{"id":194,"date":"2021-03-07T12:51:50","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T17:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=194"},"modified":"2021-03-07T12:51:51","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T17:51:51","slug":"breaking-the-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/03\/07\/breaking-the-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Listening to Wednesday\u2019s presentations pushed me to think more about the role of memory and history in the texts we\u2019ve read so far. The presenters did a great job of pointing out the silences in the texts and in the writers\u2019 lives\u2014the characters in Native Son <\/em>who remain voiceless, the identities that must remain hidden, and the emotions that the authors struggle to express. This is such a compelling way of approaching these readings. Interrogating the silences makes it possible to tell a more complete story and expand the world we encounter through Baldwin\u2019s eyes. I noticed Baldwin to be preoccupied with the past and the role of memory in his essays. I would argue that this attention to memory and storytelling is a way of confronting parts of the past that have been painful or silenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cAlas, Poor Richard,\u201d Baldwin asks, \u201cWhich of us has overcome his past?\u201d and states, \u201cIf we do not know this, \u2026we know nothing about ourselves, nothing about each other; to have accepted this is also to have found a source of strength\u201d (CE 266-267). It seems that for Baldwin, reckoning with the past and finding a way to speak about it is an essential part of his project as an author. Both for Baldwin\u2019s individual memory, confronting his place in his family and in America, and for shared, intergenerational memory of race and identity, being able to find the words for his experiences is crucial. I think that Wright\u2019s and Baldwin\u2019s differing approaches to how they talk about fear, anger, and masculinity, for example, reflect both the silences that remain in their lives and the silences they seek to break.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we move into some of Baldwin\u2019s novels, I am interested to see how or if he will continue to engage individual and collective memory in his writing. I\u2019m curious if others have noticed the role of the past in these texts, and whether you think that literature can help break the silences of American history in a meaningful way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listening to Wednesday\u2019s presentations pushed me to think more about the role of memory and history in the texts we\u2019ve read so far. The presenters did a great job of pointing out the silences in the texts and in the writers\u2019 lives\u2014the characters in Native Son who remain voiceless, the identities that must remain hidden, and the … Continue reading Breaking the Silence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3909,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}