The Absent ManAs the first African American fiction writer to achieve a national reputation, Ohio native Charles W. Chesnutt (18581932) in many ways established the terms of the black literary tradition now exemplified by such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Charles Johnson. Following the highly autobiographical nonfiction produced by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other slave narrative writers, Chesnutts complex, multi layered short fiction