchal]] power."<ref>Quote from Marjorie Pryse in "The Other Ghost in Beloved: The Specter of the Scarlet Letter" by Jan Stryz, from ''The New Romanticism: a collection of critical essays'' by Eberhard Alsen, p. 140, {{ISBN|0-8153-3547-4}}.</ref> In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of the European intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for African-American political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, most famously by [[W. E. B. Du Bois]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mason|first=Theodore O. Jr.|date=1997|title=African-American Theory and Criticism|url=http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/free/african-american_theory_and_criticism-_1.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000115080159/http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/free/african-american_theory_and_criticism-_1.html|archive-date=2000-01-15|access-date=2005-07-06|website=The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism}}</ref>
[[File:WoleSoyinka2015.jpg|thumb|Nobel laureate [[Wole Soyinka]] in 2015.]]