The Theme Of Race In Homegoing, By Yaa Gyasi

As time moves on, so does the love Pauline and Bonbon accumulate for each other. At this point no other man is able to claim her, she now belongs to Bonbon. Having their two twin boys together, Billy and Willie, both Pauline and Bonbon love their children very much. Bonbon not only has children from Pauline, but other daughters of his own. Although white men, at this time were not bashed for sleeping with a black woman, falling in love with a black woman was not something that was normal. Bonbon genuinely cared. “After so many years, Pauline falls in love with Bonbon. She couldn 't help but fall in love with him” (66). Here the reader can understand that even though white men despised black people, Gaines has turned the tables. “He wanted to be with [Pauline]-yes, you could tell from watching them at the table how much he loved her and wanted to be with her; but he had to go to a black man, and a respectful way, and ask that black man for a room. He didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t know how to talk to a black man unless he was given orders” (145). Readers suggest that Bonbon is depicted as a hypercritical person, but change into what may seem as a white man caring for black people. He loves Pauline, as well as his two twins, but cannot fully express his feelings for them. “They looked at each other like they

Despite knowing that they are "nicer, brighter," they cannot ignore "the honey voices of parents and aunts and the obedience in the eyes of [their] peers, the slippery light in the eyes of [their] teachers" when Maureen is around or the topic of conversation (74). The way Maureen dresses and behaves in front of adults is not the only way she affects Claudia and Frieda. With racist comments such as, "What do I care about her old black daddy...[and] you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute," she infuriates the girls, for in their eyes Maureen is black too. Racist attitudes like Maureen's affect the poorer, darker blacks and can eventually lead them to think racist thoughts of their own.

Both authors explore examples in which they are treated in a racist or discriminatory manner. Brent Staples encountered a younger woman and “came upon her late one evening on a deserted street… she cast back a worried glance… picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest.” (Staples 1) Just the mere sight of him made the woman scared, after this experience he feels “surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny.” (2) He realizes that he is “indistinguishable from the muggers...” (2), or at least to the woman. Staples experiences, first hand, discrimination; the woman is fearful of him because of his race, and Staples feels the full effect of that. Gloria Naylor recounts the first time she was ever called the N-word. It was in class and she she says “she couldn’t have been more puzzled.” She “didn’t know what a nigger was,” but she did know “it was something he shouldn't have called” her (Naylor 3). She was thoroughly confused and later asked her mother what the word meant. Naylor is treated poorly due to the color of her skin. Similarly to Staples,

In the United States early history, Native Americans, Africans and Europeans were marginalized by White People, and categorized as the minorities because they were seen as the inferior race. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person's appearance, their social circle (how they lived), and their known non-White ancestry. History played a major part, as persons with known slave ancestors were assumed to be African (or, in later usage, black), regardless of whether they also had European ancestry. Most often these minorities face significant discrimination in various forms whether through voting, law policy, unequal pay, or even implicit racism, minorities of all kinds have been and still are being put down today. The book Between the World and Me is a letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fifteen-year-old son, Samori. He weaves his personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. Not only does Coates give his personal experience in how he experience in first hand discrimination, racism, marginalization but he also gives vivid images on how he lived multiple worlds and how those experiences changed him. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua exposes her feelings about social and cultural difficulties that Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States. She establishes comparisons among English, Spanish and their variations on how

To engage a large audience, Staples appeals to readers with his use to two different points of views throughout the essay: societal views and black views. Staples tries to connect with the readers by giving examples of unconscious thoughts that run through the minds of most people when in the same situation as the “white women.” In his opening sentence, Staples calls the women a “victim.” In her own eyes, she herself was “victim” due to the influence of generalized stereotypes presented in our culture. She becomes quick to judge based on Staples appearance: his skin tone. Because of his color, his every action becomes nothing but threats and anxiety on the women. “She casted a back worried glance. To her, the youngish black- broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a

The Unites States is a true melting pot of ethnicities and cultures. For many members of minority groups a certain hybridity is readily adopted, but for others, cultural assimilation can be quite difficult. Chicana author, Sandra Cisneros described this phenomenon as “always straddling two countries… but not belonging to either culture” (Doyle. 54). African American author, Alice Walker shared Cisneros’ sentiment, but focused her attention on the assimilation of black cultures and subcultures within the United States. Cisneros and Walker make the same poignant statement about the strains of cultural assimilation, with reconciliation of split identities as the goal, in their respective works, 1991’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and 1973’s “Everyday Use,” yet their unique ethnic perspectives allow them to make it in surprisingly different ways.

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

White explores the master’s sexual exploitation of their female slaves, and proves this method of oppression to be the defining factor of what sets the female slaves apart from their male counterparts. Citing former slaves White writes, “Christopher Nichols, an escaped slave living in Canada, remembered how his master laid a woman on a bench, threw her clothes over her head, and whipped her. The whipping of a thirteen-year-old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl was put on all fours ‘sometimes her head down, and sometimes up’ and beaten until froth ran from her mouth (33).” The girl’s forced bodily position as well as her total helplessness to stop her master’s torture blatantly reveals the forced sexual trauma many African females endured.

As the community begins to wrong them for their sexuality, Lorraine becomes very irritable when she is confronted about her ‘ways’. Although the community views her as abnormal, their change in communication tends to be the only thing that’s not normal to Lorraine. the residents of Brewster Place alienate Lorraine by saying harsh things, and making her feel as though she is “different.” Lorraine begins to feel lost in herself, so she turns one of the tenants, Ben to confide in. Ben helps Lorraine build her confidence with herself by reminding her that it’s not about how society perceives you, its how you perceive yourself. It is common in the black community for therapy to be viewed as a “white people thing’” despite the positive results therapy may bring for some individuals. At a young age Lorraine’s father kicked her out of the house due to her sexuality, which aided her to find a sense of stability in women. Instead of Lorraine’s father trying to see where his daughter went left, he kicked her out because that isn’t the way he wanted her to live her

Within popular black music from the early 1900s there was often a duplicitous message, allowing the authors to both entertain their audiences and provide a social critique. In their song, She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, George Walker and Bert Williams tell the story of a young black girl who, after working in a hotel for a richer white woman, takes on the habits and affectations of white folk. While at first this song might appear to simply be making fun of a young girl whose mannerisms have changed, when examined closely it reveals a powerful commentary on the meaning of blackness, specifically in regards to race relations, social progress, and gender. Black performance in the early 1900s, whether it was minstrelsy, vaudevillian, or coon songs, all relied upon the perceived differences of the black lower class. They usually featured white or black actors parodying black persons, with blackface a common trend. However, in She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, this mimicry is reversed. Rather than a white man taking on black traits, they show a young black girl adopting the mannerisms of her rich, white boss. Instead of using blackness as the primary source of humour, they rely upon a satire of white culture. By showing how unusual the young woman is acting, Williams and Walker impress upon their audience ideas of contrast between lower class black culture, and upper class white culture. Unlike usual themes present in the black and white

In Toni Morrison’s novels, The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child, the main characters, Pecola and Bride, both display elements and the fetishization of whiteness within the black community. Pecola and Bride’s propensity to embrace whiteness and mask their blackness speaks to the pervasive nature of white culture over that of others. The use of masks, disguises, and dreams of being more white to attain society’s view of what is beautiful is a major theme that two texts share and the primary characters strive to achieve, while one character questions the infatuation with whiteness and its pervasive dominance over all other cultures within the United States. The fetishization of whiteness by those in minority communities within the U.S. damages minority’s in many ways, from many sides, and has traditionally forced the black community into compliance with white standards at their own expense.

Whiteness as a norm is questioned by Marilyn Dumont. This is sensed in her selection of the title of her poetry collection, A Really Good Brown Girl. This title, connecting race to gender, age and morality, suggests that the image of a ‘good girl’ means different things and these different things depend on one’s race. In the collection’s namesake poem, “Memoirs of a Really Good Brown Girl” the speaker becomes conscious about her bodily difference at school. The speaker’s brown skin is full of scrapes and dirt and she remembers when her brother’s white fiancée “scrubbed the hell”

When I began reading the introduction to “In Living Colour: Race and American Culture,” I found the preponderance of Omi’s standpoints to be akin to my own, thus stirring feelings of anger towards the predicament persons of colour face. Caucasian Americans

“The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly” (Morrison, 1998, p. 38). This is the general feeling of many of the characters throughout the book. A big reason for these feelings derives from the term Whiteness. The qualities associated with this term include: beauty, innocence, goodness, cleanliness, and purity. Throughout the book we saw this development of obsession towards having whiteness on both an internal and external level. The definition according to Ferguson says, "Whiteness is a juridical status established and maintained by the state for its own purposes" (Ferguson, 2012, p. 153). The African American characters in this book began to define themselves based on their possible Whiteness. These characters were looking at lightness of skin, blue eyes, and texture of their hair in order to find any sign of whiteness. When these characteristics fell short they went as far as to look at educational, religious, and hereditary differences that define their whiteness. For example, Soaphead Church the head pastor used his white heritage and educational background to define his.

I was drying clothes out in the Smith’s front yard when Mr. Gunther approached me in a black suit and tobacco-stained smile. Smiles like those were not easily directed towards me. Being born a black girl, I was used to having wary looks thrown my way or a racial slur uttered through gritted teeth. The latter most especially after Momma died due to a fever five years ago when ten, and the Smiths, compassionate and caring, took me in as one of their own in exchange for helping them around the house. When Momma got pregnant with me and escaped the brutal South, Henry and Jenny Smith took her in, as well.