Comparing Amari And Polly In Sharon Draper's Copper Sun

In contrast, the grandmother states that the blacks did not have things like the whites do (p.2118), putting the blacks down infront of her grandchildren, associating the blacks with poverty. We see how the grandmother fails to treat the blacks equally as human, solely because of their social status, as she perceives them merely as an inanimate object - a picture.

She hated the people at home when white people talked about their peculiarities; but she always hated herself more because she still thought about them, because she knew their pain at what she was doing with her life. The feelings of shame, at her own people and at the white people, grew inside her, side by side like monstrous twins that would have to be left in the hills. The people wanted her… For the people, it was that simple, and when they failed, the humiliation fell on all of them; what happened to the girl did not happen to her alone, it happened to all of them. (Silko 69)

Throughout the book, Sharon M. Draper used figurative language to show that family's death is hard to deal with, on top of being a slave and working very hard day to night by using similes, flashback, but most of all using a metaphor to draw the reader's attention. Eventually, Amari gets over her families death, escapes from being a slave and heads to Fort Moses, Florida, just like how in life, we get over our family's death. The inherent struggles portrayed in the book are some of the struggles we face today, and we ourselves must face them as we move on with our lives. The author showed us that slavery was a very compelling movement that caused people to deteriorated internally and externally. In conclusion, Copper Sun showed that Amari a

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.

In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave, written by himself, the author argues that slaves are treated no better than, sometimes worse, than livestock. Douglass supports his claim by demonstrating how the slaves were forced to eat out of a trough like pigs and second, shows how hard they were working, like animals. The author’s purpose is to show the lifestyle of an American slave in order to appeal to people’s emotions to show people, from a slave’s perspective, what slavery is really like. Based on the harsh descriptions of his life, Douglass is writing to abolitionist and other people that would sympathize and abolish slavery.

Though born into slavery, Nanny had "dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do." She wanted to "preach a great sermon about colored women sittin' on high, but they wasn't no pulpit for [her]." She tries to fulfill her dreams first through her daughter and then through Janie. But slavery and years of dependence on a white family have warped

She felt as though she could do anything she wanted within the dominant culture, and since she was a part of it, she could also disparage it as she wished. Lawrence Blum says, “Whites in general cannot avoid benefitting from the historical legacy of racial discrimination and oppression. So unjust enrichment is almost never absent from the life situation of whites” (McIntosh, 1998).

She criticizes the way the blacks walk, talk, and live; and she states, "Who wants to be mixed up wid uh rusty black man, and uh black woman goin' down de street in all dem loud colors, and whoopin' and hollerin' and laughin' over nothin'?" (Hurston 135). Hypocritical of her own culture, she works in her successful eating establishment while she pronounces that "[c]olored folks don't know nothin' about no business," a truth which she believes further connects her life to the white community (Hurston 136). Mrs. Turner grasps at minute differences in shading as differences in intelligence because she is substantially more cruel to "those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness" and because she expects "[a]nyone who look[s] more white folkish than herself [to be] better than she [is]" (Hurston 138). Her prejudice against her own people is alarming; she sees her insults of a lower culture as rungs in the ladder of social prestige, bringing her ever closer to Caucasian characteristics. As she associates her lighter skin with the complexions of white people, Mrs. Turner argues, "Ah got white folks' features in mah face," a visage lacking the "flat nose and liver lips" she stereotypically associates with black facial features (Hurston 136). She constantly judges and condemns while she worships a paradise of "straight-haired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs" (Hurston 139). Examining the dark-skinned humans around

"But I also hated Negroes," she writes. "I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had a stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites."

During the beginning of the play, she essentially pretending that race is irrelevant and that her chances of getting into a medical school is just as good as anybody else’s. She takes pride in being her own person rather than focusing on her race.

Slaves’ future lives all depended on who would “win” them and buy them. For Douglass, it was unbearable to observe human beings cry in desperation and pain. Frederick’s mistress was the only person, besides himself, that was able to experience pure dismay; causing them to ache together and understand the terror.

It was a common fear among the African-Americans. The Younger Family knew that the discrimination would hold them back from their dreams and goals, but because they believe in prosperity and pride, that was the last thing on their mind. The “want” in their spirits, is what sets them at place of tranquility and hope. “In fact, here’s another fifty cents… buy yourself some fruit today - or take a taxicab to school or something! (1.1.1840) Walter is letting his son know that there is no problem when it comes to their economic status. One of the difficulties that the adults faced was their self-righteousness. The discrimination was really enabled when it came to anything in their life. Whether it be buying certain houses, jobs, or even sitting in a restaurant, it was something so common; they learned that it is far more important for their child to know how to live with no fear and worrisome in life. When it came to Walter, he knew that keeping the innocence in Travis’ life was the right thing to do, where for Ruth she was far more upright. The self-doubt they displayed was becoming a burden in their lives, but that transformation and growth is what helped them come to a better understanding of themselves. The Younger Family’s moral development would be their sense of pride, and Mama’s destiny was to continue that pride. Mama’s development within herself had grown to great measures, but when it came to her

“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.

Minrose Gwin‘s book, Black and White Women of the Old South, argues that history has problems with objectiveness. Her book brings to life interesting interpretations on the view of the women of the old south and chattel slavery in historical American fiction and autobiography. Gwin’s main arguments discussed how the white women of the south in no way wanted to display any kind of compassion for a fellow woman of African descent. Gwin described the "sisterhood" between black and white women as a "violent connection"(pg 4). Not only that, Gwin’s book discusses the idea that for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a black woman usually got subjected to displacement of sexual and mental