Personal Narrative: My Survival Is Radical

I must admit that all of the assigned reading topics were new to me, nevertheless, I gained a great deal knowledge with new found perspectives on literature and life in general by engaging in these works. The Color Purple was truly an eye opening and deeply intimate story, A Streetcar Named Desire also portrayed similar feelings of intimacy however, compared to The Color Purple, it lacked the ambiguous cultural diversity that tends to be intriguingly more complex. Taking the poetry and short stories we read into consideration, I would have to say, they also added a significant amount of literary educational value, but once again lacked in comparison to Alice Walker’s, The Color Purple. Therefore, having to choose one particular work to discuss

In the essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, author Zora Neale Hurston writes to an American audience about having maturity and self-conscious identity while being an African American during the early 1900’s through the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance. Hurston expresses and informs her audience about how she does not see herself as a color, and instead sees herself as all she is made up of on the inside. Her primary claim is that she is not “tragically colored” and she should not have a single care about how the world reminds her of how she should act about her race. Her essay chronicles her personal experiences in being an unapologetically colored woman and creates the argument that she should not ever feel self-pity for being black. She utilizes her personal anecdotes and weaves them with metaphors, analogies, and rhetorical questions in order to create an immersive experience for the reader. Furthermore, Hurston engages the reader with her slightly sarcastic, strong, and blissfully positive tone effectively creates a way with words that communicate her claims in an entertaining way.

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

Reading the content in this book made me get a picture of what it was like to be a colored person in this time. My eyes were opened to the meaning of the word “nigga”. Nigga is such a derogatory term, yet now-a-days it is used by people so much. Kids in this generation use it as a term of endearment when they see their friends, or they say it when they are shocked by something. Frankly, I don’t believe they know how serious it really is. The fact that white people could look at a person and see less than a human being when they did nothing wrong distresses me. They (white people) treated them as if they were property and below them. Even though we don’t have racism to this extent

This book tackled many situations that people of color face on an everyday basis. For example, in one situation Coates and his son were faced with mistreatment. A white lady pushed Coates son, rushing him to hurry up, in an act of showing who was boss, the author tells how he became upset with the situation. What ended up happening was that because of the way Coates defended his child people began to scream at him and threaten to call the police for his behaviors. He states that he faced a state of shock, he was unaware, how cruel people could be and how much power white people attained. (94) This example shows how people misjudge a person of color it doesn’t matter if they did something right, they are being called out just by the pigment of their skin. It goes to show that the statement Coates said was true “not being violent enough could me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body.” (28) Either way one may look at a situation, for a person of color, it can go bad and seeing through the eyes of this author we become aware that social racism still exists in today’s

In Blueprint for Negro Writing, Richard Wright makes the argument that all black artists have a social and moral responsibility to use their art to improving and uplifting African Americans and their culture. Wright believed that black artists should use their work to advocate for their race and to help address social issues and make changes for the better. Wright also believed that black artists were too caught up in trying to appeal to white audiences. Wright wanted African American artists to create work for African Americans instead. Wright’s stance on black art being made for a black audience and to address social issues is supported by the celebration of black heritage and beauty in Beyoncé’s “Formation” and Bennett’s “To a Dark Girl”.

The author of the novel, James McBride, shows how being biracial affected him throughout his life. When James was younger his racial identity caused many situations that made him favor the black side and feel ashamed of his mother. An example of James’ racial encounter is when he says “I could see it in the faces of the white people who stared at me and Mommy and my siblings when we rode the subway, sometimes laughing at us, pointing, muttering things like, ‘look at her with those little niggers’” (31). This is important because it shows how it made him realize that people were being cruel to them because his mom was a different skin color than them. James then states “I thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. I didn’t want to be white… I

Systematic racism continues to perpetuate the marginalization of people of color in the 21st century despite belief of living in a post racial society. This unfortunate reality is seen in many different forms of current culture. One of the ways systematic racism takes current form, is in the negative portrayal created by a single narrative, or the lack thereof, minority groups. This lack of representation or diversity of people of color in different forms of art and platforms, not only affects those subject to misrepresentation, but perpetuates negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior towards those subject to misrepresentation. It is necessary to look into the ways this single narrative in different art forms affects marginalized group, and the current move to dismantle the component power plays in who gets to tell these stories.

As a white person, I will never understand certain circumstances in life that a black person would. I have never had to deal with thoughts such as Is the people in this store watching me because I am Black and might steal something? Or Does my teacher think I read slower because I am black? There is no way for me to relate to circumstances of that matter. You can feel the anger of the author in his writing, Black English is considered wrong. His emotion is noticeable and realizing the reality of what he is speaking is more moving than his actual words. A society and its culture effects how language is used and understood. It allows one to relate or separate from one

The most effective message in the novel manages what Coates calls the "fantasy." The "fantasy" is the conviction that white individuals have encompassing our reality. They trust that they are completely white and are some caught in their own particular reality, that they don't understand the defects our reality. As a white subject they don't need to manage separation, racial profiling and other burdens that

Life experiences often tend to influence thoughts, actions and behavior. It can be seen through poem, criticism or even fictional works. Something as simple as a drawing from a young kid can be influenced by their young years of life to be drawn on a page. Although the experiences can be explained more through literary devices as most authors do to effectively convey to the reader. As in the the case of Zora Neale Hurston's, “How it feels to be colored,” she uses literary devices and personal experiences to show a prideful identify as an African American.

When reading the story, we realize then just being a person of color you become cataloged at first sight. Many elements join with

As a result, leftists, liberals and progressives would be wise to pick up the phone, send an email or otherwise reach out to each other. It's not that hard. I'm tired of hearing people say, "Well, that's the sort of work you do, not me. I'm a radical activist therefore I don't work with those capitulating liberals!" Or, from the other angle, "I'm a liberal activist, hence I'm not willing to work with those silly radicals!" This sort of self-righteous nonsense needs to stop. Again, I'm guilty of it, but I'm also willing to make changes, and have. If we hope to win, we all need to make some changes.

Can a literary criticism involving African Americans further enhance the understanding of a short story about a utopian society? It may seem improbable from the surface because these two pieces of literature seem unrelated when viewed without intensity. The literary criticism, Playing in the Dark, describes the roles of African Americans in literature and how these roles can also reflect and impact our current culture and world. On the other hand, the fictional short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas describes a utopian society called Omelas and the lifestyle of its inhabitants. However, after understanding African Americanism and the connection of dark and white symbolism through Toni Morrison’s criticism, readers can then comprehend the seemingly simple characters and the plot in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in better detail. Also, the ambiguous details of the plot of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas are become more clear when examined through the eyes of Toni Morrison and her criticism on literature. Therefore, through the analysis of the concepts such as the co-dependency and reverse symbolism of black and white and the idea of naturalized associations in African Americanism mentioned in Playing in the Dark, the symbolic meaning of the roles of dark and light and the relationship of happiness and sadness throughout The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas are brought into greater context through the city of Omelas, it surroundings, and its inahbitants.

I like to read stories that are realistic so the one connection that I make between this work and others that I have read in the past is that it doesn’t cover up the fact that black people have had to make due with the hand they were dealt. There is no happy ending but the