James Baldwin And Jamaica Kincaid

1950 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Own definition of freedom

Freedom can be defined very differently by society. The concept of freedom is abstract in its self like “Love” or “God.” It is something questioned, fought, and searched by people from the being of civilization. Among the centuries of struggles, the liberation of blacks and cultural difference are focuses we continue to examine and learn from. The works of two great writers, James Baldwin and Jamaica Kincaid are dissected by readers every day to obtain insights and understands in regards to personal liberation. The era of James Baldwin writing career was during a period of a very active movement for African American equality. Being the color of black himself, Baldwin experiences many of the injustice and struggle first hand. He turned this agony and anger into a force in his writing. His background in preaching from the church at a young age assisted him in his …show more content…

An avid gardener, she has written extensively about plants and the painstaking procedures required to nurture them.” Subconsciously we are in a constant struggle with external and internal factors to obtain freedom. All our actions and thoughts are concealed notions of liberation. In “Lucy,” by Jamaica Kincaid carried its’ readers through a personal liberation crusade from the point of view of a young girl. Lucy the character in Kincaid’s book, criticized everything and everyone she encounters upon leaving her home. Fear from unfamiliarity was the initial reaction. The fear obstructed her judgment of passion and love for the people around her. She made comparisons of her new experiences to her childhood in a manner of displeasure and anger. Attempts to see things from the other’s position were undertaken. Once again hindered by her stubbornness, she fails horribly to make a liberal connection. A perfect example from “Lucy” by

Show More
Related

  • Having Our Say by Sadie and Bessie Delany

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.

    Read More

  • Baldwin's Father in Notes of a Native Son

    1668 Words  | 4 Pages

    Baldwin’s father died a broken and ruined man on July 29th, 1943. This only paralleled the chaos occurring around him at the time, such as the race riots of Detroit and Harlem which Baldwin describes to be as “spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred.” (63) His father was born in New Orleans, the first generation of “free men” in a land where “opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else.” (63) Although free from slavery, African-Americans still faced the hardships of racism and were still oppressed from any opportunities, which is a factor that led Baldwin’s father to going mad and eventually being committed. Baldwin would also later learn how “…white people would do anything to keep a Negro down.” (68) For a preacher, there was little trust and faith his father ...

    Read More

  • Style of The Fire Next Time

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    James Baldwin is one of the premier essayists of his time. He draws on his experiences in a straightforward, unapologetic manner, which helps achieve his purpose in The Fire Next Time. His style elucidates his arguments for racial harmony and for the understanding of other religions.

    Read More

  • Simple Justice

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Sonny's Blues And Battle Royal, By Ralph Ellison

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine you’re confined to a wooden box where you’re only allowed tiny amounts of movements but your arms and feet are free of clutches and there is a few holes on the top surface of the box so you are allowed to breathe. How free are you? In the short story, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and the novel “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison we are spectators of ‘Black Oppression’. Where the Blacks regardless of the abolition of slavery, are still mentally enslaved and physically limited to any kosher manifestation of success without the sway of the Whites. Consequently, of reading these written works I only now realized the gap of history that I’ve forgotten to see. When I was sixteen years old I remember telling myself, “Oh hell to those who

    Read More

  • Comparing Poems 'I, Too And' Theme For English B

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    The civil rights movement may have technically ended in the nineteen sixties, but America is still feeling the adverse effects of this dark time in history today. African Americans were the group of people most affected by the Civil Rights Act and continue to be today. Great pain and suffering, though, usually amounts to great literature. This period in American history was no exception. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer before, during, and after the Civil Rights Act and produced many classic poems for African American literature. Hughes uses theme, point of view, and historical context in his poems “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” to expand the views on African American culture to his audience members.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Price Of The Ticket

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    James Baldwin is described in the film James Baldwin – The Price of the Ticket as a man who resisted having to deal with the racism of the United States, but eventually found that he had to come back into the country to help defend the cause of civil rights. Baldwin was an American writer who was born in 1924 and died in 1987. He wrote a wide variety of different types of books, examining human experience and the way in which love was a part of that experience. However, he was also very active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was a voice that helped to bring about understanding, even if sometimes it was by slapping White America in the face. His message

    Read More

  • Baldwin's Writing Style in Notes of a Native Son

    1676 Words  | 4 Pages

    James Baldwin was born in Harlem in a time where his African American decent was enough to put more challenges in front of him than the average white American boy faced. His father was a part of the first generation of free black men. He was a bitter, overbearing, paranoid preacher who refused change and hated the white man. Despite his father, his color, and his lack of education, James Baldwin grew up to be a respected author of essays, plays, and novels. While claiming that he was one of the best writers of the era could be argued either way, it is hard to argue the fact that he was indeed one of the most well-known authors of the time.

    Read More

  • James Baldwin's Writing Technique

    1762 Words  | 4 Pages

    Baldwin begins his essay by stating that fact that his father died on the July 29, 1943. Right after stating that fact, he mentions the rioting, which occurred in Detroit and in Harlem about a month before the death of his father. Baldwin incorporates the events that are going on around him in his narrative as a way to set up the environment for the reader. The rioting and other events that Baldwin speaks of is his way of explaining, or even rationalizing his feelings during tha...

    Read More

  • Double Consciousness and the American Narrative

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    DuBois presents the question “[h]ow does it feel to be a problem?”, introducing the attitude towards African-Americans upon their emancipation (DuBois 3). The idea of freedom for slaves meant equality, but “the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land […] the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people” (6). The challenge faced during this time was how to deal with the now freed slaves who once had no rights. DuBois states that African-Americans merely wish “to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly i...

    Read More

  • James Baldwin's Stranger in the Village

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...as a reader I must understand that his opinions are supported by his true, raw emotions. These negative feelings shared by all of his ancestors were too strong to just pass by as meaningless emotions. Baldwin created an outlook simply from his honest views on racial issues of his time, and ours. Baldwin?s essay puts the white American to shame simply by stating what he perceived as truth. Baldwin isn?t searching for sympathy by discussing his emotions, nor is he looking for an apology. I feel that he is pointing out the errors in Americans? thinking and probably saying, ?Look at what you people have to live with, if and when you come back to the reality of ?our? world.?

    Read More

  • The Power of Slave Narratives

    1903 Words  | 4 Pages

    The influence of Fredrick Douglass and his struggle for emancipation will always be a source of inspiration. Douglass’ history, as articulated in The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, has a remained an influential element on those seeking liberation from oppression and has maintained a tangible position in African-American popular culture. Douglass demonstrates the availability of counter hegemonic ideologies but also provides a guide to achieving corporeal and racial agency. For Douglass, one avenue of liberation was reading. While a close reading of his narrative also suggests music was a fundamental component of his circumstances.

    Read More

  • Freedom: To the African American Slave

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is freedom? This question is easy enough to answer today. To many, the concept of freedom we have now is a quality of life free from the constraints of a person or a government. In America today, the thought of living a life in which one was “owned” by another person, seems incomprehensible. Until 1865 however, freedom was a concept that many African Americans only dreamed of. Throughout early American Literature freedom and the desire to be free has been written and spoken about by many. Insight into how an African-American slave views freedom and what sparks their desire to receive it can be found in any of the “Slave Narratives” of early American literature, from Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustav Vassa, the African published in 1789, to Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself which was published in 1845. Phillis Wheatley’s poetry and letters and Martin R. Delany’s speech Political Destiny of the Colored Race in the American Continent also contain examples of the African-American slaves’ concepts of freedom; all the similarities and differences among them.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Barbara Kingsolver And Our Flag Was Still There

    782 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”, once again the words of the late reverend Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind. Although written 150 years and worlds apart the eternal principles of justice and freedom contained in the works of Barbara Kingsolver and Frederick Douglass are emblazoned throughout the world of English literature. There is a common clamor found in the writings of these authors regardless of their space and time, “Voices and Images That Call for Response!”

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

More about James Baldwin And Jamaica Kincaid

Open Document