The Significance of Southern Landscape to African Americans

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The Significance of Southern Landscape to African Americans
90% of African Americans live in the south hence the great deal of historical and cultural significance. This fact alone gives great importance to the emergence of African American traditions and the importance of their time spent in the southern landscapes tied to literature. The American South was categorized as a complicated landscape due to its pairing of slavery and oppression with beauty. The southern landscape, for many, was a place in which slavery and the separation from family began paired with the foundations of their cultural beliefs. What this means is that even throughout the troublesome experiences, this was a place for the birth of their lifelong traditions, cultural values, and a sense of family. Despite the region's conflation with these horrors. It also emerges in African American literature as a landscape of agrarian-based kinship, close community, and family networks. This paper will analyze the significance of the southern landscape to African Americans.   
Throughout their writings of the south, its identity is affected by both horrific events and the lush, beautiful, picturesque landscapes they inhabited together. Frederick Douglass, in his memoir, mentions and highlights “Douglas was named Fredrick Augustus Bailey at birth. He took the name Douglas after he escaped from slavery with the assistance of hos future…." (Douglass 241). Throughout the readings, the conflict of home and the want for freedom from slavery are illustrated in narratives, songs, and personal memoirs. 
In the text "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston illustrates the importance of togetherness and a sense of place. Hurston mentions that “The house changed into a complete of humans each night. That is, all over the doorstep becomes full. some have been there to pay attention Tea Cake to select the container: a few got here to speak and inform memories, but a maximum of them came to get into anything game become occurring or would possibly move one" (Hurston 309). Hurston is giving the sense of place and togetherness; this is the complete opposite of the expected association with the daily life of someone living in the era of slavery. In the chapter three introduction, it is mentioned several times about the landscape harboring the birth of many African American traditions and family relationships along with the ho...