Back to school
Can I say how much I cannot wait to have my degree finished so I don't have to deal with peevish college professors who think the world revolves around them? Other than that, and the one professor that reuses her discussion post responses to the students in her class, school is going well. I am having a tough time fitting everything in, but you do what you need to do. I just keep telling myself that eventually, when I can quit my crappy government job, it will be worth all the headaches and late nights.
I have to say that I recently read "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson in my African American Lit since 1900 class. IT RULES. It was a great novel. There were so many interesting race and class things going on in it that you could analyze it for hours. Everyone should read it. It rocks. Interesting thing, I have always had the general assumption that classes stick together in most things. It was interesting in the book to note that Johnson describes how people of color that reached "upper class status" were still ostracized by their white counterparts. I'm still thinking on that one. Essentially class division was used as a means to break up unity amongst slaves and white indentured servants in colonial times. So were they all for class unity as long as it served their purpose but not if it meant mingling with those other than the lilly-white set?
Stuff I'm reading now:
Langston Hughes' Autobiography "The Big Sea"
I just finished "The Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. I know a lot of people read it in high school, but I didn't. Fantastic novel. I was reading something about how she was crticized by the likes of Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison because she didn't write a racial protest novel when that was what everyone was doing. I thought it was a weird criticism until I read the book. She writes as if whites and racism are not the focal point of life. White characters are on the sideline while the story of the African American characters themselves takes center stage, as it should be. I do have to say that I think part of the criticism came from the fact that this was so much a feminist novel. She expressed the oppression hierarchy (black men oppressed by whites, who then oppress black women) magnificently. I am curious if man-feathers getting rustled was where some of the criticism came from.
I also have "Ruled Britannia" by Harry Turtledove that a guy from work gave me. It's an alternate history sort of book. He said it's basically an account of what could have happened if the Spanish Armada won. Pretty cool...
I have to say that I recently read "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson in my African American Lit since 1900 class. IT RULES. It was a great novel. There were so many interesting race and class things going on in it that you could analyze it for hours. Everyone should read it. It rocks. Interesting thing, I have always had the general assumption that classes stick together in most things. It was interesting in the book to note that Johnson describes how people of color that reached "upper class status" were still ostracized by their white counterparts. I'm still thinking on that one. Essentially class division was used as a means to break up unity amongst slaves and white indentured servants in colonial times. So were they all for class unity as long as it served their purpose but not if it meant mingling with those other than the lilly-white set?
Stuff I'm reading now:
Langston Hughes' Autobiography "The Big Sea"
I just finished "The Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. I know a lot of people read it in high school, but I didn't. Fantastic novel. I was reading something about how she was crticized by the likes of Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison because she didn't write a racial protest novel when that was what everyone was doing. I thought it was a weird criticism until I read the book. She writes as if whites and racism are not the focal point of life. White characters are on the sideline while the story of the African American characters themselves takes center stage, as it should be. I do have to say that I think part of the criticism came from the fact that this was so much a feminist novel. She expressed the oppression hierarchy (black men oppressed by whites, who then oppress black women) magnificently. I am curious if man-feathers getting rustled was where some of the criticism came from.
I also have "Ruled Britannia" by Harry Turtledove that a guy from work gave me. It's an alternate history sort of book. He said it's basically an account of what could have happened if the Spanish Armada won. Pretty cool...