LITR 5731 Seminar in Multicultural Literature
American
Minority Literature
Lecture Notes
Complete Song of Solomon
| assignments & handouts discussion, Song of Solomon--Christine instructor's questions [break] 4th research option + midterm Angelou poem--Denielle |
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Tuesday, 16 February: Conclude Song of Solomon
Reading Assignments: complete Song of Solomon (through part 2, through p. 337?)
Reading discussion leader: Christine Ford
Poetry: Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"
Poetry reader / discussion leader: Denielle Alexander
(Suggested question for poem: How does it conform to The Dream? Dr. King's Dream Speech?)
Instructor's Discussion Questions:
American literary aesthetics remain powerfully influenced by Romanticism, which Modern / Postmodern writers like Morrison vary and challenge. 2 examples:
The wilderness gothic, in which the "maze" or "labyrinth" of the gothic space is projected onto nature. What variations when Milkman enters the forest to meet Pilate at the end?
The Romantic impulse to "escape" or "transcend": in Douglass, the "escape" blends Romantic and anti-slavery attitudes. In Song of Solomon, the impulse to escape is figured in the African American legend of the Flying Africans. How does Morrison both indulge the attractiveness of escape while questioning its social responsibility? How does the final image of Milkman's flight resolve (or fail to resolve) escape and responsibility?
Midterm & research plan due by email b/w Wednesday, 24 February & Monday, 1 March
Midterm & Research Plan Assignment
Begin American Indian literature
Origin stories—cf. Slave narratives
Black Elk—problems of authorship? Cf. Push or slave narratives—how speak for the voiceless? How create a voice from alternative tradition?
Objective 3
To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and privileging the individual—with alternative narratives of American minorities, which involve involuntary participation, connecting to the past, and traditional (extended) or alternative families.
3b.
Native American Indian alternative
narrative: "Loss and Survival"
(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people. Yet they defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)
Begin American Indian literature
Origin stories—cf. Slave narratives: what kind of world is established? What uses for language?
Black Elk—problems of authorship? Cf. slave narratives—how speak for the voiceless? How create a voice from alternative tradition?
Tendency to "Romanticize" American Indians: noble savage, close to nature . . . how much does the book indulge and question the Romantic image?
Objective 3
To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and privileging the individual—with alternative narratives of American minorities, which involve involuntary participation, connecting to the past, and traditional (extended) or alternative families.
3b.
Native American Indian alternative
narrative: "Loss and Survival"
(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people. Yet they defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)
midterm
Via email
Posted as they come in
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"the Black Aesthetic"
"the Black Aesthetic"
dance, art, music, literature
African American Literature Book Club
Historical overviews of Black Arts Movement
Two aspects
1. political: "Black Power"
Media momentarily receptive to African American literature, etc., during separatist movement
key terms: community, dignity, respect, the people, movement
x- assimilation > "power-sharing"
assumption: African Americans as distinct people, never entirely assimilated
Is assimilation desirable or not?
assimilation > economic benefits, but always limits, esp. on intermarriage--"assimilated" blacks sometimes occupy a "parallel but lesser world" like Macon
separation--provides field of difference; consensus of dominant American culture > position of dissent
2nd aspect: "black aesthetic as aesthetics"
definition of aesthetics: a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of the beautiful and with judgments concerning beauty
"Black is Beautiful"
1d. “The Color Code”
Literature represents the extremely sensitive subject of skin color infrequently or indirectly. Generally western civilization transfers the values it associates with “light and dark”—e. g., good & evil, rational / irrational—to people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc. (But see objective 4 regarding “the New American” & racial ideology and practice.)
Song of Solomon
266 "the measure"
expansion
of sensorium 173 (ch. 8)
40-41
black, rainbow
47
purple
185
deeper darkness
273 accustomed to dark > possible to see
"black aesthetic" expands range of the beautiful
That which was formerly officially ugly can be beautiful
inverts the form of the "color code"
look for it in Langston Hughes poems
Instructor's notes:
147 you can't just fly on off
208 “You just can’t fly on off and leave a body.”
Instructor's questions:
What does Milkman learn? How is the legend of the “Flying Africans” complicated? Is it confirmed or questioned?
How much does Song of Solomon’s overall narrative parallel “The Dream” narrative?
Leftover notes from previous classes
discussion: Karen Daniels
Objective
2
To observe representations and narratives (images and stories) of ethnicity and gender as a means of defining minority categories.
2a. Is the status of women, lesbians, and homosexuals analogous to that of ethnic minorities in terms of voice and choice? Do "women of color" become "double minorities?"
Discussion:
Morrison uses references
to the myth of the flying African to discuss the idea that the men in the story
are always flying away and leaving the women behind to deal with the realities
of everyday life. The men in the
story use flight to escape and the abandoned women have the double burden of
racism and sexism as their culture assigns hero status to the absent men who
have flown away while criticizing the women for their weakness in dealing with
the aftermath. They pay a heavy
price for the men’s’ freedom.
(p 322)
“Oh, that’s just some folks’ lie they tell around here.
Some of those Africans they brought over here as slaves could fly.
A lot of them flew back to Africa. The
one around here who did was this same Solomon, or Shalimar—I never knew which
was right. He had a slew of
children, all over the place. You
may have noticed that everybody around here clams kin to him.
Must be over forty families spread in these hills calling themselves
Solomon something or other. I guess
he must have been hot stuff.” She
laughed. “But anyway, hot stuff
or not, he disappeared and left everybody.
Wife, everybody, including some twenty-one children.
And they say they all saw him go. The
wife saw him and the children saw him. They
were all working in the fields. They
used to try to grow cotton here. Can
you imagine? In these hills? But cotton was king then.
Everybody grew it until the land went bad. It was cotton even when I was a girl. Well, back to this Jake boy.
He was supposed to be one of Solomon’s original twenty-one—all boys
and all of them with the same mother. Jake
was the baby. The baby and the wife
were right next to him when he flew off.”
“When you say ‘flew off’ you mean he ran away, don’t you? Escaped?”
“No, I mean flew. Oh,
it’s just foolishness, you know, but according to the story he wasn’t
running away. He was flying. He flew. You
know, like a bird. Just stood up in
the fields one day, ran up some hill, spun around a couple of times, and was
lifted up in the air. Went right on
back to wherever he came from…”
(p 328)
Milkman is ecstatic about finding out that his grandfather flew away and
abandoned his grandmother.
(p 332)
Milkman realizes he has flown away from Hagar and that she has suffered
for it.
Questions:
Why do you suppose that
society praises the men that fly away and abandon their families?
Do you think Morrison is using that as a metaphor for what she perceives
to be social problems in her culture?
At one point Milkman
celebrates his grandfather’s flight but shortly afterward he observes that he
loves Pilate because she can fly without ever leaving the ground and abandoning
her family. What do you suppose he
meant by that? Does this show
maturity and growth on his part?
Can the novel’s impact on a proper academic audience be compared with the impact of Hip Hop music? What other comparisons to Hip Hop?
contrast with hip-hop: no real noise
literacy as "abstraction"--all senses possible, but all imaginary
contrast music, visual art--power of sensory appeal or offense is much higher
compare Douglass or Jacobs--most white readers couldn't have imagined sharing a sensory space with the author
But racial difference can more or less disappear in language, writing, literacy
Flying Africans in Push
24 fly
116 fly back to green chair (steals file)
129 I see flying, Feel flying. Am flying. . . Precious is bird