Book Review of “The Sweeter The Juice” by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
The book “The Sweeter The Juice” is part autobiography and part family narrative of Shirlee Taylor Haizlip and her extended family. Her family narrative is composed of stories about the lineage of her mother and father; these stories were a product of extensive research into historical documents and accounts of relatives passed down from generation to generations. Haizlip intertwines her family stories with historical figures and events allowing for the audience to be able to relate certain characters to the timeline of the history of the United States. As well, she provides personal accounts of her experiences while researching for her family’s past: where she traveled,
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As Shirlee found out from accounts of relatives, when family members visited one another, all windows were closed and covered by thick curtains, no visitors were welcome and the whole entire event was a secret from the outside world. These family members had turned away from their origins and practically abandoned one another for the chance to live not happily but peacefully as someone else. These are the kind of people described by Haizlip who abandoned her mother on the other side of the color line. On the other end of the spectrum, the black end, is the story of Shirlee’s father and his family history. This narrative, Haizlip tells with pride; she mentions how she would have very much liked to meet her Native American grandmother from years back and how she too would have loved to have a name like “White Cloud.” In this narrative there is no shame, no abandonment, and no sadness. This is a story of a family and it’s success despite their skin color and the changing times around them. Her father, as his father before him, had inspired her with confidence and pride in the way she was, dark or light, and from this end of the spectrum she learned to love the dark pigment in her skin. Haizlip tells various stories of black communities in which her father grew up and how her grandfather was respected by his fellow citizen. This is a completely different story than that of her mother. Instead of running away from their darkness, her father’s family reached for it, yearned
Important has a different meaning to everyone, because everyone has different important things in their life. For some people, it is their family, or their friends, or something they love to do. For LaVaughn in Make Lemonade, by Virginia Euwer Wolff, the thing most important to her is her education. LaVaughn is a 14 year old girl who babysits for college money because her mom does not have any. Her main babysitting job in this book is for Jolly, a teen mom who is struggling to work and take care of her kids. LaVaughn goes through ups and downs with Jolly and tries to help her -- but one thing sticks with her the whole time: throughout Make Lemonade,
other white children. Readers get a snapshot at the beginning of The Bluest Eye of Frieda and
People often think of family as positive, loving, and with no flaws. However, there is almost a stereotype that all families love each other and there aren’t problems or challenges in a family. Sometimes families put people through challenges and some families aren’t “perfect”. In the book Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Jolly has two kids and goes through challenges with her family. Most careful readers can see how Jolly has these challenges with her kids and how she is far off from the “perfect” family. She goes through many of these challenges in life and finds a way to overcome them. Jollys family shapes her identity because the challenges she faces ends up making her stronger. Jeremy and Jilly challenging her, LaVaughn helping her out, and her past family all shape her identity.
Moving from a childlike bliss to an awakening of the world's prejudice, the author makes the words take on flesh. The story is made alive as she breathes life into a time that is unpleasant yet not void of hope. "The hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations" disappeared when they were told the cold hard `truth' of their fate that some white man had already decided for them.
Zora Neale Hurston is unequivocally open about her race and identity in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” As Hurston shares her life story, the reader is exposed to Hurston’s self-realization journey about how she “became colored.” Hurston utilizes her autobiographical short story as a vehicle to describe the “very day she became colored.” Race is particularly vital in Zora Neale Hurston’s essay, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” as she deals with the social construct of race, racism, and sustaining one’s cultural identity.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, her racial identity varies based on her location. Towards the beginning of her life when Zora was in her own community she could be a lighthearted, carefree spirit. However, when she was forced to leave her community, Zora’s identity became linked to her race. In this essay I will demonstrate how Zora’s blackness is both a sanctuary and completely worthless.
Nella Larsen’s Passing uses the two main characters to explore how the idea of racial identity is not a discussion that is black and white, but rather one that is grey. The story is utilized to demonstrate how some individuals of black complexion fell trap to societal standards, causing them to abandon their own race in search of better life. But, in all actuality, the text argues that the pursual of another identity ultimately causes an individual to lose their own self identification.
A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.
The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.
At the start of the book a naïve, young and innocent African American girl lived life almost oblivious to the socially constructed issue of race. She did not see the difference of skin color and believed it was perfectly normal to socialize with whites. As far as she was concerned raced did not exist. This view was quickly altered and changed as the little girl named Essie-Mae Moody grew up fast in a society dominated by racial boundaries involving whites, blacks and a hierarchy of people who had parts of both. Essie’s first encounter with race which initiated her first change, from being oblivious to being confused, occurred early in life. When she was young, she was friends with and often played with white children. This all changed
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset,
Obviously, this entire poem was a flashback of the authors childhood and what she went through growing up during such a changing time in American history. This flashback occurs during the integration period, where African Americans and whites started to attend school together. Even though laws banned segregation and racism, there was still racial tension that not only affected blacks, but those that were biracial. During this time, if one has at least one drop of black blood in them, they are considered black. In American, being black was a bad thing because blacks are the ones that are oppressed. African Americans were and still are treated like they are less than, based simply on the color of their skin. Tretheway had a valid reason for wanting to disown her black side because she wanted to be treated with the same respect as those who were not black. Tretheway had an opportunity to lie about who she was since she had such light skin, and she took it. But as she reflects back on what she went through, she realizes that she should have accepted who she was, no matter how others would view her. After looking back on her past, she was able to recognize the importance of self-acceptance and how it is more important than getting acceptance from those her. Natasha Tretheway used her writing ability and experiences to share the experiences she went through to let readers know that they are not
The play No Sugar by Jack Davis has various themes and issues covered in it. My understanding of society helps with the meaning of this text, through multiple aspects. These aspects are shown in the text through various themes/issues. These themes portray society and help with my understanding of No Sugar. The themes/issues are as follows; colonialism, economic depression and the patriarchy society. All these topics were a big part of Davis time, and when he wrote the play. This is the reason that we can see these issues portrayed through his play. Racism is a big part of his play and in the era when the play was written as well, and it’s shown not as a separate issue but is portrayed
In the short story “Drenched in Light” by Zora Neale Hurston, the author appeals to a broad audience by disguising ethnology and an underlying theme of gender, race, and oppression with an ambiguous tale of a young black girl and the appreciation she receives from white people. Often writing to a double audience, Hurston had a keen ability to appeal to white and black readers in a clever way. “[Hurston] knew her white folks well and performed her minstrel shows tongue in cheek” (Meisenhelder 2). Originally published in The Opportunity in 1924, “Drenched in Light” was Hurston’s first story to a national audience.
Racial identity is an important concept that everyone must deal with in their life. It is an individual’s sense of having their identity be defined by belonging to a race and or ethnic group. How strong the identity is depending on how much the individual has processed and internalized the sociological, political, and other factors within the group. In some instances, people do not identify with their race and they will “pass” as another. Nella Larsen, an African American writer and prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance movement, she explores the consequences of “passing”. Larsen’s Passing is a novel that challenges the concept of ethnicity, race and gender while revolutionizing the idea of what we describe as identity. The novel explores the issue of race through vivid plotting that depicts a mentally touching story of affecting boundaries in the early American society. The novel also explores the effects of racial construction on a person through multiple levels. Through Larsen’s characterization and setting she is able to bring out the social construction of race in an enjoyable and educated format in which race, class distinction and identity themes are intertwined. Larsen herself often struggles with identity, as she grew up being raised by an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life. Larsen depicts the theme of racial identity by using two women characters, both of which are attractive, and are “light” enough to be able