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In trying to understand the origins of African American literature, I have taken what many may find to be an unusual approach. For one thing, this study is something other than a survey of major African Ameri- can authors and their works, although, of course, they occupy center stage. Rather, it is an effort to investigate the historical conditions for an African American literary enterprise. It is an effort to understand why and how black women and men came to do the literary work they did, as well as why, during its more than a century of early development, such work took the various shapes it did.