Since childhood, I’d been fed the constant patriotic narrative of World War II, imbibing the events in which the United States had direct involvement from Pearl Harbor to D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and more. I never really veered from those stories until I started looking deeper into World War II a few years ago, specifically the connections between Jim Crow and the … Read More The Reverberations of World War II Syllabus
+ american literature, georgia literature, lillian e smith, Literature, race, religion, strange fruit
Over the past week, I’ve been reading Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream for my Women in the Civil Rights Memoir course and her debut novel Strange Fruit for a book club at the end of January. If memory serves, this is the third, maybe fourth, time I have read each of these books. However, I have never read them at the same time, moving back and forth between the … Read More Lillian Smith and the “Sex-Race-Religion-Economics” Tangle
+ african american literature, all the sinners bleed, american literature, ernest j gaines, Literature, s.a. cosby, southern literature, the autobiography of miss jane pittman
Recently, I wrote about some of the ways that S.A. Cosby addresses religion and faith in his recent novel All the Sinners Bleed. Today, I want to look at another aspect of his novel that stood out to me, namely the ways that he examines the roots of enslavement and racism buried deep within the soil of Charon, the South, and the nation. He does this … Read More Literary Influences in S.A. Cosby’s “All the Sinners Bleed”
+ african american literature, ernest j gaines, Literature, louisiana literature, mass incarceration, of love and dust, thirteenth amendment
When Marcus encounters Pauline on the road in the quarters in Ernest Gaines’ Of Love and Dust, he becomes angry at Pauline for ignoring his advances while she accepts Bonbon’s advances towards her. He asks, “What’s the matter with you? . . . I been working up there all night like a slave, like a dog — and all on ‘count of him. What’s the … Read More The Thirteenth Amendment and Incarceration
+ african american literature, alice walker, ashley hope perez, banned books, Literature, out of darkness, the color purple
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple has been one of the most and banned challenged books since its debut in 1982. As The Banned Books Project points out, there have been “different reasons for the book being banned, including religious objections, homosexuality, violence, African history, rape, incest, drug abuse, explicit language, and sexual scenes.” The bans and challenges to The Color Purple, as we know, have nothing to do with … Read More Banned Books Week: Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”
Interminable Rambling 