Two of my favorite short stories are Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” and Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray.” Each of these stories, in different ways, interrogates the deployment of language and how language serves as a foundation to the social construction of race the subversion of that false construction. Morrison states that “‘Recitatif’ was an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a … Read More Writing Process for “Paper”
Looking through historical documents, specifically British court documents, related to the 1712 slave revolt in New York, Rebecca Hall encounters the names of four women involved in the revolt. However, their testimony doesn’t exist within the record. Instead, it simply reads, in reference to one of the women, “Having nothing to say for herself than what she had previously said . . .” The … Read More Silence and the Reclamation of Voice in Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martínez’s “Wake”
In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison highlights the ways that language obfuscates yet also illuminates he Africanist presence at the heart of American literature. Morrison delivered the lectures that would constitute Playing in the Dark in 1990, and she foresaw possible backlash from her ideas. She chose to risk backlash because the point she sought to make was vitally important. As she puts it, “for both … Read More “Racially Inflicted Language” and the Archives
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A few months ago, Jadyn DeWald asked me to participate in a reading on campus. I debated reading something about Frank Yerby or Lillian Smith; however, I chose, instead, to write a short story. Below is the story that I wrote. It is entitled “Paper.”
Over the course of the past few semesters, I have had students work in the Auburn University archives. As they did this, they discovered various items that may be of interest to my readers. One such item comes from the John Horry Dent collection. Dent was a wealthy plantation owner in Barbour County, AL, owing up to five plantations at one point. During his … Read More Letter to a Young Overseer, Unexperienced
Interminable Rambling 