“Who is the hero of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940)? Bigger Thomas, a black man from Chicago who murders a white woman and is executed for it.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Moving right along on this cold and rainy day, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright. I assume I needn’t belabor his importance in American letters in the twentieth century.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Who is the hero of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)? He has no name. He is a young man from the south who finds his way to a hidden existence in a coal cellar in New York.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
His premature death robbed the world of a keen, compassionate intellect. Since reading The Fire Next Time in my early twenties, my eyes have been wide open to his genius. If you want to know more about James Baldwin, I cannot recommend highly or often enough Raoul Peck’s magisterial documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”
So, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on James Baldwin does not do the man justice, but it might serve as an introduction to him for your students.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Invisible Man: (1952) A novel by Ralph Ellison. Although he wrote only two novels, Invisible Man firmly established Ellison’s reputation. This powerful story is about a nameless black man’s search for his own identity in a world that is essentially inimical to him. Through the narrator’s transition from an initial acceptance of the guise invented for him by the whites of a southern town, to his identification and eventual rejection of his role in a Black Nationalist Group in Harlem, where he becomes no more than a puppet and a pawn, Ellison portrays the irony of the African-American search for self, a portrayal that avoids excessive emotionalism through the use of irony and wit. The narrator’s struggle for identity, though perceived through the black/white racial dichotomy, is universal. In its perception of the absurdity of human existence, and its handling of this central existential theme, it has been ranked with the works of Camus and Sartre….”
[This entry in Benet’s goes on to erroneously identify Shadow and Act, a book of Ralph Ellison’s essays, as a novel. Hence the ellipses, which omits that error. That said, Mr. Ellison’s Collected Essays, which includes Shadow and Act, is a supremely edifying book. And, while searching for the preceding link, I noticed that The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison was published in December of 2019. I will certainly be on the lookout for that volume, and very much look forward to reading it.]
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”
Things Fall Apart ch.1 (1958)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Consider the history of labor in a country in which, spiritually speaking, there are no workers, only candidates for the hand of the boss’s daughter.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Charles Waddell Chestnutt: “(1858-1932) American novelist. Chestnutt, sometimes referred to as the first black American novelist, was a teacher, newspaperman, and lawyer. His first story, ‘The Goophered Grapevine,’ appeared in The Atlantic in 1887. His first book, The Conjure Woman (1899), centered on Uncle Julius McAdoo, a character with similarities to Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. His later books dealt with race prejudice, the best known being The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). In 1928, Chestnutt received the Spingarn gold medal for his pioneer work in depicting the struggles of African Americans.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Things Fall Apart: The first novel (1958) by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (born Albert Chinualumogo, 1930). Its theme is the mutual incomprehension between Ibo tribal communities and white officials in the 1890s. The title comes from the poem ‘The Second Coming’ (1921) by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939):
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.’”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, fiction/literature, poetry, readings/research
“Timothy Mofolorunso Aluko: (1918-2010) Nigerian novelist. Aluko’s novels deal with the conflicts and dilemmas attendant upon social change in a comic manner. Unlike his fellow Nigerian, Achebe, Aluko focuses on the more contemporary clash of values which accompany modernization. Aluko’s style is lightly ironic, preferring to reveal the corruption of the educated African elite in seemingly neutral tones. His novels are One Man, One Wife (1959), One Man, One Matchet (1964), Kinsman and Foreman (1966), Chief the Honorable Minister (1970), His Worshipful Majesty (1973), Wrong Ones in the Dock (1982) and A State of Our Own (1986).”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
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