Whether referring to a poem, a situation or someone in particular, we as a society are told not to judge a book by its cover, not to judge someone until getting to know him or her, or without discovering the underlying message. In Dionne Brand’s, Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater and Margaret Atwood’s, This Is a Photograph of Me, both texts must be looked at in-depth before jumping to any conclusions. Both authors incorporate photography to paint a picture for their readers. By doing so, Brand defines slavery through an artistic perspective and signifies aspects of time, physical appearance and her outlook on life, which gives life to the aftermath of an ex-slave. In contrast with this, Atwood incorporates the same three aspects into her work and as a result, both text are much alike than originally thought.
One important concept encrypted into Dionne Brand’s lyrical poem, Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater is time. Continuously, the words “she waited” are seen repeated once or more in each stanza. Firstly, it is clear that that she waited 115 years, but what for? They say a picture is worth a thousand words and the improvement of photography is one of the aspects that Mammy was waiting for so that she could receive the quality of the picture that she wanted and deserved.
"her days when waiting for this photograph was all that kept her sane she planned it down to the day,” (Brand, 42-4)
After living 115 years of her life, she is seen as a survivor for outliving slavery. Mammy Prater wanted to wait until she was free to take her self-portrait, as she did not want to be remembered and seen as a slave. She needed to make sure that her eyes had seen her life and had captured the world for what it is. In contrast with this, in; This...
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...for what she had done for herself and by herself for her future. The advances in photography was a key contributor in helping her absorb all of her memories, values, rights, essentially her life into one single image that would be seen by others like her that survival is possible. Margaret Atwood uses photography to her advantage by creating and image where the camera can initialize more than the person taking to photo, therefore revealing that there is more to the picture than it seems.
Works Cited
Moss, Laura, and Cynthia Conchita. Sugars. “ Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater.” …….Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts. Vol. 2. Toronto: Pearson …….Education, 2009. Print.
Moss, Laura, and Cynthia Conchita. Sugars. “This Is a Photograph of Me.” Canadian ……..Literature in English: Texts and Contexts. Vol. 2. Toronto: Pearson Education, …….2009. Print.
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
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
This piece of autobiographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
Kara Walker’s piece titled Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b 'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart represents discrimination on basis of race that happened during the period of slavery. The medium Walker specializes in using paper in her artwork. This piece is currently exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art. Even though this artwork depicts slavery, discrimination is still an issue today in America, the country where people are supposedly free and equal. Even though slavery ended in the 19th century, we still see hints of racial discrimination for African Americans in our society. Walker uses color, image composition, and iconography to point out evidence of racial inequality that existed in the
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
To read the Civil War diary of Alice Williamson, a 16 year old girl, is to meander through the personal, cultural and political experience of both the author and one's self. Her writing feels like a bullet ricocheted through war, time, death, literary form, femininity, youth, state, freedom and obligation. This investigation attempts to do the same; to touch on the many issues that arise in the mind of the reader when becoming part of the text through the act of reading. This paper will lay no definitive claims to the absolute meaning of the diary, for it has many possible interpretations, for the journey is the ultimate answer. I seek to acknowledge the fluidity of thought when reading, a fluidity which incorporates personal experience with the content of Williamson's journal. I read the journal personally- as a woman, a peer in age to Alice Williamson, a surrogate experiencialist, a writer, an academic and most of all, a modern reader unaccustomed to the personal experience of war. I read the text within a context- as a researcher versed on the period, genre, aesthetics, and to some degree the writer herself. The molding of the personal and contextual create a rich personalized textual meaning .
Cam, Heather American Literature; Oct87, Vol. 59 Issue 3, p429, 4p Academic Search Complete Ebesco. Web. 25 July 2011
Toni Morrisons novel 'Beloved' demonstrates how the African American people, oppressed by marginalization and racism, endure the strain of slavery even after they are liberated from it. The establishment of slavery’s horrific dehumanizing, through the estrangement of families and destitution of fundamental human rights is distinctly existent in the novel. Opposite from this setting, Morrison moves us from one location to another; with movements in time through the memories of the central characters. These characters yearn to repress the painful memories of their pasts and are often driven out from a character’s mind or contained securely within; Paul D functions by locking his memories and emotions away in his imagined “tobacco tin”. The case
The first-hand account of life in post-civil war United States for slaves is described through the use of imagery and symbols in Beloved. Sethe, a runaway slave, reaches freedom at her mother-in-law’s house but is pursued by her former owner. Acting rashly and not wanting a life of slavery for her children, Set...
She focuses not only in the obvious forms of resistance, but also its disguised forms by utilizing resources such as slave narratives and interviews, papers and journals. She demonstrates how enslaved people threatened the control of plantation owner’s space, time and movement through movement of bodies, objects, and information. Her work exhibits extended research of analysis on already researched topics. Camp gives a new angle on these already researched topics by providing a deeper analysis as if she knows what these enslaved women truly think. Thus, successfully showing the efforts of black women trying to establish ownership of their own body, showing their hope for freedom, and expressing their emotions as a way to show that they are more than just the price they were bought
In 1942, Margaret Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her poem For My People. This accomplishment heralded the beginning of Margaret Walker’s literary career which spanned from the brink of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s to the cusp of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (Gates and McKay 1619). Through her fiction and poetry, Walker became a prominent voice in the African-American community. Her writing, especially her signature novel, Jubilee, exposes her readers to the plight of her race by accounting the struggles of African Americans from the pre-Civil War period to the present and ultimately keeps this awareness relevant to contemporary American society.
Barnstone, Aliki, and Willis Barnstone. A book of women poets. New York: Schocken Books, 1980. Print.
Not all people expose their opinions through books, but Toni Morrison believes that language and storytelling are main parts of revealing the “truth”. She makes it obvious in her novel Beloved, that slavery should not be seen just as something that physically harmed but sometime thing that also altered the emotional state of slaves. In the book Morrison presents this view through a family’s past and present experiences. She makes this “truth” noticeable with the constant use of repetition, parallel structure and metaphors throughout the book.
“Lucille Clifton.” Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 1997-2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/79 .
Langston Hughes, a renowned poet from the early 1900s, has written numerous poems that have various themes and meanings. Although a lot of his poetry has to do with the struggles of African Americans during the time of slavery or during the early 1900s, Langston Hughes’ themes differ from poem to poem. One theme that appears in multiple poems of his is the theme of race, Langston Hughes uses the theme of race in his poems as a way to challenge the racial barriers that are placed on society. The theme of race is discussed in a plethora of his poems and it is important to examine a few of these poems which include, “I too, sing America”, “Theme for English b”, and “Let America be America Again”, to point out that Hughes tries to implement the sense of hope into African Americans of the time, also he uses race as a way to provide a focus on the oppression of slaves.