African American poetry frequently challenges master narratives that justify slavery, segregation, racial hierarchy, national innocence, or simplistic historical memory. By exposing omissions, distortions, and ideological framing, poets create counter-histories rooted in lived Black experience. The term helps explain why many poems revisit official versions of patriotism, justice, civilisation, or progress, revealing how dominant stories often exclude or suppress African American voices and historical realities.

The master narrative in the context of African American poetry refers to dominant white supremacist accounts of American history that position Black people as peripheral, inferior, or absent, and that have been institutionalised in education, media, and official culture. African American poets have consistently worked to identify, deconstruct, and replace master narratives with more truthful and complex accounts. Students should understand that challenging a master narrative is not simply adding Black content to an existing framework but questioning the framework itself. Related terms include counterstory, countermemory, revisionist history, and talking book. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Toni Morrison's critical essays (particularly "Playing in the Dark") provide essential theoretical context.