Blog Reflection Assignment

E314V/AFR 317F– African American Literature and Culture

Blog Reflection

DUE before midnight (11:59 PM) on Sunday, January 22^nd to the course blog: http://afamlit.blogspot.com/

In 350+ words, respond to some aspect of James Baldwin’s essay “Many Thousands Gone” from the 1955 collection Notes of A Native Son.  You might consider addressing:  

·        Issues of audience. Who “we” are and who “they” are shifts around throughout the essay. Why might this be the case? What is Baldwin trying to achieve through this identification and othering? (see 26, 28)

·        Consider Baldwin’s claims regarding how music or other black cultural influences are received by society at large (start with 24).

·         What does Baldwin mean by the “social arena” (25)? How does he think that this arena limits Wright’s novel Native Son and particularly its protagonist Bigger Thomas? (see 25, 40-41)

·        With regard to the “social arena,” explain some of the ways that black Americans have been historically been thought of in terms of “statistics”—“an endless cataloguing of losses, gains, skirmishes” (start with 25).

·        How does Baldwin describe the cultural complexity of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom? (see 27-28)

·        How does Baldwin suggest that Americans are made? (start with 29)

·        Why, according to Baldwin, has black tradition and community been obscured in larger American culture? (see 24-29, 36)

·        Whether you think that Baldwin’s (admittedly angry and frustrated) view of race in American society is still applicable today. Have we “walk[ed] together into that dazzling future when there will be no white or black” (45)? What might Baldwin mean when he writes that “the battle is elsewhere”?

You must look up and link to a resource for some element of the text. It is fine to reference or link to Wikipedia for this assignment.  

You might consider exploring:

           

-          the relationship between black identity and statistics within the “social arena”

-          the history, varied meanings, and controversy over the Aunt Jemima/Uncle Tom myths

-          the background for the “angry productions” (32) of the late twenties and thirties – the WPA/New Deal/Spanish Revolution

-          the concept of the New Negro

-          what you think constitutes the “American image of Negro life” and the “ray of hope” (40) in national culture today vs. in the 1950s.