of love and dust

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

The time period of the novel created an uncomfortable setting for the prominent black characters in the story.  During the 1960’s, there was a prodigious divide between blacks and whites.  Being set during the time

Many tragic events happen in this short story that allows the reader to create an assumption for an underlying theme of racism. John Baldwin has a way of telling the story of Sonny’s drug problem as a tragic reality of the African American experience. The reader has to depict textual evidence to prove how the lifestyle and Harlem has affected almost everything. The narrator describes Harlem as “... some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (Baldwin 60). Another key part in this story is when the narrator and Sonny’s mother is telling the story of a deceased uncle. The mother explains how dad’s brother was drunk crossing the road and got hit by a car full of drunk white men. Baldwin specifically puts emphasis on the word “white” to describe the men for a comparison to the culture of dad and his brother.

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

“Love is complex: considered simply in itself, it is neither honorable nor a disgrace-its character depends entirely on the behavior it gives rise to,” (Plato 183d). There are two different types of love that Pausanius refers to, which are the common and heavenly love. The common love is based on your love for someone for their body, sex or beauty making it physical love and desire for a person. Heavenly love is love for the mind such as your intelligence and strength, someone you can benefit from making one more wise. Any love that is encountered has a purpose whether is it the love between a mother and daughter or the love between a husband and wife. In the end, all love leads and is directed to virtue and improves the loved ones.

But, there is no telling what will happen down the road. A possibility of what may come to the family is abundance of discrimination from the White Americans. “The only people in the world who are more snobbish than rich white people are rich colored people.” (Pg. 49). The excerpt further explains the comparison of people’s attitudes by the color of their skin. The neighborhood that they are moving to may not accept or view them as equal. “That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world.. Don’t understand about building their men up and making’em feel like somebody.” (Pg. 34). This reference analyzes how Walter has no appreciation for his wife. This is apparent because of the comparison he is trying to do with the color of her skin instead of who she assuredly is. Making the decision of moving into this new house could bring up great opportunities for women or not give them equal rights and

Though there was a heightened sense of tension over civil rights in the late 1950s when A Raisin in the Sun was written, racial inequality is still a problem today. It affects minorities of every age and dynamic, in more ways than one. Though nowadays it may go unnoticed, race in every aspect alters the way African-Americans think, behave, and react as human beings. This is shown in many ways in the play as we watch the characters interact. We see big ideas, failures, and family values through the eyes of a disadvantaged group during an unfortunate time in history. As Martin Luther King said, Blacks are “...harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

The novel The Garies and their Friends is a realistic examination of the complex psychology of blacks who try to assimilate through miscegenation and crossing the color barrier by “passing as white.” Frank J. Webb critiques why blacks cannot pass as being white through the characters Mr. Winston and Clarence Jr.

This representation is depicted more explicitly as it manifests itself in both Juanita Mae Jenkins’ We’s Lives in Da Ghetto and in Monk’s own novel, My Pafology. When Monk is flying to Washington D.C, he reads a review of the new “runaway bestseller,” We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. The novel is about Sharonda, who “is fifteen and pregnant with her third child, by a third father. She lives with her drug addict mother and her mentally deficient, basketball playing brother Juneboy” (39). While the novel’s premise is ridiculous, what is offensive is the way it is acclaimed and the claims that are made about it. The review heralds the novel as one that depicts “the experience which is and can only be Black America” and claims that Sharonda “lives the typical Black life,” before the conclusion of the novel when she has become “the epitome of the black matriarchal symbol of strength” (39-40).

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

These images display a consistent lack of sympathy for blacks. Here he shows an attractive and wealthy, slave-owning white family, including a husband, his wife, and their two children. The young daughter plays with a lean greyhound which stands before them. Black stereotypes evolved as they did not fit into the free market success.

Rhys places Antoinette in such a position to show her readers several things: how Antoinette faced racism and prejudice, her misunderstanding of racism, and the violence towards the discriminated. Rhys also shows how apparent the racism towards white people is, with Annette hinting at the destructive nature of the Jamaican people by saying “they are more alive than [Mr. Mason is], lazy or not, and they can be dangerous and cruel for reason you wouldn’t understand” (29). Rhys needs to show that races, Creole and white people cannot escape racism and chooses to use Rochester and Antoinette to help readers better connect with them. The point of this practice is to show Rochester and Antoinette are both victim and helps create a complex connection between them: through conflict, marriage and their individual faults.

The setting of the novel is a rural plantation in Louisiana in the Deep South. Most of the story takes place on Henri Pichot’s plantation. He is a wealthy influential man in Bayonne who can influence many decisions. Being set in the 1940’s before civil rights, the whites reigned supreme, and the blacks were still seen as inferior. Gaines uses characters such as Sheriff Guidry, Henri Pichot, and Mr. Joseph Morgan to demonstrate the white mentality towards African Americans (Poston A1). The white mentality causes many negative feelings. Folks says, “Part of Grant’s bitterness stems from his negative feelings about the black population in his hometown” (Folks B1). Grant is always mad and discouraged by the vicious cycle the blacks are put through. “The reader is able to gain insight into Grant’s thoughts and frustrations through his conversations with Vivian, his girlfriend. He feels trapped in his present situation” (Poston A1).

So, Mr. Griffin had a multistage process done on his body so that the pigment of his skin would appear darker. After many treatments of ultraviolet light and tablet pills, Mr. Griffin had become a black man. After Mr. Griffin’s transformation was complete, he immersed himself into the black community. Mr. Griffin was not prepared for what would happen to him once in the black life. While Mr. Griffin traveled to different places in the south he met numerous people, both black and white. Some people were friendly while others were quite hostile.