Telephone Conversation

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Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

The poem 'Telephone conversation' is staged by a black man who is looking for a flat but ends up phoning to a landlady who is racist but tries to be polite in finding out whether he is he is a dark or light one. When he first speaks to her he feels awkward as he feels he has to confess that he is African. Also I think he feels as though he has been in the same position before somewhere else and he knows what is expected from people like the landlady he is speaking to. When he tells her that he is African she becomes speechless and wants to know if he is light or dark brown. She puts her words in a more polite way of asking but they are not to the point of what they could be which makes it more harder for the answers. His response to the question 'How dark?' 'Are you light or very dark?' is to get her back and deliberately embarrass her by putting in words of what she meant when she asked that question. When he answers the question this time he gives her a sarcastic answer that he just made up to be awkward. She then becomes stuck and wants an immediate answer as you can see by the tone of her voice. The poem also has a number of amusing lines to bring in some humour "by sitting down has turned my bottom black" Again when he gives her this information he is trying to embarrass her. The whole conversation seems like a war between then because she is racist and he gets her back by embarrassing her. The poem is very much like a play showing everyday life as a black person who wants to rend a room from a racist landlady. I think that the poem is quite effective as it is a more modern and day to day situation rather than "Strange Fruit". Both the poems are featured on racial prejudice. I think that the telephone conversation would be more effective because it is more modern and likely to happen than walking through some part of a country and finding black bodies swinging from trees

The poem 'Telephone conversation' is staged by a black man who is looking for a flat but ends up phoning to a landlady who is racist but tries to be polite in finding out whether he is he is a dark or light one.

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