Where Girlhood Ends

In Jacobs’, The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda’s “girlhood” seems to begin at the start of the novel, which is her early childhood. Even through the death of her mother, her mistress, and her father, this idea of girlhood remains intact. She has a sense of purity and innocence- and most…

Mitch’s God Complex

The idea of black masculinity was very prevalent during the black arts movement. Men had to prove that after centuries of being less than the white man that they were now elevated into a new kind of man – one that had control over everything and everyone in his life. This masculinity is seen in…

An Uphill Battle

In Hugh’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, he uses the image of a mountain to represent the obstacle “in the way of true Negro art;” it is the “race towards whiteness” and “the desire to pour race individuality into the mold of American standardization.” Du Bois also uses the image of a mountain…

Don’t Accept Gifts From Strangers – there may be strings attached

As a text, “Space Traders” uses the genre of science fiction to aid the irony within the text. The fantastical concept is portrayed as very unrealistic and the word choice of the author, such as when they describe the different perspectives of the aliens (“no-nonsense folks” vs. “menacing”), makes the text seem more ironic and…

Sorry to Bother You and “Black No More”

Sorry to Bother You. Dir. Boots Riley. Perf. Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Lily James, Armie Hammer. Annapurna Pictures, 2018. Both Schuyler’s Black No More and Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” deal with the physical changing of a African American man in order to more fully assimilate into white society, and thus become more successful. In Black No More, Max…

The Never-ending Race

DuBois took on a difficult struggle when deciding to write The Souls of Black Folk; not only did he have to tell the story of white maltreatment toward African Americans, but he had to communicate that message to a predominantly white audience. A race so clouded with prejudice at the time, white people were not going to read the…

The “Deliverance” of Henry Box Brown

“Deliverance” is a common theme in the Bible and a topic touched on by Henry Box Brown. Deliverance is the action of being rescued or set free; the theological definition is the actions of God when He rescues His people from peril. Brown uses the idea of theological deliverance to show the similarity between his…

A Phaneric Mask

The deformation of mastery displays the type of mask that H. B. Cott calls “phaneric.” The word phaneric comes from the noun phanerite, an igneous rock whose crystals are large enough to be distinguished with the unaided eye, or, as Baker would define it, “meant to advertise.” Beyoncé’s “Formation” embeds this idea of a phaneric…