Re-membering the Clichés

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-156
Author(s):  
Cindy Gabrielle
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
African American History ◽  
African Woman ◽  
Old Field ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Woman Warrior ◽  
The Past ◽  
Charles Fuller ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry

These days authors who use stereotypical characters such as the African woman warrior or the old field slave smoking his pipe and humming blues songs would probably be considered as intellectually biased or mentally colonized. Yet, for some African American writers like Amiri Baraka, Charles Fuller and Lorraine Hansberry, these characters represent a link between Black people and their past or, to use Pierre Nora’s term, they are lieux de mémoire. This is why these authors oppose the more or less general attitude which consists in dismissing these clichéd-figures from the field of representation, for this would amount to erasing an entire segment of African American history. Going against the trend of the time, these playwrights thus give a voice to those silenced by normative history and, to decolonize symbols which after all belong to the past of Black people, Baraka in The Slave (1964), Fuller in A Soldier’s Play (1981) and Hansberry in Les Blancs (1966) also invest these characters with a new significance.

scholarly journals Historiography in “Beginnings: Malcolm” by Amiri Baraka

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 22-28
Author(s):  
Maryam Hosseini ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literature Culture ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This article discusses Aimiri Baraka‘s concern with the history of black people in his poem ―Beginnings: Malcolm‖. The writers try to shed some light on the way Baraka‘s historiography challenges the white supremecist discourses through a rewriting of the African American past that blurs the boundaries of myth and history, fact and fiction, in a postmodern manner. It is argued that through the use of the central African myth of Esu/Elegba and drawing on traditions of Christianity and Western literature/culture, Baraka‘s poem offers an uncanny insight into the past.

scholarly journals Problems of Assimilation and Difficulties of Becoming a Man in LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Madhav Prasad Dahal
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Racial Hatred ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Major Argument ◽  
American Blacks ◽  
Ways Of Life

This article attempts to explore the obstacles of an African American in becoming a Man in the white community in LeRoi Jones’s play Dutchman. In doing so, it analyzes the text from African American perspective, which is a black cosmological lens applied to critically examine African American history, culture and the literature, primarily with its focus on cultural assimilation and its aftermath. LeRoi Jones, also known with his new name Amiri Baraka, in this play exposes how the black Americans fall victim of racial hatred in the process of assimilating themselves with the mainstream white ways of life. The major argument of this article is an African American’s process of assimilation with the white culture is not only a detachment from his/her origin but also his/her failure to be accepted by the new culture. It argues that in adopting a new culture, a colored American is twice the victim of his/her past and the present. To justify this stark predicament of colored American population, the article briefly looks back at the situation of the American blacks in the 1960s. It ponders on the entire behavior of Clay, a twenty years old black boy in the play, his fondness in choosing to imitate the white world as a model. His craze for white way of life is reflected in the dress up he is putting on, his mastery over the use of cosmetic language of the whites, his eating of apple given by Lula, a thirty years old white lady who morbidly tempts him for sexual intercourse, his attempt to forget his own ancestral history to make him look more like an American than a descendent of slave. The article also analyses Lula’s stereotyping of Clay and the way she dictates white values and norms.

To the Past and Beyond: African American History Films in Dialogue with the Present

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula J. Massood
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History ◽  
Nonfiction Film ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Dramas ◽  
Historical Films ◽  
American Society ◽  
Shared Commitment

Over the last decade a number of historical dramas, including Selma (Ava DuVernay, 2014), Twelve Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013), and The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker, 2016), have been the recipients of numerous accolades, screening at festivals and winning prestigious awards. The films are linked by a focus on the past, particularly the antebellum and Civil Rights eras, and a shared commitment to providing historical narratives from African American perspectives. In many ways, they continue in the tradition of the slave narrative/abolitionist melodrama, with Twelve Years a Slave perhaps the closest embodiment of the genre and Selma, despite its more contemporary setting, a close second. At first glance, the green-lighting of such historical films, particularly those that capitalize on the genre's melodramatic aspects, can be interpreted as signaling the industry's belief that antiblack racism is a thing of the past, or perhaps a conviction that American society is ready to face its “original sin” of slavery. A more generous interpretation might suggest a genuine media interest in African American history. Regardless, the continuing engagement with such narratives raises important questions about the longstanding relationship between cinema and history, and the former's capacity to relate African American stories within a medium that has its own troubled representational past as a birthright, one memorialized in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Films such as Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation and Selma reflect upon and refract many pasts and presents, prompting considerations of what's changed, and, more importantly, what hasn't. They also raise questions about the feasibility of the historical genre's ability to convey black history, especially when the form is overdetermined by contemporary expectations of historical accuracy. If Hollywood's plantation/Civil Rights formula no longer works, then productive alternatives can be created, either in fiction or nonfiction film, that cannot only relate the past but also link that past to the ongoing effects of antiblack racism in the twenty-first century.

From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community. By Lorena S. Walsh. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Pp. xxii, 335. $18.95, paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1140-1141
Author(s):  
Peter A. Coclanis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social History ◽  
American History ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
African American History ◽  
Agricultural History ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Over the past quarter century, no scholar has done more to document the social history of the colonial Chesapeake than Lorena Walsh. In so doing, she has made important scholarly contributions in a variety of areas, most notably, in agricultural history, demographic history, African American history, and women's history. Along with such scholars as Lois Green Carr, Allan Kulikoff, Darrett and Anita Rutman, and Russell Menard among others in the so-called Chesapeake School, Walsh has helped to create a powerful framework for understanding the evolution of Virginia and Maryland and for interpreting the behavior of the populations residing therein. Two of the hallmarks of the work of scholars associated with the “School” are innovative methodologies and meticulous, painstaking research, both of which characteristics are readily apparent in the volume under review.

scholarly journals Ama Ata Aidoo’s Diagnose and Representation of the Dilemma of the African American Diaspora in her play Dilemma of A Ghost

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Ammar Shamil Kadhim Al-Khafaji
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
African Woman ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Ama Ata Aidoo ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Past

The research investigates in details about the influence of cultural differences in Postcolonial Ghana as presented in Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost. The play centers on the cross cultural marriage of young couple; Ato Yawson, a Ghanaian who recently completed his studies in the United States and returns home, and Eulali, his African American bride. Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo expresses the consciousness of the diaspora of Ato Yawson and his wife and the final effort of Yawson’s mother to find a compromise. The husband is caught between the challenging demands of his wife and his family, He feels torn and irresolute as the folkloric ghost in the children's song in the play. Aidoo has a strong historical and political awareness of Africa's colonial past and post-colonial present, and the problems facing an African woman in Africa and outside it. She is like a physician, diagnoses the symptoms of the troubled postcolonial age in Africa. In her use of Dilemma tale technique, she raises difficult questions without easy solution leaving her readers to contemplate about. She calls for an action to resolve the painful dilemma of African life in a world of change where the past and present, tradition and modernity suffer a fierce conflict. The aim of the research is to prove that according to the concept of compensation there is neither absolute gain nor absolute loss for with every loss there is again and with every gain there is a loss. Without the concept of compromise the dilemma of diaspora will lead to catastrophic results.

Transitions In Time

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-89
Author(s):  
Juanita Moore
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American History ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Leadership Succession ◽  
Sustainable Leadership ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Deep Relationship

Leadership, succession, and governance in African American museums have often been affected by the deep relationship between these museums and their communities, their relative lack of financial resources, and relationships between the founder, CEOs/directors, and their boards. Unlike traditional museums, which were often founded by patrons of the arts, early African American museums were birthed by strong community leaders with a commitment to African American history and culture but usually without personal wealth. They needed and utilized community in every area of the museum’s mission and operations to fight for their very existence, which continued to shape the leadership and growth of these museums for years. Today, African American museums combine the community-driven legacy of the past with new opportunities to create sustainable leadership and governance.

Synthetic learning environment games: Prototyping a humanities-based game for teaching African American history

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adams Greenwood-Ericksen ◽  
Stephen M. Fiore ◽  
Rudy McDaniel ◽  
Sandro Scielzo ◽  
Janis A. Cannon-Bowers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History
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