alice's blog
Submitted by alice on Wed, 2006-10-18 22:06. Veils and such
I brought this up to my students the other day. Speaking of veils...Ellison's narrator IM asks whether the veil is being lifted by Washington or lowered:
Submitted by alice on Wed, 2006-09-06 21:59. Claude McKay - America
Along with race, class, and gender, throw in the immigration factor and/or possible language barrier:
America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Submitted by alice on Wed, 2006-09-06 14:41. from Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place
If anyone is curious as to the effects of the white service industry, it is still ongoing:
The Hotel Training School, Antigua
“a school that teaches Antiguans how to be good servants, how to be a good nobody, which is what a servant is. In Antigua, people cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and their celebration of the Hotel Training School (graduation ceremonies are broadcast on radio and television)”; it is these same people that cannot see that “they are governed by corrupt men, or that these corrupt men have given their country away to corrupt foreigners.
Submitted by alice on Wed, 2006-08-30 14:35. Booker T.
Wow. I can't tell if this text is completely subversive in conning white people to donate their money to Tuskegee, or if Washington truly believes his turn-the-other-cheek Christian-oriented rhetoric. What does everyone else think?
