Reunion with Self in Terry McMillan’s I Almost Forgot About You

The novel I Almost Forgot About You by Terry McMillan, which deals with the problem of finding your own identity by studying the components of personality and the context in the formation of identity, is examined. African American feminist literature consists of common themes like sense of being different, managing multiple selves and quest for identity. Terry McMillans works represent African American female characters struggle for self-realization that help them in better understanding of the present and planning for the future by reestablishing their identity. The predicament of Georgia, protagonist of the novel, is that she has lost selfhood after subsequent divorces. In due course of time, her role in the family becomes diminished; also she loses interest in the professional life. Her aimlessness and strong desire to restore self leads her to search for male companion among her old boyfriends. She believes that self-satisfaction is possible with exploration of self for that she decides to go on a train trip and tries to focus on nurturing the hobby of woodwork. It helps her in regaining her internal and external self. Thus, the leitmotif of the novel is the search for your own identity as an attempt of inquiry for the destined future.

Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York

The widow Drouillard de Volunbrun and her household boarded the brig Mary & Elizabeth in November 1796, only after many failed attempts to leave the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Like many others, they sought refuge from the violence and deprivation of the Haitian Revolution. In the party were the widow, her mother, a male companion, Marie Alphonse Cléry and, at best count, twenty enslaved people. Catastrophe struck November 18 when the Mary & Elizabeth wrecked on the west end of the Miguana Reef, off the Bahamas. The vessel and cargo were “totally” lost, but the captain, crew, and twenty-nine passengers, including the Volunbrun household, were “saved.” By the following April of 1797, the household was again at sea, bound for New York City. New York was, Shane White explains, “the center of the heaviest slaveholding region” in the North. Slaveholdings were small, with slaves a shrinking minority of the overall population. Still, one in five households held at least one slave. The household maintained a modest profile during their first four years in the city, moving to what was then the city's northeast periphery, Eagle Street near Bowery. Their neighbors were skilled workers, including butchers, masons, and men working the maritime trades. The widow put most of those she termed slaves to work manufacturing cigars.