...Discovering African American Literature Rebekah Valcarcel Eng/301 November 30th, 2015 Dr. Julie Kares The art of storytelling invites readers into another world. Examining the literary conventions African American authors use allows readers to compare and contrast literary works. Harriet A. Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Terry McMillan’s The End and Maya Angelou’s Willie are significant literary pieces to discuss. It is important to consider factors such as historical, socio-political and cultural climate because these factors contribute and influence an author’s point of view as well as each author’s unique voice and message depending on the time period. Harriet A. Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is a slave narrative. The literary conventions of the slave narrative define the work. Slave narratives echo biblical stories that often reflect persecuted groups attempting to escape to freedom. Jacobs’s piece details her struggle to escape her master from sexual abuse. Vivanco (2003), “The process from sin to rebirth in spiritual autobiographies is paralleled by the process from slavery to freedom in slave narratives. Slaves experience a change from chattel, enduring suffering, to man or woman living in the Promised Land, the North,” (para. 5). Further distinction of the slave narrative is how authors shape the story, often chronologically. Slave narratives illustrate an author’s personal experience though many share common themes of extreme...
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...major themes in American literature that have Caucasians playing the heroic protagonist whereas the African American plays the antagonist. African Americans are seen as the dark, or the wrong within media. Throughout history most African Americans play minor characters that add conflict to stories such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. American history of race has impacted the world and created problematic stereotypes. “I pointed out that cultural identities are formed and informed by a nation's literature. What seemed to be on the "mind" of the literature of the United States was the self-conscious but highly problematic construction of the American as a new white...
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...facing African-Americans aside from the modern prison industrial complex. I selected this topic to review because suicide rates amongst African-American high school students has been on the rise for many years, in 2015, (10.2%) African-American females and (7.2%) African-American males tried to commit suicide (Center for Disease Control, 2015). Seeing this rise and the fact that more than half of the recent suicide population are African-American males is an alarming trend. Sadly, you do not hear about African-American people killing themselves, or thinking about suicide, or even having mental problems that would lead to suicidal ideation. This literature review paper, will discuss different sociocultural factors affecting the increase of suicide amongst African-Americans. The subgroups include men, women, and the adolescent age group within the African-American community. Some areas of mention are the prevalence of suicide within each group, the risk of suicide versus protective factors within each group, and the risk factors in each group....
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...African American literature is surprising, captivating, and spirited. Once you start reading a story it is easy to get caught up in the tale being told. The descriptive nature of the works makes it easy to relate to them. Throughout my readings thus far in the class I have noticed some common themes that reoccur in many of the stories and poems. Of course slavery was a very common topic but there were others such as inequality between the races and sexes, injustice and resentment, the black identity, and a strong faith and religion. Even though the words can be separated in the end they all come back together. There were many narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era. These narratives document slave life from the perspective of first-hand experience. The stories they tell are dark and ugly. The authors like Douglas and Jacobs reveal the struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs of slaves in absorbingly personal story-telling. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. In it she describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women. She also recounts her life in slavery in the context of family relationships with her escape and her struggle to free her children. Fredrick Douglas who wrote Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself...
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...The formation of self-identity is a process each of us must go through on our journey to adulthood. The development of a system by which to lead our adult lives is difficult for all children, but especially for African American children. In addition to defining their personal character, they must define themselves in terms of their culture and nationality – African American and American. One of the ways in which black children create their self-identity is through the illustrations they see in the literature they are exposed to. We look to African American children’s books to help promote self-esteem, cultural identity, and pride for African American children. As books are read to them, children concentrate on the images, and become subject to the impressions these images create. Children’s books that are authentic to African American culture, physicality and intelligence are few and far between. With consideration to our theme, “Black Literary Contemplations on Thomas Jefferson and Western Enlightenment Ideologies of Race and Humanity” and Thomas Jefferson’s Query XIV, it is my belief that the images in children’s literature are important to development of self- identity and esteem in African American children. In Query XIV, in his comparison of whites and blacks, Thomas Jefferson commented on the beauty of whites and blacks, and critiqued blacks because of their “immovable veil of black” and lack of flowing hair. He then stated that black men favored white women over black...
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...Comparison Approaching the end of forced slavery, birth was given to the new genre of literature. Fugitive Slave Narratives, the new genre, have become highly recognized in the literary world. These narratives have been analyzed thoroughly by scholars, as well as influenced the enhancement of learning today. Well-known author, Frederick Douglass, was able to recollect and share his childhood through his book entitled “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” Slave Narrative author, Harriet Jacobs, also shared her slave childhood through her book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Both authors take out a piece of them and put it down on paper for the public to be aware of the things they suffered through. However, the contrast in their gender influences the differences in their experiences. Although it would be coming to an end, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs were born into slavery. Together, they suffered pain and agony of seeing things that children should see. In recalling their childhood, both authors can remember pain. Douglass watched African-American men and women beaten by their masters for any or no reason at all. Jacobs had her family torn apart from her every time one of her masters died. The two wrote explaining not only their suffering and agony, but also their excitement. Douglass was being taught to read and write by his mistress and even when she was instructed to discontinue his teachings, he continued to learn any way he saw fit. When...
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...A Quest for Being: Analysing the obstacles Frederick Douglass had to overcome to establish an autonomously emancipated and intelligible African American identity in his autobiographical writing Table of Contents 1. Douglass' Conflict - "Double Consciousness" 2. Factual Inconsistencies in the Crafting Process of African American Identity 2.1. Douglass' Silences on the World beyond the US 2.2. Contradictions in Douglass' Autobiographies 3. The Challenge of Establishing Douglass' Intended African American Identity 3.1. The Contented Slave 3.2. Slave Laws and Types of Mankind 3.3. Heteronomous Submission vs. Autonomous Emancipation 4. An Intelligible Paragon of African American Identity Written Outline Frederick Douglass, though encountering various obstacles, "went from being not even considered fully human according to US law to representing the US government" (Nwankwo 146) in Haiti as consul. His autobiographical writing is considered to be a paramount example of the southern slave's "quest for being" (Baker 34), however, in regard to W.E.B. Du Bois' conception of "double consciousness", Douglass, in his autobiographies, is virtually silent on the Black world beyond the United States to be able to emancipate African Americans, which he characterized as "a nation, in the midst of a nation which disowns them" (Dixon 251), on US soil. To gain a better understanding of Douglass arguments about Black identity in the United States, these silences on the...
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...his legacy based off of both because both skills made him who he is to African Americans today. Fredrick Douglass was a former slave who played a major role as civil rights activist during the time of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed. His experience as a former slave enabled him to gain sympathy for his cause, and he was very influential in the attainment of rights for African Americans. A great orator, his speeches had a great impact on abolitionists and further inspired them to fight for the freedom and equality of blacks. People compared him to another Martin Luther King of the 19th century. In his literacy life his speeches and his publications are a part of American culture history and mostly African American literature and politics. Fredrick Douglass has written 3 autobiographies and they are looked as some of the strongest influences in the slave narrative literary genre. In his autobiography he tells learned how to write from the white children in the neighborhood and by also observing the writing with men he worked with. He quoted that "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom. He stood by his quote and continued to learn how to read and write and ended up teaching other slaves how to read at a local Sunday school. In one of his works he also quoted that “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” This shows that he forever praised other African American slaves out there that once you are able to read and write there’s much...
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...conflicting battles by various readers since the first print of the novel, though inspiring some. Says John H. Wallace, outraged by Twain’s constant use of the degrading and white supremacist word ‘nigger’, "[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is] the most grotesque example of racist trash ever written" (Mark Twain Journal by Thadious Davis, Fall 1984 and Spring 1985). Yet, again to counter that is a quote by the great American writer Ernest Hemingway, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…it’s the best book we’ve had…There has been nothing as good since" (The Green Hills of Africa [Scribner’s. 1953] 22). The controversy behind the novel has been and will always remain the crux of any readers is still truly racism. Twain surely does use the word ‘nigger’ often, both as a referral to the slave Jim and any African-American that Huck comes across and as the epitome of insult and inferiority. However, the reader must also not fail to recognize that this style of racism, this malicious treatment of African-Americans, this degrading attitude towards them is all stylized of the pre-Civil War tradition. Racism is only mentioned in the novel as an object of natural course and a precision to the actual views of the setting then. Huckleberry Finn still stands as a...
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...American Realism The Civil War tore the country apart. Once America was reunited in 1865, there was a lot of healing that needed to take place to correct the wounds Americans had suffered at the hands of their kin. In these years there were still a lot of questions to answer and still a lot of truth to be found out about the nation itself. The questions of the place of African-Americans, white Americans, political Americans and every other kind of American out there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s...
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...James Clifford T. Santos Dr. Jocelyn Martin LIT 127.2 (Postcolonial Literature II) Ateneo De Manila University 10 February 2014 Of Interpreters, Schools, and Courts: An Analysis of the Postcolonial Themes of Language, Education, and Power in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Through his awareness of the European literary tradition of negatively stereotyping the African natives as uncivilized peoples and putting the West in the pedestal in terms of cultural superiority and advancement (Guthrie 51-52), it can be asserted that the renowned African novelist and intellectual Chinua Achebe may had realized, at one point in his life, that in order to have a more realistic portrayal of the dynamics of Western and non-Western contact, there is a need to break such convention which undeniably favours the West. Perhaps, this is the reason why Achebe had written Things Fall Apart in such a way that it provides readers the African point of view of culture, identity and colonization thereby eradicating the dominant and unwarranted perception that the peoples of Africa are mere savages that have no customs, beliefs and traditions. Indeed, by providing a somewhat balanced approach in portraying the dynamic societal changes experienced by the Ibo people due to the conflict between their traditional culture and the foreign culture brought by their English colonizers primarily through religious and educational instruction, Things Fall Apart indubitably qualifies as a relevant and interesting...
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...Yogendran Professor Frank Runcie Postcolonial Literature: Africa 09 March 2015 In Chinua Achebe’s Death Men’s Path, the main focus was to share a narrative, which emphasize the conflict between world-views and value systems. This story is about Michael Obi, a modern and ambitious young man who is appointed headmaster of the un-progressive Ndume Central School. Obi hopes to clean up the educational mission field and speed up its Christianizing mission. Chinua Achebe’s The Education of a British-Protected Child and Colonialist Criticism leads the readers to thoroughly understand Dead Men's Path. In Colonist Criticism, the author criticizes the enduring colonialism in the criticism of African literature by non-Africans. The writer states, "If the text is judged from European perspective a text doesn't get right evaluation and the essence of the text is killed" which shows Achebe’s disagreement on the European colonial injustice, a habit of ruling and discriminating other and comparing African people their literature, art and culture. He argues that African literature should not be judged with the official literature since it has its own particularity. The mask of European civilization does not know the history of African people. So Achebe's claim is that colonized people should write their own history disregarding what has been already universalized. According to Achebe, there are two problems with Universalism; first every literature must speak of their own place and culture....
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...Unfortunately, the days of going to the library to take out books, and speaking with a librarian for help on research rarely happens anymore. That’s why studying literature, and researching topics is essential for us students. Literature can be described as a language. It has been expressed for centuries and throughout different countries and cultures. Literature is a work of art, which has been spoken in different structures and also for many diverse reasons. I believe that literature is another way to view our historical past as well. Throughout history, society has been grateful exposed to different styles of literature; non-fiction, fiction, poems, plays, etc. Literature has a variety of styles; American literature, Irish literature, African American literature, and also Women’s literature are only a few examples. I am charmed by Women’s literature, everything from Annie Bradstreet to Judy Blume. My focus is to show how women portray a major role in the making of great literature, and also their existence in the works of art themselves. Distressingly, for years we women didn’t have a voice and our ideas were pushed aside. An American Editor Joan Goulianos wrote, “There exists a rich and complex literature by women that goes back to the Middle Ages, a literature that consists of diaries, of autobiographies…of stories- a literature in which women wrote about their lives and from which women and men today can draw insight about theirs.” I want to examine literary works and extract examples...
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...The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, created by Mark Twain, is a highly controversial literature piece. The book has sparked countless debates about it’s vulgar word choices and its different themes. In the biography of Mark Twain, it was highlighted that the novel was banned in many countries and libraries due to its controversial themes (113). I do not believe the novel should be banned. I believe it is symbolic of the South and highlights the Southern culture during the age of slavery. The novel does not sugar code the way the South was during slavery. I believe some may want to ban the book because of the offensive language and themes; however, banning the book, bans the true history of the South. In the Mark Twain biography, Mark Twain...
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...1. Literature of the 17th century. John Milton. “Paradise Lost”. John Bunyan. “Pilgrim’s Progress”. The peculiarities of the English literature of the 17th century are determined by the events of the Engl. Bourgeois Revolution, which took place in 1640-60. King Charles I was beheaded in 1649& General Oliver Cromwell became the leader of the new government. In 1660, shortly after Cro-ll’s death, the dynasty of the Stuarts was restored. The establishment of new social&eco-ic relations, the change from feudal to bourgeois ownership, escalating class-struggle, liberation movement and contradictions of the bourgeois society found their reflection in lit-re. The main representatives of this period is: John Milton: was born in London&educated at Christ’s College. He lived a pure life believing that he had a great purpose to complete. At college he was known as the The Lady of Christ’s. he Got master’s degree at Cambridge. It’s convenient to consider his works in 3 divisions. At first he wrote his short poems at Horton. (The Passion, Song on May Morning, L’Allegro). Then he wrote mainly prose. His 3 greatest poems belong to his last group. At the age of 23 he had still done little in life&he admits this in one of his sonnets. (On his 23d B-day) In his another sonnet he wrote on his own blindness. (On his Blindness) Milton wrote diff. kinds of works. His prose works were mainly concerned with church, affairs, divorce & freedom. The English civil war between Charles...
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