Reading about the invention of Black-No-More in George Schuyler’s Black No More reminded me of a Dove advertisement that came out in 2017. The advertisement began with a black model wearing a brown shirt who, in the process of changing her shirt, changed into a white woman wearing a white shirt (CBS). Years earlier, Dove…
Author: emmariemer
Art and Auctions
As I was reading Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, I noticed several moments when Sassafrass and Cypress referred to slave auctions in conjunction with art and gender (e.g. 79, 116, 132). For this post, I will focus particularly on two instances related to Sassafrass. The first instance occurs when Sassafrass says that she will not listen…
Physicality and Crudeness
As I read Wallace Thurman’s “Cordelia the Crude,” the first short story in FIRE!!, I became interested in the relationship the story established between what is physical and what is “crude.” I traced the appearance of the word “physical” and images of physicality in order to examine the story’s tone with regard to physicality. I…
“Space Traders”: What’s In Focus?
Cosmic Slop’s adaptation of Derek Bell’s short story “Space Traders” illustrates that the medium of film informs the way we think through questions about blackness and its relationship to the material and what matters through its use of camera angles. In particular, the people who are and are not in focus in the camera’s frame…
Challenge: Madam C.J. Walker and Madame Sisseretta Blandish
Sources 1.Bundles, A’Lelia. “Madam C.J. Walker: A Brief Biographical Essay.” Madam CJ Walker: The Official Website, http://www.madamcjwalker.com/bios/madam-c-j-walker/. 2. “Madam C.J. Walker.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 25 Jan. 2019, http://www.biography.com/people/madam-cj-walker-9522174#comments. 3. Michaels, Debra. “Madam C.J. Walker.” National Women’s History Museum. PwC Charitable Foundation, 2015. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker. 4. Curseen, Allison. “How Does It Feel to be a Problem?”…
Within the “Shadows”
The image of a shadow repeats five times over the course of W. E. B. Du Bois’ “Of Our Spiritual Striving,” the first chapter in his work The Souls of Black Folk. The first three appearances of the word “shadow” explicate white Americans’ problematization of black Americans on personal and cultural levels, thereby illustrating Du…
Joy and Pain, Intertwined
In the Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Henry Brown writes, “I felt that life had joys worth living for if I could only be allowed to enjoy them, but my heart was filled with the deep anguish from the awful calamity” (Brown 76) of his impending separation from his wife and children….
Portraits of Reclamation
Beyoncé’s “Formation” abounds in mastery of form and deformation of form, but one of the video’s most powerful phaneric masks is developed in the short span between 0:38 and 0:41. This brief clip begins as Beyoncé and four fellow black women occupy the hall of a plantation-style home. As a plantation style home, this space…
Black Matter 