Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Sunday, October 16, 2016
George Schuyler: Writer, Social Critic, Iconoclast
Schuyler's novel, Black No More cast a satirical, yet critical eye on the preoccupations of race and color consciousness that Schuyler observed within and without the black community. The novel's protagonist, Dr. Crookman, was "a black man who has devised a process for the blanching of dark skins, the tale is a trenchant commentary on race relations in America but cuts as mercilessly against blacks as it does against whites" (Gates et al. 1220). Though Black No More is chiefly considered by literary historians as an early 20th century satire, Schuyler's novel heralds the early stirrings among African American writers to engage the themes of Science Fiction and futurism to construct trenchant social critique.
The terse wit and biting commentary that Schuyler deploys in Black No More is equally evident in his critical essay, "The Negro-Art Hoakum," which was published in Nation in 1926. In it, Schuyler levels a caustic attack on the notion of a uniquely "Negro" art as postulated by many of the black artists, critics, patrons and commentators of the Harlem creative scene. To Schuyler, to note that art produced by African Americans is unique or distinct in nature from European models is to suggest that it is necessarily inferior. This essay sparked an historic exchange between its author and poet Langston Hughes, who penned a forceful rebuttal in his "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." In light of DuBois and Locke, how do Schuyler's views on the nature and future of African American aesthetic forms fit within this discussion?
Quotes:
"New art forms expressing the 'peculiar' psychology of the Negro were about to flood the market. In short, the art of Homo Africanus was about to electrify the waiting world. Skeptics patiently waited. They still wait" (Schuyler 1221).
"As for the literature, painting, and sculpture of Aframericans--such as there is--it is identical in kind with the literature, painting, and sculpture of white Americans: that is, it shows more or less evidence of European influence" (1221).
"Negroes and whites from the same localities in this country talk, think, and act about the same. Because a few writers with a paucity of themes have seized upon imbecilities of the Negro rustics and clowns and palmed them off as authentic and characteristic Aframerican behavior, the common notion that the black American is so 'different' from his white neighbor has gained wide currency. The mere mention of the word "Negro" conjures up in the average white American's mind a composite stereotype of Bert Williams, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Jack Johnson, Florian Slappey, and the various monstrosities drawn by the cartoonists" (1222).
"One contemplates the popularity of the Negro-art hokum and murmurs, 'How come?'" (1223).
Friday, July 29, 2016
Toni Morrison: The Ancestor is Foundation
Toni Morrison, b. 1931 (photo from theguardianuk.com)
Chloe Anthony Wofford (now Toni Morrison) was born in February of 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Hers was a large family headed by devoted and hard-working parents who had moved the family from the South to Ohio to escape the pervasive racism and discrimination there. With them, they brought "the traditions of song and storytelling"--thereby introducing their daughter to a rich cultural heritage that would become the basis of much of Morrison's fiction (Gates 2211).
Intellectually precocious, Morrison began reading at an early age, and her tastes ranged across national and generic boundaries: She was drawn to the work of Jane Austen, Gustav Flaubert, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski (1). She would become the first member of her family to attend college. As Gates relates, the students there could not pronounce her name, so she elected to go by "Toni."
The first African American novelist to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, Morrison's work has spanned across specific genres; however, it is the novel where she finds her niche. There she draws from the rich history of African American folkways to examine her characters' lives and reactions to a history of struggle. Many of Morrison's protagonists suffer through a trial of disconnection and fragmentation; it is the community that rescues the protagonist finally from self-destruction. Gates observes Morrison's fiction is "[r]ooted in the history and culture of African Americans, her novels evoke a past that is scarred by the violence both of slavery and its long aftermath and redeemed by the power of love and the grace of laughter" (2210). Community and a binding heritage serve to restore Morrison's fictive characters.
Perhaps equal to her literary contribution to American arts and letters is Morrison's philosophy concerning her work, and the role of the Artist.
Gates observes Morrison's commentary on her goal as a writer of the novel, her chosen format:
"[Morrison does not] regard Black literature as simply books by black people, or simply as literature written about Black people or simply as literature that uses a certain mode of language in which you sort of drop g's. There is something very identifiable about it and it is my struggle to find that elusive but identifiable style in the books" (qtd. in Gates 2210).
And as Morrison outlines her struggle to capture that elusive style of representation, in her essay "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation," the author examines the purpose of the African American artist and her relationship to community. This generative essay encapsulates much of the theory and purpose of the African American female contemporary writer who, as she writes, moves forward into the future undauntedly; however, she does so with an eye firmly trained on the past and those who have written before her. Morrison's essay is among the first to address an inclusive theory concerning the aesthetic and chief characteristics of African American literature, as well as the mission of the individual artist. She raises some significant points for our consideration, especially as one recalls the circumstances of the black writer as both representative of himself--or herself; and of the community. What difficulties or challenges do you imagine an author might face when attempting to voice both herself, and others within her community?
"There must have been a time when an artist could have a tribal or racial sensibility and an individual expression of it (2287)"
"It should be beautiful, and powerful, but it should also work. It should have something in it that opens the door and points the way. Something in it that suggests what the conflicts are, what the problems are. But it need not solve those problems because it is not a case study, it is not a recipe (2287)"
"I don't like to find my books condemned as bad or praised as good, when that condemnation or praise is based on criteria from other paradigms. I would much prefer that they were dismissed or embraced based on the success of their accomplishment within the culture out of which I write" (2288).
Morrison' new novel, God Help the Child extends the author's dialogue concerning race and beauty in America. The Guardian has this article featuring the 84-year-old novelist discussing her newest publication.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
The Vernacular Tradition: From Folktales to Performance and Back Again
The Tar Baby Stories: Joel Chandler Harris
*From Wikimedia Commons
Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), was an American fiction writer, folklorist, and a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution. From 1862-1866, Harris served as an apprentice at Turnwold Plantation, in Eatonton, Georgia. While there, he spent much of his leisure time among the slaves of the plantation from whom he learned the storytelling tradition among African Americans whose oral tradition became the basis for his collection of Uncle Remus Tales. Though Harris has been credited for having revolutionized children's literature with his collection of folktales about the post-Reconstruction American South, contemporary critics argue that his rendition of these tales fosters an erroneous and romanticized image of the plantation South.
Joel Chandler Harris
Our texts cautions that "like other oral forms these tales were originally invented not for the printed page but for the spoken performance. Something vital is lost when we are not at the fireside with Scooter, hearing the sounds, watching the tellers and their tellings, full of whispery asides, silences, dramatic songs, clicks, calls, and other story sounds" (Gates, et al. 131). Read through Joel Chandler Harris' rendering of "The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story" on page 144; then compare it to the performance featured here in the video below. How does Donald Griffin's performance alter, enrich, or detract from your response to the tale of the Tar Baby--particularly in light of critics' assertions about Harris's version?
Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), was an American fiction writer, folklorist, and a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution. From 1862-1866, Harris served as an apprentice at Turnwold Plantation, in Eatonton, Georgia. While there, he spent much of his leisure time among the slaves of the plantation from whom he learned the storytelling tradition among African Americans whose oral tradition became the basis for his collection of Uncle Remus Tales. Though Harris has been credited for having revolutionized children's literature with his collection of folktales about the post-Reconstruction American South, contemporary critics argue that his rendition of these tales fosters an erroneous and romanticized image of the plantation South.
Our texts cautions that "like other oral forms these tales were originally invented not for the printed page but for the spoken performance. Something vital is lost when we are not at the fireside with Scooter, hearing the sounds, watching the tellers and their tellings, full of whispery asides, silences, dramatic songs, clicks, calls, and other story sounds" (Gates, et al. 131). Read through Joel Chandler Harris' rendering of "The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story" on page 144; then compare it to the performance featured here in the video below. How does Donald Griffin's performance alter, enrich, or detract from your response to the tale of the Tar Baby--particularly in light of critics' assertions about Harris's version?
Monday, April 25, 2016
Good Night, Prince
We lost one of my biggest heroes this week: Prince Rogers Nelson passed away due to complications from an influenza virus. I do not know the full details of his passing, I only know that he is gone and he will be sorely missed. He was obviously one of the greatest musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, but few got to see his humorous side. This video from his appearance on The View gives us a rare glimpse of his gentler, funny personality.
Monday, February 22, 2016
The Sentimental Novel
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online describes the Sentimental Novel, or the Novel of Sensibility,
"...any novel that exploits the reader's capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting a beclouded or unrealistic view of its subject. In a restricted sense the term refers to a widespread European novelistic development of the 18th century, which arose partly in reaction to the austerity and rationalism of the Neoclassical period. The sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason and raised the analysis of emotion to a fine art..."
"The assumptions underlying the sentimental novel were Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness of man and his belief that moral development was fostered by experiencing powerful sympathies. In England, Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1740) was recommended by clergymen as a means of educating the heart. In the 1760s the sentimental novel developed into the 'novel of sensibility,' which presented characters possessing a pronounced susceptibility to delicate sensation. Such characters were not only deeply moved by sympathy for their fellow man but also reacted emotionally to the beauty inherent in natural settings and works of art and music. The prototype was Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67), which devotes several pages to describing Uncle Toby's horror of killing a fly. The literature of Romanticism adopted many elements of the novel of sensibility, including responsiveness to nature and belief in the wisdom of the heart and in the power of sympathy. It did not, however, assimilate the novel of sensibility's characteristic optimism" (www.britannica.com).
Jane Eyre, the novel by British writer Charlotte Bronte is, in some ways a prototypical sentimentalist work. Identified as an item of the Bildungsroman category, the novel traces the coming of age of its protagonist, and her developing affection for the dark and brooding Rochester. Though the novel features a love story, "the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility and all the events are coloured [sic] by heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry..." (1).
Jane Eyre is credited with being the novel that revolutionized the genre, but perhaps just as importantly, created an entree for women writers focused on social critique, and on exposing the inconsistency and disparity between the genders, and is thus considered a "proto-feminist" novel. This novel becomes relevant as we explore the writing of Harriet Jacobs, who, in many ways structured her own Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl after Bronte's novel. Jacob's narrative, too re-presents the Bildungsroman model, but of a woman who came of age in slavery. The romance with Rochester is recast as Harriet's unwanted attention from a cruel and sexually perverse master, and Jane's relationship to the violent and disturbed Bertha Mason is mirrored in Linda Brent's relationship to her last mistress, Mrs. Flint, a woman who proves nearly as heartless and cruel as her husband.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also includes many of the tropes and themes that Bronte's included, such as religious piety, sin and redemption, morality (both sexual and temporal), and God and religion. Many of these themes are articulated through characters in the Narrative.
Finally, as Bronte's novel ends "with marriage," Linda Brent's narrative ends conspicuously with a far greater reward for its protagonist: freedom. As we read from Incidents, keep these themes in mind, and as you encounter characters who embody these themes, think about how they enact them or remind the reader of their importance in the larger narrative.
"...any novel that exploits the reader's capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting a beclouded or unrealistic view of its subject. In a restricted sense the term refers to a widespread European novelistic development of the 18th century, which arose partly in reaction to the austerity and rationalism of the Neoclassical period. The sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason and raised the analysis of emotion to a fine art..."
"The assumptions underlying the sentimental novel were Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness of man and his belief that moral development was fostered by experiencing powerful sympathies. In England, Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1740) was recommended by clergymen as a means of educating the heart. In the 1760s the sentimental novel developed into the 'novel of sensibility,' which presented characters possessing a pronounced susceptibility to delicate sensation. Such characters were not only deeply moved by sympathy for their fellow man but also reacted emotionally to the beauty inherent in natural settings and works of art and music. The prototype was Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67), which devotes several pages to describing Uncle Toby's horror of killing a fly. The literature of Romanticism adopted many elements of the novel of sensibility, including responsiveness to nature and belief in the wisdom of the heart and in the power of sympathy. It did not, however, assimilate the novel of sensibility's characteristic optimism" (www.britannica.com).
Jane Eyre, the novel by British writer Charlotte Bronte is, in some ways a prototypical sentimentalist work. Identified as an item of the Bildungsroman category, the novel traces the coming of age of its protagonist, and her developing affection for the dark and brooding Rochester. Though the novel features a love story, "the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility and all the events are coloured [sic] by heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry..." (1).
Jane Eyre is credited with being the novel that revolutionized the genre, but perhaps just as importantly, created an entree for women writers focused on social critique, and on exposing the inconsistency and disparity between the genders, and is thus considered a "proto-feminist" novel. This novel becomes relevant as we explore the writing of Harriet Jacobs, who, in many ways structured her own Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl after Bronte's novel. Jacob's narrative, too re-presents the Bildungsroman model, but of a woman who came of age in slavery. The romance with Rochester is recast as Harriet's unwanted attention from a cruel and sexually perverse master, and Jane's relationship to the violent and disturbed Bertha Mason is mirrored in Linda Brent's relationship to her last mistress, Mrs. Flint, a woman who proves nearly as heartless and cruel as her husband.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also includes many of the tropes and themes that Bronte's included, such as religious piety, sin and redemption, morality (both sexual and temporal), and God and religion. Many of these themes are articulated through characters in the Narrative.
Finally, as Bronte's novel ends "with marriage," Linda Brent's narrative ends conspicuously with a far greater reward for its protagonist: freedom. As we read from Incidents, keep these themes in mind, and as you encounter characters who embody these themes, think about how they enact them or remind the reader of their importance in the larger narrative.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives
"Unchained Memories," produced and presented by HBO, is perhaps one of the most comprehensive, enlightening, and moving recreations of slave life as told by those who suffered and lived to tell the tale.
The readings and reenactments in this documentary are taken from interviews conducted by sociologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists--as well as historians, with former slaves in the 1930s. Many of these former slaves were in their late eighties, nineties, some were over 100 years old. They tell tales of forced starvation, deprivation, beatings and whippings, as well as surviving in the harshest climates without sufficient clothing to cover their bodies, or shoes on their feet. They speak of brutal planters who assumed their own sexual access to black female bodies as a natural right emasculated slave men and tore slave families apart. Most of all, they speak of work, work, work, with no respite for their endless labor.
An interesting note to keep in mind about this documentary, is that these interviews represent the midpoint between an oral and a literary tradition: well-known and wonderfully talented actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, CCH Pounder, Robert Guillaume, Don Cheadle, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Brown, Jasmine Guy among others, reenact the transcribed interviews of real slaves, imbuing each narrative with pathos, compassion, and intuition, against the narration of Whoopi Goldberg.
"Unchained Memories" speaks to the dying art of oral tradition: the film resurrects the dynamic and the performative aspects of oral culture, while simultaneously committing to national memory the sufferings as well as the survival and endurance of the American slave.
The readings and reenactments in this documentary are taken from interviews conducted by sociologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists--as well as historians, with former slaves in the 1930s. Many of these former slaves were in their late eighties, nineties, some were over 100 years old. They tell tales of forced starvation, deprivation, beatings and whippings, as well as surviving in the harshest climates without sufficient clothing to cover their bodies, or shoes on their feet. They speak of brutal planters who assumed their own sexual access to black female bodies as a natural right emasculated slave men and tore slave families apart. Most of all, they speak of work, work, work, with no respite for their endless labor.
An interesting note to keep in mind about this documentary, is that these interviews represent the midpoint between an oral and a literary tradition: well-known and wonderfully talented actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, CCH Pounder, Robert Guillaume, Don Cheadle, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Brown, Jasmine Guy among others, reenact the transcribed interviews of real slaves, imbuing each narrative with pathos, compassion, and intuition, against the narration of Whoopi Goldberg.
"Unchained Memories" speaks to the dying art of oral tradition: the film resurrects the dynamic and the performative aspects of oral culture, while simultaneously committing to national memory the sufferings as well as the survival and endurance of the American slave.
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