Genre Blog: Drown

The short story that I chose to write about in this blog is titled “Drown,” by Junot Diaz. I chose this one because it was really interesting to me and it is the easiest to dig into. I feel like the strongest theme or trait of this story is sexuality. I think the main character, Yunior, is struggling to find himself, especially when it comes to his sexuality.

I feel like this for a number of reasons. It all started when his mother tells him that his best friend from when he was younger is home from college. Right away Yunior mentions that, “he is a pato now but two years ago we were best friends,” (1). Pato is slang for a gay man, as if that was important for us to know about him. He then goes on to use other offensive words like “fag” to describe gay men. Not thinking anything about this, you continuing to read on.

The narrator brings us back to their last summer together before Beto moves to college. As we get towards the end of the story, there’s a paragraph that literally just says, “Twice. That’s it,” (7). And the next page or two goes into detail about the two times that Beto, the best friend, had touched him sexually and that he didn’t stop him. As the third time is about to happen and he hears someone outside the room, he freaks out and tells Beto that enough is enough. It’s almost as if, the thought of getting caught doing what they were doing scared him or embarrassed him so much.

As a reader, you can’t help but get the sense of shame and embarrassment from him as he calls it quits with Beto. He becomes very distant in the next few weeks before Beto leaves for college and when Beto gives him a book right before he leaves, Yunior just throws it away without even reading or looking at it. This all points to the fact that, he’s not really sure what happened to them and their friendship and that he doesn’t want to accept it. He can’t quite come to terms with it. This is now a factor into why he does what he does. He puts on this “tough guy” persona, he deals drugs, no one really knows that he can actually read and is pretty smart. As you can see, this is large theme in this short story among others like family, abandonment, secrets, etc. There’s so much information to be interpreted in this story. 

Literary Context Presentation: Dorothy Allison

                I did my literary context presentation on Dorothy Allison. She is a storyteller and poet as well as author of bestselling novels like “Bastard Out of Carolina.” What I found the most interesting about her is that as a child, she went through a lot of horrible things like sexual abuse and incest and rather than hide what happened to her, she embraces it and uses it to teach and help others. She incorporates this trauma into her work and because of this, many people see her work as inappropriate or too explicit.

                The reading that was paired to Dorothy Allison was her very complex memoir “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.” In this memoir, she goes in depth into her abuse as well as her family’s (specifically the women) past abuse and issues with poverty and men. Many people claim that her book “Bastard Out of Carolina,” is her memoir but it’s not. I felt that I could really understand and pick up more about her after researching into her life and her past. I got the sense that she went through some traumatic stuff but it wasn’t until after I started researching that I got the extent of what that was. I think that after figuring out the horrors she went through, I could understand the context of the short snippet from the book.

                One section that makes a lot more sense to me after finding out about her past is the part where they are at her mother’s funeral. In the story Allison is talking about how her older sister had taken on the role of mother and was taking care of everything including, “Keeping me carefully out of my stepfather’s reach,” (15). Obviously that doesn’t mean much to someone who was only reading an excerpt of her book and didn’t know her history. Now that I know he was the one who had sexually abused her for around ten years, it makes sense that they’d keep her away from him.

                Now I wasn’t in class the day of the discussion due to another class field trip so I can’t reflect on what the class talked about but my own interpretation of this book and of Dorothy is that she tried to push passed the horrible things that she endured in her childhood. She is now empowering women all over to do the same. She is using her trauma to help women realize that if they are victims of sexual abuse or child abuse, that it does not define who they are and what they can become. She also has been trying to get the title “white trash” away from her name. A label given to her by a critic just because she had come from a poor family in the South. Allison is truly an inspiration and I’m glad I was able to teach the class a little bit about her. 

Literary Analysis

During the semester, we read two books for class, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved. I chose a theme that I thought played a large part of both of these novels and that theme is the topic of runaway slavery.  I feel that this topic is an important event in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and when it comes to Beloved, I don’t think the plot of the book would’ve been possible if it hadn’t been for the characters running away. In this blog post, I am going to compare the significance of this theme in both books and go into detail by using examples and quotes from the two.

I’ll start with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eliza’s (a slave who worked for the Shelby’s) husband George lives a horrible life. His master drowned his dog and tried to force George into marrying one of the slaves on his plantation and told him to leave his wife, Eliza, and child behind. His master also beats him and forces him into hard labor for doing a good job at work. “What business had his slave to be marching round the country, inventing machines, and holding up his head among gentlemen? He'd soon put a stop to it. He'd take him back, and put him to hoeing and digging, and ‘see if he'd step about so smart,’” (11). George can never do anything right by him. This constant beating and dehumanization leads George to want to run for Canada where he’d be free. Which leads me into my next example.

George’s wife had a different experience on her plantation, which was seemingly perfect for her and the other slaves. The Shelby’s gave them all the freedom they wanted, with the exception that they were still property and had to work. Tom and his wife had a cabin where they lived with their kids, they could make supper and do anything they wanted, Eliza was free to marry a slave from another plantation and have children. They couldn’t have asked for better masters. It wasn’t until a buyer comes along and convinces Mr. Shelby to sell little Harry, Eliza’s son, and Uncle Tom that makes Eliza want to run. She hurries and packs her things and is off in the night. She got the idea from her husband who was running to Canada. The thought of men taking away her child, leaving her with nothing, made her sick and she needed to escape. She also couldn’t stand the thought of Harry being sold to some horrible plantation that would work him until he was dead.

During this time period of the book, the Fugitive Slave Law was coming into play. This law allowed owners to cross state lines to pursue slaves that escaped. It put the constant fear of getting caught into the slaves’ minds. The Quakers and people like the Birds assisted runaways all the time just like they helped Eliza. Mrs. Bird even said to her husband who was a senator, “You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance..” (72). So, as you can see, this theme is a large part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Now, in the book Beloved is where I believe the theme of runaway slaves plays the largest role. The Foreword of the book states that the story is all based on a real life story of a slave woman, Margaret Garner, who had escaped and then got caught (17). When she was caught, she felt she had no other option that to try to kill her children to protect them from being taken back to the plantation and/or sold into slavery of a new master. Obviously, this book wouldn’t be the same if it hadn’t been based on this escaped woman.

For starters, the Sweet Home plantation was exactly that while the first owners were still in control. However, once Mr. Garner passed away and the Schoolteacher took over with his nephews, it went downhill. The men and Sethe were treated like property only. They were beaten, whipped, sexually abused. It was anything but sweet. The actions of the new masters lead the group to plan their first escape. This plan failed and caused one of the slaves their life. The sexual assault of a pregnant Sethe is what causes her to leave the second time. We as readers know that this lead her to leave. She was so shaken up by it, she still is, talking constantly about the day “those boys” stole her milk. In her second attempt, Sethe was successful, for a while. Schoolteacher, however, finds her after only a month and then she panics and tries to kill her children like I said before.

When Sethe had escaped, she took shelter at her mother in laws house in Ohio. This woman who we know as Baby Suggs, runs this place that is a shelter for all runaway slaves on their way to freedom. When reading this book, I could just tell that this whole story was based on my theme. Anyone who reads this book can tell you that the whole book is based on slaves who have escaped and are now living their free lives in Ohio.

I have given a few examples of how the running away of slaves is incorporated into these two books. I hope that other readers can see the significance as well.

Sources:

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.

Reader Response

After reading this book, I took a look on multiple different sites to read the reviews that other people have given the book “Beloved.” I myself found the book fairly interesting, intense at times and I also found myself confused, using the internet to look up the deeper meaning behind some aspects of the book. The three sites I looked at were, Goodreads.com, Barnes and Noble and lastly, Amazon.

            The first one I looked at was goodreads.com. Like any other site will have, there were a lot of people that had different responses to the book. It seemed like either they loved it, or they hated it. Some people however, hated it for silly reasons I think. They didn’t like her writing style, they didn’t want to read “another” book on slavery, etc. I found one quote that was particularly interesting to me, “Unfortunately, I just could not get into this book. I tried reading it as a class assignment and again on my own, but alas. It wasn't the writing style, which was...a cute attempt for creativeness but resulted in harming the progress of the story (much like Faulkner's Sound and the Fury actually). Don't misunderstand me, I love being exposed to different styles such as stream-of-consciousness, magical realism or what have you - but I feel that this book fails, miserably. I am also not a fan of Morrison, I don't particularly care for her personal opinions and I am confused why this title is so revered. I wasn't entertained by it, I felt no remorse or sympathy for any characters and I was just glad to be done with it. I rarely throw books into a recycling bin, but this was one of those that deserved to be tossed aside, in my opinion.”

I found this to be a little harsh, especially when they said they felt no remorse for anyone in the book. How can you hear what Sethe went through in the barn and not feel bad? How can you not be sad when reading what happened to Beloved and Sethe and her other children that day? How does someone read about slavery and not feel bad for the thousands of people that were forced into slavery? I think this person, along with all the other people who didn’t like the book because it was written on slavery, doesn’t have a heart!

            The second website that I was looking at was Barnes and Noble’s. Again, I found a range of people who felt differently about the book. I found a quote from someone that I really liked and thought it was a great response to all the haters, especially the person who I found on goodreads.com. “To all the people complaining that this novel is difficult, boring, weird, senseless, etc and calling Morrison a bad writer or overrated, I can't have any other reaction but to smile and feel bad that those people do not have the mental capacity to understand such incredible writing. If Toni Morrison was not an extraordinary writer, she would not have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, or the Pulitzer. Yes, this is a difficult book to read. Yes, it will take very close reading and sometimes rereading but please do not diminish the value of this absolutely beautiful and haunting literary work. Morrison is an absolute genius and if you cannot understand her or think she's “ overrated”, just accept that you will never be able to grasp this work of ART or the level of language/literature it's written in. Do yourself a favor and enrich your library and soul with this novel.

I found this very funny and satisfying. I also thought that, while reading some of the reviews, that the people bad mouthing the book clearly didn’t understand it. They must not have the ability to dig deeper into the book. I’m not saying that it was a walk in the park to read, but reading and rereading as well as using other resources to help me at times, I was able to better understand the book.

Lastly, I looked on the Amazon website in hopes that I could find some better reviews. I found one that rated the book with five stars rather than the one stars that the previous reviews did. This person says “If you can allow yourself to put yourself in the place of a slave, as is described in this book, you can feel the humiliation, grief, indignity, disgrace, fear, degradation and submissiveness that was a slave. Through Toni Morrison's words, I felt these feelings. I don't know how they survived. This is a hard book to read, but I'm glad I did. I believe we all need to understand what was done.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I could definitely feel the pain, humiliation, the dehumanization, the fear and the shame that took place in the novel. I felt like I was experiencing everything along with Sethe and Denver and Beloved. This book truly was a good book and Morrison did a great job writing it. The style of her writing and the way she didn’t do it chronologically left me using my head to piece everything together, in return making me feel like apart of the story.

Sources:

Morrison, Toni. "Beloved." Barnes & Noble. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/reviews/beloved-toni

morrison/1001875673?ean=9781400033416>.

Morrison, Toni. "Beloved." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6149.Beloved?from_search=tr

e#other_reviews>.

"Customer Reviews." Amazon. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

<https://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Toni

Morrison/dp/1400033411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493002453&sr=8

1&keywords=beloved>.

Contemporary Connections

              I think everyone can think of one major racial issue that’s going on in America at the moment. One thing that came to mind when reading the directions for this blog, was the Black Lives Matter movement. It started a couple of years ago in regards to the violence that African Americans were facing in the public, including with law enforcement. It’s gotten stronger and in many cases, out of hand recently with the election of Donald Trump. So one article that I found and will talk about is “Bleak days for black America.”

                This article discusses how in the past few years, shootings of African Americans has been on the rise. Particularly shootings involving police officers. Some even feel like the violence has gotten worse and will only continue with the presidency of Donald Trump, a “white supremacist,” (1). With the all the shootings and horrors of society, black parents are warning their children “never, ever run in the presence of a police officer; say ‘yes, sir’ or ‘yes, ma’am,’” (1). They’re doing everything they can to make sure their children come home safely each night. The article states “A century and a half after slavery, and 50 years since the end of legal segregation, ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’ impressively brings us up to date with America’s fraught history of racial injustice,” (1).

            This relates with the books that we read because this movement was created to get awareness out there that black lives matter just as much as white lives or any other lives for the matter, which is what Beecher-Stowe was trying to portray in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It’s 2017 and black lives are in need of help to make sure that people see them as equal members of society, something that was done, like the article states, a century and a half ago. This can also relate back to our books because black parents are telling their children to say “yes ma’am” and “yes sir” to police officers and nothing else, which is what they did as slaves how many years ago? They weren’t able to talk, just obey by saying “yes sir.” It’s reducing their worth as human beings.

            The second article that I found was “A reflection on the Black Lives Matter movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship,” by Wil Gafney, an instructor at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth Texas. The very first thing that is written in this article is a quote from none other than Toni Morrison from the book “Beloved,” saying “… they do not love your flesh.” It then has the words, “Black Lives Matter,” (1). This article is about an African American who claims this movement affected her teaching greatly. She is working to take the “whiteness” out of things. She claims that what made her first realize “the degree to which black folk are not regarded as fully- if even at all- human,” was the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. This, along with all the other recent shootings has paved the way for her work.

            This obviously can relate to both books but “Beloved” especially because the very first thing in this article is a quote directly from the book. How cool that I just happened to click on an article that had a quote from the book we just read? It’s true though, this article on Black Lives Matter can relate back to our book on slavery because today, like during the time of slavery and shortly after, people did not accept the color of blacks’ skin. If they had a different color skin than white people, they were not accepted. Just like Gafney suggests, it’s as if African Americans are not being seen as human beings by some people to this day. Whenever a black person is seen on the streets in some areas, it’s automatically assumed that they did something wrong. This can also relate to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” because like I said with the previous article, black people are not given the same rights as white people are, just like in the time period of the books.

            I think that after reading both of these books on slavery and how African Americans were treated back then and then also reading all the poems and short stories on lynchings and all of that, I have become more aware of what is going on. After reading these articles on today’s racial issues, as well as seeing and hearing about all the riots, I realized that there is a problem. There’s no reason some of these problems are still occurring in 2017, hundreds of years since the end of slavery and about 50 since the end of segregation. 
Source One:
   Biswas, K. “Bleak Days for Black America.” New Statesman, vol. 146, no. 5352, 03 Feb. 2017,            pp. 44-45.. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uwc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?              direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ipcpid&custid=s5805083&db=a9h&AN=121117984&site=ehost-        live&scope=site
Source Two: 

    Gafney, Wil. “A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My

Scholarship.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 136, no. 1, Mar. 2017, pp. 204-207.

EBSCOhost

Critical Commentary

                The essay that I chose to read and talk about is titled, “The ‘Scent of Ink’: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Semiotics of Rights,” by Elizabeth S. Anker. This essay goes on to talk about the novel “Beloved,” and summarizes some of the main events. I agree with much of what she says about the book and I found that this essay can relate to my theme of runaway slaves.

 Anker states how this is a book that “has become a foundational point of reference in its portrayal of the ongoing legacy of American slavery,” (2). She claims it takes place during time of Reconstruction for the United States after the abolishment of slavery. She also mentions that it’s about a runaway slave that tried to kill her children, succeeding with only one, in order to protect them from having to endure life as a slave. Of course, we all know what happens in the book so I won’t go into detail about the rest of her summarization of the book. Anker says that this book’s “illustration of how slavery’s wounds still infect the present is what endows Beloved with its ‘heroic’, even ‘epic’ power,” (3). She’s saying basically that everything that went on in the book, shows how the pain and horror that went on during the time of slavery, still affect the lives of everyone involved after the fact.

The article itself is title “Scent of Ink” because it’s mentioned how Schoolteacher wrote in his notebook all the time and in the book on page 6, Sethe’s own trigger was the ‘scent of ink,’ (4). One particular example given in the essay is when Schoolteacher and his nephews attack Sethe in the barn on page 178. The boys take her milk, beat her violently, all the while their uncle is recording it in his notepad. Anker exclaims that this crime “defiles her maternal bequest and reduces it to fungible good,” (4). Another example given, on page 229, a time when Sethe overhears a lesson given to the nephews on her value, talking about her body and what she’s worth. This gives her a lesson than human status, almost as if she’s equal to an animal, which brings the essay into talking about rights.

I agree with everything that Anker says in this article. It’s a long article that goes in depth about what the book was about, and the rights of slaves, giving examples as the essay goes on. I agree with her statements about how the lengths that Schoolteacher goes to, it took away their rights as people, the rights that they had when Mr. Garner was still in charge. The dehumanization that these slaves endured during the time at Sweet Home, lead them to take matters into their own hands. This leads me into my theme for the project. The slaves try to run away. Some fail at it the first time, but when Sethe tries to escape with her children she is successful. This is an important part of the book because the entire story wouldn’t have taken place if it weren’t for a slave trying to escape her owner.
Source: Anker, Elizabeth S. "The 'Scent of Ink': Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Semiotics of                          Rights." Critical Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 4, Dec. 2014, pp 29-45. EBSCOhost,                                        ezproxy.uwc.edu/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? 

Genre Blog Post: Poetry (The Lynching)

The poem that I chose to talk about is “The Lynching,” by Claude McKay. I am choosing this because we’ve recently read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in class and will be moving onto “Beloved,” soon. This poem was written during the Harlem Renassaince by a man who was well known for writing poems that challenge white power and the racism and violence that African Americans endured during that time period. The poem paints a disturbing picture of a lynching and tells of the darkest, saddest elements of humanity at the time. The themes that are evident in this play are racism, violence, religion, slavery and passing on of traditions.

                These themes are ones we’ve talked about in class but also ones that I’ve talked about in the past in other classes. I recall learning about slavery and racism for years and one line from this poem that I can relate to my previous knowledge is, “All night a bright and solitary star/(Perchance the one that ever guided him,/ Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim,” (line 5, pg. 927). It’s to my knowledge that slaves from the South that wanted to run away and escape their masters followed the North Star. I believe we briefly talked about that in American Lit and that’s where that reference comes from. Another one that really breaks my heart is, “The women thronged to look, but never a one/ Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue,” (line 11, pg. 927). This touches on slavery, violence and racism because it’s saying that these women didn’t feel any compassion for the man being lynched but they also found joy in it and that’s just sickening.

                I used a couple quotes but I came to understand them better when knowing the time period that the poem was written. Just knowing that it’s author is a black man who grew up during the time of racism and the Harlem Renaissance I knew it was going to be a push back against slavery and also a way to show the reality of what African Americans went through during this time. It’s very realistic to what these people had to go through. It’s also written in a sort of Southern Lit context because you know right away by the words being used, such as “lad” and “o’er” and “lynching” and the dialect that it’s either from a southern person or it takes place in the South.

                Connecting this poem to the class and the contexts that we’ve been learning, like Southern Literature and the Harlem Renaissance, has helped me better understand and interpret it. I now know that the author, Claude McKay was writing a series of poems to get back at and challenge white power, along with educate readers on what went on during the times of slavery. I also knew right away that it was going to be about this, not just by the name and certain words included in the poem, but also by using my previous knowledge about the issue. Knowing these contexts will allow me to look at other poems just like it and be able to tell if it’s written with a Southern Lit context.