Modern Southern Fiction

Prof. Harvey

BLACK BOY ISSUES/CATEGORIES ON ONE PAGE

(Please notice how in both Light in August and Black Boy I have highlighted crossovers between writing/texts and bodies. Under racism, how you perceive your body, how others perceive your body, and, in turn, the relationship between liberating writing or controlling writing and your body gets very intense.)

(Please, please: this is a great book to write papers on!!!)

“ODD” PSYCHOLOGICAL PATTERNS (i.e. you should have underlined or taken note of some of these passages before you came to class; active thinking about literature requires focusing on initially “odd”passages)

--house-burning/udder dream (7) = revenge as adult (Wright chooses to include this scene) against NON-nurturing grandmother

--rather than maternal/paternal presence speaking words of love, just scolding words and peculiar body images (19-20, 63). “Black expressivity” = harsh words or naturalistically represented bodies.

--hence Richard learns to write/speak filth (graffiti)

--weirdest scene, but should now make sense: grandmother cleans his behind (wants to control his filth, and he rebuts with filth saying “kiss me there”)

BLACK/WHITE RELATIONS: WHAT IS JIM CROW CODE?

227-9 -- do we have any respect for Shorty?

IMAGES TOWARDS SOUTHERN BLACKS: ETHNOGRAPHICAL VS EMPATHIC?

37 --condemns Southern blacks: no true selves

79 --tone: superior/sociological detachment?

41 --overcomes peasant, rural father, who is reduced to naturalistic animality

HOW DOES HE THEMATIZE BEING A WRITER? (I.E. voluntary words/involuntary words/clean-unclean words)

--reading novels = devil's work

--cannot write name: aphasia (blocking)

--asymmetry between words/effects (talks too little gets in trouble; talks too much gets in trouble)

--works distributing racist newspaper

--Grandpa can't prove his legitimacy; Richard has a dream of reading white letter

--Richard’s voice is almost stolen by principle in valedictorian scene

--Richard ventriloquizes racist language when getting the library card

--mother paralytic