“Criteria for Negro Art” and “The Negro Artist and Modern Art”
DuBois’ piece, “Criteria for Negro Art,” helps illuminate the unanswered questions by Bearden in “The Negro Artist and Modern Art.” Bearden’s aesthetics do not account for commercialism and his fundamental chain concering social critique (“The artist must be the medium through which humanity expresses itself” (141)) becomes stressed when talking about commercial viability. Bearden writes that the artist ought to channel humanity through his or her art, in some ways this meets DuBois’ criteria that art ought to be a communal artifact channeling the values or aspirations of that community: “Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of back folk to love and enjoy” (DuBois 103). Bearden’s concept of humanity-artist-art only seems to work in a vacuum, in a world without the prejudices DuBois describes in his essay. The wonderful creative process Bearden describes: “…[T]he artist with vision, sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personal,” would likely fade into obscurity because DuBois argues the audience for black artists expect a distinctly stereotypical as opposed to distinctly personal narrative.
Bearden talks at length about the relationship between the theory of art, an aesthetics, and the subsequent development of worthwhile art: “We need some standard of criticism then, not only to stimulate the artist, but also to raise the cultural level of the people. It is well known that the critical writings of men like Herder, Schlegel, Taine, and the system of marxian dialectics, were as important to the development of literature as any writer” (Bearden 140). DuBois’ work seems to reflect the public consciousness Bearden hopes an aesthetics for black art will cultivate when he writes that black artists simply hand over their work to a “white jury” (DuBois 104). The goal, unstated in Bearden’s piece, is that developing an aesthetics empowers a minority voice, which then in turn encourages the production of truly authentic art from minority artists.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Week 13, entry one and two
Entry one
“The Harlem Intelligentsia” and “Cordelia the Crude” and “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” and the work of Archibald Motley Jr.
McKay’s chapter “The Harlem Intelligentsia” contains arguments for aesthetics and black art. McKay’s aesthetics emphasize authenticity, and that authenticity ought to be preserved, regardless the picture portrayed through the artist’s medium. McKay writes: “I think all people are interesting to write about. It depends on the writer’s ability to bring them out alive” (McKay 159). Within that statement appears some implication that links form and content. The writer’s ability is a very broad term that could encompass potentially much more besides form, but form is definitely under that very large, ambiguous umbrella.
Two selected works: “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” and “Cordelia the Crude” meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics in varying ways. The idea of form makes Nugent’s work, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” a problematic piece for McKay’s aesthetics, I think. Nugent’s short story, while vividly capturing the dead-end artist lifestyle, seemingly obfuscates the vitality of the people in the story through its form. The ellipses disjoint the narrative, presenting the readers with flashes of information that can be very difficult to piece together. While the lighter in the story undoubtedly meets McKay’s insistence that words ought to be “pictures conveying color and meaning,” the rest of the short story presents challenges to McKay’s aesthetics. “Cordelia the Crude” seems to meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics. I think McKay would appreciate Thurman’s authentic portrayal of a displaced Southern girl in Harlem who eventually becomes part of the seedy underbelly most everyone ignores. The vividness of Thurman’s account also highlights the authenticity McKay emphasizes. McKay eloquently states: “…[H]arlem did not hold quite the same thrill and glamor as before. Where formerly in saloons and cabarets and along the streets I received impressions like arrows piercing my nerves and distilled poetry from them, now I was often pointed out as an author. I lost the rare feeling of a vagabond feeding upon secret music singing in me” (McKay 161). The reflection on McKay’s part illuminates perhaps his own idea of the narrative voice, that vagabond translating the energies of a place in prose, poetry, or whatever medium the artist chooses.
McKay seems willing to suspend formal definitions often constructed by social forces to evaluate something objectively. His opinion of Walter White seems particularly useful for this. He writes that White “is Negroid simply because he closely identifies himself with the Negro group—just as a Teuton becomes a Moslem if he embraces Islam” (McKay 159). Based on this idea of associations McKay introduces, I wonder if any of this is applicable to forming a definition black art. Would McKay consider something patronized exclusively by white audiences still black if it is firmly associated with a white audience? This potential argument throws the career of someone like Archibald Motley Jr. under tight scrutiny because Motley found success largely with white audiences but yet his content was often portraying jazzy street scenes.
Entry two
From Black No More and “South Park”
The excerpt from Schuyler’s work probably ranks among the most favorite works I’ve read thus far from the course. When the original presentation on Schuyler happened, we talked about science fiction and that genre as a means of examining social constructions, the future, and other things. Yet the plot in Schuyler’s work seems like a useful comparison to the “South Park” episode where Kyle Broflovski undergoes a negroplasty to become black.
The brief excerpt from Schuyler’s work demonstrates the social-commercial ramifications of erasing skin color (and the social baggage that accompanies it). The various “race” leaders are exposed as commercial-minded men who built their comfortable life off a corrupt a system. Ultimately, Dr. Beard, Licorice Santop, Walter Williams, and a host of others, are rendered ludicrous because while they have eloquently stated the problem, racism, they have not really thought of the next step, overcoming racism. The excerpt’s focus on the healthy commercial structure thinking about the race problem has created neglects those black people who went through Dr. Crookman’s machine. Here is where the “South Park” episode enters into the picture.
Kyle Broflovski, a Jewish elementary school student, emerges as South Park’s premier basketball player and representative on the state of Colorado’s team. Kyle discovers the other team members are tall, athletic, but the thing he focuses on is that they are also all black. Kyle consults with a plastic surgeon, who then in turn makes Kyle black after darkening his skin, inserting genitalia into his knee caps to make him taller, and doing other things to re-arrange his face. Part of the episode’s point, I feel, is that outward appearances still do not account for social experiences that truly account for an authentic identity. Kyle preserves his curly red hair, a hallmark of his Jewish identity, and still talks the same—suggesting that little socially has changed for Kyle. While Kyle is black, he is still no better at basketball than when he was a small white kid. This idea makes Schuyler’s title, Black No More, particularly striking.
The idea of blackness rendered in the South Park episode suggests a physical and social identity. Yet for whatever reason, the two seem largely unrelated, perhaps because of the brevity of the time Kyle spent as a black kid. Some interesting questions to ask of Schuyler’s full work is how does the changing of skin color finally alter black’s social identity. The implication is that racism is destroyed, so that suggests blacks can appreciate the full opportunities afforded in the United States. So while the blacks in Schuyler’s work are physically black no more, they also appear to be socially “black” no more.
“The Harlem Intelligentsia” and “Cordelia the Crude” and “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” and the work of Archibald Motley Jr.
McKay’s chapter “The Harlem Intelligentsia” contains arguments for aesthetics and black art. McKay’s aesthetics emphasize authenticity, and that authenticity ought to be preserved, regardless the picture portrayed through the artist’s medium. McKay writes: “I think all people are interesting to write about. It depends on the writer’s ability to bring them out alive” (McKay 159). Within that statement appears some implication that links form and content. The writer’s ability is a very broad term that could encompass potentially much more besides form, but form is definitely under that very large, ambiguous umbrella.
Two selected works: “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” and “Cordelia the Crude” meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics in varying ways. The idea of form makes Nugent’s work, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” a problematic piece for McKay’s aesthetics, I think. Nugent’s short story, while vividly capturing the dead-end artist lifestyle, seemingly obfuscates the vitality of the people in the story through its form. The ellipses disjoint the narrative, presenting the readers with flashes of information that can be very difficult to piece together. While the lighter in the story undoubtedly meets McKay’s insistence that words ought to be “pictures conveying color and meaning,” the rest of the short story presents challenges to McKay’s aesthetics. “Cordelia the Crude” seems to meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics. I think McKay would appreciate Thurman’s authentic portrayal of a displaced Southern girl in Harlem who eventually becomes part of the seedy underbelly most everyone ignores. The vividness of Thurman’s account also highlights the authenticity McKay emphasizes. McKay eloquently states: “…[H]arlem did not hold quite the same thrill and glamor as before. Where formerly in saloons and cabarets and along the streets I received impressions like arrows piercing my nerves and distilled poetry from them, now I was often pointed out as an author. I lost the rare feeling of a vagabond feeding upon secret music singing in me” (McKay 161). The reflection on McKay’s part illuminates perhaps his own idea of the narrative voice, that vagabond translating the energies of a place in prose, poetry, or whatever medium the artist chooses.
McKay seems willing to suspend formal definitions often constructed by social forces to evaluate something objectively. His opinion of Walter White seems particularly useful for this. He writes that White “is Negroid simply because he closely identifies himself with the Negro group—just as a Teuton becomes a Moslem if he embraces Islam” (McKay 159). Based on this idea of associations McKay introduces, I wonder if any of this is applicable to forming a definition black art. Would McKay consider something patronized exclusively by white audiences still black if it is firmly associated with a white audience? This potential argument throws the career of someone like Archibald Motley Jr. under tight scrutiny because Motley found success largely with white audiences but yet his content was often portraying jazzy street scenes.
Entry two
From Black No More and “South Park”
The excerpt from Schuyler’s work probably ranks among the most favorite works I’ve read thus far from the course. When the original presentation on Schuyler happened, we talked about science fiction and that genre as a means of examining social constructions, the future, and other things. Yet the plot in Schuyler’s work seems like a useful comparison to the “South Park” episode where Kyle Broflovski undergoes a negroplasty to become black.
The brief excerpt from Schuyler’s work demonstrates the social-commercial ramifications of erasing skin color (and the social baggage that accompanies it). The various “race” leaders are exposed as commercial-minded men who built their comfortable life off a corrupt a system. Ultimately, Dr. Beard, Licorice Santop, Walter Williams, and a host of others, are rendered ludicrous because while they have eloquently stated the problem, racism, they have not really thought of the next step, overcoming racism. The excerpt’s focus on the healthy commercial structure thinking about the race problem has created neglects those black people who went through Dr. Crookman’s machine. Here is where the “South Park” episode enters into the picture.
Kyle Broflovski, a Jewish elementary school student, emerges as South Park’s premier basketball player and representative on the state of Colorado’s team. Kyle discovers the other team members are tall, athletic, but the thing he focuses on is that they are also all black. Kyle consults with a plastic surgeon, who then in turn makes Kyle black after darkening his skin, inserting genitalia into his knee caps to make him taller, and doing other things to re-arrange his face. Part of the episode’s point, I feel, is that outward appearances still do not account for social experiences that truly account for an authentic identity. Kyle preserves his curly red hair, a hallmark of his Jewish identity, and still talks the same—suggesting that little socially has changed for Kyle. While Kyle is black, he is still no better at basketball than when he was a small white kid. This idea makes Schuyler’s title, Black No More, particularly striking.
The idea of blackness rendered in the South Park episode suggests a physical and social identity. Yet for whatever reason, the two seem largely unrelated, perhaps because of the brevity of the time Kyle spent as a black kid. Some interesting questions to ask of Schuyler’s full work is how does the changing of skin color finally alter black’s social identity. The implication is that racism is destroyed, so that suggests blacks can appreciate the full opportunities afforded in the United States. So while the blacks in Schuyler’s work are physically black no more, they also appear to be socially “black” no more.
Week 12, entry one and two
Entry one, “The Creation” by James Weldon Johnson and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
The two poems take differing approaches to attacking the narrative poor people are encouraged to cling to: theirs is the kingdom of Heaven and all the luxury promised in it. As we discussed in class, the Earth in “The Creation” offers comfort and splendor to be enjoyed by all. Yet the opening lines in Hughes’ poem challenge this rendering: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (261). The mother in Hughes’ poem navigates a life full of peril filled with tacks, splinters, and boards torn up (261). The beauty in Hughes’ poem is identified in the determination earthly actors demonstrate. The mother does not seem resigned to wait for the afterlife. Rather she has chosen an arduous path that promises struggle and hardship and a perpetual climb.
What strengthens the actors in these poems to move beyond the traditional narrative of the poor also differs. The mother seems motivated by improving the next generation’s stock. The ultimatum the mother delivers to her son is clear: “So boy, don’t you turn back… / Don’t you fall now-- / For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes 262). The implication from the line resounds: the mother is willing to move beyond her own familial ties in pursuit of improvement for perhaps her entire race. In Johnson’s poem, God is cast as lonely. This loneliness makes God approachable, for He enjoys his creations. Throughout the empty world God creates, His oft-repeated line echoes: “That’s good!” (Johnson, 286). God’s creations seemingly have much meaning to Him, for they have inspired and cultivated His genius and creativity but perhaps most importantly, abated His loneliness. If His creations should falter, God could tumble back into loneliness and despair. The poem makes God approachable, a God that appreciates his creations and appears there for them throughout all their hardships because as God warded off loneliness and despair from his divine powers, so now he appears willing to ward off despair for his creations.
Entry two,
“Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen and “I Want To Die While You Love Me” by Georgia Douglas Johnson
The two poems by the talented poets seem to capture Richard Wright’s creed that black art ought to be intended for black audiences, not necessarily appeals to white audiences. “I Want To Die While You Love Me” is a remarkably beautiful work that measures vitality through the experience of love and that experience over time. The times without love crawl at a snail’s pace, agonizing the speaker: “Oh, who would care to live / Till love has nothing more to ask / And nothing more to give!” (Johnson 275). Life after love has lost its energy and vitality seems worthless to the speaker because the times would just feel so slow and arguably make the speaker feel cold. While the time without love is agonizingly slow, the time with love seems all too quickly passing. The speaker has a nagging conscience reminding him or her love will dim, and this high will cease to be (Johnson 275).
Likewise “Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen recognizes love as a fleeting quality that has the heart purring for its duration but ultimately all blood goes from riotous to “quiet” and “still” (Cullen 250-251). The poem concludes with the powerful observation: “Nirvana gapes / For all things given; / Nothing escapes, / Love not even” (Cullen 251).
Buried perhaps within the two poems is a social commentary on the factors that contribute to love. The speaker in Johnson’s poem identifies fairness, laughter upon his or her lips, and lights in his or her hair as factors holding his or her partner’s attention (275). Time slowly erodes are youthful attractiveness and mental sharpness in Johnson’s poem, making love’s timeline a situational rather than universal code. In “Nothing Endures” there is a “tax” levied “on the subtlest brain” that perhaps control the perception of beauty waxing or waning (Cullen 251). The two poems demonstrate that some Renaissance figures were not neglecting domestic and personal issues in search of the general racial uplift. This sentiment reverts back to Wright and other’s aesthetic value that black art should be for black audiences. At the same time these poems seem short of DuBois’ “criteria” for Negro art, for they do not seem to hold the political propaganda the race leader demanded out of works.
The two poems take differing approaches to attacking the narrative poor people are encouraged to cling to: theirs is the kingdom of Heaven and all the luxury promised in it. As we discussed in class, the Earth in “The Creation” offers comfort and splendor to be enjoyed by all. Yet the opening lines in Hughes’ poem challenge this rendering: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (261). The mother in Hughes’ poem navigates a life full of peril filled with tacks, splinters, and boards torn up (261). The beauty in Hughes’ poem is identified in the determination earthly actors demonstrate. The mother does not seem resigned to wait for the afterlife. Rather she has chosen an arduous path that promises struggle and hardship and a perpetual climb.
What strengthens the actors in these poems to move beyond the traditional narrative of the poor also differs. The mother seems motivated by improving the next generation’s stock. The ultimatum the mother delivers to her son is clear: “So boy, don’t you turn back… / Don’t you fall now-- / For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes 262). The implication from the line resounds: the mother is willing to move beyond her own familial ties in pursuit of improvement for perhaps her entire race. In Johnson’s poem, God is cast as lonely. This loneliness makes God approachable, for He enjoys his creations. Throughout the empty world God creates, His oft-repeated line echoes: “That’s good!” (Johnson, 286). God’s creations seemingly have much meaning to Him, for they have inspired and cultivated His genius and creativity but perhaps most importantly, abated His loneliness. If His creations should falter, God could tumble back into loneliness and despair. The poem makes God approachable, a God that appreciates his creations and appears there for them throughout all their hardships because as God warded off loneliness and despair from his divine powers, so now he appears willing to ward off despair for his creations.
Entry two,
“Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen and “I Want To Die While You Love Me” by Georgia Douglas Johnson
The two poems by the talented poets seem to capture Richard Wright’s creed that black art ought to be intended for black audiences, not necessarily appeals to white audiences. “I Want To Die While You Love Me” is a remarkably beautiful work that measures vitality through the experience of love and that experience over time. The times without love crawl at a snail’s pace, agonizing the speaker: “Oh, who would care to live / Till love has nothing more to ask / And nothing more to give!” (Johnson 275). Life after love has lost its energy and vitality seems worthless to the speaker because the times would just feel so slow and arguably make the speaker feel cold. While the time without love is agonizingly slow, the time with love seems all too quickly passing. The speaker has a nagging conscience reminding him or her love will dim, and this high will cease to be (Johnson 275).
Likewise “Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen recognizes love as a fleeting quality that has the heart purring for its duration but ultimately all blood goes from riotous to “quiet” and “still” (Cullen 250-251). The poem concludes with the powerful observation: “Nirvana gapes / For all things given; / Nothing escapes, / Love not even” (Cullen 251).
Buried perhaps within the two poems is a social commentary on the factors that contribute to love. The speaker in Johnson’s poem identifies fairness, laughter upon his or her lips, and lights in his or her hair as factors holding his or her partner’s attention (275). Time slowly erodes are youthful attractiveness and mental sharpness in Johnson’s poem, making love’s timeline a situational rather than universal code. In “Nothing Endures” there is a “tax” levied “on the subtlest brain” that perhaps control the perception of beauty waxing or waning (Cullen 251). The two poems demonstrate that some Renaissance figures were not neglecting domestic and personal issues in search of the general racial uplift. This sentiment reverts back to Wright and other’s aesthetic value that black art should be for black audiences. At the same time these poems seem short of DuBois’ “criteria” for Negro art, for they do not seem to hold the political propaganda the race leader demanded out of works.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
week 11, entry two
11/10
From Mule-Bone and from “Long Gone” by Sterling Brown
Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes’ collaboration on Mule-Bone explores similar themes to Sterling Brown’s poem “Long Gone.” The two works detail men who have some spirit that resists conventionality and the usual means of living. In “Long Gone” the speaker talks about a restlessness preventing him from planting any permanent residence. Troubling about the speaker’s lifestyle are the occupations seemingly available, options Hurston and Hughes bring to the forefront in Mule-Bone. Both Jim and Dave reject hard labor, which consequently rules out any future with Daisy, a woman who works as a house servant for a white Southern family. Jim seems content to play music for the rest of his life; Dave seems content to dance for the rest of his life.
The restlessness that leads the speaker from Brown’s poem and Jim and Dave to reject some life security are perhaps the lasting effects of slavery, prejudice, and a poor quality of life in the South for blacks. Jim and Dave’s ambition to make the town feel jealous, boiling a mule bone down to gravy, is on some levels a symbolic gesture, but the basic level ludicrous and almost another comedic line in a short excerpt full of one liners. Their ambition falls short in the foresight because both men are painted as constant consumers. Dave had his fill of Daisy last night, Jim got into exile from wanting too much. The two characters’ day-to-day existence and consumption definitely defies the Talented Tenth ethos. The speaker in “Long Gone” seems to have greater ambitions because there is the recognition that his present actions can lead to an uncertain future: “I don’t know which way I’m travelin’…” The poem on one hand glorifies the immense possibility of uncertainty and mystery but at the same time underneath that optimism is the nagging conscience that being a vagabond denies stability.
From Mule-Bone and from “Long Gone” by Sterling Brown
Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes’ collaboration on Mule-Bone explores similar themes to Sterling Brown’s poem “Long Gone.” The two works detail men who have some spirit that resists conventionality and the usual means of living. In “Long Gone” the speaker talks about a restlessness preventing him from planting any permanent residence. Troubling about the speaker’s lifestyle are the occupations seemingly available, options Hurston and Hughes bring to the forefront in Mule-Bone. Both Jim and Dave reject hard labor, which consequently rules out any future with Daisy, a woman who works as a house servant for a white Southern family. Jim seems content to play music for the rest of his life; Dave seems content to dance for the rest of his life.
The restlessness that leads the speaker from Brown’s poem and Jim and Dave to reject some life security are perhaps the lasting effects of slavery, prejudice, and a poor quality of life in the South for blacks. Jim and Dave’s ambition to make the town feel jealous, boiling a mule bone down to gravy, is on some levels a symbolic gesture, but the basic level ludicrous and almost another comedic line in a short excerpt full of one liners. Their ambition falls short in the foresight because both men are painted as constant consumers. Dave had his fill of Daisy last night, Jim got into exile from wanting too much. The two characters’ day-to-day existence and consumption definitely defies the Talented Tenth ethos. The speaker in “Long Gone” seems to have greater ambitions because there is the recognition that his present actions can lead to an uncertain future: “I don’t know which way I’m travelin’…” The poem on one hand glorifies the immense possibility of uncertainty and mystery but at the same time underneath that optimism is the nagging conscience that being a vagabond denies stability.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Week 11, entry one
Bontemps’ and Hughes’ poetry each identify in nature some artifact of black heritage. In Hughes’ poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” the speaker traces his toiling to rivers and the accompanying civilizations that rose along those rivers. The slave identity is linked to the richness of those civilizations but the perspective seems to be from the outside looking in. Responsible for the grandeur we can still recognize those civilizations for today but never really credited for it nor ever really benefited from the civilizations.
Bontemps seems to be reminded of suffering when he looks at nature as telling the history of black people. While Hughes explicitly marks the effect of meditating on history and heritage through nature with the line: “My soul has grown deep like rivers,” Bontemps seems to have an implied ruefulness when he writes: “It would be great / To touch the pieces of glory with our hands.” That ruefulness than colors the line “All of them get big in time and people forget / What started them at first” with a disdain. Bontemps seems to point at systems that empower some while leaving others causalities of history with their stories untold. Bontemps writes: “Oh the world is covered with mountains! / Beneath each one there is something buried: / Some pile of wreckage that started it there.”
In some ways Bontemps seems distrustful of the heritage Hughes speaks of. The line “Dust shall yet devour the stones / But we shall be here when they are gone” seems sarcastic and that heritage is perhaps only a lie people tell themselves to make them feel better in light of their deplorable circumstances—chiefly, slavery.
Bontemps seems to be reminded of suffering when he looks at nature as telling the history of black people. While Hughes explicitly marks the effect of meditating on history and heritage through nature with the line: “My soul has grown deep like rivers,” Bontemps seems to have an implied ruefulness when he writes: “It would be great / To touch the pieces of glory with our hands.” That ruefulness than colors the line “All of them get big in time and people forget / What started them at first” with a disdain. Bontemps seems to point at systems that empower some while leaving others causalities of history with their stories untold. Bontemps writes: “Oh the world is covered with mountains! / Beneath each one there is something buried: / Some pile of wreckage that started it there.”
In some ways Bontemps seems distrustful of the heritage Hughes speaks of. The line “Dust shall yet devour the stones / But we shall be here when they are gone” seems sarcastic and that heritage is perhaps only a lie people tell themselves to make them feel better in light of their deplorable circumstances—chiefly, slavery.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Week 10, entry two
From Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Emporer Jones, and Birthright
Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neal Hurston repeats the same authenticity that has made her work so praised. Compared to Emporer Jones, the play by Eugene O’Neill that played off the idea of the innocent primitive black person, Jonah’s Gourd Vine setting takes on a different attitude and mentality, despite being very similar to the jungle Jones stumbles through in the play. Hurston’s opening line frames the setting while describing the physical environment: “God was grumbling his thunder and playing the zig-zag lightning thru his fingers” (719). A channeling of the blues is evident, and this blues-y mentality colors the physical description to make the experiences of the Crittendens all the more vivid and ultimately sorrowful. The items within the setting, such as the drinking gourd, ring with an overt symbolism of slavery. The jungle in Emporer Jones makes Jones more primitive and therefore ultimately more free. Primitivism is given a Romantic pardon—although Jones is a bad guy, his adventure through the jungle, and the larger metaphysical journey of reverting his soul to that primtive nature, makes the reader feel sympathetic, and in the end that primitivism grants Jones his freedom. John in Hurston’s work also strips in the jungle to wade through the creek. But unlike Jones, the freedom of John is not truly attained. While he escaped the despotic Ned, the larger picture remains gloomy. Unfair sharecropping, bounding practices, and a host of other subtle discriminatory economic systems trap the Crittendens in a slave existence. In the end, John resolves to make enough money so that he can return and save his mother, which sounds exactly like a slave saving enough money to buy his or her own freedom.
In Birthright, Peter Siner returns to the South to teach, but ultimately he hopes to open an institute like Tuskegee. The implication in his plan seems to be an argument that racial uplift can occur from blacks learning trades, being succesful, and ultimately moving up classes by virtue of their increased pay from learning more desirable skills. Hurston’s work gives context to Stribling’s musings as a white man writing about black life. The master of the Crittenden shack, Ned Crittenden, seems trapped in the days of the 1800s because of an internalized inferiority from serving as a slave. He cannot think outside his own terms and even evaluates others in what Peter Siner might consider archaic terms, such as judging John based off the cotton he can harvest, the food he consumes. Amy says with a tinge of uplift yearning: “[D]ese heah chillun is diffunt from us... Ah doan know, mebbe hit’ll take some of us generations, but us got tuh ‘gin tuh practise on trasurin’ our younguns. Ah loves dese heah already uh whole heap. Ah don’t want ‘em knocked and ‘buked” (Hurston 722-723). Treasuring youths involves giving them chances, which Ned does not, consciously or not. Existence for the Crittendens means living in practical slavery. Jonah’s Gourd Vine seems open to being read as what systems block racial uplift that earlier Renaissance artists, such as T.S. Stribling, described.
Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neal Hurston repeats the same authenticity that has made her work so praised. Compared to Emporer Jones, the play by Eugene O’Neill that played off the idea of the innocent primitive black person, Jonah’s Gourd Vine setting takes on a different attitude and mentality, despite being very similar to the jungle Jones stumbles through in the play. Hurston’s opening line frames the setting while describing the physical environment: “God was grumbling his thunder and playing the zig-zag lightning thru his fingers” (719). A channeling of the blues is evident, and this blues-y mentality colors the physical description to make the experiences of the Crittendens all the more vivid and ultimately sorrowful. The items within the setting, such as the drinking gourd, ring with an overt symbolism of slavery. The jungle in Emporer Jones makes Jones more primitive and therefore ultimately more free. Primitivism is given a Romantic pardon—although Jones is a bad guy, his adventure through the jungle, and the larger metaphysical journey of reverting his soul to that primtive nature, makes the reader feel sympathetic, and in the end that primitivism grants Jones his freedom. John in Hurston’s work also strips in the jungle to wade through the creek. But unlike Jones, the freedom of John is not truly attained. While he escaped the despotic Ned, the larger picture remains gloomy. Unfair sharecropping, bounding practices, and a host of other subtle discriminatory economic systems trap the Crittendens in a slave existence. In the end, John resolves to make enough money so that he can return and save his mother, which sounds exactly like a slave saving enough money to buy his or her own freedom.
In Birthright, Peter Siner returns to the South to teach, but ultimately he hopes to open an institute like Tuskegee. The implication in his plan seems to be an argument that racial uplift can occur from blacks learning trades, being succesful, and ultimately moving up classes by virtue of their increased pay from learning more desirable skills. Hurston’s work gives context to Stribling’s musings as a white man writing about black life. The master of the Crittenden shack, Ned Crittenden, seems trapped in the days of the 1800s because of an internalized inferiority from serving as a slave. He cannot think outside his own terms and even evaluates others in what Peter Siner might consider archaic terms, such as judging John based off the cotton he can harvest, the food he consumes. Amy says with a tinge of uplift yearning: “[D]ese heah chillun is diffunt from us... Ah doan know, mebbe hit’ll take some of us generations, but us got tuh ‘gin tuh practise on trasurin’ our younguns. Ah loves dese heah already uh whole heap. Ah don’t want ‘em knocked and ‘buked” (Hurston 722-723). Treasuring youths involves giving them chances, which Ned does not, consciously or not. Existence for the Crittendens means living in practical slavery. Jonah’s Gourd Vine seems open to being read as what systems block racial uplift that earlier Renaissance artists, such as T.S. Stribling, described.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Week 10, entry one
“Drenched in Light” and some from Home to Harlem and other earlier works
I enjoyed reading “Drenched in Light” because I found the protagonist Isie’s zest so refreshing from other readings such as Bennett’s poem “Hatred” and Hughes’ serious essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Characters around Isie seem preoccupied with their own weighty thoughts such as Isie’s grandmother and her antiquated ideals of womanly behavior or the white woman and her melancholy. These attitudes almost appear comical in light of Isie’s carefree nature. Her chief activity is spent looking out onto the road, something fraught with metaphorical import, but for her the activity seems thoroughly based in passing the time, amusing herself with her own thoughts, etc. In some ways she reminds me of Jake from McKay’s Home to Harlem because in the chapter “Snowstorm in Pittsburgh” we see Jake seemingly reject the gaudy symbolism of Pittsburgh the narrator lays out in the opening lines.
Now that’s interesting to explore what it means that a mid-20s man and a child can have that much in common. Just as far as investigating their respective outlooks and what those outlooks mean in the context of the narrative, the social events at the time (such as the Harlem Renaissance and idea of racial uplift), etc.
But still in the light of other readings some parts of “Drenched in Light” read with a slight sting. When Isie is dancing in front of that gaping crowd in red, it is hard not to call the image of Cordelia or Karintha. But I think what makes David Levering Lewis laud the work is its commitment to storytelling, not the grandiose meaning behind actions. You can project Isie to any one of those futures but if that happens it is not because Hurston foreshadows in any way that eventual reality, but rather she authentically tells of a little black girl in Florida and does so with incredible clarity and vividness.
I enjoyed reading “Drenched in Light” because I found the protagonist Isie’s zest so refreshing from other readings such as Bennett’s poem “Hatred” and Hughes’ serious essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Characters around Isie seem preoccupied with their own weighty thoughts such as Isie’s grandmother and her antiquated ideals of womanly behavior or the white woman and her melancholy. These attitudes almost appear comical in light of Isie’s carefree nature. Her chief activity is spent looking out onto the road, something fraught with metaphorical import, but for her the activity seems thoroughly based in passing the time, amusing herself with her own thoughts, etc. In some ways she reminds me of Jake from McKay’s Home to Harlem because in the chapter “Snowstorm in Pittsburgh” we see Jake seemingly reject the gaudy symbolism of Pittsburgh the narrator lays out in the opening lines.
Now that’s interesting to explore what it means that a mid-20s man and a child can have that much in common. Just as far as investigating their respective outlooks and what those outlooks mean in the context of the narrative, the social events at the time (such as the Harlem Renaissance and idea of racial uplift), etc.
But still in the light of other readings some parts of “Drenched in Light” read with a slight sting. When Isie is dancing in front of that gaping crowd in red, it is hard not to call the image of Cordelia or Karintha. But I think what makes David Levering Lewis laud the work is its commitment to storytelling, not the grandiose meaning behind actions. You can project Isie to any one of those futures but if that happens it is not because Hurston foreshadows in any way that eventual reality, but rather she authentically tells of a little black girl in Florida and does so with incredible clarity and vividness.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Week 9, entry two
10/23
“When the Negro was in Vogue” and Black Manhattan
The part from Hughes’ autobiography further describes the first part of the Harlem Renaissance identified by David Levering Lewis, when an interest from white bohemians propelled black artists to new recognition and also seemingly financial security. Hughes reminisces with the same light heartedness he often writes his fictional prose from, weaving between sarcasm (“I don’t know what made any Negroes think that—except that they were mostly intellectuals doing the thinking”) and an old, weary narrative tone that seems eager in some ways to close the door on this chapter (“It was the period when the Negro was in vogue”). As an artist who received his start in racial uplift publications such as Crisis, and then left those pretensions for communicating the experience of the “common” black person, Hughes uses his own experience to color his outlook of the Harlem Renaissance.
Within the first paragraphs Hughes’ irony illuminates the talent black artists had that only surfaced because of white recognition. In recounting the all-star cast of the early show Shuffle Along, the punch line and “Wow!” in Hughes’ humor comes from the fact that such stars could gather on the same stage, on it or behind it. While Hughes recognizes the show supplanted the primitive depiction of blacks, it seemed to have created a new portrayal in the minds of white consumers who now saw blacks as these partyers who play great music, have catchy dances, and throw great parties. There is no real authentic mixing of the races, much less a genuine, sincere appreciation of black artistic output, it seems. As Hughes comments, white audiences still stared at black performers like animals at a zoo. Some clubs were also segregated in Harlem. It seems like “vogue” for a time replaced the notion of “primitive,” that while blacks could be admired, it was still an admiration from a distance—not a genuine recognition of their humanness. Hughes seems to comment on this when he writes that whites came to Harlem but “saw nothing but the cabarets, not the houses” (Hughes, 78).
In some ways this piece is hard to reconcile with James Weldon Johnson’s work Black Manhattan. Johnson portrays a much better picture of Harlem, one where blacks sustain the life of the city and seem to live happily, for there is no mention of their housing situation. Johnson also focuses on the artistic creativty around many of the works, not the white patronage, or condescenion as Hughes probably sees it, providing the opportunities for such artistic work. Hughes line, “It was the period when the Negro was in vogue,” encapsulates his turn from being preoccupied with racial uplift and toeing the Talented Tenth line to the artist intent on authentically giving voice to the “common” black person’s condition.
“When the Negro was in Vogue” and Black Manhattan
The part from Hughes’ autobiography further describes the first part of the Harlem Renaissance identified by David Levering Lewis, when an interest from white bohemians propelled black artists to new recognition and also seemingly financial security. Hughes reminisces with the same light heartedness he often writes his fictional prose from, weaving between sarcasm (“I don’t know what made any Negroes think that—except that they were mostly intellectuals doing the thinking”) and an old, weary narrative tone that seems eager in some ways to close the door on this chapter (“It was the period when the Negro was in vogue”). As an artist who received his start in racial uplift publications such as Crisis, and then left those pretensions for communicating the experience of the “common” black person, Hughes uses his own experience to color his outlook of the Harlem Renaissance.
Within the first paragraphs Hughes’ irony illuminates the talent black artists had that only surfaced because of white recognition. In recounting the all-star cast of the early show Shuffle Along, the punch line and “Wow!” in Hughes’ humor comes from the fact that such stars could gather on the same stage, on it or behind it. While Hughes recognizes the show supplanted the primitive depiction of blacks, it seemed to have created a new portrayal in the minds of white consumers who now saw blacks as these partyers who play great music, have catchy dances, and throw great parties. There is no real authentic mixing of the races, much less a genuine, sincere appreciation of black artistic output, it seems. As Hughes comments, white audiences still stared at black performers like animals at a zoo. Some clubs were also segregated in Harlem. It seems like “vogue” for a time replaced the notion of “primitive,” that while blacks could be admired, it was still an admiration from a distance—not a genuine recognition of their humanness. Hughes seems to comment on this when he writes that whites came to Harlem but “saw nothing but the cabarets, not the houses” (Hughes, 78).
In some ways this piece is hard to reconcile with James Weldon Johnson’s work Black Manhattan. Johnson portrays a much better picture of Harlem, one where blacks sustain the life of the city and seem to live happily, for there is no mention of their housing situation. Johnson also focuses on the artistic creativty around many of the works, not the white patronage, or condescenion as Hughes probably sees it, providing the opportunities for such artistic work. Hughes line, “It was the period when the Negro was in vogue,” encapsulates his turn from being preoccupied with racial uplift and toeing the Talented Tenth line to the artist intent on authentically giving voice to the “common” black person’s condition.
Week 9, entry one
10/23
“The Negro Art Hokum”
I think implicit in Schuyler’s argument for a lack of difference in black and white art is a lack of difference between white and black people. Schuyler seems ahead of his time in recognizing socialization when he writes: “…[W]hen [blacks respond] to the same political, social, moral, and economic stimuli in precisely the same manner as his white neighbor, it is sheer nonsense to talk about “racial differences” as between the American black man and the American white man” (98). Schuyler and Hughes would agree that black art should be evaluated seriously, because Schuyler sees condescension in a critic’s appraisal towards black art while Hughes only sees stereotypes available to the black artist such as being a clown.
While Schuyler is ahead of his time in socialization my only concern about his piece is the over generalization I think he makes about segregation and Jim Crow. Schuyler seemingly chalks this as just another factor that could shape just about any race. It was only a matter of chance that blacks were enslaved and developed so many musical forms in part as a result of their condition throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Schuyler really merges race with the condition of the blacks at the time of his writing. It seems like getting at Schuyler’s definition of race reveals his own values on aesthetics because for Schuyler, aesthetics indicates some heritage and condition.
“The Negro Art Hokum”
I think implicit in Schuyler’s argument for a lack of difference in black and white art is a lack of difference between white and black people. Schuyler seems ahead of his time in recognizing socialization when he writes: “…[W]hen [blacks respond] to the same political, social, moral, and economic stimuli in precisely the same manner as his white neighbor, it is sheer nonsense to talk about “racial differences” as between the American black man and the American white man” (98). Schuyler and Hughes would agree that black art should be evaluated seriously, because Schuyler sees condescension in a critic’s appraisal towards black art while Hughes only sees stereotypes available to the black artist such as being a clown.
While Schuyler is ahead of his time in socialization my only concern about his piece is the over generalization I think he makes about segregation and Jim Crow. Schuyler seemingly chalks this as just another factor that could shape just about any race. It was only a matter of chance that blacks were enslaved and developed so many musical forms in part as a result of their condition throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Schuyler really merges race with the condition of the blacks at the time of his writing. It seems like getting at Schuyler’s definition of race reveals his own values on aesthetics because for Schuyler, aesthetics indicates some heritage and condition.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Week 8, entry one and two
10/19
“Cordelia the Crude” and “Negro-Art Hokum”
Thurman’s short story “Cordelia the Crude” has slang and dialect interspersed in the narrative, which is helped understood by George Schuyler’s work, “Negro-Art Hokum.” Schuyler concludes whites and blacks are all subject to the same socialization and therefore produce similar art. Schulyer writes: “…[T]heir work shows the impress of nationality rather than race. They all reveal the psychology and culture of their environment—their color is incidental” (98). Thurman’s short story seems to wrestle with this issue because he retells the events of somebody who does not have all that unique of circumstances. Schuyler writes in his work: “Again, the Africamerican is subject to the same economic and social forces that mold the actions and thoughts of the white Americans” (97-98). Cordelia leaves South Carolina for New York because of her family and eventually falls into prostitution because of her defiance to her family and because Harlem is conducive to that lifestyle with its concentration of people in one area.
What is hard to reconcile in light of Schuyler’s work though is the slang and dialect evident in “Cordelia the Crude.” The breaks in the narrative are easily spotted and especially glaring in light of the articulate narration. What these breaks in the narrative seem to suggest is the local flavor of Harlem. While Schuyler is correct that the forces that animate people are indeed national forces, not so much racial ones, the response to those products seems distinctly local. Any woman is capable of becoming “bountiful in the matter of bestowing sexual favors upon persuasive and likely young men,” but perhaps only in Harlem is she “a fus’ class chippie” (Thurman 629, 631). Thurman describes the narrator interacting with Cordelia, flirting with her and everything, but that behavior has the label of a “sheik.” (Thurman 632). The narrator even does not live up to that label when Cordelia says that he “was different from mos’ of des’ sheiks, and when pressed for an explanation [she] brazenly told me in a slightly scandalized and patronizing tone that I had not even felt her legs…!” (Thurman 632). Cordelia has already adopted the language of Harlem to label people and anticipate outcomes based on the labels she attributes to people.
These distinct breaks in narrative do not wholly answer Schuyler’s driving question central to his essay: “How, then, can the black American be expected to produce art and literature dissimilar to that of the white American?” (98). In some ways, the slang and dialect could be boiled down to the different ways people say tomato. There is no suggestion that race is linked to being a “fus’ class chippie” or a “sheik.” When describing Cordelia’s past, he speaks of the Stokeses and their “bad mixed blood in ‘em,” but even the badness of the mixed blood reflects the larger Southern view of interracial people, not just racial views (which Thurman thoroughly explores in The Blacker the Berry).
Entry two
“Hatred,” “Mulatto,” and “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
In Hughes’ essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes argues that embracing the beauty of being black enables black artists to create truly liberating art. The selected poems show a preoccupation with whiteness by making their hatred for white people the focus of the poem.
Bennett’s poem “Hatred” seems to have a preoccupation with having the speaker’s hatred validated by instilling fear in white people. The poem ends with the kicker: “Memory will lay its hands / Upon your breast / And you will understand / My hatred.” In some ways the speaker seems incomplete without instilling fear in the white people. I feel like Hughes would argue this poem fails in being meaningful because it is preoccupied with whiteness, still. Despite its venomous tone, its hatred, and even its rash pronunciation of black empowerment (the “rekindled fires” in the speakers’ eyes), it is still this internalization of whiteness. “Hatred” can be read as an attempt to traverse the racial mountain before black artists. The tools are there with the darts of singing steel but the speaker is immersed in that culture where whiteness is regarded as superior, not the culture Hughes sees holding the great Negro artist: “These common people…will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself” (Hughes 92). That culture of the common folk, as Hughes describes it, is firmly planted in the present, jovial, and vibrant. They hardly seem like the type to play hatred as “a game / Play with cool hands / And slim fingers” (Bennett 223).
Hughes poem “Mulatto” is interesting because it tells of a speaker killing his father to gain racial freedom. Yet Hughes does not choose the jazz form he is so known for, but really an arguably “white” form, the sonnet. Like the speaker in “Hatred,” the speaker in “Mulatto” is preoccupied with validating his or herself by having the whites feel the hatred the speaker experiences. What is unsaid in Benett’s poem is explicitly laid out in Hughes’, however; the aim of the hatred is to create a future for the speaker by liberating himself from the whiteness of heritage. The whiteness has given the speaker a “bastard birth-mark,” a constant reminder of the whiteness within. It would appear from that liberation the speaker can identify only his or her black race, and perhaps embrace that.
“Cordelia the Crude” and “Negro-Art Hokum”
Thurman’s short story “Cordelia the Crude” has slang and dialect interspersed in the narrative, which is helped understood by George Schuyler’s work, “Negro-Art Hokum.” Schuyler concludes whites and blacks are all subject to the same socialization and therefore produce similar art. Schulyer writes: “…[T]heir work shows the impress of nationality rather than race. They all reveal the psychology and culture of their environment—their color is incidental” (98). Thurman’s short story seems to wrestle with this issue because he retells the events of somebody who does not have all that unique of circumstances. Schuyler writes in his work: “Again, the Africamerican is subject to the same economic and social forces that mold the actions and thoughts of the white Americans” (97-98). Cordelia leaves South Carolina for New York because of her family and eventually falls into prostitution because of her defiance to her family and because Harlem is conducive to that lifestyle with its concentration of people in one area.
What is hard to reconcile in light of Schuyler’s work though is the slang and dialect evident in “Cordelia the Crude.” The breaks in the narrative are easily spotted and especially glaring in light of the articulate narration. What these breaks in the narrative seem to suggest is the local flavor of Harlem. While Schuyler is correct that the forces that animate people are indeed national forces, not so much racial ones, the response to those products seems distinctly local. Any woman is capable of becoming “bountiful in the matter of bestowing sexual favors upon persuasive and likely young men,” but perhaps only in Harlem is she “a fus’ class chippie” (Thurman 629, 631). Thurman describes the narrator interacting with Cordelia, flirting with her and everything, but that behavior has the label of a “sheik.” (Thurman 632). The narrator even does not live up to that label when Cordelia says that he “was different from mos’ of des’ sheiks, and when pressed for an explanation [she] brazenly told me in a slightly scandalized and patronizing tone that I had not even felt her legs…!” (Thurman 632). Cordelia has already adopted the language of Harlem to label people and anticipate outcomes based on the labels she attributes to people.
These distinct breaks in narrative do not wholly answer Schuyler’s driving question central to his essay: “How, then, can the black American be expected to produce art and literature dissimilar to that of the white American?” (98). In some ways, the slang and dialect could be boiled down to the different ways people say tomato. There is no suggestion that race is linked to being a “fus’ class chippie” or a “sheik.” When describing Cordelia’s past, he speaks of the Stokeses and their “bad mixed blood in ‘em,” but even the badness of the mixed blood reflects the larger Southern view of interracial people, not just racial views (which Thurman thoroughly explores in The Blacker the Berry).
Entry two
“Hatred,” “Mulatto,” and “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
In Hughes’ essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes argues that embracing the beauty of being black enables black artists to create truly liberating art. The selected poems show a preoccupation with whiteness by making their hatred for white people the focus of the poem.
Bennett’s poem “Hatred” seems to have a preoccupation with having the speaker’s hatred validated by instilling fear in white people. The poem ends with the kicker: “Memory will lay its hands / Upon your breast / And you will understand / My hatred.” In some ways the speaker seems incomplete without instilling fear in the white people. I feel like Hughes would argue this poem fails in being meaningful because it is preoccupied with whiteness, still. Despite its venomous tone, its hatred, and even its rash pronunciation of black empowerment (the “rekindled fires” in the speakers’ eyes), it is still this internalization of whiteness. “Hatred” can be read as an attempt to traverse the racial mountain before black artists. The tools are there with the darts of singing steel but the speaker is immersed in that culture where whiteness is regarded as superior, not the culture Hughes sees holding the great Negro artist: “These common people…will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself” (Hughes 92). That culture of the common folk, as Hughes describes it, is firmly planted in the present, jovial, and vibrant. They hardly seem like the type to play hatred as “a game / Play with cool hands / And slim fingers” (Bennett 223).
Hughes poem “Mulatto” is interesting because it tells of a speaker killing his father to gain racial freedom. Yet Hughes does not choose the jazz form he is so known for, but really an arguably “white” form, the sonnet. Like the speaker in “Hatred,” the speaker in “Mulatto” is preoccupied with validating his or herself by having the whites feel the hatred the speaker experiences. What is unsaid in Benett’s poem is explicitly laid out in Hughes’, however; the aim of the hatred is to create a future for the speaker by liberating himself from the whiteness of heritage. The whiteness has given the speaker a “bastard birth-mark,” a constant reminder of the whiteness within. It would appear from that liberation the speaker can identify only his or her black race, and perhaps embrace that.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Week Seven, entry one
10/8 “Wedding Day”
The events of “Wedding Day” all occur in France, which allows some exploration of the effect place has on the characters. Montmartre, particularly rue Pigalle, is described as as the Harlem of Paris, with its concetration of black jazz musicians musicians who are expatriates of the U.S. Besides being concentrated into living in one area, the blacks in Paris also frequent “The Pit,” which recieved its name from the density of blacks resembling a thick colony of fleas. What seems unsaid in both of these descriptions is why are blacks living in one place and socializing in just one place, especially with just their own race? The blacks portrayed in the story are musicians with no relationship to their white patrons, which is ironic when you think of the communicative power of music, especially the individuality invested in each jazz improvisation. Still, the story indicates no exchange between the whites and blacks. Perhaps this implies some disconnect in values—the Parisians see the music as exotic and something pleasant to dine to while the blacks see their music as parts of themsevles by virtue of its form, jazz.
While what is unexplained is troubling in “Wedding Day,” some of the plot illuminates the various opportunities blacks have in Paris. Paul appears to be able to have a wedding befitting of the passion and romance in the relationship he had with the white American prostitute, Mary. Paul eagerly dresses for the day and then immediately looks into contacting Mary to express his jubilation with the succinct phrase: “Happy wedding day” (Bennett, 368). That phrase seems to say a lot for the new outlook Paul briefly had and some of the opportunity available to blacks in France.
While the blacks in “Wedding Day” are away from the United States, they still bring some of that racial consciousness to bear in their new surroundings. In some ways it seems place cannot erase the cultural formation of certain vulnerabilities, as one musician predicts: “Oh you ain’t so forty. You’ll fall like all the other spades I’ve seen. Your kind falls the hardest” (Bennett, 366). While Paul took advantage of his new place, Paris, and its leniency on blacks (after all he hasn’t done much jail time and he openly beats up white people), others still see him as an American black male susceptible to women, including white women. One of the musicians snickers about Paul’s former racial outlook, saying how he detested white males, but was vulnerable to white females (Bennett, 367). In fact, the news of Paul’s new relationship is centered on his break from the social and gossiping nexus of the Pit to some other place. In Paris there appears some transportation of the former United States culture to new surroundings as much out of comfort as it is out of possibility. The blacks don’t appear entirely integrated in Parisian society but they are clustered very similarly like they are in the United States.
Bennett, G. “Wedding Day.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1994. 363-369.
The events of “Wedding Day” all occur in France, which allows some exploration of the effect place has on the characters. Montmartre, particularly rue Pigalle, is described as as the Harlem of Paris, with its concetration of black jazz musicians musicians who are expatriates of the U.S. Besides being concentrated into living in one area, the blacks in Paris also frequent “The Pit,” which recieved its name from the density of blacks resembling a thick colony of fleas. What seems unsaid in both of these descriptions is why are blacks living in one place and socializing in just one place, especially with just their own race? The blacks portrayed in the story are musicians with no relationship to their white patrons, which is ironic when you think of the communicative power of music, especially the individuality invested in each jazz improvisation. Still, the story indicates no exchange between the whites and blacks. Perhaps this implies some disconnect in values—the Parisians see the music as exotic and something pleasant to dine to while the blacks see their music as parts of themsevles by virtue of its form, jazz.
While what is unexplained is troubling in “Wedding Day,” some of the plot illuminates the various opportunities blacks have in Paris. Paul appears to be able to have a wedding befitting of the passion and romance in the relationship he had with the white American prostitute, Mary. Paul eagerly dresses for the day and then immediately looks into contacting Mary to express his jubilation with the succinct phrase: “Happy wedding day” (Bennett, 368). That phrase seems to say a lot for the new outlook Paul briefly had and some of the opportunity available to blacks in France.
While the blacks in “Wedding Day” are away from the United States, they still bring some of that racial consciousness to bear in their new surroundings. In some ways it seems place cannot erase the cultural formation of certain vulnerabilities, as one musician predicts: “Oh you ain’t so forty. You’ll fall like all the other spades I’ve seen. Your kind falls the hardest” (Bennett, 366). While Paul took advantage of his new place, Paris, and its leniency on blacks (after all he hasn’t done much jail time and he openly beats up white people), others still see him as an American black male susceptible to women, including white women. One of the musicians snickers about Paul’s former racial outlook, saying how he detested white males, but was vulnerable to white females (Bennett, 367). In fact, the news of Paul’s new relationship is centered on his break from the social and gossiping nexus of the Pit to some other place. In Paris there appears some transportation of the former United States culture to new surroundings as much out of comfort as it is out of possibility. The blacks don’t appear entirely integrated in Parisian society but they are clustered very similarly like they are in the United States.
Bennett, G. “Wedding Day.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1994. 363-369.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Week six, entry two
10/5 from The Blacker the Berry and Quicksand
Gender roles react with the shade of blackness for both Emma Lou and Helga Crane in their respective stories. Emma Lou thinks to herself that being a darker black woman condemns her to sorrow and disappointment, while a black man can get along just fine. Larsen frames Crane’s experience with the excerpt from Langston Hughes, where the mixed heritage creates a new identity ostracized by both races of the ancestors. That ostracism is seen in the lack of place for Helga, and her migration is partially in response to that perception she has and what others think of her. The exchange between her and Axel caps years of being branded as the exotic dark woman from America, and Helga succinctly reflects on her time as much as the picture Axel presents her: “It wasn’t, she contended, herself at all, but some disgusting sensual creature with her features” (Larsen, 83).
Part of the opportunities that present themselves to the respective women in light of their gender expectations are seen through the colors they adorn. Emma Lou remembers how her skin restricted the colors she wore, excluding white for it not being “complementary to her complexion” (Thurman, 637). Helga assesses the current colors and styles available to black people and claims that black, brown and gray are “ruinous to [black people], actually destroyed the luminous tones lurking in their dusky skins” (Larsen, 16). Dusky skins seems to suggest not complete blackness, as is Emma Lou’s pigmentation, so Crane’s attitude towards those very dark black people remains ambiguous. The clothes are important because they hold much of societies expectations, and as we see from the texts, Helga appears to have a fuller, more colorful wardrobe to choose from. She is not as limited by her skin as is Emma Lou. Emma Lou understates her appearance, attempting to alter her skin tone, straighten her hair, really trying to find some measure of whiteness in some characteristic, though ultimately she completes the package by wearing what she calls “Arline’s less pretentious afternoon frocks” (Thurman, 640).
Gender roles react with the shade of blackness for both Emma Lou and Helga Crane in their respective stories. Emma Lou thinks to herself that being a darker black woman condemns her to sorrow and disappointment, while a black man can get along just fine. Larsen frames Crane’s experience with the excerpt from Langston Hughes, where the mixed heritage creates a new identity ostracized by both races of the ancestors. That ostracism is seen in the lack of place for Helga, and her migration is partially in response to that perception she has and what others think of her. The exchange between her and Axel caps years of being branded as the exotic dark woman from America, and Helga succinctly reflects on her time as much as the picture Axel presents her: “It wasn’t, she contended, herself at all, but some disgusting sensual creature with her features” (Larsen, 83).
Part of the opportunities that present themselves to the respective women in light of their gender expectations are seen through the colors they adorn. Emma Lou remembers how her skin restricted the colors she wore, excluding white for it not being “complementary to her complexion” (Thurman, 637). Helga assesses the current colors and styles available to black people and claims that black, brown and gray are “ruinous to [black people], actually destroyed the luminous tones lurking in their dusky skins” (Larsen, 16). Dusky skins seems to suggest not complete blackness, as is Emma Lou’s pigmentation, so Crane’s attitude towards those very dark black people remains ambiguous. The clothes are important because they hold much of societies expectations, and as we see from the texts, Helga appears to have a fuller, more colorful wardrobe to choose from. She is not as limited by her skin as is Emma Lou. Emma Lou understates her appearance, attempting to alter her skin tone, straighten her hair, really trying to find some measure of whiteness in some characteristic, though ultimately she completes the package by wearing what she calls “Arline’s less pretentious afternoon frocks” (Thurman, 640).
Week 6, entry one
10/5 from “The Closing Door”
What does Lewis mean when he calls Grimke “a true aristocrat of color”? Does this title have anything to do with the metaphor of the closing door?
Grimke’s aristocratic stature developed from her use of a high form of fiction to comment on the current social realities. In a previous post I attempted to draw some similarities between Grimke’s work and Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I feel the connections are warranted and reasonable, and based on that I think Grimke’s use of this high form of fiction helps cast her as a true aristocrat of color. Grimke’s work appears in the first stage of the Harlem Renaissance, when white Bohemia was fascinated with the savage black person while simultaneously the black artists of the time were responding to the Red Summer with poems such as “If We Must Die” and Grimke’s short story. Lewis writes, “For the whites, art was the means to change society before they would accept it. For the blacks, art was the means to change society in order to be accepted into it” (xxi). The assumption in these beliefs is that art must foremost have some political dimension, and that would seemingly be an aristocratic belief because the higher class for the most part consumes the works of literature that combine language and other literary tools to comment on social realities.
By writing “The Closing Door” Grimke is entering into that aristocratic circle by using a high form of fiction developed by one of the original American masters to comment about race. The central horror to the story, the infantcide, reflects Lewis’ line about blacks understanding of art—they must change society in order to be accepted into it. When Agnes Milton realizes society will not change to embrace her race, she supposes the best option is to kill her child rather than letting the child mature into just another “instrument.” Her decision is contained in the multi-dimensional symbol of the closing door, Lewis points out, whether it represents the isolation, the depression, or in the larger picture, the loss of opportunities for blacks across America suffered during the violent Red Summer of 1919 (486).
What does Lewis mean when he calls Grimke “a true aristocrat of color”? Does this title have anything to do with the metaphor of the closing door?
Grimke’s aristocratic stature developed from her use of a high form of fiction to comment on the current social realities. In a previous post I attempted to draw some similarities between Grimke’s work and Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I feel the connections are warranted and reasonable, and based on that I think Grimke’s use of this high form of fiction helps cast her as a true aristocrat of color. Grimke’s work appears in the first stage of the Harlem Renaissance, when white Bohemia was fascinated with the savage black person while simultaneously the black artists of the time were responding to the Red Summer with poems such as “If We Must Die” and Grimke’s short story. Lewis writes, “For the whites, art was the means to change society before they would accept it. For the blacks, art was the means to change society in order to be accepted into it” (xxi). The assumption in these beliefs is that art must foremost have some political dimension, and that would seemingly be an aristocratic belief because the higher class for the most part consumes the works of literature that combine language and other literary tools to comment on social realities.
By writing “The Closing Door” Grimke is entering into that aristocratic circle by using a high form of fiction developed by one of the original American masters to comment about race. The central horror to the story, the infantcide, reflects Lewis’ line about blacks understanding of art—they must change society in order to be accepted into it. When Agnes Milton realizes society will not change to embrace her race, she supposes the best option is to kill her child rather than letting the child mature into just another “instrument.” Her decision is contained in the multi-dimensional symbol of the closing door, Lewis points out, whether it represents the isolation, the depression, or in the larger picture, the loss of opportunities for blacks across America suffered during the violent Red Summer of 1919 (486).
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Week 5, entry one and two
Week 5, entry one
from Passing and The Fire in the Flint
Based on the excerpts, both Larsen’s Passing and White’s The Fire in the Flint, display two male physicians in different ways. Brian, Irene Redfield’s husband in Passing, is seen as a strong-willed physician frustrated by his professional growth. Brian principally acts in the excerpt as a means to understand Irene’s focus on sustaining the middle-class respectability she has found in Harlem. Kenneth Harper, the protagonist in The Fire in the Flint, exercises his solution to the race problem by bettering his own circumstances. While the introduction to the excerpt mentions a love of Kenneth’s she appears nowhere in the selected portions of The Fire in the Flint. While Jane Phillips, Kenneth’s love, is absent, his office is stocked with other females that work inversely to the relationship of Brian and Irene Redfield. The women in The Fire in the Flint excerpt¸ are there to express Kenneth’s belief that the racial issue would be resolved if all blacks could improve their situation.
The first two women introduced in the excerpt are Kenneth’s mother and Mamie. Both function as representatives on behalf of Kenneth’s practice, the vital networkers needed to introduce blacks in Georgia to Kenneth’s deft surgical skills. Kenneth’s mom is an astounding character in and of herself, an articulate women who managed to preserve her serenity while her son was in the North. The descriptions afforded to the two other doctors, Dr. Williams and Dr. Bennett, describe in a roundabout way the culture of the Georgia town where Kenneth practices. Williams affects almost a false intelligence and austerity, with his love of Latin words, and his refrain of the busy work schedule he keeps. He drives a shiny Ford, but levels the power distance between himself, the driver, and the onlookers, by raucously calling out to those on the streets. His arrival is more of a carnival than it is the serious, revered entrance of a dignified individual (which I think Williams wishes it was more the latter rather than the former). Dr. Bennett is proof of the durability of traditional Souther thinking, with nearly all descriptions of him or his buggy involving some passage of time. It was in this backdrop, traditional Southerners, black demagogues, that Kenneth’s mother lived those years without Kenneth. Mrs. Harper is an intermediary moving between the poor Georgian community and the highly educated office of Kenneth, a woman who can bridge blacks and their present circumstance and racial uplift.
Mrs. Johnson is another woman in Kenneth’s office who seems to represent the belief of Kenneth’s that skill, talent, and education translates to a desirable life. She held a respectable career as a nurse at a hospital, but now leads a domestic life with her husband in Central City. Addressing how one betters his individual circumstance is seen through Mrs. Johnson: skill, talent, and education.
Week 5, entry two
from “The Closing Door”
While reading Grimke’s “The Closing Door,” the fairest intertextual comparison seemed to be the work of Edgar Allen Poe, particularly “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The comparison between the two works attests to the social burdens that can drive the central characters to hysteria. The elements Poe outlined in pioneering and popularizing Gothic fiction are present in Grimke’s work: the narrator as a character (suggesting some unreliability), suspense, isolation, and finally hysteria resulting from some social ill.
The narrator’s relationship with Agnes shapes the retelling of the events, as she outlines from the beginning: “I wish I might show you Agnes Milton of those far off happy days” (Grimke, 487). The suspense arises also very early in the short story, arriving in the form of a bill with no accompanying service expectant of a bill. The characters are all charged something, but what charges them is unclear. Discovering that charge becomes integral to the denouement of the plot. The suspense is further heightened when the service they paid for, the telegram, arrives, reading only: “Bob died suddenly. Under no circumstances come. Father” (Grimke, 489). The weight of that news isolates the characters, because almost improbably Joe, Agnes’ brother and a reporter of the event, shows up shortly after the telegram. Agnes is removed to the kitchen to save her from any grisly news Joe may have while the narrator and her husband, Jim, remain in the scene to hear from Joe. The narrator and Jim make it a point to guard Agnes from any news, though she still hears it and faints.
Agnes and Roderick Usher both seem driven to hysteria by social forces outside their control. Agnes’ refrain, “I’m an instrument” serves to describe not only her but also Roderick. Roderick could not continue the revered Usher bloodline or withstand the pressure of that high society living. Agnes cannot make sense of the brutality and barbarism that racism begets. Rather than reproduce another instrument, Agnes kills her own child and to guarantee she produces no more tools, she kills herself. The death caused by the supernatural events in Poe’s story is matched by the death caused by the despair and resentment in Grimke’s work.
from Passing and The Fire in the Flint
Based on the excerpts, both Larsen’s Passing and White’s The Fire in the Flint, display two male physicians in different ways. Brian, Irene Redfield’s husband in Passing, is seen as a strong-willed physician frustrated by his professional growth. Brian principally acts in the excerpt as a means to understand Irene’s focus on sustaining the middle-class respectability she has found in Harlem. Kenneth Harper, the protagonist in The Fire in the Flint, exercises his solution to the race problem by bettering his own circumstances. While the introduction to the excerpt mentions a love of Kenneth’s she appears nowhere in the selected portions of The Fire in the Flint. While Jane Phillips, Kenneth’s love, is absent, his office is stocked with other females that work inversely to the relationship of Brian and Irene Redfield. The women in The Fire in the Flint excerpt¸ are there to express Kenneth’s belief that the racial issue would be resolved if all blacks could improve their situation.
The first two women introduced in the excerpt are Kenneth’s mother and Mamie. Both function as representatives on behalf of Kenneth’s practice, the vital networkers needed to introduce blacks in Georgia to Kenneth’s deft surgical skills. Kenneth’s mom is an astounding character in and of herself, an articulate women who managed to preserve her serenity while her son was in the North. The descriptions afforded to the two other doctors, Dr. Williams and Dr. Bennett, describe in a roundabout way the culture of the Georgia town where Kenneth practices. Williams affects almost a false intelligence and austerity, with his love of Latin words, and his refrain of the busy work schedule he keeps. He drives a shiny Ford, but levels the power distance between himself, the driver, and the onlookers, by raucously calling out to those on the streets. His arrival is more of a carnival than it is the serious, revered entrance of a dignified individual (which I think Williams wishes it was more the latter rather than the former). Dr. Bennett is proof of the durability of traditional Souther thinking, with nearly all descriptions of him or his buggy involving some passage of time. It was in this backdrop, traditional Southerners, black demagogues, that Kenneth’s mother lived those years without Kenneth. Mrs. Harper is an intermediary moving between the poor Georgian community and the highly educated office of Kenneth, a woman who can bridge blacks and their present circumstance and racial uplift.
Mrs. Johnson is another woman in Kenneth’s office who seems to represent the belief of Kenneth’s that skill, talent, and education translates to a desirable life. She held a respectable career as a nurse at a hospital, but now leads a domestic life with her husband in Central City. Addressing how one betters his individual circumstance is seen through Mrs. Johnson: skill, talent, and education.
Week 5, entry two
from “The Closing Door”
While reading Grimke’s “The Closing Door,” the fairest intertextual comparison seemed to be the work of Edgar Allen Poe, particularly “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The comparison between the two works attests to the social burdens that can drive the central characters to hysteria. The elements Poe outlined in pioneering and popularizing Gothic fiction are present in Grimke’s work: the narrator as a character (suggesting some unreliability), suspense, isolation, and finally hysteria resulting from some social ill.
The narrator’s relationship with Agnes shapes the retelling of the events, as she outlines from the beginning: “I wish I might show you Agnes Milton of those far off happy days” (Grimke, 487). The suspense arises also very early in the short story, arriving in the form of a bill with no accompanying service expectant of a bill. The characters are all charged something, but what charges them is unclear. Discovering that charge becomes integral to the denouement of the plot. The suspense is further heightened when the service they paid for, the telegram, arrives, reading only: “Bob died suddenly. Under no circumstances come. Father” (Grimke, 489). The weight of that news isolates the characters, because almost improbably Joe, Agnes’ brother and a reporter of the event, shows up shortly after the telegram. Agnes is removed to the kitchen to save her from any grisly news Joe may have while the narrator and her husband, Jim, remain in the scene to hear from Joe. The narrator and Jim make it a point to guard Agnes from any news, though she still hears it and faints.
Agnes and Roderick Usher both seem driven to hysteria by social forces outside their control. Agnes’ refrain, “I’m an instrument” serves to describe not only her but also Roderick. Roderick could not continue the revered Usher bloodline or withstand the pressure of that high society living. Agnes cannot make sense of the brutality and barbarism that racism begets. Rather than reproduce another instrument, Agnes kills her own child and to guarantee she produces no more tools, she kills herself. The death caused by the supernatural events in Poe’s story is matched by the death caused by the despair and resentment in Grimke’s work.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Week 4, entry two
Based on the excerpt I would want to read more of Nella Larsen’s Passing. Both Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry have upper-middle class privileges but feel unsatisfied. In addition to exploring those voids, a more complete picture of Clare Kendry could be provided given the full text. The excerpt seems very much about Irene, while only the foreword provided by the editor gives a sample of Kendry’s domestic life. Most of all, the full text would provide a complete picture of this urban gentility that draws from the Southern legacy.
Within Passing there is some remodeling of Southern gentility to fit Harlem. Specifically, this is the life Irene Redfield embraces, and the life she suspects Clare Kendry to be disrupting. The silence between Irene and her husband Brian mirrors the unspoken tension of those empty, arranged marriages in the South. Irene seeks to harbor her children within that gentility by marking the racial issue taboo.
This lifestyle affects both Irene and Brian. Brian feels frustrated that his professional growth has stagnated and seeks to move to Brazil. Meanwhile, the serenity and composure Irene affects, in the face of infidelity, makes her feel “years, not months, older” in the short time she suspects Brian’s affair. Harlem seems inhospitable to providing the systems that sustain this elitism Irene lives. The snowy and arid months match the despair pervading Irene’s relationship, which provides no recourse in the cool, temperate climates of the South. Her social network does not actively live the urban gentility life style, as Irene discovers Felise passing, which provides no recourse in the elaborate social networks evidenced in the South. Additionally, Irene seems to internally struggle with this lifestyle, as seen in her response to Clare’s value of money. Irene internalizes her response, feeling: “Her reason partly agreed, her instinct wholly rebelled” (Larsen, 463). This reason, logic, may have been constructed over the years of this privileged middle class life, while the instinct may be the sum of her experiences, the reminders of her skin color in a segregated United States.
Within Passing there is some remodeling of Southern gentility to fit Harlem. Specifically, this is the life Irene Redfield embraces, and the life she suspects Clare Kendry to be disrupting. The silence between Irene and her husband Brian mirrors the unspoken tension of those empty, arranged marriages in the South. Irene seeks to harbor her children within that gentility by marking the racial issue taboo.
This lifestyle affects both Irene and Brian. Brian feels frustrated that his professional growth has stagnated and seeks to move to Brazil. Meanwhile, the serenity and composure Irene affects, in the face of infidelity, makes her feel “years, not months, older” in the short time she suspects Brian’s affair. Harlem seems inhospitable to providing the systems that sustain this elitism Irene lives. The snowy and arid months match the despair pervading Irene’s relationship, which provides no recourse in the cool, temperate climates of the South. Her social network does not actively live the urban gentility life style, as Irene discovers Felise passing, which provides no recourse in the elaborate social networks evidenced in the South. Additionally, Irene seems to internally struggle with this lifestyle, as seen in her response to Clare’s value of money. Irene internalizes her response, feeling: “Her reason partly agreed, her instinct wholly rebelled” (Larsen, 463). This reason, logic, may have been constructed over the years of this privileged middle class life, while the instinct may be the sum of her experiences, the reminders of her skin color in a segregated United States.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Week 4, entry one
9/16 from Home to Harlem
“Are Jake and Ray rejecting society’s institutions or are they outside of them trying to find their way in?”
From the excerpt it would appear Jake and Ray are both rejecting at least part of their society’s institutions. Jake observes the energies of industrialized Pittsburgh, being consumed by them by being enveloped in a cloud of smoke from an incoming train, the wonderful metaphoric description of Wiley Avenue, with its bleak looking shops along an uphill street, shrugs, and says, “I don’t like its ‘pearance nohow” (McKay, 371). It’s a wonderful line that acknowledges the surface of things, seemingly making Jake look foolish, but pronouncing within Jake’s character there is a concerted effort to not get swept up in the grandiose import of his life—that “romance of being black” as Ray describes it in his mind. There seems some contentedness by Jake with his economical realities—why take satisfaction from what you purchase (the pie) when the woman selling it offers more succor? Why gamble when you already won enough money at it? For Jake, there is always some niche within his economic reality to detract from the hardships he does indeed face. Rather than sleep in a bug-ridden place, he goes out, has his share, and then comes back to the same squalid place to pass out. Jake’s actions defy society’s morally and intellectually edifying institutions, thereby rejecting them.
While Jake is accepting of his economic realities he seems hopelessly lost pinning down his social life and figuring out what he wants from that sphere. When he initially looks at the world of opium and drugs, that place with a separate threshold a part from the bar (almost signifying you are in some serious stuff if you walk through those doors into this new place), he seemingly rues: “It’s a great life ef youse in on it…” (McKay, 375). But Jake can’t seem to bring himself to accept all that comes with that life—only the casual drop in to scratch and old habit. I feel Jake recognizes the transience and fruitlessness in drug highs because they aren’t as “mahvelous” as Jake’s feelings. While Ray is conflicted with his intellect, Jake seems nagged by his emptiness. When he touches down in Harlem, instead of being enveloped by the energies of the city (no smoke this time!), he is forlorn over not having any woman to share this beautiful day with.
Ray’s character is harder to judge in terms of his rejection or seeking of society’s institutions. As we discussed in class, he seems afflicted with a sense of dignity. For that prestige to strike a man of Ray’s circumstances instills a sense of restlessness within Ray. Ray reads the weighty black publications, Ray talks like an educated person, Ray may have even gone to Howard University. Ray initially seems attempting to work his way into the social institutions. But it doesn’t seem by any accident that Ray and Jake first meet at what is described as a social nexus for low-lives and shop of ridiculous religious iconography, a pool hall on dirty Wiley Avenue. For all of Ray’s efforts this is where he finds himself. His frustration doesn’t seem to come ahead until the scene where he lies awake, begging to sleep, but kept awake by his conscience screaming at him for his social situation in the broader context of race relations. Ray seemingly throws in the towel by stealing Jake’s drugs. What troubled him became distorted: “Taboos and terrors and penalties were transformed into new pagan delights, orgies of Orient-blue carnival, of rare flowers and red fruits, cherubs and seraphs and fetishes and phalli and all the most-high gods…” (McKay, 379). And with that action, the “tuning in and dropping out” long before the 1960s ever happened, Ray got his sleep. The word “capitulate” I think is an interesting word choice. There are connotations of loss from the word’s definition of drawing up the terms of surrender.
“Are Jake and Ray rejecting society’s institutions or are they outside of them trying to find their way in?”
From the excerpt it would appear Jake and Ray are both rejecting at least part of their society’s institutions. Jake observes the energies of industrialized Pittsburgh, being consumed by them by being enveloped in a cloud of smoke from an incoming train, the wonderful metaphoric description of Wiley Avenue, with its bleak looking shops along an uphill street, shrugs, and says, “I don’t like its ‘pearance nohow” (McKay, 371). It’s a wonderful line that acknowledges the surface of things, seemingly making Jake look foolish, but pronouncing within Jake’s character there is a concerted effort to not get swept up in the grandiose import of his life—that “romance of being black” as Ray describes it in his mind. There seems some contentedness by Jake with his economical realities—why take satisfaction from what you purchase (the pie) when the woman selling it offers more succor? Why gamble when you already won enough money at it? For Jake, there is always some niche within his economic reality to detract from the hardships he does indeed face. Rather than sleep in a bug-ridden place, he goes out, has his share, and then comes back to the same squalid place to pass out. Jake’s actions defy society’s morally and intellectually edifying institutions, thereby rejecting them.
While Jake is accepting of his economic realities he seems hopelessly lost pinning down his social life and figuring out what he wants from that sphere. When he initially looks at the world of opium and drugs, that place with a separate threshold a part from the bar (almost signifying you are in some serious stuff if you walk through those doors into this new place), he seemingly rues: “It’s a great life ef youse in on it…” (McKay, 375). But Jake can’t seem to bring himself to accept all that comes with that life—only the casual drop in to scratch and old habit. I feel Jake recognizes the transience and fruitlessness in drug highs because they aren’t as “mahvelous” as Jake’s feelings. While Ray is conflicted with his intellect, Jake seems nagged by his emptiness. When he touches down in Harlem, instead of being enveloped by the energies of the city (no smoke this time!), he is forlorn over not having any woman to share this beautiful day with.
Ray’s character is harder to judge in terms of his rejection or seeking of society’s institutions. As we discussed in class, he seems afflicted with a sense of dignity. For that prestige to strike a man of Ray’s circumstances instills a sense of restlessness within Ray. Ray reads the weighty black publications, Ray talks like an educated person, Ray may have even gone to Howard University. Ray initially seems attempting to work his way into the social institutions. But it doesn’t seem by any accident that Ray and Jake first meet at what is described as a social nexus for low-lives and shop of ridiculous religious iconography, a pool hall on dirty Wiley Avenue. For all of Ray’s efforts this is where he finds himself. His frustration doesn’t seem to come ahead until the scene where he lies awake, begging to sleep, but kept awake by his conscience screaming at him for his social situation in the broader context of race relations. Ray seemingly throws in the towel by stealing Jake’s drugs. What troubled him became distorted: “Taboos and terrors and penalties were transformed into new pagan delights, orgies of Orient-blue carnival, of rare flowers and red fruits, cherubs and seraphs and fetishes and phalli and all the most-high gods…” (McKay, 379). And with that action, the “tuning in and dropping out” long before the 1960s ever happened, Ray got his sleep. The word “capitulate” I think is an interesting word choice. There are connotations of loss from the word’s definition of drawing up the terms of surrender.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Week 3, entry two
9/10 excerpt from Birthright
T. S. Stribling’s title appears a conscious selection devised to interplay with the predominant idea in white bohemia of the American black as the innocent primitive. As we discussed in class, several white artists used blacks and their culture as a means to comment on the broader culture of the United States. While Peter Siner contrasts Eugene O’Neill’s superstitious, bumbling Brutus Jones, the idea of racial uplift through atavism and rebirth surfaces in both texts. For Jones, as Robeson points out in his “Reflections on O’Neill’s Plays,” the character returns to a previous generation through his trek through the wilderness “throwing off one by one the layers of civilization until he returns to the primitive soil from which he (racially) came” (58). To me, the implication in atavism is that there is no reference to the direct preceding generation, but rather a link to the Romanticized ideal of ancestry. While Jones removes his clothing or rips it, becoming the primitive, Peter Siner seemingly takes on the layers of civilization, hanging his overcoat, suitcase, and hand-bag in the Jim Crowe car while sitting next to blacks in their military uniforms and other plain dress.
Both Jones and Siner appear reborn, conceived as varying portrayals of blacks by two different literary artists. Jones’ is an authentic atavism, a relationship with his ancestors, while Siner’s story surfaces little relationship to his ancestors, but rather an indication of the promising future to come for American blacks. Siner meditates on his ancestors, remarking: “He was coming back into the South, into his own country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly…,” though he “shrugged away such thoughts and with a certain effort replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South once more” (Stribling, 335).
T. S. Stribling’s title appears a conscious selection devised to interplay with the predominant idea in white bohemia of the American black as the innocent primitive. As we discussed in class, several white artists used blacks and their culture as a means to comment on the broader culture of the United States. While Peter Siner contrasts Eugene O’Neill’s superstitious, bumbling Brutus Jones, the idea of racial uplift through atavism and rebirth surfaces in both texts. For Jones, as Robeson points out in his “Reflections on O’Neill’s Plays,” the character returns to a previous generation through his trek through the wilderness “throwing off one by one the layers of civilization until he returns to the primitive soil from which he (racially) came” (58). To me, the implication in atavism is that there is no reference to the direct preceding generation, but rather a link to the Romanticized ideal of ancestry. While Jones removes his clothing or rips it, becoming the primitive, Peter Siner seemingly takes on the layers of civilization, hanging his overcoat, suitcase, and hand-bag in the Jim Crowe car while sitting next to blacks in their military uniforms and other plain dress.
Both Jones and Siner appear reborn, conceived as varying portrayals of blacks by two different literary artists. Jones’ is an authentic atavism, a relationship with his ancestors, while Siner’s story surfaces little relationship to his ancestors, but rather an indication of the promising future to come for American blacks. Siner meditates on his ancestors, remarking: “He was coming back into the South, into his own country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and fruitlessly…,” though he “shrugged away such thoughts and with a certain effort replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South once more” (Stribling, 335).
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Week 3, entry one
9/9 “Returning Soldiers” and “If We Must Die”
McKay’s poem and Dubois’ editorial both appear in 1919 as responses to the Red Summer, a time of indiscriminant attacks on black neighborhoods throughout the U.S. An interesting theme between the two works is the development of struggle and resistance. For Dubois’ returning soldiers, the men “fought in bitter resignation” for a country that despised blacks overtly and subtly. In Dubois’ piece there is a progression that begins with soldiers returning from fighting and ending with the returning soldiers and black community preparing to fight the next war for their equal rights. The enemies appear to be various systems, not necessarily any individual or mob.
McKay makes no explicit reference to the contributions of blacks during the World War I, but charges this current group of blacks in the U.S. and abroad to meet the common foe. McKay’s term “kinsmen” seemingly speaks to the pan-African identity cultivated by Harlem Renaissance artists and thinkers. The enemy are marauders—dogs, monsters, murderous, cowardly packs—individuals perhaps acting out the will of the system. Yet that is only an inference made, not a fact explicit by McKay’s poem. One of the descriptions of the condition of the attackers comes with their portrayal as mad and hungry. To me that is very interesting because how far removed are the blacks from that instance? Their anger may be different but their hunger, both literally and figuratively, may be very similar. This gets at the classicism discussed in class, moving the conversation beyond race to class. And from that portrayal there is a fair suggestion that some of the same systems denying blacks also inhibit poor whites.
In class we talked of “grandfather clauses,” but just to use the one outlined by Dubois, the southern cotton collective could be another example. White cotton farmers must contend with two forces: the price the market will bear, and the price to keep blacks out of that industry. Just from that, it appears it would be very difficult to profit from farming cotton.
Dubois, W. E. B. “Returning Soldiers.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering
Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1994. 3-5.
McKay, C. “If We Must Die.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis.
New York: Penguin, 1994. 290
McKay’s poem and Dubois’ editorial both appear in 1919 as responses to the Red Summer, a time of indiscriminant attacks on black neighborhoods throughout the U.S. An interesting theme between the two works is the development of struggle and resistance. For Dubois’ returning soldiers, the men “fought in bitter resignation” for a country that despised blacks overtly and subtly. In Dubois’ piece there is a progression that begins with soldiers returning from fighting and ending with the returning soldiers and black community preparing to fight the next war for their equal rights. The enemies appear to be various systems, not necessarily any individual or mob.
McKay makes no explicit reference to the contributions of blacks during the World War I, but charges this current group of blacks in the U.S. and abroad to meet the common foe. McKay’s term “kinsmen” seemingly speaks to the pan-African identity cultivated by Harlem Renaissance artists and thinkers. The enemy are marauders—dogs, monsters, murderous, cowardly packs—individuals perhaps acting out the will of the system. Yet that is only an inference made, not a fact explicit by McKay’s poem. One of the descriptions of the condition of the attackers comes with their portrayal as mad and hungry. To me that is very interesting because how far removed are the blacks from that instance? Their anger may be different but their hunger, both literally and figuratively, may be very similar. This gets at the classicism discussed in class, moving the conversation beyond race to class. And from that portrayal there is a fair suggestion that some of the same systems denying blacks also inhibit poor whites.
In class we talked of “grandfather clauses,” but just to use the one outlined by Dubois, the southern cotton collective could be another example. White cotton farmers must contend with two forces: the price the market will bear, and the price to keep blacks out of that industry. Just from that, it appears it would be very difficult to profit from farming cotton.
Dubois, W. E. B. “Returning Soldiers.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering
Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1994. 3-5.
McKay, C. “If We Must Die.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis.
New York: Penguin, 1994. 290
Friday, September 4, 2009
Reading Journal: Week 2
9/1 “Returning Soldiers”
With the lecture in mind, Dubois’s mentioning of France takes on several dimensions. The French recognized the black soldiers with high honors, which contrasted the disingenuous behavior by their own country, the United States. In several ways Dubois aligns the condition of blacks in the U.S. to that of France. Both a country and a race of people are bleeding, and there appears to be some kindred relationship.
While only mentioning “German race arrogance,” but enumerating the many awful hate crimes against blacks in the U.S., Dubois links the enemy in the First World War to racism (Dubois 4). He closes the connection, stating: “But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses, if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land” (Dubois 5). The real war appears just on the horizon.
Dubois’s piece holds several parallels to the Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson. For one it lists grievances and suggests how those actions are unjust according to the country’s own moral standards. Dubois also punts to recycling popular rhetoric by bringing up the rallying cry: “It taxes us without representation” (Dubois, 4). As there was a King in the 1770s, there was a “dominant minority” then in the United States (Dubois 4). Dubois is already tempered in his approach to race relations: It is not all of citizens fault that black people are where they are (as Garvey might have it), it is the fault of a few (relative to the entire population) racists.
In this early work we see several ideas that are apparent in later works by Dubois: France, race relations, and racism and its infection of American systems.
Dubois, W. E. B. “Returning Soldiers.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering
Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1994. 3-5.
9/3 excerpt from Black Manhattan
I feel this piece of James Weldon Johnson’s history addresses the popular black separatist movement while also restoring class to particular artistic contributions of blacks during the 1920s. As it is edited in our anthology, the piece outlines two major tensions between separate black groups: how do blacks acquire equality and what purpose does art have? What Johnson details and what he neglects indicate some favoritism, a favoritism shaped by his post as executive secretary with the NAACP and his association with the Talented Tenth.
Johnson’s description of landowners has the undertone of defying black separatism espoused by Marcus Garvey and others during the 1920s. The diction employed by Johnson especially emphasizes his insistence, and the Talented Tenth’s, of changing racial perceptions and relations by remaining in the United States. “All classes bought,” Johnson writes, as the classes spent at an unimaginable pace so as to never have to experience that “precarious foothold” they held in the hostile territory of the United States (Johnson, 34). Specifically, the term “hegira” on page 34 illustrates Johnson’s bias, for the term means an exodus of a particular group (in this case white people), and in that aftermath of the exodus a new era begins (OED). Johnson carries an understanding of beginnings that does not rely on having new land to have a new beginning (as Garvey would have it), but rather a new beginning out of an existing land. Later he calls Harlem an expanding “colony,” which reveals the nationalism budding in Harlem, for colonies are typically settlements by like-minded people concentrated on propagating their way of life. So not only is their land already in the United States, but fertile soil for a black identity to grow. In the second half of the reading, Johnson describes some of the art that transmits culture to Harlemites.
The second half’s discussion of various stage performances marks acceptable art. Charles Gilpin emerges as a leading figure recognized by esteemed organizations such as the Drama League. It was Gilpin’s performance in the serious playwright Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones that set off his popularity and critical adoration (Johnson, 38). In addition to Gilpin, several musicals, such as Shuffle Along, Runnin’ Wild, and Dixie to Broadway, elevated black artists to wild popularity. Conspicuously absent from any discussion is vaudeville. Its only mention is in Gilpin’s shameful past, which includes menial jobs such as being an elevator boy, railroad porter, and a boxing trainer (Johnson, 38).
The audiences for very high art performances, particularly interpretations of Shakespeare, are also agonizingly obscured. Johnson’s clunky opener: “On May 7, 1923 there was at the Frazee Theatre what was the most ambitious attempt Negroes had yet made in the legitimate theatre in New York,” hides who actually showed up to the Frazee Theatre and emphasizes the date and theatrical ambition (Johnson 41). Unlike portions discussing the musicals, no mention of traffic stoppages are made, but rather the text moves directly to critical reception. While black artists pushed the Shakespearean envelope, the size of the audience for such a venture is never described.
Through its form Black Manhattan seems to serve as partially a death-knell and resurrecting power. The introduction quotes the famous line: “Harlem is still in the process of making,” though culturally it was being pulled into something not well received by the Talented Tenth (Lewis, xxxvi). Within the timeline of the Harlem Renaissance, Black Manhattan appears alongside other works that did not have the same ambition. Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes all wrote about themes troubling to the Talented Tenth. Johnson had taken a professorship at Fisk University in Tennessee in 1930 and W. E. B. Dubois taught at Atlanta University in Georgia. Harlem was left to be sacked by the mongrels with their base art. With Johnson writing his version of history, he closes off any more contributions that can be made under that particular name, signaling its end—its death. But history also serves to inspire, especially if written properly, so Black Manhattan has the capacity to inspire a new generation to continue racial uplift as seen fit by the Talented Tenth. The introduction’s author points out the romanticized Harlem that cheered when blacks won awards of serious merit and read of “activities above Central Park” (Lewis, xxxvi). In his history of Harlem, Johnson populates the humming “mecca” with landowners and people who appreciate serious stage performances.
"Hegira." The Oxford English Dictionary. Available online at www.oed.com
Johnson, Charles Weldon. from Black Manhattan. Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David
Levering Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1995. 34-45.
Levering Lewis, David. “Introduction.” Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering
Lewis. New York: Penguin, 1995. XII-XLI.
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