How can art bring bodies and stories systematically erased from history to light? I feel the best way to do this is to go about it how Nona Faustine did, that being go to places where the most terrible atrocities that have been forgotten happened and bring them back into the light. In her series White Shoes in 2013. She took to the streets of New York to bring to light the societal and racial injustice that took place in New York during slavery. (Unit 4 Lecture) One of her key photos is a photo of her standing on a box in the middle of an intersection in New York. That being the heart of the financial district home to Wall Street between Water and Pearl Streets. (Unit 4 Lecture) What she was trying to bring to light is that there stood the
Eat That Cookie written by Liz Jazwiec focuses of workplace positivity. The author, Liz Jazwiec is a former emergency department nurse, former emergency department director, author of other workplace books, and is currently a speaker and strategist of how to make the workplace better. She writes about her experience in the work place as it evolved over time from a negative, pessimistic mind set, to a positive mind set created by individuals within the workplace regardless of the current situations. Not only does Liz Jazwiec explain that creating on optimistic working environments are extremely beneficial for all employees, but they also have a positive effect on patient perception of provided services. She addresses many issues and even naysayers throughout the book providing ways to improve and even eliminate negative attitudes. The key message throughout the book is that positivity comes from within and is more beneficial than negativity.
Nearly five decades later, Walter Mosley introduced his detective mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress, which would become a classic amongst hard-boiled literature and would also make it to the big screen. When we look at Mosley’s essay, “Poisonville,” which describes hard-boiled as “a state of being…when a man or a woman, or an entire nation of women and men, is pressed to physical, emotional, economic, and/or intellectual limits…”(Paragraph 1), it can be argued that he carried these ideas over to his novel. With a storyline full of alcohol, corruption, poverty, racial tension, sexual slavery, economic disparity, family conflict, emotional strife, and, yes, the femme fatale, Mosley manages to cover the hard-boiled life at a multitude of levels. As an African American writer, his novel is given a unique perspective and he is able to give us a convincing account of a black protagonist, nicknamed Easy, who struggles financially and evolves from a day laborer to a detective while finding himself surrounded by corrupt money and crime. Easy has settled in L.A. in hopes of pursuing the American Dream and quickly finds himself entangled in a spiraling turn of events full of mystery, deceit and murder. As Mosley’s own description of hard-boiled would have it, Easy struggles with his place in this world and no matter how well he has played the game of life, it is unpredictable and tainted and he is not safe. He is alone, black, and poor and knows that he will never be equal to the
‘48 Shades of Brown’ by Nick Earls is a novel that follows Dan Bancroft, the main protagonist, and his troubling experiences as he goes through his final year of school. Dan is thrown into a world of unfamiliarity, where he makes many comical and embarrassing decisions. This novel expresses the theme of having or not having control subtly through the choices Dan makes, and their consequences. This theme is also successfully revealed through the four elements; characters, plot, motifs and setting. The relationships between the characters are vital to providing an insight into the theme.
Broken shards in Nemecia’s soul glued together with hope that she may be the light in the world her family dreams for her to be. Throughout Nemecia life her family desperately tries to heal her by helping her forget her broken past. In the story, Nemecia by Kirstin Valdez Quade the theme broken piece may never be truly fixed but hope always glimmers through is revealed by using metaphors throughout the story.
“Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” the Evil Queen inquiries (1). In the novella Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver (Snow White) surpasses the beauty of every living organism in Starkfield. Zenobia Frome correlates herself with the Evil Queen. Furthermore, Zeena, a hypochondriac in the eyes of Ethan Frome, is used as a foil for Mattie Silver. In the dark and gloomy tale of Ethan Frome, the story emerges as an inverted fairytale. The “fairy maiden” anthropomorphizes into a greater evil than the Evil Queen, herself. Snow White was known for her pale skin, red lips, and her beautiful voice. Alike Snow White, Edith Wharton sedulously attaches red and light with Mattie Silver, symbolizing her with a red scarf. Ethan Frome and Zeena are associated with dark and grim colors blending in with their haggard surroundings. Ethan is in awe when he sees Mattie, his silver lining. Zeena envies Mattie indirectly in the story and goes out of her way to make her seem like a horrendous person. Moreover, Zeena emerges as the powerful Evil Queen in Ethan Frome that successfully wins. Thus, in Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton taints the classic fairytale to become a disastrous tragedy of two lovers.
Literature can be a powerful tool for social change. Red Rooms by Cherie Dimaline is about the weaving of indigenous stories through the common element that they were patrons of an urban hotel. The narrator, Naomi, works as a housekeeper at the hotel and imagines the past, present and future existence of the patrons by what they left behind. Dimaline shows how indigenous histories and knowledge operate, in that they are not linear, and they do not have a definite beginning or an end. The novel subtly shows the need for an Indigenous resurgence, but the book itself is an act of resurgence because it shows the importance of indigenous literature. This paper will argue that Red Rooms itself acts as an act of indigenous resurgence
1. One of the main characters in the book Black and Blue is a woman named Frannie Benedetto. Some of the roles that Frannie had were being a wife, a mother, a Catholic, and a nurse. Her role as a wife was very challenging, due to the fact that she was in an abusive relationship and was married to a New York City Police Officer. Frannie had been married to her husband Bobby Benedetto for almost twenty years. Her entire relationship with her husband has been traumatizing. Numerous times Frannie had been physically assault, raped, and belittled. Bobby physically assaulted Frannie when she was nineteen years old for the first time in their relationship. Frannie recalls many times that Bobby came home drunk and would rape her. Bobby belittled his wife by accusing her of sleeping with the doctors she worked with and by making her feel like she had deserved to get beaten up by him. One of the major reasons that Frannie stayed in the relationship with Bobby was because of their son.
“Silent Dancing” by Judith Ortiz and “Homeplace: A site of Resistance” by bell hooks are two stories about their experiences throughout their difficulties of adaptation while growing up and the battle to familiarize in a surrounding where they weren’t comfortable. They both share their story and their experiences during their childhood and as they grow. The difference between the two is their background and how they deal with it now.
Public art conquers so much more than the simple task of making the street a little easier to look at. It involves those who created it, those who supplied the means to create it, and those whose lives it continues to impact. Wall paintings in particular take an important role in working for a greater good. Judith F. Baca, a Hispanic-American woman and artist- activist has contributed an unaccountable amount to the mural movement in Los Angeles. She has accomplished this by giving individuals the chance to create art and develop a sense of pride, she has taught younger generations a respect for their ethnic identity, and from the many walks of life that continue to view her
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi makes use of the gothic trope of the uncanny to explore the horror of England as a colonial site of terrifying unhomeliness. While Oyeyemi summarizes the tale as the story of a “starving girl and a xenophobic house”, the text embodies much more than these issues. Instilling the unheimlich into her narrative, Oyeyemi explores the haunting of contemporary English nationalism by colonial ideology through a haunted house animated by xenophobia. The home, and the xenophobia that comes hand in hand with it, becomes the gothic villain that violently seeks nationalistic and racial homogeneity. Oyeyemi’s haunted house magnifies the enduring legacy of British colonialism, the continuing colonial fears of contamination, and whiteness as the essence of Englishness within colonial ideology. Strongly politicized, the unheimlich house on the cliffs of Dover locates and exposes both the horrors of colonialism and the failures of English national allegory.
The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil
Art is the gateway to learning about the past, artists tell stories like authors but instead of using words they use pictures to explain how they are feeling or what they see during their time. The Nazis’s were also destroying books, especially books by jewish authors; there is a huge possibility that these books aren’t around today because of Hitler and that we didn’t have the technology to keep backups. Stories that will never be told again, gone forever. Books, art, and everything that Hitler took and destroyed is a good part of our history that will be forgotten forever because it’s gone and now we are left to
The steam from the kettle had condensed on the cold window and was running down the glass in tear-like trickles. Outside in the orchard the man from the smudge company was refilling the posts with oil. The greasy smell from last night’s burning was still in the air. Mr. Delahanty gazed out at the bleak darkening orange grove; Mrs. Delahanty watched her husband eat, nibbling up to the edges of the toast, then staking the crusts about his tea cup in a neat fence-like arrangement.
Nina Raine’s play uses image in the title of her play. The title Tribes is an image because it has a different meaning in regards to what the play is about. It does not mean what one would typically think it means. The known of the image is the word tribe. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, tribe is “a social group comprising numerous families, clans, or generations together with slaves, dependents, or adopted strangers” or “a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest.” The unknown of the image is that Billy wants to feel a part of a “tribe.” He wants to be surrounded by people who understand him. His family is his “tribe” but they do not understand what it’s like to be ignored because of the language
Red Jackets’ “Reply to the Missionary Jacob Cram” and the poems written by Phillis Wheatley both have something in common. Belief in a God/god(s). Red Jacket provides that in his culture there is the belief in the Great Spirit which Jacob Cram wants to change to the almighty God and Phillis Wheatley shows how what she went through as a slave brought her to an un-denying devotion to God. Religion is something that has developed continually over the years, but one thing has remained the same… every individual has their own God or god(s) that they profess their faith in. What does the belief in a Great Spirit or the belief in God reveal about Red Jacket and Phillis Wheatley? It reveals who they are as an individual, how they live their life, their character, and also shows their past and how they have gotten where they are today.