Writing my final paper for African American Lit. Feel the need to get some thoughts out in a freer environment than a blank Word document. I can write whatever here and not feel my own judgment glaring back at me. Something to explore, later.
Anyway, I have a rather weak thesis at the moment and I need to work through it. My focus will be on the interplay of racism and sexism as they work together in reflecting white male privilege, especially during the Harlem Renaissance. I will be comparing and contrasting Janie Crawford from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Emma Lou Morgan from Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry. I intend to prove that the relationship between racism and sexism works in each case, in Janie's with a heavier emphasis on sexism and in Emma Lou's with a heavier emphasis on racism, to lead these women into accepting themselves as independent individuals living in a racist and sexist world which they must confront on a day to day basis.
My paper, essentially, is about identity and how individuals must personally construct their own attitudes within the context of the society they live in. I need, first, to focus on Emma Lou and Janie independently from each other, and then work to connect the ties between their separate struggles to reflect the larger picture. In this case, it's important to identify the society these women come from, how these societies are related to and differ from each other, and how they play into the modern world and modern culture. Using Janie and Emma Lou as examples, I can connect their journeys as women, as African Americans, and as African American women to the overarching journeys of the oppressed in our current culture.
OK, here the problem is: I started out vague and got vaguer. ... More vague. o_O Details are important. The first details are Emma Lou and Janie's lives and stories as presented in The Blacker the Berry and Their Eyes Were Watching God respectively. Next is the exploration of the worlds they come from, focusing heavily on how race and sex are treated within their cultures. Start here. If I go further I'll go too far. Rawr.
Introduction:
Janie & sexism:
"She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels." (72)
"...love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore." (182)
"Far from representing a happy marriage of equals between the folk and the feminist, Their Eyes Were Watching God demonstrates the many impediments to such a marriage embedded in a largely patriarchal oral narrative tradition and the difficulty faced by women seeking to enter and find voice within that tradition." (Jones & Donaldson 321)
Emma Lou & racism:
interplay of racism & sexism within both of their lives:
the wider culture at the time & commentary on realities:
the wider current culture & reflection of white male privilege:
the journey of self-discovery and identity within the confines of these wider cultures:
Janie & racism:
"Here, finally, was a woman on a quest for her own identity and, unlike so many other questing figures in black literature, her journey would take her, not away from, but deeper and deeper into blackness, the descent into the Everglades with its rich black soil, wild cane, and communal life representing immersion into black traditions." (Jones and Donaldson 322)
Emma Lou & sexism:
"As Thurman develops Emma Lou's racial self-hatred and difficulties in the world of intraracial prejudice, he highlights the fact that light-skinned black women's bodies, in the body politics of racial uplift, became a type of currency for dark-skinned black men."
the connection between light skin & femininity and dark skin & masculinity. Emma Lou wants to find a light-skinned man but continually finds herself attracted to dark-skinned men, seeing in them something stronger, rougher, less refined, a trait she sees herself as having been cursed with because of her dark skin, despite the fact that she strives to act refined and poised throughout her young life.
Conclusion:
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