Answer Q 1. In her story, Morrison makes it clear that one of the girls is white and the other black, but she very carefully never specifies which is which. Why do you think she does this? Does it make any difference to the meaning of the story? Do you find yourself, as a reader, looking for clues to help you assign a race to these characters? If so, why? What does reading “Recitatif” tell us about the very ways in which we read? 2. In Walker’s story, do you approve of the decision the mother ultimately makes about what to do with the quilt? Why or why not? 3. Your first reading of Ralph Ellison’s "Battle Royal" is likely to focus most on its spectacular elements, namely an overt level of both sexuality and violence that still has the power to shock after more than fifty years. I think it's important that we talk about both these things: is their presence in the text justified? Why do you think Ellison includes material that is likely to offend some, perhaps many, readers?

Date Posted: 22/02/2020

Category: English
Due Date: 23/02/2020

Instruction

some African-American authors associated with the Harlem Renaissance. This week, we look at fiction by four African-American authors of subsequent decades. The work by these writers cannot be simply grouped under a single movement or school, but taken as a group they give an idea of the power and depth these writers continue to contribute to American literature. What all these stories deal with, in varying ways, is the question of double consciousness—what it means to be both American and black. It’s worth highlighting the work of Ralph Ellison in particular. The sections in your anthology are the opening chapters of his 1950 novel Invisible Man (not The Invisible Man, the science fiction classic by H. G. Wells; be careful to get the titles straight!). Published at the exact midpoint of the 1900s, this novel might well be the defining American fictional work of the century. It concerns the travels and adventures of an unnamed African-American man from the South who comes to realize, through a sequence of increasingly bizarre encounters with various social forces, that nobody can really see him; they can only see the prejudices and preconceptions they have about men of his race. The full text is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the question of race in America and how it has developed throughout our history. You should also be particularly aware of the work of the Nobel Prize winning Toni Morrison; many scholars would not hesitate to name her America’s most important living novelist. “Recitatif” is one of her very few short pieces, an expertly crafted story about racial difference with a twist: the author never identifies which character belongs to which race. In this story, Morrison is asking us to consider how we read and how we think about race. How do we assign racial identities to these characters? What makes it important to do this in the first place? These writers remind us forcefully that almost two and a half centuries after the Revolution, race remains a central question—perhaps the central question—of American literature. Race marks the boundary between the promise we made at our start (that all men are created equal) and the reality of how we have, so frequently, failed to live up to that promise. Today’s news provides ample reminders that this boundary is still present, and thus, even setting aside their enormous talent and craft, these writers still have important things to say to us.

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proffesoranncarrl | Feb 22, 2020, 18:09 PM