(Im)Possibilities

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk about the danger of the single story never fails to leave me moved. So much of what she says is relevant in today’s society.

Adichie explained how her experiences as a child showed how vulnerable and impressionable children are in the face of the “single story.” It made me wonder how many parents, specifically in the U.S., are unaware of the impact they have on their children– not only impacting them with their own words, but the kinds of media they expose them to. Continue reading “The Danger of the Single Story in Today’s Society”

Throughout our powerful conversation on Monday that concluded on the topic of single stories, I could not stop thinking about the single story that I myself and the rest of the Black male population in America are characters of. The single story of Black males that is composed of characteristics such as violent tendencies, aggression, rudeness, and others that make people afraid, or unwilling to communicate with them (us) are strong. So strong Continue reading “Single Story of the Black Man”

“I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division.”

Toni Morrison utilizes this excerpt from “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” from the Gnostic manuscripts in the Nag Hammadi Library as the epigraph of her novel Jazz. The entire poem is made up of paradoxical statements by a first person identifier, such as “[…] I am the first and the last” and “I am war and peace.” The poem is believed to be the voice of the divine, which would explains its all-encompassing assertions. Continue reading “Morrison and the Other”

I was especially moved by Bernice Johnson Reagon’s articulations about the oral tradition within Black churches and Civil Rights movements and later our unique dynamic in the classroom. Bill Moyers jokingly comments that his experience with the Southern Christian (white) churches is vastly different from Bernice’s. He jokes that “This Little Light of Mine” was taught to him via the church as a song about humility and submissiveness to god. Conversely, Bernice Johnson Reagon emphasizes that the song in the black oral tradition emphasizes the exact opposite and that the usage of the song, in Civil Rights movements and elsewhere, is actively undoing the oppressive expectation for black people to be silent and unseen.  Continue reading ““The Songs are Free”: Black Oral Tradition and the Classroom”

In class yesterday we talked about the concerns around narrating the lives of those who have died.  More specifically, we talked about what it means to give life to those who traveled on the Middle Passage.  In Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts,” we read about double-edged sword that Hartman struggles with every day; she wants to tell the stories of the slaves in the archives, but claims they have “impossible stories to tell.”  This desire to tell someone’s story, but worry which constrains that desire, is something I constantly find myself struggling with.  This leads me to further question what it actually means to narrate the lives of those who have passed away.  Hartman writes how we, writers, could never do the lost lives justice.  While I believe this claim to an extent, I think that writers may write in a way that commends the lives that were lost.  Continue reading “Writing the Deceased Back to Life: A Sin or an Honor”

I just finished reading “Venus in Two Acts” and I have to say this essay really struck a chord with me. Since elementary school, the African American literature I’ve been exposed to was almost exclusively about slavery. I can’t think of any specific titles right now, and my memory could be skewed, but it seems as though once a year growing up we read our one token African American novel in reading group (the lack of diversity in the kinds of books we read is a problem in and of itself that I’ll save for another post) and it was always about slavery in a historical sense.

Continue reading “Retelling the Slave Narrative”