Ayat Jaber African American Literature

After going through Native Son, Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Beloved , I’m very excited to be reading The White Boy Shuffle! Don’t get me wrong, I loved the other books as well. Each book was unique in its own sense, but I’m happy to read a book closer to the culture of 2018. Yes, Gunner is growing up in the 80s and 90s instead of the 2018, yet I could still recognize a lot of the racial stereotyping that he is going through. Someone mentioned this in class, and I thought it was very true: this book could’ve only been written in the 90s. Before that it wouldn’t have hit home won’t a lot of people, a little too early. But the 90s was the perfect timing for it. Beatty is able to point out the remainders of racism that a lot of people may not have thought about at the time, yet point them out in a very intellectual and nerdy, hilarious manner. Each sentence is packed with so many words and advanced vocabulary and cultural references but somehow Beatty just adds in a cu

When Paul D found out about that horrible trauma that Sethe went through, of trying to kill her children to protect them from schoolteacher and Sweet Home, he was understandably shook. It’s not just the fact that he was in a relationship with Sethe and this totally changed his image of her, but it was also him trying to imagine why and how this kind of event could even happen. He keeps thinking Sethes love is too strong, too “dangerous”, because she is a black woman. She shouldn’t ever put something too close to her heart, not even her children, because it could be taken away from her in a split second. There are so many messed up things with slavery, but this was one of the saddest things for me. I think a huge distinguishing factor between humans and other creatures is our emotions and how we show our emotions. Yes, a mama bear loves her baby and feels that connection, but she doesn’t show it to the extent a human mother shows it. Human expressions of love and commucation is somethin

Richard Wright's criticism of Their Eyes Were Watching God  was very interesting to read as we are in 2018. I think nowadays the notion that someone can write about what they want to write about, whether it's social or political or personal, is much more accepted and encouraged than at that time with the situation of black and white relations in America. With African American literature really emerging as a genre that Americans were reading more and more, Wright thought it wasn't just an option, but an obligation for African American novelists to write about the struggles of blacks in the white supremacist system. When Hurston wrote more about the personal story and growth of a black woman than about racism in America (there were barely any white people in the story, although she did make a point of the racism in the court-- not really sure what to make of that scene though), Wright was very disapproving. And added on to that, he felt that Hurston was just giving the white

In Invisible Man,  we see the narrator navigating between his personal identity and his community identity. The narrator doesn't really start with an identity, but as he goes through the college, Harlem,  and the Brotherhood, he ultimately has to face his invisibility and ask himself who he really is. His solution is to stay in solitude and have some deep self-reflection before going back out into the world, apart from society. But can we develop our own identities within society? In a way, identity is based on society. We say that we are "conservative" or "liberal" in relation to what people assume as conservative or liberal. We say we are "introverts" or "extroverts" based on how we interact with people around us. We define ourselves by using society's dictionary. Our identity is very much shaped by society, yet we often have to question ourselves. "Who am I?" What the narrator did is what many of us may do, although to a mu

Similar to Native Son 's depiction of women characters and their roles in the main character's life, Ellison portrays women as sexual objects who are (to say the least) not as smart as the men and who are needy. Their characters are created in relation to the main male character, or another male character. We only hear of Sybil when the narrator is trying to get some more information about the Brotherhood from the married woman, and of course, it turns into drinking and physical intimacy because she's a woman. We also see this when the narrator goes to talk about the "woman" question in Harlem, even though he doesn't even really know what he's talking about. He ends up having an affair with one of the women when she seductively asks him some rather vague questions and pretends to be interested. Even in a small encounter, when a woman thought the narrator was Rhinehart, she grabbed his arm as if she were his partner and was described as smelling a lot like

In Invisible Man , we see the concept of the mask constantly coming in the story. Bledsoe kindly supporting and agreeing to his white partners while in reality running the show, Grandpas hardwork ethic and humble living while he keeps a guarded mind and heart against the system, the director handing over compensation money for the narrators injuries in a civil manner while really just doing his job and getting it over with. There are tons of examples of the mask, which made me wonder; do we have masks? And if so, when do we take them off? On the political scale, prime ministers, presidents, dictators, kings and queens, and all types of rulers often have wear the mask, in public speeches and in private meetings. Many affairs and scandals have occurred behind the scenes, such that the public wouldn’t know about it, and many secrets have been kept even until death. For example, the majority of the public in America had no idea that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in a wheelchair and suffered f