“The overseers wore dazzling white shirts and broad shadowy hats. The oiled barrels of their shotguns flashed in the sunlight. Their faces in memory are utterly blank.” Black and White men are the symbol of ethnic abhorrence. “The prisoners wore dingy gray-and-black zebra suits, heavy as canvas, sodden with sweat. Hatless, stooped, they chopped weeds in the fierce heat, row after row, breathing the acrid dust of boll-weevil poison.” The narrator expresses the unforgiving situations the slaves worked in; they didn’t even have a choice which is the saddest part. Yet the slave masters lived a different elegant life.…
It asks us to read these plays to learn about the horrors that African Americans have faced during their period of enslavement, and how freed slaves attempted to bring these atrocities to light through writing literature. It also helps us understand how theatre was used as a tool to assist in the freeing of millions of enslaved people, as well as a way to mock an entire race. It is important to search for the inspiration behind any theatrical style and determine what the motivation was in developing it into a staged production. From the extremely racist motives behind minstrel shows, to the noble cause of the slave narrative, by determining the motivation behind each theatrical movement, we can attain a more comprehensive understanding of the…
There is nothing more important to a woman than having the freedom to do as she pleases. It is an unexplainable feeling tingling on the inside of a person that is held captive against one’s will or bound to a master like a slave. Being bound by a slave master is horrible but being a woman of mixed color during that time can be detrimental to one’s soul. It is disheartening to a woman to be bound to her master in ways other than a servant. There were two narratives that tell of individual struggles of mulatto women bound under the control of another human being. Although the women in William Wells Brown Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter and Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl undergo drastically…
A look at chapters V, VI, and VII of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl revolves around a teenage slave girl and the control placed over her by her slave owner. The passage goes to reflect the atrocities placed over many slaves of the south in that time. It goes to show that these poor individuals had no power over the system in place over them and that they had to submit to the rule of those masters above them regardless of how heinous the act was. These acts were not unique to just her but was known to happen to many slave girls throughout the south. Slaveries affect on the south was made very apparent in the early to mid 1800's. Slaves made up 1/3 of the southern populations and was making its way further west into eastern Texas. At the…
In the Southern states, slaves were forced to work and received no compensation. Being a slave meant you were often disrespected, demoralized, and detested. Trying to escape was not an option and surviving alone was difficult. Harriet Jacobs, writing as Linda Brent, gave an intimate view of what it meant to be a slave in the mid 1800’s. Linda earned no wages for her hard work, and could have received “thirty-nine lashes” just for knowing how to read (Jacobs). Linda experienced far less physical discomfort than many other slaves; however, she was a victim psychological pain due to the fact that she was seen as nothing more than a piece of property. It is hard to believe that Jacobs 's contemporaries would have to be convinced of the natural wrongness of owning another person. In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, Jacobs clearly explained and helped us gain an understanding of self-assertion, family bond, unity, dependence, resistance, equality, and…
the rest of the century. As you watch these videos notice how musicals come to represent…
Harriet Jacobs’ narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, not only presents her journey through slavery and her experiences but also shows how she asserted her identity as a woman and resisted the sexual humiliation and exploitation most African American women suffered in slavery. Harriet Jacobs, speaking through her narrator, Linda Brent, reveals her reasons for deciding to make her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation public. Jacobs was a woman of great dignity, strong will, and aspiring desire. Harriet was considered nothing more than just a slave girl would give anything for the freedom for herself and her two children. Jacobs asserts that slavery is not only about “perpetual bondage” but also about “degradation”. Jacobs indefinitely uses her knowledge as a key to gaining freedom from the bondages of slavery. Her own education provides her with a look at the possibilities of freedom in the North and this her mental capabilities allow her to fight herself free from her obscene master, Dr. Flint. Linda’s actions in this book underscore a theme of the love and support of the black community and especially the community of women and how this community served as a critical component of the struggle for survival and freedom. Harriet Jacobs asserted her identity as a woman and resisted the sexual humiliation and exploitation in her narrative Incidents through control over the situation with Dr. Flint, the risks she took for her children, and through the strength she held while being mistreated.…
In the play, Walter Lee Younger acts as an ambitious but naive African American patriarch. Ignorance blinds Walter and prevents him from achieving the success that only white males could acquire. His poor judgment compels him to lose touch with his family and become a major burden. Ironically, Walter believes that African American women have an illegitimate opportunity in surviving…
The play Rachel, by Angelina Grimké, reveals the harsh realities of life for an African American family living in the United States during the early part of the 20th century. Focused on the central character Rachel Loving, the play reflects each character’s reaction to racial prejudice against African Americans. The themes of motherhood and the innocence of youth are vital pieces of the issues Grimké wished to portray in her work. The development of Rachel herself revolves around her changing perception of what the role of motherhood might be. This insight stems from her understanding of the importance of child-like innocence towards the terrible truths of the world in which we are surrounded by. Through the use of poignant dialogue and stage directions Angelina Grimké highlights the ways in which certain populations are unable to attain their childhood dreams through Rachel Loving’s disillusionment with entering adulthood and leaving behind the ambivalence of youth.…
Black women played several roles in slavery and in freedom. According to Darrel Dexter, the roles of Lydia Titus, was much of a struggle being a free slave. He informs us that, “Lydia Titus not only had to work on the farm to provide for her family, but maintaining their freedom against kidnapping became a lifelong struggle.” (371) The roles of a slave were much more brutal than that of a freed slave. As young as 9 years old, these undeveloped children were responsible for cooking. As the teenage years came, they were then held responsible for raking stubble, pulling weeds, hoeing, and picking cotton. (94) There are numerous stages of growth and work for the children and adults of slaves. However, gender was not recognized when it came to the younger slaves. White mentions on page 93 that "parents were more concerned that children, regardless of sex, learn to walk the tightrope between the demands of the whites and expectations of the blacks without falling too far in either direction." The life of children was finding ways through the slavery to survive. The teenage years conveyed tough work and an aching awareness of what the slave life meant to…
These plays and performances allowed for white audiences to make a macokery of African americans and add comic relief to a situation that has very heated opinions.…
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes of African American females, Jezebel and Mammy, which would inevitably serve as slave holders’ excuse for the sexual exploitation of female slaves. The term Jezebel, a seductive female slave concerned only with matters of the flesh, was…
1. Being located right under the vast lands of China, Vietnam is like China’s baby brother who imitates its older brother.…
A quinceanera usually begins with a religious ceremony such as a mass specifically for the quinceanera. This represents the parents presenting their little girl to God and blessing her. Then a reception is held in a home or a banquet hall. The celebration includes food music and usually a dance or a waltz performed by the quinceanera. There are many traditions in a quinceanera but one of the most popular is the changing of the shoes. Usually the father changes the young girls flat shoes to high heels.…
White slave owners in the American South during the 18th and 19th centuries often attempted to make their slaves lose their identity through a variety of means. They did this to empower themselves over the blacks, as the blacks would no longer feel like a real person with a unique and individual identity. Although the patterns of white dominance over blacks have not disappeared over time, they have changed in this regard. In the 1900s, blacks were finally express their own identity, and were not held back by whites. The play “A Raisin in the Sun,” by Lorraine Hansberry, exemplifies this. The play only provides a glimpse into the life of the Younger family and those they interact with, as it takes place over a short period of time. However,…