Long-Stemmed Roses In Alice Walker’s Meridian, she tells the story of the slave Louvinie who buried her tongue, that her white slave masters cut out, beneath a weak magnolia tree on a slave plantation. Walker’s character, Meridian follows suit by laying the decomposing body of five-year-old boy that drowned due to the city commissioner’s neglect, in front of a representative of the racist hierarchy. These stories follow a classic Alice Walker theme, “when they torture you too bad to talk plant a tree” (Torture). Meridian carries the body of the boy like flowers to a gravesite, and teaches us to use our experiences to invest in our future, as an opportunity to grow stronger. One of the things that Alice Walker looks to address in many of her …show more content…
The story of the five-year-old boy is reminiscent of Emmett Till, the teenager lynched in 1955, his body was sunk in the river. Both of their bodies were found “ravaged” (209) and left in the water for days. Tommy Odds shared a story with Lynne of the nine-year-old black girl raped by a white man, “they pulled her out of the river, dead, with a stick shoved up her” (179). There is a habitual pattern of mourning, the tears building up, waiting for the next black person to die unjustly. The women at Saxon college act similarly, by retelling the stories of Wile Chile, Louvinie and Fast Mary they are “ritualizing their suffering, the Saxon women recognize that their own lives are part of a continuum. Their circle includes those women that have suffered before them.” (43 Downey) Although, the black community is always looking for something to stop this cycle, they protest violently and non-violently, attempting to vote, sharing stories or praying. Meridian, when the activist Medgar Evers was assassinated, planted a wild sweet shrub bush in the gardens at Saxon College and when she carried the body of the five-year-old boy “it was as if she carried a large bouquet of long-stemmed roses” (209). As if she was taking flowers to a grave of a
The concept of displacement from rape in “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and “Mississippi Damned” is represented by mental distortion, trauma, and self-degradation.
Pauline Hopkins’ novel “Of One Blood” was originally published serially in a magazine called Colored American, from 1902-03. Within this novel Hopkins discusses some of the prominent racial and gender oppressions suffered by African Americans during this time. Following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1849 which resulted in African American freedom from slavery, but unfortunately not freedom from oppression and suffering. One of the minor characters, and the only dominant female role, within the novel is Dianthe Lusk. Within the novel Dianthe has many identifiers, which limits not only the readers but Dianthe’s understanding of her identity. Some of these identifiers include: women or ghost, black or white, sister or wife, princess or slave, and African or American. However, the most prominent of these juxtapositions in the novel is the racial identity. This paper will argue that the suffrage of Dianthe through her experiences with racial identity and rape serve to locate racial identity as an agent of politics, rather than of one’s color.
In the book Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals, the author describes what her reactions and feelings are to the racial hatred and discrimination she and eight other African-American teenagers received in Little Rock, Arkansas during the desegregation period in 1957. She tells the story of the nine students from the time she turned sixteen years old and began keeping a diary until her final days at Central High School in Little Rock. The story begins by Melba talking about the anger, hatred, and sadness that is brought up upon her first return to Central High for a reunion with her eight other classmates. As she walks through the halls and rooms of the old school, she recalls the horrible acts of violence that were committed by the white students against her and her friends.
In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
When first looking at the essay there is a very noticeable aspect to first page of it; that would be the picture of Emmett Till’s deformed body lying bloated and lynched within his casket. The picture strikes an unforgettable image in the reader’s head that is meant to instill the question of how exactly someone could do this to another human being none-the-less a 14 year old teenager. The visual invokes some strong feelings that most people cannot ignore or suppress; those feelings include disgust, anger, fear, and sadness. These feelings are evident in the picture due to the graphic nature of the image and the memories it invokes in readers of past situations they had endured. Being a part of the first page of the essay is what makes this rhetorical device so effective, this puts an image into the reader’s mind of what the African American descent had to endure during the time period and continued to endure for years to come. The image itself had an enormous impact on the civil rights mo...
During the course of this work, many ideas and themes are portrayed and readers are able to view subjects that surround the main topic of racial injustice and intolerance. With the three main narrators, Minny Jackson, Aibileen Clark, and Skeeter Phelan, the audience quickly gains an insight on how racial inequalities affected everyone. These thoughts help to form a plot that can easily keep readers entertained throughout the novel. During the course of the novel, there are many points in the plot that decide the actions and events other cha...
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
It leaves the readers in an awe of silence as they deliberate and take in the powerful message of Kindred. Octavia Butler extablishes the site of trauma as adaptation and the cause as the inhumane act of slavery. Butler leads her audience to question the equality not only in the past, but also in the present. Developing and Critically thinking about the world around us is the message that Butler is wanted to convey. Are black people really free? Have blacks gained all the right that blacks are reserved to by constitutional law? The answers are up to the individual, but in the words of Jesse Williams, “the burdened of the is not to comfort the bystander. If you have no intrest in the equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestion for those who do. Sit down.”
Although none of the novels were wrote in conjunction, each has a link towards the other regarding abuse, both sexual and spousal, as well as class oppression and the manual labor that was a necessity for survival among black women. By examining present society, one can observe the systems of oppressions that have changed for the better as well as those that continue to devastate the lives of many women today.
The effects of racism on the victims differed depending on age and whether or not a person would withstand the abuse. Moody makes these connections in her book by realizing that when the civil rights movement picked up in the 1960s, older blacks usually remained dormant and never stood up for themselves by speaking out against the abuse they received. In contrast, younger black Americans, notably teenagers, were more likely to be fearless and take part in the Movement. This theme can be seen throughout the whole book, from when Anne was a young girl and never understood why her mother co...
Tragedy has the ability to simultaneously bring people together and push them apart. Judith Cofer, the writer of “American History,” explores the theme of tragedy when she dwells upon the day when tragedy struck the lives of many. In her essay, she remembers the day former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Numerous people in her community are devastated by JFK’s unexpected death because they can relate to the fact that he stood for equality of culture, race, and gender. However, Cofer lacks the understanding of JFK’s goal, so her mother tries to expose the truth of her identity to her. Although Cofer’s mother wants to protect her, evidence from the text proves that unraveling the truth of racial prejudice is agonizing and
Thesis Statement: Alice Walker, a twentieth and twenty- first century novelist is known for her politically and emotionally charged works, which exposes the black culture through various narrative techniques.
By being called “slaves”, the twelve hanged, desperate and angered maids have their social rights, their political rights, and their economic rights stripped from them relieving them of their duties as human beings, leaving them to rot on Earth and in Hell. By using the words “cold blood”, the author illustrates the murderer as being emotionally detached and having the cruel intent to torture the maids and have them embarrassed and ridiculed. The fact that the attorney only has to mention that it was “within his rights” to kill women without a blink of an eye shows the reader the patriarchal world these desolate souls had to live on, get r...
Alice Walker's short fictional story, "Nineteen Fifty-five", revolves around the encounters among Gracie Mae Still, the narrator, and Traynor, the "Emperor of Rock and Roll." Traynor as a young prospective singer purchases a song from Mrs. Still, which becomes his "first hit record" and makes him rich and famous. Yet, he does not "even understand" the song and spends his entire life trying to figure out "what the song means." The song he sings seems as fictional as certain events in this story, but as historical as Traynor's based character, Elvis Presley.