U.S. Minority Literature Week 6a

U.S. Minority LiteratureWeek 6a

FINAL EXAM REVIEW • Section I: Identifications. • Section II: Short Answer. You’ll define and explain key terms related to the course. • Section III: Short Essay. You’ll be given three prompts; you’ll respond to one of them. • NOTES: 1) The final will begin at 12:30 and end at 1:30p this Thursday. 2) Stephanie Black’s film Life and Debt will be on the final. If you were not in class the days we viewed the film, you may check out the DVD from me for a limited time or you can try to find it on your own.

What you’ll need for the final: • A bluebook • A reliable writing utensil (s).

Identifications • You’ll receive a brief passage from one of the works we’ve encountered this term, including Stephanie Black’s Life and Debt(text from Kincaid’s A Small Place). • You’ll need to identify the passages in your blue book using the “Answer Key” provided at the end of the final (on p. 4). Make sure to write the number of the passage (1-15) as well as the identification letter (A-I) next to it clearly in your blue book. Note that in some cases there is more than one quotation from a given text so you may have to use the same letter twice.

Short Answer • Neo-slave narrative • Slave narrative • Colonialism • Neo-colonialism • Postcolonialism • Indian Removal Act of 1830 • Dawes Act 1887 • The blanket motif in Native American literature • Bildungsroman • Jim Crow • Civil Rights Movement • Reconstruction • Iambic pentameter • Double consciousness • Sorrow songs • Manifest destiny • Harlem Renaissance • Transatlantic literature • Free Indirect Discourse • Direct discourse • Indirect discourse • Race • Ethnicity • gender

Short Essay • You’ll receive a prompt much like the ones you’ve received for the close reading paper and Critical Response paper. You’ll respond to one of the given prompts. Three will be provided.

Introduction to Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

Bad Mothers • Great Britain, metaphorically the “bad mother” of Antigua, colonized the island in 1667, but the island became a colony in 1632. • Antigua does not become independent until 1981. • But, does Antigua become “free” and “independent” from their bad mother in 1981 according to Stephanie Black’s Life and Debt?

Neocolonialism/Postcolonialism • Neocolonialism: Colonial powers still have existing control over decolonized places. This may manifest in debt, poverty, struggles for leadership. • Postcolonial literature deals with the cultural legacy of colonial rule; how colonialism impacts the identity of colonized people after decolonization.

Blood and Fire BBC History of Jamaica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL500iDEoXA

Lucy’s Mother • “I had written my mother a very nice letter, I thought, telling her about the first ride I had taken in an underground train. She wrote back to me, and after I read her letter, I was afraid to even put my face outside the door. […] Only the other day, she wrote, she had read of an immigratn girl, someonemy age exactly, who had had her throat cut while she was a passenger on perhaps the very same train I was riding […] Why should my life be reduced to these two possibilities? (20-21)

Lucy’s mother • Lucy about Miriam. “She must have reminded me of myself when I was that age, for I treated her the way I remembered my mother treating me then. When I heard her cry out at night, I didn’t mind at all getting up to comfort her, and if she didn’t want to be alone I would bring her into bed with me; this always seemed to make her feel better, and she would clasp her little arms around my neck as she went back to sleep.” (53)

Mother figure informed by race/history of oppression • Colonial education: (pgs. 18-19) Why are the daffodils such a bad memory for Lucy? “The night after I had recited the poem, I dremt, continuously it seemed, that I was being chased down a narrow cobbled street by bunches and bunches of those same daffodils that I had vowed to foget, and when finally I fell down from exhaustion they all piled on top of me, until I was buried deep underneath them and was never seen again” (18)

View of the Bible informed by colonial past • Pgs. 37-38 • “This is supper. Let’s go feed the minions.” • Why does Lucy hear this? Why does it impact her?

View of the Bible informed by colonial past • “Through it we could hear the clink of the cooking utensils as we cooked the fish Mariah’s way, under flames in the oven, a way I did not like” (39) • Why is the question “but how did Jesus serve the fish? Boiled or fried?” so important to Lucy (38)

View of the world influenced by colonialism • Restaurant scene with Mariah: pgs 31-32 • “Mariah did not seem to notice what she had in common with the other diners, or what I had in common with the waiters. She acted in her usual way, which was that the world was round and we all agreed on that, when I knew that the world was flat and if I went to the edge I would fall off”(32)

Differences between Lucy and African American literature more generally • Lucy describes a different history of colonialism. Lucy is from Antigua and immigrates to U.S. much later. • Text is published in 1990.

Why all the questions? • “How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?” (41) • “How does a person get to be that way?” (26) • “All along I have been wondering how you got to be the way you are. Just how it was that you got to be the way you are” (41) • “why should my life be reduced to these two possibilities?” (21)

Wealth gap by race

What is different about U.S. inequality and the colonial past that continues to impact Jamaica? • Is it any better? • Is it worse?

U.S. Minority Literature Week 6a