Over break, I re-read a prompt that Dr. McCoy provided for us that talks about culture and how it relates to property. I’ve talked before about Bernice Johnson Reagon and her ideas about how church is the black community’s property. Recently in class, we have been talking about how the concept of culture can be a kind of property. In Pat Parker’s poem, “For the white person who wants to be my friend”, she expresses how blackness can be seen as a property, but not just property as an object, rather property as an idea.
Commodification and Gentrification
After class a few weeks ago and the many discussions that were had about power and commodification, I began to think about how these concepts could be related back to texts that were involved in the course thus far. I thought about the poems that were read and the song that we listened to, and the discussion that happened in my small group. The definition that Dr. McCoy provided us is that commodification is, “the transformation of relationships, believed to be untainted by commerce, into commercial relationships, relationships of buying and selling”. In my small group, this was related back to the idea of gentrification, defined by Merriam Webster as, “the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents” and how in major cities such as New York City this is becoming more prevalent. Different communities, such as the lower class black and the upper-class white that have been known to not get along are now having even more strains put on their relationship due the upper-class coming into the neighborhoods and possibly removing the residents or making it impossible for the residents to afford living here by doing things such as raising the rent. Sarah brought up a great example of how the upper-class is coming in and buying property and opening coffee shops, yoga studios, etc. that does not take into account the needs or wants of the neighborhood.
When pondering on the example that was given during class, I went back and took a look at the poem by Jayne Cortez, ‘How Long Has Trane Been Gone’ from 1969. I found that the lines, “You takin- they givin/ You livin- they/ creatin starving dying/ trying to make a better tomorrow” truly related to the idea of gentrification. With the “you” being the white upper-class and the “they” being the black lower class. There could be much discussion as to whether or not gentrification is beneficial to the revival of suffering communities. I think it is safe to say (although I hate to make assumptions on her part) that Cortez would not be a fan of the idea. She would most likely say that the upper-class is not worrying about the needs of the lower class and that they are simply doing it for self-benefit, going back to the line “You takin- they givin”.
Respect the Difference
The other day my friend told me she had to evaluate an album for one of her classes and she had no idea which album to choose. The first album that popped into my mind was Aretha Franklin’s album “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.” I suggested she write about what Aretha Franklin represented as a black woman singing soul music in the 60s in the height of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements. Specifically, the song “Respect” (1967) which empowered many people during this time to fight for their personal and political liberation.
I showed her the page in Call and Response that includes this song and said “see it’s in my book, so it must be important” and then I saw it. “Respect by Otis Redding as interpreted by Aretha Franklin”. You can imagine my reaction given my last post about the ownership of songs by repeating them. I do not know a single person who would tell you that this song is Otis Redding’s and yet every time it is played he is the one getting paid. While listening to his version on YouTube, the comments are filled with people who did not even know it was his song, they thought it was Aretha Franklin’s. This sparked my interest in the difference between the two versions of the song and the impact that these differences have on the meaning of the song.
W.B. Yeats and Carl Phillips in Conversation
I was thumbing through Angles of Ascent over the weekend and noticed a single dogeared page. Page 379, I had annotated a poem by Carl Phillips “Leda, After the Swan.” In the small group discussion a few weeks ago we were asked to discuss our favorite poems, this wasn’t mine, but we discussed it in length and after our conversation I found myself interested in the origins and the poem is it based off of.
“Leda and the Swan” was published in the mid 20s, by W.B. Yeats about the myth of the rape of Leda by Zeus who took the form of a Swan. In our group we discussed the controversy surrounding the poem. Yeats focuses on the act itself and alludes to the Trojan War as well. In the rape, Leda becomes impregnated with who will become Helen of Troy. Yeats posits that the rape of Leda leads to the Trojan War and thus the end of Greek civilization. When “Leda and the Swan” was published it stirred up controversy due to its explicit nature. More recently however, it has upset feminist activists because of the way in which Yeats chooses to show the rape of Leda by Zeus, or the swan. The poem remains Yeats’ most commonly anthologized poems. Continue reading “W.B. Yeats and Carl Phillips in Conversation”
How D’Aguiar Breathes Life into His Protagonists
When I went to the D’Aguiar reading, I wasn’t sure what to expect. At previous poetry readings I’ve been the audience to mainly women, who were mainly white, who were reading poems about love and heartbreak and growing up in small towns. This isn’t to talk down on these poets, because by many of them I’ve been brought to tears, but rather it shows that my own background has informed the readings that I’ve been able to attend. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and my, mostly white, high school would have Java Jive, a poetry and live music event, yearly. Most of my experiences listening to poetry read aloud have occurred in that unilateral arena.
I’d like to approach D’Aguiar’s reading of Bullet, an excerpt from a piece he’s working on now about the Virginia Tech Massacre which he has a close connection too, using a course epigraph: “Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.” Continue reading “How D’Aguiar Breathes Life into His Protagonists”
Anthologies, Trail Mix, and Group Work, Oh, My!
When I first saw the assignment to write down everything that we ate over spring break, I’ll admit that I was a bit stunned. Why in the world would I have to keep a food journal for a class titled African American Literature? I talked to some of my classmates, friends and family about the assignment, and they all had similar thoughts.
Continue reading “Anthologies, Trail Mix, and Group Work, Oh, My!”
Empowerment in “How Could Anyone”
I have been going to a Lutheran leadership ministry for four summers. It is only a week long, but each time I go it feels like a year. One of ways in which I remember the ministry is by creating a playlist of some of the songs that we sing. Some of these songs include “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, and “How Could Anyone” by Libby Roderick.
“All Their Stanzas Look Alike”
As I was reading through the Norton anthology, Angles of Ascent, there were several poems that stood out to me. I found Thomas Sawyer Ellis’ poem All Their Stanzas Look Alike on page 317 to be the one that captivated me the most. The title definitely intrigued me and drew me into the poem. You have the ambiguous “stanzas” which could be interpreted literally as other poets stanzas all looking the same, or figuratively and the speaker in fact not speaking about stanzas at all. For my close reading, I chose the latter. At first glance, this poem seemed to be about someone’s life feeling mundane and the same every day. And then I realized that the “their” the speaker was talking about was an entire group of people; the white population all around them. I particularly enjoyed the lines, “All their plantations/ All their assassinations/ All their stanzas look alike”. As I read the line regarding plantations I could “see” clearly what the speaker was referencing. In films and novels (including ones written today) a plantation is normally portrayed as a large white house in the south surrounded by acres upon acres of land, and nine times out of ten that large white house will have a porch with a swing. When it comes to the assassinations, I had to ponder for a while what this could mean. I came to realize that the speaker could be alluding to the white plantation-owners murdering the black slaves. I also began to think on the past assassinations of presidents, and how although it was white men that committed the crime, there was a horribly negative stereotype placed onto the black population as a whole. Although, it was always white men committing these murders/assassinations, still in today’s society there is an idea that black men are to be feared, when in reality it should probably be the reverse.
The Necessity for Diversity in Children’s Literature
Seeing the Dick and Jane reference in Larry Neal’s The Black Arts Movement sparked an interest in me to further research the history behind the famed children’s books. Continue reading “The Necessity for Diversity in Children’s Literature”
Language, Vernacular, Authorship, Meaning Making, and Profiling through a Single Narrative
After constructing my previous blog post that can be found here, a quote that Dr. McCoy provided me as feedback struck me. “It’s incredible a sentence is ever understood.” I started actively thinkING about this specific quote and began researching. I came across this as it perfectly pieced together what has been discussed in class so far in relation to language, vernacular, authorship, meaning making, and profiling through a single narrative.