Tutti Ad Libitum by Anna Julia Cooper — Read

For nations as for individuals, a product, to be worthy the term literature, must contain something characteristic and sui generis.

So long as America remained a mere English colony, drawing all her life and inspiration from the mother country, it may well be questioned whether there was such a thing as American literature. "Who ever reads an American book? " it was scornfully asked in the eighteenth century. Imitation is the worst of suicides; it cuts the nerve of originality and condemns to mediocrity: and 'twas not till the pen of our writers was dipped in the lifeblood of their own nation and pictured out its own peculiar heartthrobs and agonies that the world cared to listen. The nightingale and the skylark had to give place to the mockingbird, the bobolink and the whippoorwill, the heather and the bluebells of Britain, to our own goldenrod and daisy; the insular and monarchic customs and habits of thought of old England must develop into the broader, looser, freer swing of democratic America, before her contributions to the world of thought could claim the distinction of individuality and gain an appreciative hearing.