Specifications for Essay I

English 2650

Section 201
Spring 2012

African American Literature

Essay I

So far this semester, we have read and discussed some of the key literary and creative productions of African Americans in the New World. We have encountered the trickster figure and the ‘signifying’ functions of the African American folktales and songs; the spiritual and gospel forms that provided solace and masking functions for the slave and his descendants; and we have looked at examples of early African American biography’s antecedents in the Slave Narrative, beginning with Olaudah Equiano. These texts convey to us many of the prevailing themes and preoccupations that attended the African American struggle for freedom, recognition, and civil rights in the years leading up to the turn of the twentieth century. For this first formal essay, you are to choose at least one text that we have covered so far, and analyze that text in accordance with one (or two) of the themes we have covered. Your essay should be thesis-driven: that is, it should be shaped and structured along one central point or observation you wish to make about the texts you are addressing.

The following are some prompts that you may wish to follow:

• Consider the peculiar situation of the female slave as characterized in the excerpt from Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. What ordeals did the female slave face according to Linda Brent’s narrative? How does Linda Brent’s narrative intersect thematically with the fictionalized narrative of Clotel by William Wells Brown? In your essay, you should reference passages or scenes in the narrative that illustrate these points of intersection.
• In a similar vein, compare the experiences of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs. How did slavery attempt to define their respective roles as women and as mothers? How did the machinery of slavery use their gender against them—particularly in the case of the Mistress of the house?
• Analyze the character of the trickster figure in African American folktale. How is this figure reinterpreted or contested from one text or from one author to another?  How does “Brer Rabbit” as characterized by Joel Chandler Harris differ from that of the trickster figures in Zora Neale Hurston’s retelling of African American lore?
• The editors of our textbook describe Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as featuring a “style of self-representation, through which he (Douglass) re-created the slave as an evolving self bound for mental as well as physical freedom” (Gates, et al. 386). In what ways does Douglass’s narrative demonstrate this psychological evolution? Compare Douglass’s attitudes concerning the stages of the freedman’s evolving sense of self and those of Booker T. Washington. You might even imagine a dialogue between the two authors. On what points would they agree or disagree? Give some examples from either text.

You may use one of these prompts, or formulate a thesis of your own that compares or contrasts two authors or texts. However, there must be a central point you wish to argue and prove. You may use sources outside of our text; however, you are only permitted to use sources made available through the Southwest library’s website, and you must cite/credit those sources with MLA citation.

*Essays should be formatted with one-inch margins, double-spaced, and typed in 12-point font.

Due Date: Monday, March 12th