American Dream in Song of Solomon, Narrative Frederick Douglass, Life o

American envisage in Song of Solomon, tarradiddle of Frederick Douglass, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Push In an era where knowledge is power, the emphasis on literacy in African American texts is undeniable. Beginning with the first African American literary works, the break ones back narratives, through the canons more recent successes such as Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon and Sapphires Push, the topic of literacy is almost inextricably connected to granting immunity and power. A closer investigation, however, leads the reader to another, less direct, message indicating that perhaps this belief in literacy as a pathway to the American Dream of freedom and amicable and financial success is contradictory or, at least, insufficient in friendly and heathenish terms. In this way, African American literature reconstructs the American Dream into an even more complex dream deferred. In his introduction to The mere Slave Narratives, heat content Louis Gates, Jr. sta tes In literacy lay true freedom for the black slave, (ix). Such is the case for Frederick Douglass whose initial tutelage by his mistress, Mrs. Auld, and the accompanying denial of such tutelage by Mr. Auld enlightens Douglass to an entirely young train of thought, which allows him to understand the pathway from slavery to freedom, (275). Understanding that maintaining the illiteracy of the slave population was the white mans power to enslave the black man (275), Douglass realizes that accomplishment to read is a potential pathway for freedom from the chains of slavery. It is here, however, that the note between freedom from slavery and the freedom inherent in the political orientation of the American Dream begin to breakdown what Harvey Graff terms the literacy myth.... ...n the successful duologue of not just illiteracy, but of a history of social and cultural denial. Such is the nature of the dream deferred. WORKS CITED Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl . The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. new York Penguin Group, 1987. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York Penguin Group, 1987. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Introduction. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York Penguin Group, 1987. ix-xviii. Graff, Harvey J. The Literacy legend Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City. New York Academic Press, 1979. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York The Penguin Group, 1977. Sapphire. Push. New York Vintage Contemporaries, 1996.