Intro to African American Literature Class with Mr. Mitchell

I have dabbled with various journals and diaries before, and I have really enjoyed finding a space where I can explore honest thoughts and feelings. They have often been places that I can maybe share with a few close friends, or occasionally open up to a random person, but most of the time they have been for me. So, this will be a different experience, but I am ready to share with you all some of my ideas. I am so open to any feedback at all, so please feel free to comment, challenge and say anything. Thank you in advance for your eyes and fingers.

The first thing you probably notice when you open up my page is the background picture -- Kanye West, acclaimed songwriter and husband of Kim Kardashian, etc. To me, Kanye is one of the biggest symbols of black art, performance, and life in the world right now. He symbolizes some of what black culture is, what black culture is going to become, and how it has formed over time. I don’t particularly like using the words “black culture” because I feel like they generalize and put people in boxes, but I don’t know of another way to quickly describe the history, present, and future of a whole race (whoa). In many ways, Kanye is an envoy for black culture, and even though he is not “black culture” himself, I think of him as a pretty good representation. What we are mostly covering in this class is black history through literature, but I think it’s really important to realize that there is a ton of relevance today, and hence his image on my blog.

You will have noticed, however, that none of what I have mentioned so far actually talks about the first book we read for this class: Native Son by Richard Wright. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first picked up this book, but I read Section 1 in one reading and found myself with many emotions and questions. Why is murder suddenly involved? How did Bigger get in this predicament? Is this a typical historical “black” novel? I finished the book and began to contemplate a number of the questions that were posed in class. In Book 1, how does Wright depict/draw Bigger? What is the larger context of this story? We talked about fear and Bigger’s emotions a great deal, which was confusing because he is a fictional character controlled by an author. One question that I began to ask myself was “Where does Bigger fit in his environment?”

Throughout the book, Bigger struggles to find the community he belongs in, and questions whether he should even belong in one. He constantly embraces and rejects the people and environment around him, and it’s never really clear to me what he wants. At the start of the book, we are confronted with some of Bigger’s behavior problems:the way he dangles a dead rat over his sister; the way he acts out the father/abuser figure in his family because he’s the only one with power; and the way that he wants to jeopardize his safety in one robbery of Blum’s shop. It’s overwhelming to read about all the roles he plays in the first twenty pages of the Native Son. So, initially, we think he rejects his mother, Vera, and Buddy, and only wants to indulge in his own passions and pleasures.

Quickly, though, things change as he willingly takes the job at the Dalton’s. This reminds me of the phrase “with power comes responsibility,” and finally it seems that Bigger is willing to take positive responsibility over his family and embrace his community. Thinking about his mother, I was happy that he was willing to do this. I felt sympathetic for her and her lifestyle, but didn’t realize that the job Bigger was sliding into would be just as hard for the reader to hear about as his previous hobbies such as robbing banks and chain smoking. So, is that the reality? Are we to think that whether it’s a white world or black world or an in between world that it’s uncomfortable for the reader to read? I think Wright plays a lot with his reader; he makes us feel weird and uneasy about where the book is heading.

But now, we are confronted with a new phase in which the white world everything at the Dalton’s. Bigger is forced to forget about where he comes from, even though he might not fully realize it. Part of that is because he is faced with an unfamiliar environment, and has to respond to the Daltons in a way that he isn’t used to, but also because the Daltons are willing to provide for him more than his mother ever has, and that catches him way off guard. It’s a job, yes, but I think in Bigger’s mind, the white culture he has begun to work in serves as more of a lifestyle. Ms. Dalton asks him about education and if he would be interested in continuing with his studies; Jan and Mary force him to choose between them and his own girlfriend at Ernie’s Kitchen Shack; Peggy prepares him a meal he would never be used to eating, and so on. And this pattern continues -- where whether he likes it or not, he has to choose between one community or another (or none). When he is running away from everyone, he decides to act single-mindedly (part of the reason he kills Bessie). But when I think about what would have actually been best for Bigger, I think that acting on his own and letting his own head seep through the walls of his body would be beat rather than letting other figures control him like they have been his whole life? In what way does his violence and destruction come from this control others have had over him? That’s where his so called “freedom” comes in; in the final analysis what I most want to make sense of is if the way he gets to finally take control of his communities and to be where he wants to be whenever he wants is a good thing.

My final question -- one that might not be so important but that is connected to Bigger's communities -- is “Does Bigger die alone?”