Author: ehoch

One thing I found rather interesting while reading Mules and Men was how careful Zora Neale Hurston had to be when she was a newcomer in Polk County. She was extra cautious when interacting with the people of the boarding house, as it turned out for good reason. They treated her as an outsider – the same way that she described the way that they would treat a white person interested in their lies. She was especially considered different for having a car and an expensive dress. It wasn’t until she had made clear that she was just like them that they took to her and accepted her as a new part of the community. I thought it was rather interesting how quickly they accepted her, considering how differently she was treated from the beginning. And it was also interesting how eager they were to share their lies with her, even though she was still an outsider. They would have been concerned with telling her lies before they accepted her, but they were fine with sharing them with her so she could share them with many other people. I wonder what makes the distinction here? Where is the line? Why does it matter who shares the story if it’s going to be shared with everyone eventually?

One thing I noticed when reading “Color Struck” and “John Redding Goes to Sea” was the discussion of how the women in the tales behaved. To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable with how Matty and Stella treated John in “John Redding”, and with how Emma treated John in “Color Struck”. In both tales, the women are clearly made out to be the villains in the story with their unreasonable demands, refusal to listen to reason, their attitudes, and their jealousy. I wondered, why was the focus of these stories so clearly on these bad women? What was the point of making sure that these characters were so clearly in the wrong, to the point where readers might feel almost hatred for them?

The Lightfoot family in In Dahomey can be seen as representing very clear differences between the mindsets of black people in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Mr. Lightfoot, Mrs. Lightfoot, and Rosetta each exhibit varying degrees of a “progressive” mindset, showcased in Act two of the play. Mr. Lightfoot is the least progressive of the three. He is a well-off black man in the south, due to his former master’s death. He was left his former master’s house and wealth, and now his family lives pretty well. However, Mr. Lightfoot insists on continuing to call Mr. Goodman “Mars John”, and reminiscing about his past life with his master. There almost seems to be some form of respectability politics at play here, though not in the usual sense. Usually, respectability politics are a performance for white society; however, “Mars John” is dead, and therefore Mr. Lightfoot is only “performing” to himself, which seems to suggest it is not a performance at all. It appears that Mr. Lightfoot believes that “Mars John” is the respectful title, despite all the connotations and history that come with that term. Mrs. Lightfoot has a slightly more progressive mindset than Mr. Lightfoot. She very clearly takes issue with Mr. Lightfoot’s references to Mr. Goodman as “Mars John”, and makes sure to tell her husband so. She scolds him throughout the play for it, and doesn’t allow her own opinion to be nullified when Mr. Lightfoot continues to use the title “Mars John”. However, Mrs. Lightfoot is still less progressive than their daughter, Rosetta. Rosetta has at least two songs where she refers to a wish for black people to be treated equally to white people – one literally called “Leader of the Colored Aristocracy”, and one that discusses how a smart black girl got into a private, mostly white school because of her ability rather than money. While we don’t see Rosetta’s thoughts about calling Mr. Goodman “Mars John”, we can see that her mother seems to think that she is a little too progressive when she tells Mr. Lightfoot, “She might mean well, but she never does well.” These levels of progression in one family could quite easily be adapted to fit the progressions of the mindsets of black society at the time.

One thing I noticed while reading McCann’s TransAtlantic was the way that Douglass referred to and/or described bodies of different people – specifically, the contrast between how he describes Lily’s body versus how he describes his wife’s body and his own body. Every time Douglass describes Lily, there is an implied grace and beauty in his word choice. He describes her skin as “so very pale”; her wrists as “cool” and “light”; her face “ledged with freckles” and her hair “sandy-colored”. All dainty words. He even describes her was “pretty”, though at the time he did not know that it was Lily he was describing. In contrast, Douglass doesn’t ever describe the way his wife’s body looks. His descriptions of her are limited to her emotional state (such as when he was imagining how excited she would look upon receiving a letter from him) and to what clothing she wore (such as when he describes her red scarf). We, as readers, have no idea what Anna might look like, other than the fact that she is black. Similarly, the only description we get of Douglass is a fleeting moment when he catches himself in the mirror and decides to leave his hair in the more “Negro style”. There are no descriptions of black bodies here; or, at least, not nearly of the same caliber as the descriptions of white bodies. Douglass has moments in the text where he realizes, as time goes on, that in Ireland there seems to be far less care about his skin color. He is surprised every time he realizes it again. I wonder if the lack of description of black bodies is simply because Douglass never felt as though it was appropriate to praise them as beautiful or graceful. Obviously he knew it – this was one of the rights that he was fighting for his people to have. But old habits are hard to break. Is this an intentional choice on McCann’s part, I wonder?

Gulliver, throughout his adventures in the land of the Lilliputians and in the land of the Houyhnhnms, has over and over again returned to a topic one wouldn’t necessarily find to be important to this documentation of his travels. Gulliver always seems to make reference back to the state of his own body, and the dissatisfaction he feels when he remembers how he looks. For example, in the country of the Lilliputians, he feels ashamed of his need to pass excrement (even though this is a natural occurrence). He makes a big deal out of describing how he only did this out of complete necessity, and how thereafter he always made sure to do it in a more cleanly way. In the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver became disgusted with his body because he associated it with the bodies of the Yahoos. It got to the point where Gulliver even began to act like a horse – he would hold himself as a horse, “trot” like a horse, and even imitate their speech. Gulliver’s discomfort with his own body always came as a result of examining the majority beings’ bodies. Gulliver felt out of place in his own skin. This phenomenon reminded me of the way that black bodies were treated. When black Africans were uprooted from Africa and brought to the Americas, the justifications given for this were that black bodies were inferior to white bodies. As time went on, this idea was drilled into the minds of Africana people, to the point where very few of them could feel comfortable in their own skin. Gulliver’s examination of his own body could perhaps be taken as a gesturing to these experiences, as the slave trade had been going on for centuries at that time.

While reading David Lloyd’s “Black Irish, Irish Whiteness, and Atlantic State Formation”, I noticed that he described a policy that was put into place in Ireland that sounded quite familiar. Lloyd recounts that the problem that British abolitionists had with their Caribbean colonies was how to retain the work force that they were accustomed to having under control while at the same time freeing the black slaves that they kept. In short, they were all for freedom – so long as the work that they were dependent on still got done by the “inferior” race. The Irish problem was similar, though not as drastic: How were the British to turn the Irish from subsistence farmers to laborers without causing a revolt or mass migration? How could they profit off the Irish? One idea, proposed by John Stuart Mill, was that in order to have a self-motivated working labor class, the government should provide “tenure” to the farmers. In other words, promise the settlers that they would have ownership of the land, as long as they worked it. This idea is remarkably similar to what was proposed for free slaves in the U.S. : 40 acres and a mule. This was the proposal to give every freedman and his family 40 acres of land, and a mule to work the land with. The idea was to keep a working class, even though slavery was no longer legal. Unfortunately, though 40 acres and a mule was a government initiative that passed into law, it was never honored. People promised 40 acres and a mule never received anything, which often forced them into being cheap labor for the very people who enslaved them. Again, we see a parallel, as “tenured” land in Ireland was never given to farmers, either. In both times, it was only a beautiful-looking promise that turned out to be a lie in order to keep the social hierarchy in place.

In Paul Gilroy’s “The Black Atlantic”, he examines what the term “Black” has traditionally meant in the past; and then, he redefines it. Gilroy argues that anytime one uses the term “Black”, they are usually referring to the diaspora in the United States – whether referring to Black studies, Black literature, or the Black experience. He is especially concerned with the fact that discussions about Black literature almost exclusively privileges African American writings, rather than taking from a variety of diasporas. Gilroy rejects this definition of Black. Rather, he expands the definition to include more diasporas than the one in the United States. He explains this with a reference to what it means to be “British”. Being British is almost exclusively privileging those who are white and British at the same time. However, being British is not an exclusionary identity and should not be treated as such. Gilroy says that the same case is true of being Black. There is no one single way of being Black, just as there is no single way of being British. By the end of this piece, Gilroy rejects the use of such divisive terms as “British” or “Black” even as he has rewritten them, and uses a more inclusive term instead: the Atlantic world.