- Does Heaney’s mention of the blackness of the body in “Punishment” motion towards his own experiences with black struggles in America, primarily in his time at Berkeley in “Views,” or is detail purely superficial?
- In regards to last week’s discussion of religion in Hurston’s writing, do Heaney’s works have similar subtext regarding religion, especially as an Irish Catholic who migrated from the North to the South?
- How do the PSNI’s efforts to solve murders from the Troubles and heal the deep wounds of the conflict echo efforts in America to make amends for racial and ethnic discrimination through programs such as affirmative action and reparations?
- How do Irish citizens’ hesitations to either move on from the painful past or focus on past issues and solve them harken back to the tension of the Harlem Renaissance, in which creators tried to move past or reclaim former traumatic experience by means of their art?
Hurston and History
Emerging towards the latter half of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston works at a crossroads of African-American expression, trying to break free from previous stereotypes and caricatures of the black experience in America, such as the cake walk and other forms of minstrelsy which are still close enough in time to hang over the period. While some authors, such as Alain Locke, wish to “scrap the fictions” and forget any negative depictions and performances of black culture seen commonly in minstrelsy, Hurston instead decides to refer back to these performances and comment upon them but still try to create authentic forms of African-American expression. What Hurston accomplishes in her work, notably Color Struck, is the ability to use these pre-exisiting cultural markers, such as the climactic cake walk, and use them to bolster new issues at hand in the wake of the Harlem Renaissance, such as color and the institution of marriage.
Although the cake walk functions as the main force of the plot in Color Struck, Hurston uses this dance to act as a backdrop to the newer, more personal problems rising within the Harlem Renaissance, showing an acknowledgement of the past as well as a sort of evolution beyond it by placing deeper issues as the main conflict of the work. While Emma and John bicker and argue about how to approach the cake walk dance, with Emma holding the view that such practices should be left behind and John trying to enjoy it as an act of liberation and reappropriation, the heart of the play focuses upon the pair’s issues with colorism and the delay and eventual failure of marriage. Emma’c concern that John will leave her for any light-skinned girl shows the concern during this period about how dark and light-skinned black people begin to view each other differently, with light-skinned black people tending to have more opportunities to achieve success and move up in the world because of their lighter complexion. This tension and uncertainty about how to approach such issues also appear in the works of other prominent Harlem Renaissance writers, such as Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset. This, along with Emma’s reluctance to complete the dance, leads John to dance with Effie instead, ending the earlier segment of the short play on a note of colorism leading to the dissolution of love, all while the issues of the cake walk still linger in the minds of both Emma and John.
Twenty years later, removed from the cake walk incident, Emma and John meet again, though each has gone to achieve unfulfilled romance in their own lives, with John’s wife dying and Emma giving birth to a child with an absent father. While the two seem to work things out and begin to come back together, Emma is once again infuriated by John’s apparent interest in her daughter because of her light skin. This final encounter leads to the two fighting, resulting in Lou Lillian not getting the medical attention she requires and dying. This brief epilogue to the cake walk scene shows Hurston’s own views on the debate of that and other preexisting cultural performances; after a while, these issues will go away, but the more personal issues which many Harlem Renaissance writers focus upon and experience in their own lives are more important and will repeat beyond the issues seen in the cakewalk. While she first uses the dance as a central conflict in the pair’s youth, her later focus upon the issues of “jealous love” and colorism shows her desire to resole these issues first and foremost to substantially fuel the rise of African-American expression which the Harlem Renaissance aimed to achieve, not merely dwell on the past. By incorporating images of the past in her works, Hurston shows her awareness of the past and how to appropriately use it, while still adding new themes and topics to actually move African American prose forward in the twilight years of the Harlem Renaissance.
Discussion Questions 3/25
- How do the similar deaths of men in Riders to the Sea and John Redding Goes to Sea use the images of the sea, or more specifically the Atlantic, to show the struggles of the characters? With both men dying, do the respective authors believe that life in this transatlantic world should be pursued? Are members of a community externally determined to stay there?
- How has the theme of mixed race changed from an earlier work such as The Octoroon into Color Struck?
- How does John’s death relate to the desire for social and cultural change in the Harlem Renaissance? Is Hurston using his attempt to pursue his own path a critique at artists who try to deviate from pre-existing African American traditions and customs in their art, as opposed to her belief that they should be carried on?
3/23 Discussion Questions
- How does Hurston’s Mules and Men relate to Alain Locke’s wish to “scrap the fictions” and start fresh in the Harlem Renaissance? Can the two works and ideas coexist?
- How do the gendered stories in Mules and Men relate to our conceptions of “other” in the transatlantic world?
- Does Johnson’s wish to emulate Synge suggest a similar type of cultural performance which we discussed within Synge’s description of the Aran Islands despite his intentions to be authentic?
Problematic Progress in “In Dahomey”
Despite its problematic and dated elements, such as the use of blackface for black actors and the blatant prejudice against Me Sing, In Dahomey is still undoubtedly an important text in the greater canon of African-American theater and art in general because of the progress it made for their representation, although Williams and Walker employ troublesome tactics in their work. In order to first reach their platform and deliver In Dahomey to both black and white audiences, Williams and Walker are essentially forced to include these stereotyped forms and caricatures in the play, because if they were to create an entirely new form of artistic expression, they would almost certainly be rejected by most of their white audiences because it would have contained nothing which they recognize as “black,” caused by decades of minstresly and Jim Crow shows. Yet, even when the pair chooses to employ these caricatured depictions of race, they do so to subtly subvert, so the white audiences can invest themselves in a play which on the surface seems familiar, but its content is relatively new, especially within the history of older blackface productions. As Brooks notes in her essay, “Walker was a visionary in his belief that African American entertainers should have access to owning their performances,” leading to his adaptation and subtle subversion of blackface theatrics in In Dahomey because of the platform he believes it will give to future African American creators to generate more authentic works.
Yet, in order to be more widely seen and to gain more attention, Williams and Walker still resort to the use of pre-existing markers of blackface performance, despite the cast’s authentic African-American identity, to draw in audiences. As seen in Irish reviews of the play, despite issues with the convoluted plot, audiences and critics both enjoyed the humor and dialogue, both helping and hurting the cause of Williams and Walker. Many viewers, both white and black, enjoyed the humor of the work and the interactions of the characters, although these were some of the touchier subjects about the play when read in a modern context, especially with the adaptation of Jim Crow-esque performances. Yet. once the work starts to diverge from the path which audiences are familiar with, most critics and audiences note how the play loses both steam and focus. The reviews note that once the play transitions to Dahomey, in which Williams and Walker begin to display their message about the false perceptions the two have about the recolonization movement, one of the more overtly political theses of the play, many audiences and critics did not enjoy it nearly as much as the comedy and songs in the earlier parts. Also, the ending cakewalk, meant to subvert and mock white practices, appears totally out of place to foreign audiences not in on the joke. As a result, the work shows that not the black players, but rather the audience is “not yet ready” for an authentic black production; because Williams and Walker mix older racialized blackface and black artistic iconography with newer subversion and messaging, they create a bizarre and imperfect, yet mildly entertaining play, more focused upon being a platform for others than creating a wholly new form of black artistic expression all on its own.
Boucicault’s Altering “The Octoroon”
In his creation of two separate versions of The Octoroon, Dion Boucicault creates a rift in his attempted transatlantic nature of his work; while using his work to bring broader global issues, such as American slavery, to England, his changing of the ending for the British edition hurts the impact of the work in favor of financial success. Despite many problematic issues at hand in his original American script for The Octoroon, such as the stereotypical language of the black characters, as well as the casting of his white wife in the place of Zoe as a sort of faux blackface, Boucicault’s ending clearly shows some social critique of American racial perception. Because Zoe must face slavery because of her ancestors is black despite her apparent “whiteness,” she chooses to kill herself, refusing to place herself within one of the two racial binaries available in the American South. This ending suggests that Boucicault had some hope for the work to start a broader conversation about the roles of race and identity, which were ahead of his time, even in the North. Yet, this version of the play is still problematic, featuring racist caricatures and speech patterns for many of the non-white characters. This issue is prominent and possibily undercuts Boucicault’s subtext of identity and belonging at the heart of the play, personified in Zoe’s struggle for acceptance and eventual suicide. However, this American adaptation of the play shows some realistic recognition of racial problems, unlike the British edition, which glosses over the dramatic conclusion and chooses to wrap up the story on a cheap and artificial high note.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Boucicault drastically changed the ending for the British performances of The Octoroon, although the dramatic first three acts remain intact, creating a messy, confused conclusion which does a disservice to its subject matter by oversimplifying the intensely complex question of slavery and the owning of bodies throughout the American South. These significant changes seem to support the claim that Boucicault uses the play primarily as a means of financial gain, with the controversial issue of the titular octoroon’s representation as a sort of bait to get people to buy tickets and see his play. However, the subtext of The Octoroon, with Boucicault suggesting the triviality of Zoe’s one eighth as evidence for her subsequent purchase and owning, seems to go against the ease with which the English version of the play ends, with her marrying George. While this ending offers a small glimmer of hope, its over-romanticization of racial struggle in America acts as if these important issues of representation and equality are not a concern for English audiences, despite the major issues with Ireland at this time which are a major feature in mid-century transatlantic thought. By altering the conclusion and as a result, diminishing the apparent thesis of the play, Boucicault turns a potentially thought-provoking play into a safer, more accessible piece of entertainment, without challenging the world views of the British or highlighting their own racial prejudices, primarily against the Irish.
Prejudice and Atlantic Antagonism
I found the most striking aspect of Colum Mccann’s Transatlantic to be the difficult and occasionally tense interactions between Douglass and the Irish, despite the perceived similarities of each marginalized group’s struggles. Despite Douglass’s desire to go to Ireland to spread his message with the Irish, who are similarly oppressed by the English, he quickly notices the horrors of Ireland, with streets full of beggars and filth, and his first reaction is “The Irish had little or no order about themselves” (44). This shows that despite Douglass’s attempt to interact with the Irish, especially Daniel O’Connell, he still feels a certain unease with his time in Ireland, showing that a great deal still separates the two peoples. Struck by the shantiness of the people and reckless nature of the children he passes in the street, he recognizes the failures of his visions of “rotundas, colonnades, [and] quiet chapels on the street corners,” illustrating that even Douglass feels a sense of otherness in the Irish, creating issues of prejudice for the transatlantic world which they try to occupy and interact within (46). Although the episode with the dead baby shows that Douglass displays sympathy for the poor and starving Irish, he is still somewhat repulsed by their living conditions, showing his distance from the Irish and trouble with comprehending the issues the Irish are dealing with. Despite the pleasantries exchanged between Douglass and the Irish people he encounters, their tensions and views show that the geographic separation of the two peoples allow each to view the other as a sort of “other,” despite their shared oppression and endured prejudices.
Several of the Irish people whom Douglass encounters also shows this same sort of prejudice, as McCann suggests that perhaps these groups truly are as far apart as the Atlantic is wide. When the small children in the streets start to play with Douglass’s hair and ask if he is from Africa, they hold him up as a sort of entertainment, not paying any attention to his status. Even when the local papers try to celebrate Douglass and his accomplishments, his race is constantly brought up, showing their difficulty with a black man showing such displays of intelligence and power. Called “leonine… feral, an elegant panther… [and] the Dark Dandy,” Douglass mostly receives praise which passes through a racial lens, as if his race is the only reason for his success (59). When they introduce him as the “black O’Connell,” the Irish clearly show his lower status in their own eyes; crying out against the injustice of all slavery, Douglass still experiences pushback from the crowd for not explicitly mentioning the tyranny of the British (64). Webb is the worst culprit of this prejudice, consistently making subtle jabs at Douglass on account of his race and “otherness” and looking down upon him during his visit. Webb intentionally calling Douglass “Old boy” regularly clearly shows both his lack of respect for Douglass and his prejudices, echoing deeper negative sentiments which Douglass experiences throughout the text. In spite of the shared experiences of the two groups, Transatlantic shows the potential for putting these two groups together and how they may not always coincide, regardless of their oppressions and hard experiences.
Gulliver as Both Oppressor and Oppressed
Swift clearly shows Gulliver as a symbol of the oppressed, who is held captive, ordered around, and threatened with severe punishment, despite his gargantuan size compared with the small Lilliputians; yet, I believe his writing of the events in the book signify a sort of egocentrism seen in both imperialism and the role of oppressors upon foreign lands. The use of shifting perspective, with Gulliver’s perception by others of a giant, a miniature person, and even a savage Yahoo, illustrates this varying of roles, as Gulliver is able to see reflections of his own English society is different aspects of each culture he encounters. Gulliver’s varying states of subjugation, held as a giant captive in the land of Lilliput and enduring judgment as a Yahoo from the Houyhnhnms, illustrate him as a victim of the imperialist practices which his native England enacts upon other nations, such as Ireland. These episodes display Gulliver clearly as a racialized “other,” most notably by the Houyhnhnms, as he, first believing his own ways of life the most proper and according to logic, must become indoctrinated by each culture’s traditions. Despite feeding him and trying to educate him, the Lilliputians’ militarization of Gulliver show a clear parallel to oppressive imperialist practices, as he is used by the small people because of his size to destroy the military of the Blefuscudians, despite his confessing to them that he will not be merely a utility to enslave another people. Likewise, the Houyhnhnms also first judge him to be no more than a Yahoo, so they also begin to educate Gulliver into their culture, which he quickly adapts to and becomes obsessed with, despite his exile from their land because of his race. This sort of prejudiced expulsion, despite his clear passion for reason and logic, echoes the British and their genocidal tactics against native peoples, including forced removal from their homeland.
On the other hand, Gulliver’s reluctance to believe each of his new environments echoes the views of a travelling conqueror, contrasting his own customs and practices which he sees to be the universal norm with the apparently strange and otherworldly ways of the Lilliputians and Houyhnhnms, despite his eventual acceptance and obsession with the latter. His encounter with the Yahoos specifically shows this darker side of the narrator, criticizing their savage nature and culture, especially when compared with his own love of reason and the Houyhnhnms’ entire civilization built towards the end of fully using their own reason and intellect to create a sort of perfect society. Gulliver’s attraction to the ways of the Houyhnhnms show this imperialist mindset, as he convenes with the Houyhnhnms to discuss how to solve the apparent problem of the Yahoo’s existence. Even his writing of the book implies a superiority of the author, compelling the reader to listen to him and follow his example because he has done these things and written about them. Instead of muddying the metaphor of the text, the variability of Gulliver’s significance to the foreign lands illustrates each side of the English oppression of Ireland, with Gulliver both enacting harsh tactics and prejudices upon others, as well as being a victim to the same types of treatments from his hosts.
Oppression of Those “Not Yet Ready”
As we move into more of the parallel histories of black people in America and the Irish, I have found the most interesting theme of each group’s struggles to escape the oppression and prejudices of the majority of their respective times, with the whites in America and the English colonizers in Ireland. Each dominating majority used the notion of “not yet ready” to describe its downcast group in order to maintain their own positions of power and status. Not only does this phrase create and rapidly proliferate explicitly racist sentiment among the mostly white majority, but its sense of superiority also allows for economic and political exploitation of each group of “others.” In America, whites used these attitudes to pass sweeping legislation, especially in the South, to prevent any sort of racial uplift for blacks. Jim Crow laws prohibited voting for blacks in the South and excluded them from virtually every area of society, essentially limiting them to sharecropping and still fulfilling similar roles to their slavehood for decades. The concept of “not yet ready” pushed writers such as Washington and DuBois to push in a variety of ways for social uplift, especially through education, but this practice only yielded middling success. As DuBois illustrates in “The Souls of Black Folk,” this cultural divide within the same ethnic community created great tensions between the educated and uneducated blacks, which neutralized the effectiveness of Washington and DuBois’s hopes. By facing more obstacles and true social progress, blacks in America were trapped in a harsh social space, unable to reach their reasonable goals while still being grossly mistreated by the white majorities.
Likewise, the Irish experienced similar slander to their culture and representation at the hands of the English majority, who took advantage of their crops to the point of near extinction when the potato famine hit. The introduction of the plantation system echoed its use in the Americas, in which the apparently ethnically inferior group is forced into work and after the abolition of each system, is still held in a form of indentured servitude. This continued colonial practice allowed for Britain to keep its hold over the Irish and profit off of their labor, while the Irish struggled without money for their work and extremely limited food supplies. Also, in the public eye, the Irish, as well as black people in America, were ridiculed constantly, mostly through caricatures which displayed each group as sub-human and apelike. However, one of the key differences between the blacks in America and the whites in Ireland was the Irish’s eventual acceptance into “whiteness” after generations of immigration into America, although this prohibition from full acceptance into modernity remains intact even to this day in several respects for African Americans. Whereas the Irish have been eventually welcomed into the sense of modernity brought about in the 19th century, black people must deal with the oppression of being deemed “never ready,” constantly trying to prove their similarity to the cultural majority to receive a fair chance.
Reflections on Race and Identity
Of the many topics covered in our discussions of Gilroy’s “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” I found the relations of nations, citizens, and ethnicities to race and our ideas of cultural identity to be the most fascinating, especially how concepts which seem very similar can have greatly different definitions. As we discussed in class, I was really interested in how people, especially those transplanted in the Atlantic slave trade define themselves and their personal history. For example, I would argue it is impossible to truly change one’s nation, because the idea of nation is essentially the same as one’s homeland, so even if a person were to move abroad for any reason, they could not change the fact of their nation of origin, which is tied to their cultural identity forever. However, the issue also arises in terms of ancestral homeland, contrasted with each person’s country of origin. Going forward in the course, I am interested in seeing how black writers and artists reckon with their split heritage, as both ancestors of Africa but also residents of modern America.
Furthermore, the ideas of citizenship and to a lesser extent ethnicity are more flexible and susceptible to change than nationality because they have to do more with self-representation and choice than the pre-determined nature of nationality. For example, if I were go to Ireland, I would maintain my American nationality, but I could choose to become a citizen and more broadly adopt its distinct “ethnicity” and cultural identity. Gilroy asserts in his piece that this sort of fluctuating citizenship and and cultural representation is very much a possibility, which also ties into the cultural notions of memory and performance from the Roach article. I believe this mixture of chosen and unchangeable facets of our cultural identity gets to the core of Gilroy’s article, as he believes race is a fiction which we actualize in cultural practices and interactions. Again, I am very interested as the semester goes on to learn more about the representation of one’s own culture and identity, as well as accepting and using those facets of personality, such as natioinality and homeland, which cannot truly be changed in order to somehow change or alter our ethnic identities as a whole.