Vernacular Tradition in African American Literature
Throughout all of the literary works that we've read, vernacular tradition has been expressed in various forms. Ranging from dialect, religious folklore, and ancestral acknowledgements, vernacular tradition is not confined to a specific genre. As expressed by Oxford Bibliographies , vernacular in African American Literature "permeates nearly every cultural aspect of black lives and history throughout the African diaspora." Vernacular tradition of African American literature conveys so many aspects of African American lives and history, passing on culture, history, and tradition across generations. It also acts a way of challenging dominant literary norms present at the time. In this blog, I'm going to be focusing on three examples of how vernacular tradition has presented itself in our texts. Religious folklore, specifically Christian folklore, is a significant aspect of the vernacular tradition present in African Amer...