Laura A. Moseley

28 February 2010

web review

The Importance of Reading

I found Sara Moreau’s 2006 Research Journal quite enjoyable and informative.  I appreciate the amount of thought that she put into selecting her topic not just to fill this course objective, but to further her role as a reading teacher.  Her conviction to provide children with the ability to read is very evident in the following passage: 

Not only do all these books teach children about the history of African Americans and their struggles throughout their history in America, they are interesting stories and will encourage children to want to read more as they get older. Children who read a lot are good readers, have confidence in themselves, and are good writers. These are important qualities that are essential to their success in life. 

I strongly agree with the idea that if a person can read, their only limitations in life are the ones they place on themselves.  As a homeschooling mom, my only goal was that my dear son would grow up a reader like my mother and myself.  I did not care if he knew all the details of history or what the parts of a cell are or how to solve a complex algebra equation.  I knew that if he could read, when or if these subjects ever became important to him, he would be able to seek out and learn them for himself.  Like Sara, I fell that it is more “essential to their success in life,” to be introduced to social issues like we are discussing in this class, by showing the power of the written word.

In a very different way, but yet related, Cindy Goodson also points out the importance of literacy in her 2007 Midterm, “Chains, Songs and Bible Motifs: A Dialogue on the American Dream Deferred.”  In the following passage Cindy shows the importance of learning to read to the life of a slave.  She also links The Dream to the individuals, in this instance the slaves, level of education.

In reference to Objective 3, we compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative with alternative narratives of American minorities we find in Douglass’s account that his owners Mr. and Mrs. Auld were succinctly fitted within their American Dream as theirs was held in place by the U.S. Constitution which on the one hand reads “liberty and justice for all” but actually resulted in injustices for blacks.  So the question here would be who is included the “all” as mentioned in the Constitution?  Certainly not the slaves as they were not even considered as humans.  Mr. Auld leads the dialogue as he proposed that as long as the slaves remained uneducated and ignorant the White Dream would continue to prevail.  As a result, he forbade Mrs. Auld from continuing to teach Douglass to spell.

Cindy also shows that in the case of Frederick Douglass, the ability for a slave to read might have only aggravated his view of the inequities between slaves and free people.

“Learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing (Douglass, 370).”

Following on with the theme of literacy, Philip R. Jones in his 2007 Midterm, “The American Nightmare: Stolen Innocence, Lost Identity, Physical Abuse,& Suppression of the American Slave,” shows via the following passage from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, that white people feel that they are superior and more educated.

The nurse gazed at the stout woman as though she had spoken Welsh.  Then she closed her mouth, looked again at the cat-eyed boy, and lacing her fingers, spoke her next words very slowly to him. ‘Listen.  Go around to the back of the hospital to the guard’s office.  It will say Emergency Admissions on the door.  A – D – M – I – S – I – O – N – S.  (Morrison 13)

Even Guitar, a young boy, knew how to spell the word admissions and did not need the dominate culture to talk down to him.

To summarize, these three works point out the important role that literacy and education played in the development of Minority Cultures.  Cindy Goodson sums up this importance to all people, dominant and minority, by quoting this single verse from the Bible, “Study to show thyself approved (2 Timothy 2:15).”

essay with research plan

Laura A. Moseley

African American Women; Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

          The plight of African American women in the United States is truly that of a double minority.  During the time of slavery there may not have been much of a distinction between that of a male slave and a female slave because they were both in bondage and were at the whim of the master no matter how brutal or degrading the demands were.  Male slaves did not seem to have much authority over female slaves, but when slavery ended, black males were perceived to have more power in society than their female counter parts, similar to difference in power between males and females in the dominant culture.  However, African American women experience yet another layer of dominance from the perceived higher status of the men and women who comprise the dominant society.  This plight of inequality of the African American woman can be seen in the characters of Linda in Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Pilate and First Corinthians in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and I in Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise.  

          Harriet Jacobs, writing as Linda Brent and telling her life story through the character of Linda, describes the struggles of slave women not only through her own experiences, but also through the experiences of her grandmother.  Even though Linda’s grandmother eventually became a free woman, she lived as a slave for most of her life and she had all but one of her children sold away from her.  Linda never sees her children sold from her, but she lives most of her life in constant fear of this happening.  The most explicit example of parents and children being separated given by Linda is the story of a mother who had all seven of her children sold from her on New Year’s Day which was known by the slaves as hiring day.

I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?" I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.  (Jacobs, chapter III)

How could any society treat humans that walk, talk, and breath just like themselves so cruelly solely based on the color of skin?  At the age of twelve, Linda herself is disbursed as property in her mistress’s will to the mistress’s niece.

Yet as horrible as living with the fear of being separated from your children is for any woman, this is not the most degrading fear for the female slave.  At the age of fifteen, Linda’s master, Mr. Flynt, unrelentingly begins to sexually abuse her.  He does not actually ever have sex with her; he just tells her what he has the right to do to her because she is his property.  Linda, like many sexual abuse victims, feels that she must endure this treatment in silence.  She will not tell her grandmother for fear that the grandmother will not only jeopardize her own life by killing Mr. Flynt, but somehow be disappointed that Linda, through no fault of her own, has become an immoral woman.  Linda explains,

But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe.  (Jacobs, chapter V)

Since we discussed this in class, I have struggled with the thought of why would the grandmother make Linda feel shame for actions that she cannot control?  These events of sexual abuse were inevitable in the life of a female slave and the grandmother would have been well aware of that fact.  As degrading as the thought may be, would it not have been easier on the younger female slaves for the older, more experienced mentor to have explained from childhood what would eventually occur and ease the young slave’s conscience on the matter?  After all, short of running away and making it to freedom, there would be no escaping this fate.  In Linda’s case, she does find a unique approach for dealing with this ever present injustice, she takes control of the situation and chooses the white man that she will give her sexual self to.  At least by making a conscious decision as to who she will have sex with, even though she does not love this man, she is taking the only control that she has over her body.

          There are many strong black female characters in Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon, but I would like to examine Pilate and First Corinthians.  Pilate from the age of twelve has lived life on her own terms, but yet it seems she is in constant survival mode.  At twelve, Pilate is separated from the only family that she knows, her brother Macon, and pursues traveling across the country trying to find a place where she fits.  Pilate has an extra layer of minority status in some ways because she is not only an African American woman, but she is viewed as different because she has no navel.  To her this is almost like a disability because every time this fact is revealed, or she thinks that it will be discovered, she leaves the place that she currently views as her home.  The first time she encountered this prejudice was among some migrant workers that she had joined.  After she slept with one of the men he told the others that she had no navel and, “They were very sorry, they liked her and all, and she was such a good worker and a big help to everybody.  But she had to leave just the same.”  (Morrison, 159)  Pilate never married as a result of this physical difference either.  She thought, “that she wouldn’t be able to hide her stomach from a husband forever.”  (163)

          Pilate was sexually abused during her period of seeking safety as well and not by white men, which would have been bad enough, but by a black man and not just any black man, but a preacher.  Pilate had been taken in by the family of black minister and was sent to school which she enjoyed very much, but. Like Linda, as she grew older the preacher became more interested.  “But then the preacher started pattin on me.  I was so dumb I didn’t know enough to stop him.  But his wife caught him at it, thumbin my breasts, and put me out.”  (Morrison, 156)  Knowing the oppression of African Americans in the United States, why would a supposedly good black man add to this oppression by sexually abusing a young, orphaned African American girl who had no other place to seek refuge?  This incident shows the added layer of oppression that the African American woman must dig through to live life and pursue her dreams.  This layer of black male superiority is a layer that white women do not have deal with.

          First Corinthians exemplifies most of the characteristics of the African American woman as a double minority.  She is trapped in a house where she has no control or choice over her life, this control is the result of an oppressive black man who just happens to be her father, and she is not able to live her dream because of white racism.  Corinthians father, Macon Dead, began his control of her life when she was born by arbitrarily opening the Bible and pointing to words that then became her name.  She is named after a book, not a person.  Then well over the age of thirty five, she finally finds a man that pays attention to her and she loves him, but her father and brother drag her home and evict him into the streets. So, unlike Linda, who was a slave, Corinthians cannot even choose to who and when she wants to give her sexual self. 

          Ruth and Macon Dead had high hopes for both of their daughters, but especially for Corinthians.  She was sent to college and to France only to return to her home unable to find a suitable man to marry or a job suitable to her level of education.  Neither Corinthians nor Lena needed to work, but Corinthians was not satisfied to just stay at home and do nothing.  She wanted some financial independence no matter how small.  Yet,

Unfit for any work other than the making of red velvet roses, she had a hard time finding employment befitting her degree.  The three years she had spent in college, a junior year in France, and being the granddaughter of the eminent Dr. Foster should have culminated in something more elegant than the two uniforms that hung on Miss Graham’s basement door.  That all these advantages didn’t was still incredible to her.  (205-206)        

No one in her family knew that she was only house maid to the state poet lariat, Miss Graham.  Her mother told everyone that she was a secretary.  Even with every advantage that could be possessed by an African American woman, a good lineage, light skin tone and education, Corinthians, because she was black, could only obtain the position of servant.

Finally, in Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise, we see through the character I, the empowerment of the African American woman.  I is completely unapologetic for becoming strong, independent, and willing to take the things that she needs from the past to make herself into the woman that she wants to be.  In the final stanza Angelou sums up the very embodiment of what the modern African American woman can be if she owns her past.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

This empowerment from the past is one of the many things that I have learned from this course.  African American women need to embrace their history because many strong remarkable women like Harriet Jacobs fought hard and struggled endlessly to make a better future for their daughters and their daughter’s daughters.   

I plan to further explore the plight of the African American female in my research essay.  I would like to explore the importance of family through the composition of a slave narrative using Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Song of Solomon and Octavia Butler’s Kindred as texts.  I would like to delve further into how not knowing the past affects modern African American women.  How have fractured pieces of lineage been assembled to create a meaningful history?  Kindred will be my main text and the other two works along with critical works found on the internet and in literary journals will be used to amplify points introduced through Butler’s novel.   

I realize that this is a large and complex topic and will be focusing my thesis further as I begin to research this area of literature.  Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

It is through literature that we can learn about many different cultures and communities.  I am a middle aged white woman and have no personal experience with living life as an African American woman, but through works like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Song of Solomon, and Still I Rise, a little piece of that experience has been opened to me.  Only living life as an African American woman would give the true experience and that should not be forgotten or belittled, but to be able to read and study about another person’s plight should at least be able to leave a feeling of understanding, support and kinship. 

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. Still I Rise. 1978.

Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Boston: Published for the Author, 1861.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1995.