Go There To Know There

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...

Sarah Vaughan Dinah Washington Lena Horne John Coltrane Duke Ellington Little Richard Stevie Wonder George Clinton and Parliament Prince Macy Gray

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...

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...