The brave don't live forever. The cautious don't live at all.--shango

Howdy, howdy all!

Well my lecture on Montecuhzoma went well and I am now working on yet another lecture scheduled for next Wed. Man they are not light on the public speaking in these upper division courses are they?

As you all know I went a bit left yesterday and for that i would like to apologize to you friends. I should watch my language and I should not keep things all bottled up until I explode either. To be honest it felt good to scream and shout like that. Anyway although the issue is far from resolved I shall refrain from the expletive word fest as much as I possibly can. It is gonna be difficult though.

Ya know I dont do that "blocking folks from the blog" business because I got nothing going on that can't be seen by all on Mindsay. But now I totally see why it is available. i still will not employ it for my page but I have a new appreciation for it.  I have a lurker but it's all good.

My next presentation is over the slave narrative of Linda Brent/Harriet Jacobs called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". First slave narrative ever published and WRITTEN by a female fugitive slave. The book was written between 1853-1858.

Jacobs "escaped" sexual exploitation at the hands of her master by living in the crawl space of her grandmothers house for 7 years. The space was so small that she could not fully sit up or stand up and could lay on her side but could not turn over once so situated.

Winner of the 2004 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Jacobs: A Life recovers the experience of this once-forgotten but remarkable woman who lived 29 years as a slave, seven of which were spent in a cramped hiding place to escape a sexually predatory master. For a short summary of the book you can click this link... http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Sjacobs.htm

Here is a copy of the reward posted for Harriet Jacobs return to her master It is difficult to read but It offers 100 dollars for her return and offers a detailed description of her "person", I put person in quotes because technically she was property and not a person.

Here is a photo of Jacobs late in her life

 

I read this book years ago and decided that for my literature class I would discuss literary devices emplyed in the slave narrative like, the trikster figure, the oppression, the flight and the liberation.  Likewise I will discuss the Myth of the Southern Family Romance. This structure employs the formula....

1. propertied white patriarch-overseer-aristocratic gentility-yeoman/farmer

  a. propertied sons.

2. souther white lady-"belle"-purity- metonymy for the land and whiteness

  a. virginal daughters

3. Black Men-uncle Tom-mythic black rapist-beast

  a. pickaninnies (children without gender or characteristics or personality-property)

4. Black woman-Mammy-Jezebel(myth of the black female hyper-sexual, whore)

a. pickaninnies (children without gender or characteristics or personality-property

My focus is how these archetypes deny complexities in numbers 3 and 4. Your Faulkners and Conrads will fully develop the first 2 on this list and leave the last 2 as mono-dimentional. Since the white patriarchy controlled for the most part what was read and circulated at the time the limited dimentions of the last 2 would persist.  This is just a loose outline of my focus and I will flesh it out as I move along.

How about some poetry...here goes....

 

On Being Brought From Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my beknighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their color is a diabolic dye."
Remember Christians; Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. --Phillis Wheatley

 

All for now...

Goddess Bless