Tuesday, 30 September: conclude The Bluest Eye

Web highlight (midterms): Christine Michelle Pearson

Introduction: As I browsed through the samples of midterms from our previous peers, I came across two selections I thought were interesting.

The midterm assignment for 2007 was to write two essays on two topics and a research report proposal. I will be discussing two essays, one from each topic.

 Topic 1: longer, comprehensive essay on minority identity and the African American Dream

Assignment: Write a complete, unified essay of one hour to an hour and a half answering the following questions in whatever order expresses your understanding best:

·       How does this course define minority literature and culture in terms of its differences from the dominant culture?

·       How does African-American literature and culture exemplify minority status, as distinct from the immigrant culture?

·       How does “the Dream” of African American culture resemble and differ from “the American Dream” of the dominant culture?

{Excerpt from student midterm}

            . . . First, we must understand the differences between the minority narrative and the immigrant narrative.  Although both groups of people arrived in America to live from another country, both groups are different for the reasons they came over and how they were accepted, or assimilated. 

The immigrant narrative differs from the minority narrative in that an immigrant chose to come to America, looking to achieve the American Dream.  These people traveled alone, with family, or to meet family in hopes to find opportunity.  Leaving a country with poor conditions to go to a new land with jobs and a chance to achieve anything was a goal to many of these immigrants.  Keeping their native language and being able to practice old customs was a perk of the American Dream immigrants had, but not the minority group. 

The minority culture was very different from the immigrant experience.  The minority culture of African Americans did not have a choice in coming to America.  Examples of the brutish conditions African Americans were brought to the United States can be found in The Classic Slave Narratives, a man named Gustavus Vassa writes about the trip to the United States and the experience on the boat ride.  Unlike the immigrants, most of the people on Gustavus’ ship were kidnapped from their families and crammed onto a ship where “we all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age.”  Amongst all of the confusion over the people, no one could understand each other because of the different dialects. 

Gustavus gives the reader a picture of the confusion and how he felt because he could not converse with no one.  “  I had no person to speak to that I could understand,”  is a quote in the book demonstrating a clear difference between the minority and immigrant culture because African Americans were thrown on vessels with whoever and whenever, as oppose to immigrants who were able to plan and make decisions about their journey. 

As we can see, both the minority and immigrant narrative share coming from a different country, but the way they arrived and the way the groups adjusted to the dominant culture are quite different. . . . [LM}

Topic 2: shorter, more focused essay on student’s choice of topic

Assignment: Write a personal essay responding to an aspect of our course's readings and content that you wish to develop in more detail. 

The Double Minority

            The plight of the African American has been an always arduous one from the initial days spent in bondage as American slaves to the days of the Civil Rights Movement when African Americans fought for the rights which had still not been awarded to them since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. As painstaking as this journey has no doubt been for the African American man, I am of the opinion that the African American woman’s voyage has been twice as devastating and that she has been afforded even less opportunity than have African American males simply because, not only is she black – she is also a woman, and therefore suffers as a sort of “double minority,” to borrow from course objective 2a.

            One way in which the African American woman suffers more greatly than the African American man is that, during times of slavery, her children are usually taken from her shortly after birth. No doubt an African American male slave may be torn apart over being parted from his newborn child, but because slaves were not legally able to marry, often times a man might not even be aware that he had a child. Additionally, because men do not give birth to children, they have not carried the child with them for months during pregnancy and have not become attached to the child. Men also lack the natural maternal bond that most women posses toward their children, which would make it extremely devastating for any woman to be viciously separated from her child.

Furthermore, often times, slaveholders were the fathers of a slave woman’s child, and thus suffered in no way by the child being sent away, but often preferred it. Frederick Douglass explains in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass how he was separated from his mother at birth in the following passage: “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom in the part of Maryland from which I ran away to part children from their mothers at a very early age. . . For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.”

We see that because Douglass’ mother was forced to give up her child shortly after birth, her own son has never had a normal, loving affection for her. Even more devastating is the fact that we are led to infer that over time, because of the fact that she is never allowed to see him, Douglass’ mother’s affection for her own son dwindles, which must be a horribly sad and guilty situation for any woman to be forced to contend with.

Conclusion:

I could never understand why anyone would and could not be parents to their children. My children are my life. While researching this assignment, I found that you never know what makes people do the things they do till you know the circumstances. I was very impressed with the honesty of the works. One can learn better when the subject is laid out to examine.

I wonder if the Double Minority is written by a man or woman. I would have liked to examine this perspective from both genders.

As we prepare for our midterms, lets consider the differences within minority and immigrant as well as pursuing topics of interest that we can truly learn something that will help us to become a better person and a better neighbor.