Bell Hooks Plantation Paratricay Analysis

Harriet Jacob and Phillis Wheatley, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl and On Being Brought from Africa to America both presents the existential conditions of being a black woman in a male dominated society. Despite their years span differences, both author present different, yet similar views of enslavement in America where black women struggle to reclaim their humanity and seek freedom within their society. For both Harriet and Phillis, both women used literacy as their voice to raise concern for the plight of enslaved African-Americans, more specifically the women.

Sitting on the porch with her sisters, hooks saw that “next to the white drivers in the front would be the dog and in the back seat the black worker.” This subtle image taught hooks the “interconnectedness of race and class,” and a demeaning message that white people placed animals ahead of African-Americans. Taking the high road, hooks attempted to spark conversation with her white neighbors; however, she was turned down and ridiculed. While trying to be friendly, hooks was told that “they came to this side of town to be rid of lazy blacks.” Time and time again racial and sexist tensions worked against Hooks, but instead of letting injustice get the best of her she made her porch a place of “antiracist resistance.” Hooks’ porch was an oasis in the male/white desert that dried up her life. On hooks’ porch she could experience the peace and joy she had as a child sitting on her porch with her sisters before her father came home. Hooks could have talked back to the white people that mocked her, but instead she chose the high road and conquered race with peace.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

The feminist movement sought to gain rights for women. Many feminist during the early nineteenth century fought for the abolition of slavery around the world. The slave narrative became a powerful feminist tool in the nineteenth century. Black and white women are fictionalized and objectified in the slave narrative. White women are idealized as pure, angelic, and chaste while black woman are idealized as exotic and contained an uncontrollable, savage sexuality. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, brought the sexual oppression of captive black women into the public and political arena.

James Baldwin’s short story gruesomely paints the picture of how racism and sexuality are linked. The story takes place during the civil rights movement in the United States (Gorman 119). During this time, African Americans were still being oppressed, and white people were angry that they were making progress in society. This often lead to brutal attacks and sometimes death. In the story, the narrator, Jesse, is having difficulty having sex with his wife and compares her to the black women that he has sex with. As the story progresses, the problem emerges with the killing of a black man who is dismembered by a white man right before young Jesse’s eyes. Instead of seeing this as a horrible experience, Jesse takes on the attitude of those around him. Through characterization, point of view, and symbolism, James Baldwin’s story, “Going to Meet the Man,” demonstrates the connection between sexuality, particularly masculinity, and racism.

bell hooks, renowned black feminist and cultural critic criticizes the lack of racial awareness in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination (1992). ‘bell hooks’ is written in lower case to convey that the substance of her work reigns more important than the writer. From a marginalized perspective, hooks argues that sites of dominance, not otherness is problematic and critiques the lack of attention that white scholars pay to the representation of whiteness in the black imagination. Critical feminist scholars Peggy McIntosh and Ruth Frankenberg identify their own whiteness as a dominant discourse, but share a critical departure from hooks with the notion of whiteness as terror. hooks aim is not to reverse racism, but discuss her position to authentically inform readers about how she experiences racism. Furthermore, systems of oppression are manufactured by human thought and thus the site of the Other is always produced as a site of difference. Gender, race, sex, class, disability, and geography are situated differently in social structure, but dominant groups assume they share the same reality though they cannot experience it. In consequence, the Other cannot hold a singularized identity of their own and the binary structure succeeds in containing racialized bodies in place. What happens to those bodies when they cross boundaries of the binary? hooks recounts being routinely disciplined back into place when crossing the border; however, dominant white

Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and

“Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.” In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs provides a portrayal of her life as a black slave girl in the 1800s. Though Harriet described herself as having yellowish brown skin; she was the child of a black mother and a white father. “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.” Born with one drop of black blood, regardless of the status of her white father, she inherited the classification of black and was inevitably a slave. Harriet endured years of physical and mental abuse from her master and witnessed firsthand how slaves were treated based on the color of their skin. Years of abuse can only be taken for so long, like many

Harriet Jacobs, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.

During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.

In her article, bell hooks (1990) argues that the home is a site of resistance for black people. She recalls being raised with the mindset that women, particularly black women, took the lead in running the house. According to hooks, the home was a place that provided warmth, comfort, food, and nurturing. It was a place that taught the young about dignity, integrity, and faith. Black

In the book Bone Black, Bell Hooks gives a vivid look into her childhood. She starts off by talking about a quilt that her mother gave her from her mother. She thinks that this is special because her mother gave it to her and not one of her other sisters. Then she goes into describing how the children in her family never knew that they were poor until they grew up. They liked the dolls that they played with and the food that they ate. They never wondered why they didn’t have the things that their white neighbors did have. You would seldomly hear them complain because they had to walk to school and the white kids rode the school bus. She thought that they had a pretty normal family.

Both authors use different methods to sway their audience to their position on slavery. Bell’s document provided an emotional appeal with a horrific story. The account’s of Bell’s punishments are described in gruesome detail and wouldn’t always mention what Bell did to receive the abuse from her master, but mainly focused on what the actual punishments were. Therefore a method succeeding in making the white master seem evil and a murderer with no remorse and the slave as an innocent victim. The author also transmits the abolitionist message by using specific words such as “brute” and “brutal” to describe Bell’s master William Whirl and words such as “poor negro” when referring to the slaves. To add to the emotional appeal, the author implies that the slave had integrity and was loyal to her mistress Polly Whirl when she refused to tell on her for informing her of the safe haven in Canada and how to find it. As a consequence, Bell is severely tortured and almost beaten to death, yet never betrays Mrs. Whirl. Lastly, the author’s choice of words towards the end of the document evokes a sense of guilt by including the word “we” in the conclusion. “Need we commend this poor woman to the citizens of Montreal for their practical aid, after the history we have given her?”(Doc. 1) By using the word “woman”, this document is also portraying the slave as a

Slavery was a horrible institution that dehumanized a race of people. Female slave bondage was different from that of men. It wasn't less severe, but it was different. The sexual abuse, child bearing, and child care responsibilities affected the females's pattern of resistance and how they conducted their lives. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, demonstrates the different role that women slaves had and the struggles that were caused from having to cope with sexual abuse.

Throughout history, black female bodies have been marginalized by white society and viewed as only being valued for their bodies, specifically their genitals. bell hooks’ essay titled, “naked without shame: a counter-hegemonic body politic”, discusses the domination of the black female body and how there is little discussion on how the body has been “foregrounded as a site of conquest in all efforts of colonization”. According to hooks, black bodies are rarely highlighted in a way that counters the hegemonic representation of being