Who Is Elif Batuman's Reading Racist Literature?

Spiegelman has presented his father’s memoirs in a creative way by portraying racial groups as animals and by making the story into a graphic novel. By presenting it in comic form, Art Spiegelman is able to better capture the emotions of those in the graphic novel. Not a dedication in the conventional sense, the book eternalizes the memoirs of Vladek and those around him.

Oppression is something that all humans are faced with at some point in their lives. No matter how large that oppressing force may be, it is sure to have an effect on those in its path. Zora Neale Hurston, and Celeste Ng are two authors who wrote about how their characters live in the face of hardships and both show a dramatic change in their characters from beginning to end. Hurston writes about a young woman, Delia, living in the 1920’s dealing with an abusive husband in her short story “Sweat.” Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere follows two families living in a prim and proper town in Ohio in the 1990’s. Throughout these works, the characters are consistently challenged by cruelty of the powerful forces surrounding them, but more importantly,

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.

Sometimes the hardest thing for an individual to do is taking a stance against the culture they live in, and sometimes the people who take the stance are underappreciated. Sadly, this is story of a talented writer named Kate Chopin; who took a stance against her environment with her writing, most notably in her short story, “Desiree’s Baby”. Chopin’s short story “Desiree’s Baby” uses the themes of naturalism, realism, and the usage of irony to expose the hypocrisy of racism.

Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even [if] the book or play is written by a Negro, they still [would] not like it” (Henry). In addition, John Wallace believes that the word “nigger” is so offensive that he rewrote the novel without the word “nigger.”

It is through the universal theme of racism that a symbiotic relationship between the old and the new text occurs, allowing insight, acknowledgement and understanding between the

When she utilises the modes of appeals, they are subtle within the texts, which leads the reader to analyse as they read. She conveys ideas of internalised oppression, involuntarily imposed upon to follow strict social rules, the act of people erasing cultural heritage, as well as the importance of embracing personal heritage.

Richard Van Camp's, The Lesser Blessed, contains elements that classify the novel with both Indigenous and Modern genres. Featuring both genres in a text can lead to contradicting themes that form a binary. This binary has the potential to limit the extent readers can connect to the story, suggesting the presence of a barrier. Barriers hinder the readers' lack of understanding or relatability to either Indigenous or Modern works of literature. This paper will serve to analyze how Richard Van Camp deconstructs the binary by having the sides work together rather than against one another. Furthermore, this paper will discuss how by breaking down the binary, Richard Van Camp is allowing his novel to be accessible to all readers.

Literature is the window to realizing the negatives of society and how destructive certain norms can be. Readers are brought into a completely different story than their own, but by using similar issues in today’s world, the readers can actually learn from the story and its overall message. All writers write for a purpose, whether it’s for a new meaning to life, to live a different life than our own, or to impact others on an emotional level by teaching them to see the importance of the little things. As a reader, you search for pieces of literature that interest you whether you find the story like your own, or wish you lived the life in the story. By using issues in today’s within their works, authors are able to grab the reader's attention long enough for them to get across what they wanted to get across. Often in many works of literature, writers use societal issues as their basis for the work’s themes and symbols. By doing so, this allows the reader to question the morality behind social norms and how impactful certain ideals can be in people’s lives.

Sexuality has an inherent connection to human nature. Yet, even in regards to something so natural, societies throughout times have imposed expectations and gender roles upon it. Ultimately, these come to oppress women, and confine them within the limits that the world has set for them. However, society is constantly evolving, and within the past 200 years, the role of women has changed. These changes in society can be seen within the intricacies of literature in each era. Specifically, through analyzing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one can observe the dynamics of society in regards to the role of women through the lens of the theme of sexuality. In both novels, the confinement and oppression of women can be visibly seen as a result of these gender roles. Yet, from the time The Scarlet Letter was published to the time The Bell Jar was written, the place of women in society ultimately changed as well. Hence when evaluating the gender roles that are derived from sexuality, the difference between the portrayals of women’s oppression in each novel becomes apparent, and shows how the subjugation of women has evolved. The guiding question of this investigation is to what extent does the theme of sexuality reflect the expectations for women in society at the time each novel was written. The essay will explore how the literary elements that form each novel demonstrate each author’s independent vision which questions the

These last two weeks we have been talking about racism. On the first day we were given a letter that was written by Bruce Levenson who was the former owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. This was a private letter, but was later released to the public. We were not given a brief summary of the letter in the beginning. We were just told to read it. When I was reading it I felt like Bruce Levenson was a racist. Once we were done we had to take a stand on “Bruce Levenson is racist.” I thought that he was somewhat racist simply because of some of his statements he mentioned in his letter. I just feel like he could have worded these statements differently.

Collection one explores the different aspects that make up society. The themes of pluralism, religion and apartheid are brought forth and explained. Each of these themes can be easily relatable; however, modern society refuses to be up-front about their importance. Collection one is memorable because it defies the norm, it crosses all boundaries by using each author’s individual experiences to help explain the importance of each theme. The first story found in collection one is “A Quilt of a Country” by Anne Quindlen.

Despite all of this, it is appalling that very esteemed literary critics like Charles Bukowski praise the novel’s work and portrays Arturo Bandini as a hero and calls Fante a “god” (Fante 6). Bukowski considers the protagonist “a man who was not afraid of emotion” (Fante 6). Dunja Nedic counters Bukowski’s praise of the “substance” of “humor and the pain…intermixed with a superb simplicity” (Fante 6) by saying “Bandini’s vulgarity and bitterness…come across as simply unnecessary” (Nedic 2). It could be because back in that era of 1973 seeing this social treatment and discrimination to people of color was accepted, but this kind of literature would receive intense backlash from many different critics about the nature of the content today.

Name: Yoel Bastian NIM: 392013024 The representation of minority cultures in literary works mostly controlled by dominated culture. They made notorious stereotypes to influence the popular consciousness and thus serve the agenda of the dominant culture. Those multicultural works made by dominant culture authors.

somewhat complex in his writing. He uses many words that may have to be researched and or