Alice, Maya, and Toni: Voices and Ancestors

Readings Covered: “Still I Rise,” (2156); and “My Arkansas” (2157); Morrison’s “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” 2286-2290; Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” 2430-2437)

The women pictured above should need no lengthy introduction; in fact, each should be readily recognizable: Moving clockwise, they are Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison. Each of these women contributed largely, in their unique ways, to creating a growing canon of African American women writers, who looked back to ancestors for strength, guidance, nurturing, and inspiration. Alice Walker once described her experience in writing her acclaimed novel, The Color Purple, as performing the task of mediumship: that is, she imagined herself as an interlocutor between her spiritual mentor, and the character of Celie. Walker, who is a well-respected essayist and novelist attributes much of her inspiration to Zora Neale Hurston, whom she rediscovered in 1970.

Angelou, whose best-selling and critically acclaimed autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings not only tells the story of one young child's struggle to overcome the horrific trials in her young life, but calls upon a forebear: Paul Laurence Dunbar's famous line resonates in the title. Finally, Morrison, in her essay "The Ancestor as Foundation," argues that the presence--or absence--of the ancestor in African American fiction tends to determine the happiness, or well-being of the protagonist. As you read samples of each woman's powerful contributions, notice the common desire to reach back in time to a sense of history and connectedness, and a grounding in common cultural memory. How does Morrison, for instance, describe what the African American novel should be in terms of expressing the African American (female's) experience? How does her focus on connection set the foundation for a future in African American literary expression?

Below is an excerpt from the motion picture adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. Here we find Baby Suggs, Holy during a sermon in a Hush Harbor. What do you notice about her language that seems familiar? Where else have you heard such entreaties to 'love' one's self, one's flesh? Further, what do you notice about the style of worship that harkens to indigenous Africana religion?

African American Musicians and Songwriters

Sarah Vaughan


Dinah Washington


Lena Horne


John Coltrane


Duke Ellington


Little Richard


Stevie Wonder


George Clinton and Parliament


Prince


Macy Gray

Exam Review

For the upcoming exam, you should be familiar with, and able to discuss the following terms:

Passing

Double-Consciousness

Modernism

Urban Realism

Sexual Racism

Harlem Renaissance

The Veil

Metaphor of “the gate”

Conventions of the Slave Narrative: “I Moment”; Episodes; Escape; Conversion Narrative; Acquisition of Literacy; Abolitionism

Miscegenation

Patriarchy

Hierarchy

Amanuensis

Authenticating Letter

You should also be able to recall some of the important narratives and figures we have discussed this semester. For instance, you should be able to answer such questions as the following:

1. She occupied a crawlspace in her grandmother's home for seven years in order to be close to her children.

2. He was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance who emphasized the importance of being a 'black poet'; he discovered in jazz music the spirit of African American culture. 

3. His Appeal raised the ire of white power structures in the South and his outspokenness on race matters furthered the cause of Abolition in the nineteenth century.

4. He was among the very first former slaves to publish his memoirs; before he achieved freedom he was dubbed Gustavus Vassa.

5. She was a formidable presence at over six feet tall, an electrifying stump speaker who renamed herself after the purpose she felt she had to spread God's word.

Our exam date (which also appears on your syllabus) is scheduled for December 14, 7:30-9:30 a.m.

Antislavery Tracts: David Walker's Appeal

As our text indicates, David Walker's Appeal was published in three editions between 1829 and 1830, and with each subsequent edition, Walker's tone and language increases in stridency and intensity--an audacious display of militancy that was in direct contradiction to the expectations of blacks during the early nineteenth century, especially. In this pamphlet, Walker decries the institution of slavery for its inhumanity, and assails white Christians for their hypocritical interpretation Scripture's divine justification of slavery. Concurrent with the publication of Walker's pamphlet, white Evangelical church organizations advocated the ownership of slaves as a Christian duty and slavery as a burdensome, but necessary evil. Without it, it was argued, the integrity of the social structure in the South would be undermined, and there would be chaos, as slavery was then considered necessary to mollify the "savage" characteristic of African slaves.

Walker's pamphlet followed a period in which white slave owners actively sought to Christianize slaves; however, publications like Walker's and the insurrections of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner that preceded and followed the publication of Walker's Appeal led to hysteria among whites who grew more threatened and concerned about their ability to control the African American slave population. In religious matters, whites concluded that to continue religious instruction to blacks was to promote their literacy and hence provoke their militation toward freedom. "Frightened and angry, white southerners tightened their control upon the black population, forbade the education of slaves as antisocial and dangerous, and curtailed independent religious activity on the part of slaves..." (Mathews 138). So determined was the white public to censure Walker that a bounty was placed on his head. Blacks known, or even presumed to possess copies of the pamphlet were apprehended by white officials who subjected them to severe whippings or worse. Nonetheless, Walker was undaunted and distribution of his pamphlet continued unabated. Walker, who owned and ran a secondhand apparel shop, sewed copies of the Appeal into the linings of the garments he sold.

Walker's Appeal is significant example of how one outspoken and courageous individual adopted language as a weapon against oppressors: modeling his pamphlet in accordance with the Declaration of Independence, he levels an unprecedented attack on the hypocrisy and brutality of the slaveowner, and with unmatched eloquence, calls his fellows--free and enslaved--to action.