scholarly journals The Characters of Children in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”: A Comparative Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-174
Author(s):  
Fuad Muttalib
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Short Story ◽  
American South ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The American South ◽  
Story Writer ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Different Cultures

This article tries to compare between two well-known American short stories, “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, from a comparative perspective. The author of the first of these stories is an African-American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. Alice Walker and the other story is written by an American short story writer, novelist and photographer, who wrote about the American South, Audra Welty. The specific reasons behind choosing these two short stories because they are written by women writers from different cultures, both deal with racial issues, but more importantly is that both include children characters that can add an attribution to be representations of the new African- American generation. Walker’s story includes the characters of two African- American daughters; Maggi and Dee, each of these characters behave in a different way, a behavior which consequently represents a special attitude towards the new generation of African- Americans. While in Welty’s story, we find the character of the grandson of the protagonist, Phoenix, who has a disease which deprived him from his ability to speak. This study analyses how these three characters provide different angles of seeing how the new generation of African- Americans is represented through a comparative outlook.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

Family Crises or Home Remedies

Hurtin' Words ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 13-56
Author(s):  
Ted Ownby
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
White People ◽  
Family Problems ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Home Remedies ◽  
Stable Family ◽  
The American South

This chapter compares discussions of family problems among African Americans and whites in the American South in the early 1900s. Both African American and white southerners discussed an ongoing crisis among African Americans, with considerable disagreement about whether they should explain that crisis, fix the problems that caused it, or pass laws to protect white people against the consequences. By contrast, white southerners imagined that most whites had stable family lives, especially when they lived on farms, and perhaps needed occasional reform movements to address specific problems.

scholarly journals Hidden Voices and Gothic Undertones: Slavery and Folklore of the American South

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Dos Reis Dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
American South ◽  
West African ◽  
Joel Chandler Harris ◽  
American Folklore ◽  
The American South ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Folk Stories

African American folklore embodies themes of the Tropical Gothic. It has an air of mystery as it has a deeper meaning underneath the different layers of plot. Folklore of the American South represents the darkness of the slavery period and its implications for African Americans. This article discusses two folklore collections: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk lore of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler Harris, and From My People: 400 Years of Folklore by Daryl Cumber Dance. Both collections illuminate the ways in which West African oral tradition became a source of empowerment, courage and wisdom for the enslaved African Americans. Folk stories served as a means of silent resistance and preserved the cultural heritage of African Americans.

Police Torture and “Legal Lynchings” in the American South

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-38
Author(s):  
Silvan Niedermeier
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American South ◽  
Black History ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Women ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
The American South

This chapter examines the connection between the torture inflicted by law enforcement officials in the South during the 1930s and 1940s and the decline in the number of lynching of African Americans during this period. The Scottsboro case displays the racist structure of the justice system and outlines the tradition of violence and pattern of African Americans accused of rape and sexual assault. The illustration of violence further examines black history involving the Reconstruction era in which African American challenged for equality against white supremacy. Emphasized in this chapter is the process of torture by lynching against African American. Lynching aimed to discipline landless blacks and serve as a fear and embed a stereotype of racial difference. The decrease of lynching occurred in the early 1900s as the South questioned their reputation, and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) promoted anti-lynching campaigns. The case of Ed Brown, Arthur Ellington, and Henry Shields documents the violent dynamics that tended to emerge as state authorities increasingly asserted their monopoly on the use of force in the South.

Trust and Confidence in Police Officers and the Institution of Policing: The Views of African Americans in the American South

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 808-838
Author(s):  
Daniel K. Pryce ◽  
Joselyne L. Chenane
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
American South ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between the police and African Americans has been beset by a lack of trust for decades. Improving this relationship is important to scholars, practitioners, and citizens; as a result, we examine in this study African Americans’ trust and confidence in the police. Using trust questions found in the literature, we interviewed 77 African Americans in Durham, NC, to assess their views about the police. We found that for the police to earn the trust of African Americans, the police should treat African Americans equitably, invest in community policing, and respect African Americans. Although some respondents do not believe that their relationship with the police could be repaired, this is a small percentage of respondents, less than 5%.

scholarly journals Sounding diasporic dislocation: The object voice in postcolonial short stories

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Jorge Sacido-Romero
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Acoustic Field ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Introductory Part ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Limited Scope

Jacques Lacan conceives of the voice as more than meets the ear: that is, as an objet a that must be subtracted from the acoustic field to preserve the coherence of reality as a symbolically constructed order in which subjects are inserted and from which they derive a sense of identity. Disruptive manifestations of the object voice are frequent in the modernist and postmodernist British short story, a form which, on account of its brevity and limited scope, renders more sharply the traumatic nature of such episodes, which thus become more memorable and engaging for readers. The short story, likewise, is an apt vehicle for postcolonial and diasporic subjectivities characterized by the tensions and psychic distress provoked by their liminal location between different cultures and their heterogenous and often conflicting interpellations. After an introductory part which elaborates on the interrelations between object voice, the short story genre and the postcolonial subject, this article examines two recent stories by Koye Oyedeji (‘Postscript from the Black Atlantic’) and Diriye Osman (‘Earthling’), in which existential conflicts become so acute that they trigger aural hallucinations, which determine the central characters’ predicament in the context of the migrant diaspora in Britain.

The specific characteristics of the "new Bosnian narrative" as exemplified by Karim Zaimović's short stories book Tajna džema od malina

2021 ◽  
Vol 2/2021 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Antonina Kurtok
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Local Literature ◽  
Great Tradition ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
Young Writer ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Ideological Context

The article is an attempt to describe the specifics of the „new Bosnian narrative” as exemplified by Karim Zaimovic’s short stories collected in the book Tajna džema od malina. The text synthetically presents the new generation of prose writers clearly referring to the heritage of the so-called „narrative Bosnia” (J. Kršić). The generation of writers contemporary to Zaimovic, which dominated the literary scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last decade of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century, was united by a creative motivation generated by common experiences, which was a reaction to the tragedy of the homeland war. The article briefly characterizes the „new narrative Bosnia”, highlighting the great tradition of narrative (pripovijetka) in local literature. Narrative/Short story is considered to be the most important and valued genre, which in its meaning goes far beyond purely literary boundaries – it has played and still plays an important role in the cultural, social, political and ideological context. In the text, it is shown that Zaimović’s stories, compared with (anti)war writing, are distinguished by: the way of constructing scenes that make up the story adapted from comic art, the presence of fantastic elements known from the work of „Borges writers”, as well as a characteristic, humorous style –where the author deals with the absurdity of war by the use of grotesque and satire, and describes the Sarajevo apocalypse using numerous metaphors and allegories. Even though, Zaimović’s texts cannot be treated as a model or the most representative example of “the new Bosnian narrative“, their unconventional way of presentation of the main theme as well as structural and compositional innovation have earned them an iconic status. The circumstances of the stories, and above all the fate of the young writer, made him a tragic symbol of the drama of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Heroism in the Age of Consumerism: The Emergence of a Moral Don Quixote in John Updike’s “A & P”

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-85
Author(s):  
Zakarya Bezdoode ◽  
Eshaq Bezdoode
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Story Writer

This paper analyzes John Updike’s short story “A & P” in the light of Max Weber’s notion of moral decision-making. A prominent contemporary American story-writer and literary critic, Updike has devoted his fiction to subjects’ rational and moral problems in the contemporary consumerist society. Updike’s lifelong probing into the middle classes’ lives is a body of fiction that raises questions about determinism, moral decision, and social responsibility, among others. “A & P” is a revealing example of such fiction and one among Updike’s most frequently anthologized short stories. The story, titled after a nationwide American shopping mall in the early twentieth century, investigates the possibility of decision-making within consumerist society. This paper demonstrates how Updike’s portrayal of his characters’ everyday lives reveals the predicament of intellectual thinking and moral decision-making in a consumerist society and warns against the loss of individual will in such societies.

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