LITR 4332 American
Minority Literature
Lecture notes
begin Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (pages 1-93; through "Autumn" and "Winter")
Jill's questions
Did anything stand out or are there any general questions about the text?
Did you find this text easier or harder than what we have read so far in the
course? Why?
Identify unifying themes between the slave narratives that we read and the novel
Morrison's unique use of color
Why is much of the story told from a child's perspective?
Is the Dream represented in the novel? How?
Zora Neal Hurston, "How it Feels to be Colored Me"
Discussion for Hurston, "How it Feels to be Colored Me":
Is African American literature / culture / identity part of larger American identity or separate?
Hurston as figure of Harlem Renaissance; experience crossing from black to white cultures > in-between attitude
Hurston's life 1891-1960
Harlem Renaissance 1910s-20s > Great Depression 1929 & New Deal 1930s-40s
Hurston studies at Columbia University w/ leading anthropologists, does anthropological field-work in Florida
Hurston sometimes in conflict with male leaders of Harlem Renaissance
Hurston popular performer in Jazz-Age settings for white patrons (much black-white cultural interaction in Jazz Age in USA & Europe)
Hurston opposed New Deal government action to employ poor and securitize middle-class
> found herself on opposite sides politically from most African Americans
> worked for various right-wing organizations opposing New Deal
Continued writing and publishing in 1930s and 40s
Near end of life, worked as domestic
Grave marker provided by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple
How may "How it Feels to be Colored Me" embody both the Dream and the American Dream? In what ways does it depict both an African American experience and a more universal or all-American experience?
Is the text an essay or a story?
2 affirmation of black or individual identity; cf. Jacobs not knowing she was a slave; also Douglass in Bondage & Freedom
3 family oppose?
Chamber of Commerce
4 [performance] deplored joyful, but their Zora
5 Zora > little colored girl
6 not tragically colored, x-sobbing school of negrohood
7 slaves x-depression
7 Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not
with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through
my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a greater chance for
glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to
think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much
praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center
of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh
or to weep.
8 The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of
getting.
14 across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is
so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.
[16]
I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am
merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My
country, right or wrong.
[17]
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It
merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?
It's beyond me.
18 a brown bag of miscellany . . . in company with other bags, white, red and yellow.
18 Who knows?
blackamoor 65
1. Compared to the slave narratives, why or how might you regard Bluest Eye as more like literature as you expect to study it? What differences in appeals between fiction and nonfiction? What's easier and harder about discussing either? A century has passed since slavery, but what continuities or differences with the slave narratives?
Fact: selection, compression, but reality effect; FD can’t tell escape
fiction: blank page: freedom, experimentation—Dick & Jane + p. 36
change in attitude toward characters
fact: judgment / admiration
fiction: identification or detachment; multiple centers
13 dialogue + humor
15 metaphor for pleasure: conversation like a gently wicked dance
16 foreshadowing; consciousness of story
2. How might the opening of Bluest Eye and depictions of its protagonist compare to the American Dream? The "American Dream" & "the Dream"--how different? How connected? If the American Dream fails, can "The Dream" emerge?
opening: “Here is the house.” [sets up majority against which minority is compared, measured]
2nd page: breaks down
9 Greek hotel; Rosemary Villanucci . . . pride of ownership; pull her pants down
17 Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment.
18 hunger for property, for ownership . . . . looking forward to the day of property
34 Hungarian baker, gypsies, 1st-generation Greek landlord
36 you couldn't take any joy in owning it
39 dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront
48 He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year old white immigrant storekeeper . . . his mind honed on the doe-eyed Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness of loss, see a little black girl?
62 a high-yellow dream child
69 Dreamland Theater
3. The narrator speaks of "being a minority in both caste and class" (17). Define caste. Also, how may children and adults be compared to a minority-dominant relation in the text?
10 adult / child – they do not talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information.
11 child's perspective / adult retropsective: "I do not know that she is not angry at me, but at my sickness."
15 We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre.
To our surprise, he spoke to us.
21 Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted
49 The quietly inoffensive assertion of a black child's attempt to communicate with a white adult.
69 I differed
83 assimilation and resistance
87 line between colored and nigger was not always clear
92 black bitch x pretty milk-brown lady
4. Morrison consistently uses color in her fiction as a symbolic and aesthetic sign. Compare the Color Code of Western Civilization with the Black Aesthetic. How do the title and other color symbols relate to the Color Code as a sub-text or standard of American aesthetics and culture?What does a mixed-race character like Maureen Peal signify?
title: The Bluest Eye: not an African American option?
whiteness as standard of beauty; 1
11 deep purple; Love, thick and dark
43 white doll
19 blue and white Shirley Temple cup . . . Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. . . . Christmas and the gift of dolls
20 always a big, blue-eyed baby doll
20 only one desire: to dismember it . . . to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. . . . a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every child treasured
22 transference of the same impulses to little white girls . . . . the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say “Awwww,” but not for me?
38 they believed they were ugly
39 came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. [Stockholm syndrome]
45 discover the secret of the ugliness
45 Her teachers always treated her this way.
46 she prayed for blue eyes . . . only a miracle could relieve her
48 blue eyes, blear-dropped
He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year old white immigrant storekeeper . . . his mind honed on the doe-eyed Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness of loss, see a little black girl?
50 white, blonde, blue
58 I know a boy who is sky-soft brown [black aesthetic]
62 high-yellow dream child, rich, quality of her clothes, teachers
63 Frieda and I were bemused, irritated, and fascinated by her.
73 black & ugly x cute
74 If she was cute, we were lesser
74 The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
83 learn x funkiness
88 a very black girl
92 they were everywhere
What do you do with mixed-race characters like Maureen Peal?
62 a high-yellow dream child
67 mulatto girl . . . black and ugly
75 Maureen not the enemy . . . The Thing
5. Toni Morrison is widely regarded as a great American writer and potentially a writer of enduring merit. Discuss her style? What works? What suggests a level of genius? What's threatening or offputting that keeps her from being merely a popular writer?How can you identify Morrison's greatness as a writer?
What's threatening or offputting that keeps her from being merely a popular writer?
Great writers can move your mind, open new space, make you see and feel anew, make new realities possible
2 reasons for reading: escape/entertainment & engagement/learning
not necessarily exclusive
sensational pleasure x intellectual pleasure; significance of book, lives
though balances shift
classic as book that stays open; standard text as consumable (Stephen King)
already know one, keep learning how to know the other
pleasures and challenges
challenge: difficult, not reading for escape but for intellectual pleasure
Morrison
improves with repeated readings; more you know the more you like (friends)
pleasure of company of someone who’s smarter than you are but will accept your company
fearlessness / shock but cool or deadpan
menstruation, naked man, rape, childbirth
31 Mama scolds, then hugs, indirectly apologizes
43 "Get him, Jesus! Get him!"
50 Three pennies had bought her nine lovely orgasms with Mary Jane.
51 note that Poland and Marie and China aren't identified as black.
81 love of language: Mobile, Marietta, Meridian, Nagadoches
surprising 67
love of language 81
Gretchen: physicality
humanizes Charley
humor p. 54 humor humanizes
learn to love Pecola, "the least of these"
Matthew 25.40 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
25.45 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
What is human?
18 Cholly Breedlove, having put his family outdoors, had catapulted himself before the reaches of human consideration. He had joined the animals . . . .
32 How do you get somebody to love you?
108 [transference] the familiar violence rose in me
122 physical beauty
134 God a white man
148 + 150 [transference] he hated her x-hunters
210 reclamation of black beauty in the 60s
rape
sexual relations as loving equals or
(potentially) field of dominance / submission
humanizes or dehumanizes
dehumanizing:
aggressor: animal or unfeeling
aggressed-upon: no choice, no speech
67 cold face
70 don't you tell
conclude: 231 black female’s power
The Bluest Eye
opening: “Here is the house.” [sets up majority against which minority is compared, measured]
2nd page: breaks down
3rd page: problems in nature: no marigolds, daughter having father’s baby
4th page: why > how [imitation]
“Autumn”
9 Greek hotel
Rosemary Villanucci . . . pride of ownership; pull her pants down
10 adult / child – they do not talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information.
12 a productive and fructifying pain. Love . . .
13 [dialogue + humor]
14 adult / child
14 dialogue
15 not introduced to him—merely pointed out. [cf objects]
15 to our surprise, he spoke to us.
16 a girl who had no place to go
17 outdoors the real terror of life
17 his own flesh had done it
17 Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment.
Minority = abstract
outdoors = concrete
18 hunger for property, for ownership . . . . looking forward to the day of property
18 He had joined the animals; was, indeed, an old dog, a snake, a ratty nigger.
19 Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. . . . Christmas and the gift of dolls
20 always a big, blue-eyed baby doll
20 only one desire: to dismember it . . . to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. . . . a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every child treasured
21 Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted
22 transference of the same impulses to little white girls . . . . the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say “Awwww,” but not for me?
23 adjustment without improvement
23 We didn’t initiate talk with grown-ups; we answered their questions.
25 blues as double language
30 dough-white face. Rosemary
32 somehow sacred
32 somebody has to love you
34 Hungarian baker, gypsies, 1st-generation Greek landlord
35 conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference
36 sofa purchased new, split . . . the joylessness stank, pervading everything. The stink of it kept you from painting the beaverboard walls . . . .
38 they believed they were ugly
39 came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. [Stockholm syndrome]
39 stir out of their dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront
41 hung like the first note in a dirge . . . . ceremonial close
42 [transference; cf. P. 22] For some reason Cholly had not hated the white men; he hated, despised, the girl.
43 Pecola . . . restricted by youth and sex
46 she prayed for blue eyes . . . only a miracle could relieve her
47 dandelions and weeds
47 codes and touchstones of the world
48 blue eyes, blear-dropped
He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year old white immigrant storekeeper . . . his mind honed on the doe-eyed Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness of loss, see a little black girl
49 “Kantcha talk?”
50 x-love, > anger
50 white, blonde, blue
55 x-prostitutes in novels
56 gender x-ethnicity: Black men, white men, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Jews, Poles, whatever--all were inadequate and week . . . .
58 I know a boy who is sky-soft brown [black aesthetic]
61 allusion: Vulcan
66 I had never heard Frieda's voice so loud and clear
67 Imitation of Life . . mulatto girl hates her mother cause she is black and ugly but then cries at the funeral
86 Lorain
86 Washington Irving School
87 ash; cf. Douglass
87 line between colored and nigger was not always clear