Analysis Of Chris Van Wyk 's ' Shirley, Goodness & Mercy

All their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine…. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny…. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

In this black man's country, white man's law had broken the tribe, divided the people and corrupted the youth. How could these wounds of hatred be healed, when would the youth realize the immorality of their actions, and when would South Africans achieve unity. Father Vincent said "Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an

| Relevant Biographical Information About the Author: * White * Born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1903 * Father was Scottish and mother was South African of English heritage * Worked at a reformatory with black youths

The book "Just Mercy" is a book that Stevenson wrote aknowledging the Economical Injustice in a racial world and how american social and ethnicity can affect the American legal system. Being the author, narrator, and protagonist of the book, Stevenson was a poor African American male growing up in a rural community in Delaware. Post High school, Stevenson continued his studies at Harvard Law School. There he and friend, Eva Ansley birthed the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson worked as an activist and lawyer. He stood by victims that were wrongfully accused some to be men, women and children of all races. Stevensons passion and drive for his clients exuded well throughout the entire book.It often displays many challenges he faced. Through his perseverance and dedication he paved a way for many people within the cases that he took on.

Racial bias and discrimination have historically constricted African Americans from living free and prosperous lives. Especially, in America’s Progressive Era when “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” happened to be published. This groundbreaking essay, written by Zora Neale Hurston, provided African Americans with a unique approach to defying racial discrimination. Namely, Hurston’s unique defense from societal discrimination is in her steadfast optimism towards the limitations of being African American. Therefore, Hurston’s essay achieved more than bringing hope to African Americans it also provided a solution in this period of bitter adversity. This is what distinguishes Nora’s essay from other literary works because it focuses on modeling a beneficial mindset rather than listing the hardships that black people are subjected to. Zora Neale Hurston is an influential role model for African Americans, she argues that racial discrimination and unjust biases can be overcome by having pride and optimism in the progression of one’s race.

In the novel, Mercy Among the Children, David Adams Richards paints a intricate picture of Lyle’s struggles with his father’s past mistakes and closes the passage with Lyle finally standing up for himself after witnessing his family being heavily discriminated against in the prior pages. These pages are plush with detailed diction, vast rhetorical devices and sentence structure.

Setting is an important feature of novels. This narration takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1960. A time that saw the segregation of black people and the dominance of white people in the southern United States. In this novel the setting of 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi exposes significant themes such as racial discrimination, social partiality. The setting also supplies decisive insight into character inspirations and views.

Nadine Gordimer’s “What were you dreaming?” is known to be a very sensitive, open account of her private and social relationship in South Africa. Gordimer witnessed the difference between the white minority, and their continuous efforts to weaken the rights of the black population. Gordimer made it her duty to promote the consequences of the apartheid, the problems that oppression inflicts on both the colonized (settled) and the colonizers (immigrants), its effect on daily life, and the division it caused between the black and white races. As a result, she wrote the short story, “What were you dreaming?” to show the readers her view, not explain it.

To compare the conditions of apartheid to a familiar and distinguished age in history, it was like the segregation of the

It is this dignity that many African people's all but lost in the colonial period...The writer's duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost." (Achebe/Killam Eds. Pg. 159.)

This section demonstrates how the fear manifested itself among the whites. The Afrikaners’ power is not in numbers, as “they were few” but instead in political authority. They exploit this and impose harsh laws on the black to try to control and restrict them. However, they have bound themselves in their fear of the natives, a force that is perhaps more confining than their rules. Instead of trying to understand their fear and show their compassion towards these other human beings, they instead choose to hide it so that they will not appear weak. Additionally, the solution of love that Paton suggests presents a conundrum. In order end the fear, they must love, but to love they must stop being afraid. This demonstrates the almost impossible nature of true equality occurring between the natives and the Afrikaners.

The concept of identity can be illustrated as a complex assembly, and more specifically as a group of collected observations. It can be derived from one’s view of self as a subject, to one’s view of self in relation to the other, and finally one’s identity in terms of relationships to others with shared sets of attributes, vernaculars, conditions, histories, etc. It is within the latter that the exploration of solidarity surfaces when looking at the post-colonial Black subject and their plight to finding their own sense of self in relation to others. In his text British Cultural Studies

This essay will attempt to give a response of the Rhodes Must Fall writings. It is clear that the rising of movements like Rhodes Must Fall, has been a result of a wave of philosophies of Fanon and Biko “who share a highly similar pedigree in their interests in the philosophical psychology of consciousness” and desire for a decolonising of the mind” (). Their ideologies have the interest of young South Africans. The essay will be done by looking into how the movement wants the university to be decolonised, the statue of Rhodes, alienation the students are experiencing, curriculum change, the university’s lack of cultural space and representation of blacks, racism in the university and social/systematic exclusion of black students.

A Nobel Prize winning writer, Nadine Gordimer discovers moral, racial and social issues in Africa under apartheid rule. Her novel “Burger’s Daughter” shows the struggles of a group of antiapartheid activities which depict the journey of soul searching.

Next, I’d like to discuss the ways in which the conditions of “Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night,” and the roles that were plagued amongst the women in South Africa and how forced migrations affected their situations. Due to the Apartheid era, and men's non existence in their families life because of forced migration, women began to feel as though they could only do for themselves causing for their acceptance without man's presence. In an early reference to the chapter, leaving, the author shows the ways that apartheid affected the women. For instance, “As year went from the woman had come to