Important though it was, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was also a white liberal fantasy.
Obama has had to to resist black male anger such as that described in Eliison’s “Invisible Man.”
Ellison’s “Invisible Man” helps us understand Obama’s and America’s, intricate dance with race issues.
Faulkner’s “Absolon, Absolon” is a continuing resource for countering the madness of racism.
Murakami says that the worst thing about bigots is that they are hollow men devoid of imagination.
The latest “Men in Black” films takes for granted a diverse and multicultural world, set in motion by the 1960′s.
Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” remains relevant, including to the Trayvon Martin case.
What causes Obama-derangement? Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain” offer explanations.
Frost may allude to the belief that we become more conservative as we age, but his own poetry refutes the claim.
Race, as we learned from watching a play based on student experiences with the subject, is more painful when we avoid it than we we confront it head-on.
May Justus, an Appalachian author who wrote children’s books and poetry, has a great poem about windy weather. Recalling it recently brought back other memories of this remarkable woman.
African American blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates uses Jane Austen’s villainous Fanny Dashwood to penetrate the mindset of American racists.
A visiting lecture on “Slaves as Loyal Confederates” reminded me of the complex relationships between black and white as they are explored by Twain and Stowe.
In “Blood,” Naomi Shihab Nye grieves the massacres of Lebanese Palestinians in a poem that calls out for us to see each other as individuals and not as racial Others.
King’s speech, not surprisingly, was the most memorable part of the weekend. At the time, he was upset at the violent race riots underway in Newark and Detroit. I remember him thundering, “Therefore I tell you, not ‘burn, baby, burn’ but ‘build, baby, build!’” and I carried those words with me into college.
Film Friday The Western, Hollywood’s quintessential genre, can tell us a lot about race relations. I was reminded of this on Wednesday when I taught John Ford’s The Searchers in my American Film class. Rewatching the movie got me thinking about the Congressional hearings on “Muslim American Radicalization,” which began yesterday. I will have more [...]
Film Friday I have been teaching an adult film class this semester in conjunction with a fascinating exhibit on fences that our college’s art gallery has mounted with help from the Smithsonian Museum. My contribution is to exhibit and talk about films that focus on fences, walls, and other types of boundaries. This past Tuesday [...]
Last week we had another fine presentation in the series of Twain lectures that my colleague Ben Click has been running. Once again a talk about race and Huckleberry Finn deepened my respect for that magnificent book. Here are some of the ideas I picked up, which I share with you from memory since I didn’t [...]
Film Friday I found myself fuming at a film that I showed to my American Film class this past week. My reaction caught me by surprise because the movie is almost a hundred years old and I have screened it many times before. Why did D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) get under my [...]
Writing about interracial friendships in yesterday’s post brings to mind the most famous interracial friendship in literature, that between Huck and Jim. The novel is once again in the news (is it ever out of it?) with a new edition of the novel where the n-word is changed to “slave.” The edition is the brainchild [...]
Today, in honor of Martin Luther King, I want to talk about interracial friendship: how important it is that we make friends with people of other races and the reasons why those friendships are so often challenging. The work I’m going to use to guide this discussion is Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, a remarkable 1687 [...]
Saturday’s New York Times had a column by African American novelist Ishmael Reed attacking those leftists that are excoriating President Obama for his willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts in return for a second stimulus package. What particularly galls Reed is that many of these critics refer to themselves as Obama’s base (as in, [...]
I have always been fascinated by the many ways that literature influences our lives, but, as a literary scholar, I also know that influence is a very hard thing to prove. That’s why I find censorship to be interesting. When people censor a book, they do so because they assume that it can have an [...]
“I hope that like Mark Twain, 100 years from now people will see my work and think, ‘Wow. That is actually pretty racist.’” –Tina Fey accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Thanks to a visiting lecturer in our Mark Twain series, I have a new understanding of Huckleberry Finn that is exciting me [...]
In a dinner conversation with academic colleagues and novelist Rachel Kranz, we grappled with the question of whether those who commit atrocities pay a price for doing so. I came to the conclusion that it is a question that novelists and poets are sometimes better at answering than academics.
Many readers of Huckleberry Finn enjoy laughing at Miss Watson’s approach to teaching Huck. She tries to use the Bible to scare him into good behavior, insists that he sit still, and prohibits him from smoking and drinking. Romantics that we are, we make fun of her educational philosophy and find her a hypocrite, especially [...]
Harper Lee National Public Radio reminded me yesterday that this summer is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I have written a couple of times about the book, once talking about its importance to me growing up in the segregated south and once examining Malcolm Gladwell’s critique of [...]
Streep and Kline in Sophie’s Choice A recent survey of the Tea Party movement has revealed that the movement is overwhelmingly white, educated, middle class and conservative, and people are now studying what it all means. I love this post Ta-Tehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. As occurs in the world of the [...]
Posted in Bronte (Emily), Roth (Philip K.), Roy (Arundhati), Styron (William), Wright (Richard) | Also tagged Aruhdhati Roy, Diversity, Emily Bronte, God of Small Things, Human Stain, Native Son, Philip Roth, politics, Richard Wright, Sophie's Choice, Tea Party, William Styron, Wuthering Heights |
Daniel Defoe My daughter-in-law sent me a wonderful poem by Daniel Defoe, “A True Born Englishman,” posted by Andrew Sullivan in response to a Patrick Buchanan editorial. Buchanan’s column was one of those hateful “they’re taking our country away from us” pieces, and Sullivan rightly asks who this “us” is. As Sullivan’s translates it, Buchanan is [...]
Harriet Tubman, inspiration for the heroine About our “One Maryland One Book” discussion at Leonardtown Library on Thursday, I’m sorry to report that (as expected) we didn’t pull in anyone other than our book group regulars. The good news is that that group appears as solid as ever and we had a very good conversation [...]
Let me end this series of posts concerning racism in America on an up note. This past Sunday I was singing in the Trinity Episcopal Church choir (in St. Mary’s City, Maryland) and we concluded the service with a rousing rendition of hymn 599, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the black [...]
