Interminable Rambling

Last post, I started a discussion of Lecrae's Church Clothes 3. Today, I want to finish a brief analysis of the short film that contains four songs from the album. At the end of the "Gangland" section of Lecrae's Church Clothes short film, an African American male falls in the street after a drive by. The camera pulls out and shows the body on the concrete. The movement of the camera upwards, away from the scene, provides an image of detachment, but it also calls into attention, when the image reoccurs at the end of "Deja Vu," the surveillance of the neighborhood. The beginning of the "Misconceptions 3" section contains numerous overhead shots of a car driving and the young gang initiate from "Gangland" riding a bike through the streets. This vantage point feels very reminiscent to police helicopters patrolling the community, continually maintaining an eye on those who live within the confines of the city.

The beginning of "Deja Vu" juxtaposes the image of the African American body on the street with images of the beach and sea gulls flying over the water. As the video progresses, it flashes between these two images and what appears to be a younger version of the victim bleeding out on the concrete. We see him as a boy with his mother on the porch dancing, but we also see him roaming the streets, alone. He rolls a tire down the street, climbs a fence that says "Do Not Enter," and concludes the section sitting in front of what appears to be a liquor store. While the boy's mother appears in the video, she also leaves him alone with himself throughout. It can be assumed, based off of the other songs in the video, that she does this because she is at work to make money to support herself and her son. Lecrae tackles this aspect partly in "Gangland" with his discussion of jobs. 

The key point of "Deja Vu" arises from Lecrae's assertion that things have not gotten better in regards to race and class relations since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Even though some advances have been made, we have not reached the place that we need to be at in this country. The song begins with a bleak image of our society: 

Yeah, the whole world's gone crazy  People riot in the streets Killin' unborn babies Catchin' shots from police 

Directly referencing the recent events from Baltimore to Ferguson, Lecrae questions his faith and if struggles with keeping his emotions in check. Near the end of the first verse, Lecrae relates current events to those in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. He raps, 

I done seen days go crazy, time fly by Maybe it was yesterday or maybe 65 Peace then war, sworn in, die All too familiar, more lifetimes

Things have not changed, hence the Deja Vu. Even with all of this repetition, Lecrae does offer hope by arguing that while "some days are a nightmare," some of those dreams eventually come true because, in his words, "the Lord's still right there." 

The juxtaposition of the body on the street and the beach concludes this section of the video when we see the man, after walking into the ocean, floating in the water. The image conjures up ideas of rebirth and cleansing, causing the viewer to think about what may possibly await us on the other side. On another level, the juxtaposition, with the boy sitting in front of the liquor store, calls to mind thoughts regarding a lack of mobility. It makes me think of students I taught who lived less that one hour from the Mississippi River. It turns out that these students, in high school, had never seen the river before. They had possibly never even been out of their community less than sixty miles from the Mighty Mississippi. Coupled with surveillance, this creates a community that becomes locked into a specific area, eventually possibly even turning inward as in "Gangland." 

The video concludes with "Misconceptions 3," a song that samples Nas's "N.Y. State of Mind." By sampling Nas's song, Lecrae links his song, and ultimately the video, to Nas's Illmatic (1994), an album that, like James Baldwin's essays on Harlem, provide the nation, and the world, with a view of life within the communities that Nas and Lecrae resided within. Nas's song draws upon images of criminality in the community, police presence, and the effects that those issues have on those who strive to do their best in while living in substandard conditions. (Look at my post on Vern E. Smith's The Jones Men for more on this issue.) While the entire song contains images that we could unpack here, I want to focus on a specific line that highlights what I have been discussing here. In the second verse, Nas raps about the Queensbridge Housing Projects, ". . . each block is like a maze/ full of black rats trapped plus the island is packed." Here, he compares the housing project with incarceration (block) and dehumanization (rats). Since the island (Rikers Island) is packed, Queensbridge will have to do for containment. 

In "Misconceptions 3," Jackie Hill Perry calls back to Nas in the third verse. She begins by asking a series of questions: 

They told me to rap: What's that? Is it tracks? Is it facts? Is it trap? Is it rats? What metaphor? Is you ready for the medic stored inside it? 

Perry's focus in the verse is different from Nas's, but she asks what the role of rap actually is. By referencing "trap" and "rats," she brings to mind Nas's line of people being trapped in mazes like rats, dehumanized and restricted. Ultimately, Perry concludes that rap becomes a tool that can lead to change, much like Nas does when he references Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" in his own song. 

Concluding, I want to take a second an point out the concluding scene in the video. The gang initiate from "Gangland" finds his comrade on the street, dead. His bike is the one that the camera follows at the start of "Misconceptions 3." The video partly traces his journey to a secluded spot where he finds a gun buried in a cigar box. He picks the gun up and then rides away, presumably in search of the killers. However, the video ends with an image of him throwing the gun into the water. Watching this scene, I could not help but think about other African American texts that presents guns as symbols, possibly of manhood. Richard Wright's "Almos' a Man" immediately came to mind. Rather than using the gun, though, the boy throws it away, signifying that manhood does not reside behind the barrel of the gun.

There is so much more that I could discuss here; however, that would take a very long time to do. After you watch the video and listen to the songs, let me know what you think in the comments below. I'm interested to hear your thoughts about this video, specifically in relation to Beyonce's "Formation" and Kendrick Lamar's "Alright."

On Saturday, Beyoncé dropped a new song and music video for "Formation." The move, in effect, broke the Internet. I could spend this time talking about the video and its numerous messages, layers upon layers, that need to be peeled back, taken in, and digested before I can provide any adequate analysis. Others have already done a better job at that aspect than I ever could, partly because I have never truly been a fan of Beyonce's music, so her music and songs have never really affected me. However, "Formation" presents multitudinous images that remind me of Kendrick Lamar's "Alright."

Rather than focusing on Beyoncé or Kendrick, I want to examine Lecrae's short film, Church Clothes, and the four songs that populate the seventeen minute movement. The film dropped, unexpectedly, in the same manner that "Formation" and "Alright" did. Lecrae released Church Clothes 3, his third mix-tape, on January 15, 2016. While the masses are praising Beyonce's song and video, as they should for the message it conveys, they also need to take notice of Lecrae's album, one that, like Beyoncé, plays with the past and brings a message to the present. It must be noted, though, that the video does not confront white supremacy in the same way that Beyonce's and Kendrick's do. Each of those videos contain a police presence, subservient in each instance. Lecrae's video does not contain a white presence, which is interesting. The songs confront a racist system, but the video only focuses on intraracial interactions. 

The short film contains four songs from Lecrae's mix-tape: "It Is What It Is," "Gangland," Deja Vu," and Misconceptions 3." Moving from one song to the next, the videos draw a path from Lecrae in his house tripping over his children's toys to images of gang violence to images of a family scene with a young boy and his mother and finally to an image of community. One of the most interesting images in the film occurs near the very beginning when the camera zooms in on an eight-track tape case that contains various albums. 

Following the trajectory of the film, it could be argued that Lecrae presents the same message as Beyoncé, one of community and relationships. In this manner, the presentations reminds me of Beyonce's call to action and unity in "Formation." Lecrae's representations remind me of Ernest Gaines. Gaines, while he does present racism in full view,  also limits it to the margins at times, focusing on the ways that that oppression affects those in the community trying to exist in a space where they are continually subjected to surveillance and restrictions on their movement.  

Dissecting every aspect of Church Clothes would take more time that I have here, but I want to take the opportunity to focus on a few aspects that I want to highlight in the video and the songs that accompany it. To begin with, the opening scene shows a man getting into a car and opening a box of 8-track tapes. Within the box, we see Lecrae's Church Clothes amongst a handful of other tapes. The labels on most of the tapes cannot be read; however, immediately below Church Clothes is Dueling Banjos: From the Original Soundtrack of Deliverance from the Southern Gothic book and film of the same name.  At the top right hand corner, Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden" can clearly be seen. I cannot make out the other items. It does not appear that any Motown, blues, jazz, or soul albums occupy the case. With this image. the film takes on a place, notably Southern, and a presence. I do not know much about Anderson's song, but I do know that when people hear "Dueling Banjos" certain connotations arise in their minds about the South and its inhabitants. As I said before, the film does not forefront overt confrontations with oppression and racism by white society, but in the placement of the Lecrae's mix-tape among the Anderson's and "Dueling Banjos," the film does comment, subtly, on the community on the margins, as in Gaines's work.

After, "It Is What It Is," a song and video portion that focus on Lecrae's life as someone who has escaped the "ghetto" environment, has kids, and lives a successful life, the color scheme switches to black and white as "Gangland" begins. Here, the video traces the path of a young African American male becoming part of a gang in the community. Lecrae presents a history of activists and fighters who worked for equality and unity within the community to battles against a society that subjected people, and continues to subject them, to poverty and oppression. He references Eldridge Cleaver, Bunchy Carter, Geronimo Pratt, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King Jr. Even when the community tried to help itself, the hegemonic power structure worked to keep it down, and the second half of the song focuses on this aspect. Lecrae comments that the "perfect storm" arose after segregation when the inner cities saw white flight and companies fleeing for cheaper labor, all leading to increased unemployment and poverty. Along with this, the movement of drugs coming in led some to see a quick way to get money. Perhaps the strongest verse in this song comes from Propaganda who begins with the irony of Robert E. Lee High School in Alabama. He raps:

There's a high school in Alabama named after Robert E. Lee And it's 89% black, you don't see the irony? What it do to a psyche, it's simple, you don't like me.

Toni Morrison, in a 1998 US News and World Report article, called James Wilcox's Modern Baptists (1983) one of her three "favorite works by unsung writers." This, of course, is high praise coming from such a luminary in American letters, and one read through Wilcox's novel will more than live up to Morrison's claim. Last week, I reread Wilcox's first novel in preparation for the NEH Summer Institute "Ernest J. Gaines and the Southern Experience" which will take place at UL Lafayette this coming June. As could be expected, my reading was focused, partly, on the similarities and differences between Gaines's and Wilcox's representations of the South, and specifically Louisiana. 

I could take this time to focus on those aspects of the novel; however, as I read about Carl Robert "Bobby" Pickens, his brother Francis Xavier (F.X.), Burma LaStelle, and Donna Lee Keely, I couldn't help but think about other Louisiana authors as well. In fact, for the majority of the novel, I kept conflating Binx Bolling from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer (1961) and Ignatius Reilly from John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) with Bobby Pickens's search for himself throughout the novel. In an interview with John Lowe, Wilcox stated that he had not read Toole's novel as of 1997; however, I could not help but see the Roman Catholic Reilly in the Protestant Pickens. 

Both Reilly and Pickens exist removed, in a way, from reality. Ignatius does not necessarily realize, or for that matter care, what effects his actions have on those around him, including his own other. He preaches truth, or some semblance of it, and he never really acts completely truthful throughout his picaresque adventure. Likewise, Pickens prides himself on telling the truth; however, he has moments when he skews that truth in order to save himself and possibly harm those around him: telling Toinette he did not steal her watch and telling people that he beat up F.X. Numerous people in Ignatius's and Pickens's lives work to bring the boyish men around. These attempts fail with Ignatius becomes he ultimately leaves everyone who cares for him behind when he sets out for New York with Myrna; Pickens, on the other hand, becomes connected with his family and the friends in the end when F.X. takes him to a Christmas party at Donna Lee's.

One similarity that exemplifies Rielly's and Pickens's inability to meaningfully connect with those around them occurs before the start of either novel. Both characters went to college, for a short time, and neither one actually finished. Reilly decided that the bus ride over Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans to Baton Rouge was scary, and he started a kerfuffle with a professor. Pickens, on the other hand, could not stand the dorms. After telling Burma that he was in the class of 1963 at St. Jude, the narrator intones, "He did not feel like telling her he hadn't graduated but had dropped out his junior year because he hated living in the dorm. Everyone was always snapping rattails at you in the shower" (14). For Pickens, the camaraderie, or I would say intimacy, scared him. 

Like Binx Bolling in Percy's novel, Pickens seeks to find himself and break out of the monotony of his mundane existence. While Percy delves deep into the psyche of Bolling through a first person point of view, Wilcox keeps a distance from Pickens, allowing the omniscient narrator to chronicle multiple characters throughout the novel. Pickens exists day-to-day, wanting to sit at home in his underwear to watch television. Rather than living life fully, Pickens fakes it. In order to be seen, he goes to cultural events in the hopes that someone will see him and notice him; however, he cannot truly interact with the people there because of his lack of intimacy. When he tries to approach Jerry and Jill at the opera, he falters and they make a quick escape. 

From the very beginning of The Moviegoer, Binx acknowledges his mundane, ordinary existence. When discussing the contents of his wallet, he echoes William H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" when he comments on the items that populate his billfold: "It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a new styrene card with one's name on it certifying, so to speak, one's right to exist" (7). Binx searches, throughout the, for his reason to exist. Likewise, Mr. Pickens lives life in a similar manner. While he is not as overt in his search for the reasons why he exists, he struggles to escape the mundane, ordinary existence he lives as a middle aged college drop out who begins the novel as an assistant manager at Sonny Boy. Wilcox does not go off on long tangential philosophical passages like Percy or Toole do. Instead, Wilcox lets the action take over. 

These are not the only similarities between these books, but they are the major ones that I noticed when reading Wilcox's novel. Next post, I will discuss the African American presence in Modern Baptists and Hunk City. What similarities do you see? As usual, let me know in the comments below.

Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. 

Paul Revere's caricature of King Philip (1772)

Last post, I wrote briefly about Philip F. Gura's biography of William Apess, and I discussed some of the links between Apess and Hosea Easton. Along with the links between Apess and the abolitionist movement, I have been intrigued with the relationship between Apess and the literary production of the period. Gura speaks to this topic some; however, as a historian, he presents the historical facts surrounding the relationship. In this post, I will briefly outline my thoughts on how Apess, and specifically his references to King Philip, relate to the emergence of a distinct American literature during the early part of the nineteenth century. I will not go in to great detail, but the information will provide a quick view that I plan to explore further in the future.

At the beginning of his autobiography A Son of the Forest (1829), William Apess claims that his "grandfather was a white man and married a female attached to the royal family of Philip, king of the Pequot tribe of Indians, so well known in that part of American history which relates to the wars between the whites and the natives" (3-4). On the surface, this statement on his ancestry does not appear unique In an autobiography. While it does reinforce that Native Americans have not vanished from New England, Apess's specific deployment of King Philip, and his later Eulogy on King Philip (1837) serves another more subversive motive. 

In his Eulogy on King Philip, Apess begins by stating that he does "not arise to spread before you the fame of a noted warrior, whose natural abilities shone like those of the great and mighty Philip of Greece, or of Alexander the Great, or like those of Washington--whose virtues and patriotism are engraved on the hearts of [his] audience" (277). Instead, Apess presents a eulogy for Philip to present him as a man who exhibited sympathy, nobleness, talents, and other aspects of leadership and civilization.  

By linking himself to King Philip through his lineage and the eulogy, Apess seeks to respond to the increasing relevance of King Philip during the American cultural mileu of the 1820s and 1830s. Starting with James Eastburn and Robert Charles Sands's Yamoyden, A Tale of the Wars of King Philip: In Six Cantos (1820) and Washington Irving's "Philip of Pokanoket" in his Sketch Book (1819-1820), Philip made his appearance in American literature. His presence continued through the decade with texts that obviously pulled from Irving, Charles, and Sands or from Philip's story directly. These texts included Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok (1824), Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie (1827), James Fenimore Cooper's The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (1829), and John Augustus Stone's Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829). Adding to this resurgence,the North American Review in 1831 argued:

But as it was, Philip did and endured enough to immortalize him as a warrior, a statesman, and we may add, as a high-minded and noble patriot. Whatever might be the prejudice against him in the days of terror produced by his prowess, there are both the magnanimity and the calmness in these times, to do him the justice he deserves. He fought and fell,--miserably, indeed, but gloriously,--the avenger of his own household, the worshipper of his own gods, the guardian of his own honor, a martyr for the soil which was his birth-place, and the proud liberty which was his birthright. (419)

Earlier, when the North American Review provided its thoughts on Sedgwick's Hope Leslie in 1828, the reviewer claims "that the characters of our first settlers, the peculiar features of their age, their troubles, their struggles, their wars, government, manners, opinions, and institutions, all fresh and singular, with the wild scenes amidst which they moved, and the wild men by whom they were surrounded, furnished the most admirable materials for literary fabrics of purely national manufacture, and original patterns, both in poetry and prose" (12). 

Image that appeared in Apess's Eulogy

Even if the authors presented their Native American characters as noble and highlighted their "prowess," the Native Americans inevitably vanished at the end of the novel, poem, or play, reinforcing the belief that Native Americans would disappear under the feet of "civilization" as it methodically plodded towards them. Along with this, the texts arose out of national discussions surrounding Native American removal, specifically Cherokee and Creek, in the Southeastern United States. This is the mileu that Apess wrote within. This is the mileu that brings a heightened significance to his ancestry and to his eulogy for his ancestor. This is the mileu that Apess countered by showing the United States that Native Americans existed, and thrived, among them. 

This post only touches on the broad topic of King Philip, William Apess, and American literature that I outline here. I am doing more research on this topic, so stay tuned for more in the future. If you would like to find out more about King Philip, his life and his impact of early American culture, see Jill Lepore's The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (1998). What are your thoughts? Observations? Let me know in the comments below. 

Note: Philip was not King of the Pequots, as Apess says. Barry O'Connell and Philip F. Gura discuss this. 

Apess, William. On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot. Ed. Barry O'Connell. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. 

"Hope Leslie; or Early Times in Massachusetts." North American Review 26.59 (1828): 403-420.

If you are at all interested in Native American or Early American literature, I would highly recommend reading Philip F. Gura's biography of William Apess (Pequot). The Life of William Apess, Pequot chronicles Apess's life based partly on Apess's own writings but also on historical documents such as newspapers, correspondence, and other items. Gura takes all of this information and paints a portrait of Apess that further solidifies the activist's importance in our understanding of American history and literature by showing how Apess existed within the specific miles of early nineteenth century America and how he worked tirelessly to argue for the rights of his own people and other Native American tribes, from the Mashpee to the Cherokee.

There are many aspects of Apess's life and career that are worth more in-depth discussion, and those are the aspects that I want to briefly explore today. The most interesting aspect of Apess's career, and the one that I have written about before, deals with his interaction with the abolitionist movement and more specifically with participants in that movement. As I have mentioned before, William Lloyd Garrison repeatedly put notices for Apess's lectures in his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. While now concrete evidence exists, at least to this point, that Apess came into contact with African American activists such as David Walker, Hosea Easton, Maria Stewart, and others, Gura makes the point that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Apess interacted with, or at least heard and knew of, these individuals. 

Gura does not spend an exorbitant amount of time on the links between Apess and these other activists; this is partly understandable because the book serves as a biography and not as a literary analysis. In this respect, Gura mirrors Maureen Konkle's and others quick mentions of the possible connections between activists like Apess and Easton. Even though we know that each of these authors focus on the rights of oppressed groups, when we delve into the texts in greater length than Grua does, we discover that each of these authors have similarities on the rhetorical level that need to be examined. I examine these rhetorical connections in relation to the influence of Scottish Enlightenment rhetoric in "We wish to plead our own cause": Rhetorical Links Between Native Americans and African Americans during the 1820s and 1830s. 

In my work, I discuss the ways that Apess and Easton both draw on the idea of sympathy to highlight the "psychological disposition, historically formed, [that] had to be eliminated" (Gura 59). Both authors describe the ways that language and wide held beliefs of the inferiority of "colored" people led to psychological indoctrination of the racist ideas in the minds of whites and oppressed groups. Apess does this in his autobiography A Son of the Forest and other writings. In his autobiography Apess relates a childhood story where, as an indentured servant, he was picking berries in the forest and came across a couple of "dark skinned" women. Perceiving them to be "Indians," he ran home to his master scared that they would harm him. His fears arose from the negative images that his master and other whites painted of Native Americans. Elsewhere, Apess rejects the use of the disparaging term "Indian," pointing out its negative effects on the psyche of those who say it and hear it. 

Likewise, Easton, in his A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; and the Prejudice Exercised towards Them: With a Sermon of the Duty of the Church to Them (1837), highlights the dangerous effects of words, in his case "nigger." Easton writes, "Negro or nigger, is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon them as an inferior race, and also to express their deformity of person" (105). He then proceeds to discuss the way the term becomes a marker through its use in describing body parts, seats of discipline in schools, and as a specter who could come and discipline or take away a child when he or she becomes unruly. All of these uses, among whites, becomes "most disastrous upon the mind of the community; having been instructed from youth to look upon a black man in no other light than a slave, and having associated that idea the low calling of a slave, they cannot look upon him in any other light" (108).

What I did not consider upon first researching the connections between Easton and Apess was each activist's relation to the Methodist ministry. Grua notes that both men become linked together because each on did not have the ability to ascend to permanent places within the church ministry because of their race. When I begin to expand on this work, I plan to look at this aspect, especially in relation to the continued idea of sympathy and sentimentalism. What are your thoughts? What other links do you see between the authors mentioned in this post? As usual, let me know in the comments below. 

Note: Hosea Easton was possibly mixed race (African American and Wompanoag).

Easton, Hosea. To Heal the Scourge of Prejudice: The Life and Writings of Hosea Easton. Eds. George R. Price and James Brewer Stewart. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. 

James V. Hatch and Ted Shine's two-volume Black Theatre USA has graced my bookshelf for a few years. Occasionally, I pull one of the volumes down to read or reread a play. A couple of weeks ago, I pulled down volume one and read Ira Aldrige's translation of Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois's Le Docteur Noir (1846). Aldridge's The Black Doctor (1846) contains differences from Anciet-Bourgeois's original play and other translations. I have not looked at these other texts, so I cannot comment on how Aldrifge's additions or subtractions change the play. However, Keith Byerman has written about these differences in his essay "Creating the Black Hero: Ira Aldridge's The Black Doctor" in Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius (2007).   

Born in New York in 1807, Aldridge attended the African Free School and in 1825, he left the United States for London. Aldridge performed in numerous Shakespearean plays, performing the roles of Othello, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear amongst others. He received a level of recognition and fame in England, and later in Europe, that he would never obtain in the Antebellum United States, no matter if he performed in the North or not. Near the en dog his life, in 1867, plans were in motion to have Aldridge tour the United States; however, his death prevented such a tour to take place. For more information on Aldridge, see Bruce Ware Allen's blog post on the tragedian. 

Today, I want to briefly discuss The Black Doctor, a melodrama that tackles the topics of race and class with a European backdrop. Aldridge played Fabian, a "black doctor" who saves the Pauline Reynerie, the daughter of a French aristocrat, from death. After healing Pauline, the two fall in love, and they privately marry, leading to a conflict with Pauline's mother based on class and race. The plot follows predictable lines of melodrama and romance leading to Fabian's death by the end of the play. 

When I read this play, and think about Fabian, I cannot help but think about the ideas of racial uplift and assimilation that pervaded African American communities during the nineteenth century. Fabian's position, as an ex-slave who became a doctor, does not gain anything with his "respectable" position as a doctor. Even though he saves Pauline, her family does not think that he should hold the same social standing as themselves because of his race and class. The condescending attitude towards Fabian, along with the loss of his love, causes him to go mad while in the Bastille as it comes under siege during the French Revolution. 

Fabian's position, in part, reminds me of Dr. William Miller in Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Like Fabian, Dr. Miller receives rejection from the white characters in the novel. When Major Carteret's son chokes, Dr. Price informs the major that Dr. Miller is the best doctor to save the child; however, the major and his wife do not want the African American physician in their house, and Dr. Price performs the procedure to save the Carteret child. At the end of the novel, Mrs. Carteret entreaty Dr. Miller to save her child during the race riot that erupts in the town. Dr. Miller refuses because the Carteret's refused to recognize his humanity. 

While written close to 60 years apart, both Aldridge's play and Chesnutt's novel highlight Antebleeum and Post Civil War struggles of African Americans and those of African descent around the world who strived to exist on a equal plane with whites. Both texts show, just as the first African American newspaper Freedom's Journal eventually did, that respectibility and morality did not coincide with equality. In many ways, this same though pervades today; however, we still see that individuals base their preconceived notions and perceptions on skin color or nationality. Through reading these texts, we can see where we have been, where we remain, and where we need to eventually go.   

Chesnutt's novel, unlike Aldridge's play, ends on an ambiguous note. After Dr. Miller refuses to save the Carteret's son, he begins to leave with his wife Janet (Mrs. Carteret's mulatto half-sister). After he Dr. Miller catches Mrs. Carteret as she begins to faint, he asks parents, "Is the child still alive?" (195). Responding affirmatively, the novel ends with Evans calling down the stairs, "There's room enough, but none to spare" (195). at this, the novel ends. We do not know if Dr. Miller heads up the stairs, and if he does, we do not know if he saves the child. This is where we come in. 

Aldridge as Othello

When we judge or limit people based on their race, nationality, or class, we hurt them as well as ourselves. How can we claim to live in a society with democratic ideals when we still treat individuals in the same way we did during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries? Fabian, like Charles Blow's son, gets ostracized and profiled because of the color of his skin. Dr. Miller, like Kiese Laymon, receives rejection because of the color of his skin. When one asks why we should care about early American literature or African American literature, show them that the experiences these authors went through still exist. The question is, what will we do to flip the script? What will we do to make sure the students in Detroit, MI, receive the respect and education they deserve? What will we do to make sure that Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, and countless others do not happen again? What will we do? 

As I reread Lyle Saxon's Children of Strangers (1937) for the 2016 NEH Summer Institute "Ernest J. Gaines and the Southern Experience," I couldn't help but think about the idea of authenticity and reality when I came to the final section in the book. There, Flossie Smith, Adelaide Randolph's friend, encounters the fallen Famie as she leaves Easter service with Henry Tyler. Upon first meeting Famie years earlier, Flossie celebrates the mulatto's near whiteness and praises her beauty; however, by the end of the novel, Flossie does not even recognize Famie as she sits on the mule behind Henry Tyler.

Flossie tells her husband that she must take a picture of the "wonderful" couple. When she stops Henry Tyler, she directs him and Famie in the manner that she wants them to pose. She says, "Yes, turn the mule around a little and ask your wife to look at me . . . What's the matter, is she shy? Lift up your head, I can't see your face in that sunbonnet . . . Well, never mind, you'll look coy with your head down. Maybe it will be better that way, more natural. Now, boy, you smile. Don't look so solemn" (294). Famie does not recognize the couple as anything more than a sort of commodity, something that she can take a picture of and "cherish" in New Orleans when she wants to recall the grand life that Adelaide and Guy Randolph live on Cane River. When Harry asks her to come out of the road, Flossie wonders if she has "the grandest picture" because the couple "were so typical" (294). The novel concludes with Flossie exclaiming, "I always say that niggers are the happiest people on earth. Not a care in the world" (294). Flossie's desire for a picture, and her assumptions about the life that Henry Tyler and Famie lead show that sees them as nothing more than an oddity, as objects that she can exploit for her own personal pleasure. 

In many ways, the entirety of Saxon's novel leads up to this point. The novel traces the story of Famie Vidal and shows her humanity, along with that of Numa, Henry Tyler, and others. In this way, Saxon counters Faulkner's presentations of African Americans such as Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury who gets relegated to the kitchen. It would take a much longer post to tease out these aspects of the novel, and it must be said that while Saxon progresses from Faulkner in his represenation, his novel still contains some negative aspects when it comes to his representation of African Americans, mulattoes, and others. 

Rather than focusing on those aspects for the rest of this post, I want to touch on the idea of the picture that Flossie takes at the end of the novel. By taking the picture, Flossie immortalizes Henry Tyler and Famie, proving they existed. However, she does not provide them any agency within the process. She directs the couple on how they should position themselves, and she snaps the picture. They become nothing more than a background, lifeless. This encounter should be read in relation to Henry Tyler's earlier encounter with Paul Randolph in the novel. 

Paul, an artist, has come home to Yucca Plantation to die. While in his cabin, he befriends Henry Tyler, but an impenetrable fence separates the two men. As they talk, Paul shows Henry a painting he has been working on. The picture shows "a stretch of cotton field, with a plow and a nigger coming along" (161). Paul tells Henry Tyler that the man in the picture is him, and Henry feels pleased, even though "Mr. Paul had put him in a picture without Henry knowing a thing about it" (161). Unlike Flossie's picture, Paul's shows Henry working, existing. Paul does not direct Henry, he just observes and paints what he sees. 

However, even though Paul does not act the same way that Flossie does, in fact he wants to eradicate the system of share cropping, he still has a certain position in regards to Henry. Even though he does not exist as a slave, "Henry, in a sense, belonged to Mr. [Guy] Randolph just as the land did" (154). Paul's brother, in essence, owns Henry. Paul informs Henry that he wants to take him on as a servant, and Henry agrees. Here, Paul wants to show Henry a better life, by educating him while he works as a servant. Henry agrees to do this, but before he can assume the position, Paul dies. While Paul would, no doubt, be benevolent, Henry would still exist in a state of submission to a white man. 

All of this reminds me, to some extent, of Alice Walker's "Everyday Use." There, pictures play the same role, as a means of capturing, without really exploring, conditions. Unlike Flossie and Paul, though, Wangero (Dee) takes pictures of her old home to validate where she came from, to show those back at school that she made it out. She wants to highlight her own authenticity. Like Flossie, Wangero stages the pictures. She tells her mother not to get up, and "[s]he never takes a shot without making sure the house is included" (29). When a cow meanders by, she takes a picture with the cow, house, Momma, and Maggie. Wangero's actions mirror Flossie's in the fact that she does not necessarily want the pictures to reflect upon positively; instead, they exist as objects that do not recognize the humanity they contain. Famie and Henry Tyler become non-existent, and Wangero's sister and mother exist as nothing more than a past, one that only serves to show where she came from. 

Right now, I am working out these thoughts, but I find the use of pictures, in both texts fascinating. In both, the idea of possession and ownership continually appears. These concepts play in to the discussion of photographs and should be looked at in greater detail with these texts. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below? 

Saxon, Lyle. Children of Strangers. New Orleans: Robert L. Cramer & Co., 1948. Print. 

The word "home" carries connotations of safety, security, and family; however, for Roy Williams in Langston Hughes's "Home" (1933),  his return to Missouri presents him with a confrontation that ultimately leads to his death at the hands of the white townspeople. Today, I want to look at Hughes's story in relation to Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" from In Our Time (1925). Both stories deal with young men returning from Europe, albeit at different times and under different circumstances. The African American Roy returns home after experiencing a level of freedom in Europe as he toured the continent playing music. Harold Krebs, in Hemingway's story, comes back home after the Great War, an experience that alienates him from his family and those in the town. Apart from homecomings, what ties these two stories together? Should we even look at them in relation to one another?

According to Gary Holcomb and Charles Scruggs in their introduction to Hemingway and the Black Renaissance (2012), Hughes, and other African American authors of th Harlem Renaissance looked to Hemingway for stylistic and thematic inspiration. Specifically, Holcomb and Scruggs argue that these authors looked to Hemingway for his focus on the prevalence of violence in the modern world and notably in America. For these authors,  "[v]iolence and warfare were themes that African American writers knew something about," and this link can be seen in texts that litter the interwar period (Holcomb and Scruggs 10). The violence that Krebs experiences does not occur at home; instead, the memories of the atrocities and gruesomeness he encountered manifest themselves in his memories as he tries to relate to the "unchanged" town that he left. Roy, on the other hand, comes into contact with a European society struggling to bounce back after the war: "Folks catch hell in Europe . . . I never saw people as hungry as this, not even Negroes a home" (34). Roy does not experience racism in Europe; he encounters humanity and openness. This, though, causes him forget his "home" when he returns to Missouri. 

Upon arriving home, townsfolk greet Krebs with respect and honor. They want to know about what he, and other soldiers, saw and did during the war. Even though he returned "much too late," Krebs makes up stories to tell the people in town. This does not appease him, or others. Telling the lies, and even thinking about the war, causes Krebs to be depressed, not wanting to do anything with anyone in the town. Unlike Krebs, Roy returns to leers and racism from the moment he disembarks the train. Some call him "[a]n uppity nigger," and when he sees Charlie Mumford, a white playmate from childhood, Roy offers his hand, forgetting he has returned to America and the South (36). Observing this, and Roy's comment that he has returned home to see his mother, another "white loafer" tells him, "I hope she's gladden to see yuh than we are" (36). Krebs's alienation comes from the affects of war, and Roy's rise from recognition of the color of his skin: "For the first time in half a dozen year [Roy] felt his color. He was home" (37).

Bot Krebs and Roy return home to their mothers, and both women play an important role in the stories. For Krebs, his mother tries to comfort him and make the transition home smooth. However, Krebs refuses the support and flatly tells his other that he does not love her and that he does not know how to pray anymore. Roy's sickness causes him to come home in order to see his mother. He sits with her, listens to her, and he even plays in the church when she asks him to. For Krebs, his mother and the prayer represent the past, something that modernity and the war has obliterated, rendering it useless to anyone trying to survive in the new world. To Roy, these provide a place of solace and repose, a space where he can come to rest his soul during a time of sickness and struggle. 

Returning to the idea of violence and war mentioned earlier, Krebs does not come into contact with either violence or war at home; they remain at arms length. Violence and war, though, do cause Krebs to flee the past that he knew, and he ultimately decides to leave his hometown for Kansas City, hopefully to start a new life. Unfortunately, Roy does not have this opportunity. The violence and war that exist at a distance from Krebs occur at home for Roy. His time in Europe causes him to forget the way he is "supposed" to behave around whites at home. Encountering Miss Reese in the street, Roy "[forgot] he wasn't in Europe, [and] he took off his hat and his gloves, and held out his hand to this lady who understood music" (47). This simple act causes those who see it to react with extreme vitriol. They throw bricks and beat Roy senseless because they perceive his actions as "insulting [to] a White Woman--stacking a WHITE woman--RAPING A WHITE WOMAN" (47-48). The crowd's deep ingrained racism lead them to jump to ludicrous conclusion and to eventually lynch Roy.

While Hughes's story does not stylistically resemble Hemingway's in its entirety, it thematically relates to the ideas of violence and war that Hemnigway portrays through the character of Harold Krebs. What are your thoughts? What other texts from teh Harlem Renaissance, or the interwar period, would you suggest looking at in relation to Hemingway and the themes of violence and war? Let me know in the comments below. 

Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home." In Our Time. New York: Scribner, 1996. 69-77. 

Holcomb, Gary and Charles Scruggs. "Hemingway and the Black Renaissance." Hemingway and the Black Renaissance. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.1-26.

Reading 2015 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence winner T. Geronimo Johnson's Welcome to Braggsville (2015), I noticed the continuous intersections between the histories of Native Americans and African Americans within this country, and specifically in regards to Georgia. These intersections are nothing new; Alice Walker incorporates them in The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), and activists such as David Walker and Hosea Easton during the Antebellum period highlighted the connections. Today, I want to briefly discuss the Native American presence (on the periphery) in Johnson's novel and provide a little background on the way that the Abolitionist movement linked the Native American and African American calls for citizenship together.

Chronicling the history of Braggsville, GA, the narrator describes Raymond Bragg's ascendancy writhin the state and the nation, commenting that Bragg fought "along side Old Hickory himself, as Jackson would soon be known, in the battle of Negro Fort (1816) and again in the First Seminole War (1817-1818)" (112). These two events, and the subsequent Seminole Wars, took place to keep slaves from running away to Florida (a Spanish colony at the time) where they would live in the swamps and where Seminoles would take them in as part of the community. If this practice continued, whites feared slave revolts and uprisings similar to that in San Domingue during the latter part of the eighteenth century. 

Later, after Old Hickory became President of the United States, Bragg hoped to have the capital of Georgia moved to Braggsville. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in May 1830. This act came about partly because of the discovery of gold on Cherokee land and partly out of the desire to expand agricultural production, which would include slavery, further inland. Speaking of Bragg's desire to move the capital, the narrator says, "It was August 1830. The natives were peacefully relocated to Oklahoma, and the land prices once more stable, in no small part because of the valor of men like Bragg and Jackson" (emphasis added, 112). The capital did not relocate to Bragg's "fecund twenty-five thousand acres," and he remained irritated by the fact till his death. 

This is not the only reference to Native Americans in Johnson's novel. The group of students who stage a "performative intervention" against the Civil War reenactment in the town label themselves the Four Little Indians, and Candice, one of the group, maintains she has Native American ancestry. Perhaps most interesting is that the group, which consists of a white male, white female, African American male, and Asian American male, stages their first "performative intervention" at Six Flags in Vallejo, CA. They stage the intervention to spread the symbolic ashes of Ishi over the land him and his people once inhabited. Ishi became a side-show attraction, and his "benefactor," Alfred Kroeber, "installed Ishi in a comfortable apartment in the Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkely" (36). Ishi became, as Charlie sort of does, a representation of a person rather than a person in and of himself. 

These connections remind me of the intersections between calls for Native American and African American rights during the early part of the nineteenth century. Before the Indian Removal Act, abolitionist such as Lydia Maria Child and William Llyod Garrison argued against Native American removal and for the gradual emancipation of slaves. However, once Jackson signed the act, the movement shifted its focus call for the immediate emancipation of slaves and put calls for Native American rights on the back burner. The group did reignite these calls, though, only after the Civil War and the end of "slavery." 

August 13, 1831 Masthead

The clearest image of this link, and shift, can be seen in the first masthead of Garrison's The Liberator. The masthead appeared for the first time on August 13, 1831, and it shows the atrocities of slavery and the slave trade in gruesome detail. Prominently featured in the middle, one sees a slave auction taking place with a sign that reads "Slaves Horses & Other Cattle to be sold at 12:00." In front of the auctioneer, there are bidders and slaves. It can be assumed that the slaves will be torn apart from their families and they will possibly never see one another again. In the background, to the left, a slave stands with his hands tied together at a post. A master wields a whip and is in the process of striking the bound "property." All of this occurs with the US Capital building in the background and a banner that reads "Liberty." 

None of this appears to be anything unexpected when looking at an abolitionist newspaper or drawing from the period. What most people do not notice when looking at the picture initially occurs between the word "The" and "Liberator" in the title. Strew on the ground, like litter, a piece of paper rests between the two words. The paper reads, "Indian Treaties." This picture of the atrocities of slavery carries with it the undercurrent of the atrocities committed against indigenous people of this nation. Throughout The Liberator's run, it linked the two causes, promoting and discussing activists such as William Apess within its pages. 

Welcome to Braggsville contains numerous other topics that are worthy of discussion: the role of names (especially D'aron's), the conflation of Charlie with the Charlies that litter people's lawns, the relation between Quint and Quentin Compson, D'aron's views of the South and how they get conflated, and other topics. Johnson's novel provides a plethora of topics that should be discussed. Make sure you head over to the Ernest J. Gaines Center on January 19 for a reading by Johnson.

Recently, I went to see Quentin Tarantino's eighth fail, The Hateful Eight. During the lead up to the film's release, I saw discussions that said the movie provides a commentary on current race relations in the United States. While I see this, partly, I do not wish to focus on that aspect because in order to do so, I feel that I need to watch the film a few times in a more careful manner. I do find Armond White's review and Johannes Fehrle's essay on Taranatino's obscuring sources fro Django Unchained important conversations that need to be developed. Today, though, I want to focus on the conclusion of the film. If you wish to avoid spoilers, stop reading here.

Ostensibly, the film centers around John Ruth "The Hangman" transporting a female fugitive, Daisy Domergue, to Red Rock where she will be hanged for her crimes. En route, the pair come across a former African American Union solider, Major Marquis Warren, and a white Confederate, Sheriff Chris Mannix. The party stops over at Minnie's Haberdashery, where they meet with other "travelers," and the film takes on the feeling of a stage play because all of the action takes place inside of the establishment. 

Needless to say, Major Warren and Sheriff Mannix become the characters who continually butt heads over their views in regards to Warren's place within "white" society. Throughout, Mannix speaks negatively of Warren and tries to convince the others characters to view him as nothing more than a "nigger." This dichotomy does not come as any surprise, especially considering the setting of the film during the post-Civil War frontier expansion in Wyoming. This setting, which is another discussion for another day, removes regionality from the discussion of the North and South and places both in a new setting that does not play to one side or the other. 

At the conclusion of the film, one that sees almost every character die as a tragedy is wont to do, Warren and Mannix sit, bloody, on the bed and struggle to hang Daisy from the rafters. The men succeed, and they share a semi-conciliatory moment at the end, focused on the death of a white woman. (It is not clear whether or not Daisy is Southern.) The fact that Warren, as an African American male, hangs Daisy, with the help of a Souther white man, makes me wonder what is actually occurring here. Some say that Tarantino, throughout the film, shows his misogynist tendencies, and if taken as a solitary film, he does. However, his entire oeuvre shows strong female characters from Jackie Brown to Beatrix Kiddo. 

If Warren hangs Daisy alone, and if Mannix dies, then I could see this as an act of vengance in much the same way that I see Django's comments about killing white men in context. Plus, this would play in to these expectations following Warren's show of power when he has Chester Smithers fellatiate him before he lets the man die, naked, in the snow. However, this does not occur; rather, we have Warren and Mannix extinguishing Daisy's life in tandem. Thinking about this, I cannot help but consider when Mr. Compson, Dalton Ames, and other call all women "bitches" in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. 

Another aspect that strikes me, in relation the "predatory" black male on the virginally pure Southern white woman occurs when Daisy's brother, who remains hidden under the floorboards, shoots Warren in the testicles, effectively castrating him and removing the power that he held over Smithers. Warren never confronts Daisy sexually or insinuates a "savage" nature that corresponds to stereotypical representations. However, his castration, then subsequent participation in hanging Daisy, make it appear that Tarantino is, in some way, playing with that conceptualization, whether consciously or not. I can't help but think about texts such as Richard Wright's "Big Boy Leaves Home" or even Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon." 

Daisy becomes a pawn in the coming together or Warren and Mannix, she achieves, through her death, what Pauline and Louise could not do in Ernest J. Gaines's Of Love and Dust. There, the Cajun overseer Bon Bon loves Pauline, and African American woman in the quarters. The two carry on a "hidden" relationship, but they cannot come out in the open because of the "rules." Likewise, the African American convict Marcus starts a relationship with Bonbon's white wife Louise. Like Bonbon and Pauline, these two cannot show their love publicly because of the differences in their races. These relationships ultimately fail when Bonbon discovers his wife's new relationship.While he loves Pauline, he cannot relinquish his manhood to Marcus by allowing the man to run off with his white princess. 

On Tuesday, I listed my top five posts from 2015. Today, I want to take the opportunity to share with you the to five books I read/reread this previous year. Again, this list is in no particular order. As with most lists, this one was hard to compile, especially considering all of the books I read this year from Frank Yerby's Speak Now to John A. Williams's The Angry Ones to Ira Aldridge's The Black Doctor. While some of the books on this lists are ones that I have read before, I approached them, this time, with new knowledge and eyes, causing me to view each of them from a new perspective. In the comments below, let me know your list of favorite books (new or old) that you read in 2015. 

1. Adam Bradley Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (2009)

Book of Rhymes, at times, comes across as a love letter to Hip Hop and specific artists: Notrious B.I.G., Jay Z, Eminem.  At other times, it comes across as a study that heavy handedly argues for the artistic merits of Hip Hop. These things aside, Bradley's study provides a useful book for those who want to explore the intricacies of Hip Hop poetics and for those who want to bring those poetics into the classroom to get students interested in poetry. The latter aspect is where Bradley's examination succeeds. He meticulously describes poetic terms and how they relate to specific lines from MCs. He also shows how Hip Hop artists correspond to Western poets such as Wordsworth, Shelly, T.S. Eliot, and others. For me, this book provided me a new way to examine Hip Hop and an in depth treasure trove of songs to research. Within the coming weeks, I plan to do at least one post based off of some of the items in Bradley's book. Stay tuned. 

2. William Faulkner Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

When Shreve asks him why he hates the South, Quentin Compson concludes Faulkner's epic novel by stating, "I don't hate it," and he struggles to convince himself of this fact as the novel recedes into the distance. Faulkner's text explores the intricacies and mythologies of the South, and it alters the temporality of that past by having Shreve and Quentin construct parts of Thomas Sutpen's narrative, making us as readers question what actually happened and what has been fabricated as myth. Reading the novel this time, I thought about how it related to historical constructions of race in Louisiana (New Orleans plays a role in the novel), the decline of the romanticized South, and how authors such as Ernest J. Gaines, William Melvin Kelley, and others work to revise Faulkner's representations of African Americans in his work. All of these topics, and more, caught my attention. For more on the novel, look at my post about the ESPN 30 for 30 Ghosts of Ole Miss and Absalom, Absalom!.

3. Justin Gifford Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim (2015) 

A couple of years ago, a professor introduced me to the work of Robert Beck (aka Iceberg Slim). Since then, I have seen Beck, and those like Donald Goines and Roland S. Jefferson, as more than just pulp novelists without "literary" merit. These authors, especially, Beck, serve as progenitors of Hip Hop, I would argue, and as chroniclers of urban African American life and the Great Migration during the 1960s and 1970s. Gifford's biography shows this. What I admire about Street Poision is that Gifford does much more than just show Beck's life; instead, he uses Beck's biography as a vehicle to highlight the Great Migration, African American communities in the North, the nation's correctional institutions, and other cultural and historical aspects that Beck endured and wrote about. For those interested not only in Beck's life and work but also in African American history, I would strongly suggest this book. Make sure you check out my post on literacy in Iceberg Slim's Pimp as well.  

4. Ernest J. Gaines Of Love and Dust (1967)

I've read and written about Gaines's Of Love and Dust numerous times, but upon each reading, it gets even better and better. While many may argue that The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) or A Lesson before Dying (1993) stand atop Gaines's oeuvre as his best works, I say that Of Love and Dust far surpasses them. Thematically and stylistically, the novel sees Gaines at his finest, telling Marcus's story through the eyes of Jim Kelly in much the same way that Fitzgerald tells Gatsby's story through the voice of Nick Carraway. At its core, the book presents two couples in love; however, the couples cannot publicly express their affections for one another because of the racial divide that separates them. Fittingly, the novel appeared the same year of Loving vs. Virginia, the case that struck down miscegenation laws across the country. Read in this light, the novel takes on an historical perspective that is worth studying. 

5. Paul Laurence Dunbar The Fanatics (1901)

Last summer, I attended an NEH Summer Institute on Paul Laurence Dunbar and his works. Before the institute, I did not know how prolific Dunbar had been in such a short period of time. While The Fanatics may not be Dunbar's most well know prose text, it is an interesting text to study in relation to the aftermath of the Civil War at the turn of the twentieth century. It follows out of reconciliation narratives of the period, and unlike African American uplift narratives, the novel focuses on white characters rather than African American characters. The novel revolves around two families, one Southern and one Northern, who experience a falling out when the war begins, and the narrative traces both families throughout the war. Along with these characters, there are African American participants, but they appear more in the background, and at the mid-point of the novel where former slaves make their way to Ohio only to be confronted with free African Americans who do not want them there and whites who feel the same way. What interests me about this book, apart from the plot, is how it uses white characters to comment on the state of the nation during the war and when the novel appeared. This aspect is not unique to Dunbar, France's E. Watkins Harper and A.E. Johnson both wrote narratives with white characters at the center, and more contemporary authors like Frank Yerby did as well. For more information on this topic, see Gene Andrew Jarrett's Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature (2007). 

As we start traversing our path through the new year, I want to take the opportunity to look back at some of my favorite posts from the past year. This retrospective will contain, in no particular order, the five posts that are my favorite from the 94 posts that appeared in 2015. The posts on this list will include ones from this blog as well as the posts I wrote for the Ernest J. Gaines Center's blog. So, without further do, here are my five favorite blog posts. In the comments below, let me know which post(s) you would place on this list. 

1. 100th Blog Post! Conversation with Dr. Keith Clark  

To celebrate the 100th blog post on the Ernest J. Gaines Center's blog, I decided to do something special, conduct interviews with two nationally renowned scholars who have written on Ernest J. Gaines and his work. The interviews appeared in two separate posts, and both are great introductions to discussions that arise when reading Gaines's work or literature in general. During my interview with Dr. Keith Clark, professor of English at George Mason University, we discussed his initial introduction to Ernest J. Gaines's writing. This came when he taught a class as a graduate student, and he found "The Sky is Grey" in Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon's anthology of African American literature. As well, we spoke about the role of college athletes on campuses. In the conversation with Dr. Valerie Babb, professor of English at the University of Georgia, we again spoke about her initial introduction to Gaines. Rather than experiencing Gaines in the South, she encountered him in New York during her formative years. The discussion also turned to the film adaptations of Gaines's work and how those could be incorporated into the classroom. These are only a small sampling of the topics that each conversation covered. For more, watch the videos in the link above. 

2. Arna Bontemps's Black Thunder 

Last year, I devoured Louisiana native Arna Bontemps's fiction, reading four of his books and writing six blog posts on them. I did not write one on God Sends Sunday, a migration narrative that would fit perfectly in with the "Migration and African American Literature" syllabus. Our of all of the posts that I did about Bontemps, I would have to say that my favorites deal with Black Thunder, a novel that fictionalized Gabriel Prosser's thwarted slave rebellion. In these posts, I write about stylistic elements in Bontemps's novel, specifically his use of multiple points of view in a chapter that leads up to the rebellion and his use of stream of consciousness throughout the novel. For both of these elements, I tie the work together with Gaines's A Lesson before Dying and Jean Toomer's Cane. Until last year, I had never read any works by Bontemps, except for some of his work on the Harlem Renaissance. After reading his fiction, I see him as an author that should be studied broadly. Originally published in the 1930s, Black Thunder did not take off until the 1960s due to its representation of strong African American male characters It would be interesting to examine the reception of this novel and what that receptions says about the cultural milieu of the period when it initially appeared and the one where it saw a resurgence. 

3. Imagining a Time and Place: The FSA and OWI Photos from 1935-1945

When I attended a conference last April, a presentation introduced me to the collection of FSA and OWI photos available on the photogrammar.yale.edu website. When looking at literature from this time period, or literature that retrospectively looks back to the period, the photos provide a great visual context for readers and students alike. For this post, I write about the benefits of using the photos in the classroom setting and I look at a couple of different examples. I examine images in relation the Ernest J. Gaines's "A Long Day in November" and "The Sky is Gray," Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path," and Carson McCullers's Refelctions in a Golden Eye. As stated, the database contains images from all over the country. For future work, I would love to use this site to show students images that could relate to Bontemps's God Sends Sunday or Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time. Let me know what images caught your attention in the comments below. 

4. Interview with Genarao Kỳ Lý Smith on The Land Baron's Sun 

Recently, I wrote two posts on Genarao Kỳ Lý Smith's The Land Baron's Sun, a book of poems that chronicles the life of Smith's grandfather, his seven wives, and their descendants both before and after the fall of Saigon. In the first post, I write about the false promise of the American Dream that awaited those who came to American after Saigon's fall. Rather than experiencing opportunity, immigrants faced oppression and racism that saw them as others, people who could not, no matter how hard they tried, climb the social ladder to make a better life for themselves and their families. The second post contains an interview with Smith. Here, Smith talks about the American Dream, the connection of divinity with nature, the role of food, and other topics that appear in The Land Baron's Sun. Along with this, the post includes a video of Smith reading poems from the book while images of his grandfather and family play in the background. These images, like the FSA and OWI ones, visually contextualize Ly Loc's story. 

5. Aunt Clo in Ernest J. Gaines's "Just Like a Tree"

In this post, I discuss one of my favorite passages from Gaines's oeuvre, the section where Aunt Clo compares Aunt Fe's departure with that of an uprooted tree. This passage, placed among the strictly narrative sections of the story, creates an indelible metaphorical image of the tree and Aunt Fe. On a personal level, this section makes me think about how much the past remains, no matter how hard I try to replace it or move on. It reminds me that wherever I am, when I leave that place, a piece of me will stay behind and a piece of that place will lodge itself into my very being. To me, this is the beauty of Aunt Clo's section; it is a poetic description of remembrance and "progress." What makes this post special, apart from the discussion, has to be the audio clip that accompanies it. The clip comes from a late 1960s reading of the story by Gaines himself. Gaines's voice adds depth and lyricism to the Aunt Clo's section, providing a greater appreciation for Gaines's imagery and technique. 

Note: Interminable Rambling will be taking a break for the next two weeks. We will see you again January 5th. Did you know that "O Holy Night," a Christmas carol we sing every year, has ties to the abolitionist movement? I didn't realize this until recently when I heard the song sung. Typically, performers only sing the first or maybe the first two verses; however, this time I heard the third verse, a stanza that can be seen in an abolitionist light, especially during the years leading up to the Civil War.

In 1847, French composer and music critic Adolphe Adam wrote the music "Cantique de Noël" based off of the poem "Minuit, chrétiens" written by Placide Cappeau. Later, in 1855, John Sullivan Dwight, a Unitarian minister in Boston translated Cappeau's text and noticed some lines in the third verse that corresponded to his abolitionist beliefs. Sullivan translated the third verse to read: 

The Redeemer has broken every bond:The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.He sees a brother where there was only a slave,Love unites those that iron had chained.Who will tell Him of our gratitude,For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

Of particular interest here, of course, are the third and fourth lines. Reading these, it does not seem unrealistic that someone who ardently argued againt slavery in the South would take up the song in relation to the movement. "O Holy Night" has the audience observe Christ's birth on Christmas day as if they were there. Entwined within this, though, comes a call for equality and respect. "The Redeemer," Christ, "sees a brother where there was only a slave, Love unites those that iron had chained." Arguments about the use of Christianity to "civilize" slaves and Native Americans aside, these lines fall right in step with the abolitionist movement. In fact, they even make me think about the "Am I not a man and a brother?" medallion. 

This led me to recall Frederick Douglass's description of the holidays in his Narrative. After relating his fight with Covey, Douglass takes a moment to speak about the purpose of the holiday respite from the slave's and the master's perspectives. Between Christmas and New Years, the slaves would not have to work in the fields; instead, they either "used or abused it nearly as [they] pleased (81-82). Douglass argues that this practice served as a "safety valve" for the slaves, allowing them "to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity" so they will not rise up and overthrow their masters later (82). Douglass even writes, "From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slaves, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection" (82). 

The holiday season served as a deceitful time where the master allowed respite and relaxation, only to appear benevolent and generous. By letting the slaves get drunk, the masters worked "to disgust their slaves with freedom by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation," making them feel as if they have an inability to care and fend for themselves, thus casting the slaveholder as a benevolent caregiver (83). Rather than giving in to the facade of freedom by drinking, playing games, wrestling, and dancing, Douglass suggests that slaves who remained industrious during the period stung his or master by essentially rejecting the favor the slaveholder bestowed. 

Slaves, in the North and the South, did participate in various festivities, not just at Christmas. In the North, slaves took part in Pass celebrations during Easter and in "Election Day" activities where the community received a day off and voted for a "leader" who would serve as a liason between them and the white community. These celebrations, like the holidays, provided a release, and some semblance of autonomy. However, the freedom that came with the festivities did not last, and life went back to "normal" soon afterwards. 

During this holiday season, listen to the songs you sing and think about their historical relevance. For "O Holy Night," that historical connection exists within the 1850s and the abolitionist movement, arguing for the rights of enchained slaves. In the comments below, let me know about some songs that may have more meanings than we typically perceive. For more on the holidays and slavery, see Documenting the American South's post on "The Slave Experience and the Holidays."  

Last week, we remembered December 7, 1941, and that commemoration made me think about the ways that the government used African American bodies, during World War II, to booster morale and support the war effort. Two instances of the government's deployment of African Americans in "propaganda" posters comes to mind: Dorie Miller and Joe Louis.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Dorie Miller served as a mess attendant on the USS West Virginia. As the attack commenced, Miller dropped the laundry he was cleaning, rushed on deck, and took command of a machine gun, shooting down two Japanese planes. As well, he rescued a wounded captain. All of this does not sound out of the ordinary for a soldier; however, as an African American, Miller did not receive formal combat training and was relegated to specific duties in the Navy, no of which involved combat. Jennifer James notes that the War Department initially refused to recognize Miller's heroic deeds until the African American press took up the story. James continues, "In a move both crass and ironic, the War Department then appropriated his name for military propaganda, issuing a poster featuring a drawing of the brawny Miller from the chest up, the slogan, 'above and beyond the call of duty' floating loftily above the sailor's head" (168). When Miller served their purposes, the government chose to provide him with accolades and appropriate him as a symbol of the war effort. 

Driving this point home even more, Gwendolyn Brook's "Negro Hero/ to suggest Dorie Miller" (1945) highlights the hypocrisy found in the guise of Liberty. The poem opens with Miller blatantly commenting on the fact that he had to break the law in order to save those that he did: "I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them" (19). Denied combat training by law, Miller had to deal with the men who refused him any equality. Later, Miller speaks of his love, one that goes against the Liberty he swore to protect: "Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady,/ With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her/ sweet-flowing sleeve" (20). "Their" democracy, one that Miller strives to maintain, hides something sinister underneath its flowing robes, a knife poised to strike at him if he gets too close. James views this image as the fears that white men harbored regarding the violation of white women by African American men. She says, "If the chaste white female body is a sign of nation, as Brook's invocation suggests, any desire on the part of black men to access citizenship becomes an act akin to violation, nothing less than a political rape" (169).

Like Miller, the government also enlisted Joe Louis as a face for its "propaganda" posters. Louis a world famous boxer, defeated Germany's Max Schmeling in 1938, a fight that pitted Germany against the USA. When the. Action entered World War II, Louis enlisted and went to Fort Riley, Kansas. There, he trained with future Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson. In fact, it could be argued that Louis provided the spark that allowed Robinson, and other African American soldiers, to become a commissioned officer. When the military refused to commission Robinson, Louis refused to do anything to promote the war effort. Even with this pull, though, Robinson experienced Jim Crow at Camp Silbert in Alabama. Waiting for a cab with another boxer in the bus station, Military Police arrested them because the pair were not sitting in the "Colored" section of the terminal. 

Despite all of this, the government still used Louis's image prominently in their war campaign. The poster shows Louis poised to impale someone or something with his bayonet, and the words "We're going to do our part. . . and we'll win because we're on God's side" appears at the bottom. Are these words actually Louis's? Despite all of the subjugation he experiences in Kansas and Alabama, could these words be his? No matter the answer to that question, the words signify a untied front, one where the entire country takes part in fighting for freedom and liberty. Through these displays of Louis and Miller, the government makes them into "disposable" images, ones that serve a "greater" purpose.  

Reading Nikky Finney's "The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy" made me think of these instances even more. Finney's libretto crosses time and space, tracing the restriction of African American bodies throughout our nation's existence. At two points, she draws upon the image of recruitment posters. While these references specifically zero in on the Civil War, I would argue that they cross time and space to even involve the second Great War. Opening the Civil War, the narrative voice commands, "Step forward nigger! Save your country! The Recruitment poster rings out!" (49) Of course, the irony here is that the country that needs saving does not recognize the African American body; in fact, it takes to calling that body contraband. Later, the voice proclaims, "General Lee paints graffiti on a recruitment poster when no one is looking. Just underneath the black face he writes, whispering as he scrawls, 'You are now and forever our great disposable!'" (50) The body serves as nothing more than a tool to be used, and once it serves it's purpose, it becomes worthless. 

In many ways, Finney's poem highlights what happened with Dorie Miller and Joe Louis during the war. As stated earlier, Miller and Louis become "disposable." What are your thoughts on this topic? How do the discussions above correlate to DuBois's call for the Double V Campaign (victory at home and abroad)? Let me know in the comments below.m

Brooke, Gwendolyn. "Negro Hero/ to suggest Dorie Miller." Selected Poems: Gwendolyn Brooks. New York: Harper Perennial, 1963. 19-21. 

Finney, Nikky. "The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy." Oxford American 90 Fall 2015: 44-59. 

Last post, I wrote about Genarao Kỳ Lý Smith's The Land Baron's Sun. Today, I am sharing a recent interview I conducted with Smith. In the video above, Smith talks more about his grandfather and reads two poems from The Land Baron's Sun.   Leave a comment below by 7:00 AM CST on December 15 to be entered for a chance to win an autographed copy of The Land Baron's Sun for Christmas. I will choose the winner next Tuesday with a random generator. 

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In the acknowledgements of The Land Baron’s Sun, you write about Darrell Bourque telling you that your grandfather’s “story needs to be heard” because it is an important story to everyone. What makes Lý Loc’s story so significant?

Lý Loc came from a privileged life:  inherited land from his father who was only known as the land baron (to this day, my mother does not know his name), had seven wives, twenty-seven children, seven houses (1 per wife), mistresses to go with each wife; he was a major commander for the South Vietnamese Army.  When the Fall of Saigon occurred, he lost everything to the point of writing my mother a few years later asking for money, food, medicine, and clothes.  It is a tragic story that needs to be told.  The idea of someone who had it all to living as a pauper is and has always been an intriguing story.  Also, had I not known about his seven wives or his privileged lifestyle, his story would have died with my mother.  The goal therefore was to resurrect his life, the lives of his wives and their children.  The purpose of writing the book was to leave his legacy.  I simply did not want him to die.

You dedicate “Ghost Stories: Ái” to Robert Olen Butler whose book A Good Scent froma Strange Mountain (1992) tells the stories of Vietnamese immigrants to Louisiana. What, if anything, did you take away from Butler when writing The Land Baron’s Sun? What other writers inspired or influenced you overall?

Honestly, I was envious of Robert Olen Butler’s ability to tell stories from the point of view of Vietnamese people/characters.  It forced me to learn about the mindset of immigrants and how they had to assimilate in America.  Butler understood my culture, history, and the language better than me, and I wanted to reach that level of immersing the readers into my country, my culture, my people.  It finally happened in 2002 when I sent a couple of fiction pieces to Neil Connelly, a McNeese alumnus and author of 4 books, who told me, “I kept forgetting you were half Vietnamese.  In reading your work, I thought I was reading a person who lived his whole life in Vietnam, a person who was a full blooded Vietnamese.  I had to keep reminding myself that you are half.”  That has always been my goal: to make people think they are reading someone who is completely Vietnamese.  Nam Le, author of The Boat, is able to do so in his collection of short stories whereby in one story it is from the point of view of a Vietnamese creative writing student, in another he is a white female visiting a former college friend in Iran, or a white teenager in Australia, in another a teenage Columbian assassin, and so forth.  He understands the language of “others” so well that you forget Nam Le is Vietnamese.  

Before I read Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farwell (2003), I did not realize the Vietnamese immigration that took place. I knew there was a large Vietnamese population, even in north Louisiana, but I did not realize some of the reasons for the migration, specifically, until I read Tidewell’s book. In “The Bottom Dreamers: Tú Đức, Minh, Thanh, and Bảo” and “Fidéle” you present immigrants to two very distinct regions of Louisiana: the Gulf Coast and the I-20 corridor. How were the experiences of the characters in these two poems different or similar?

I grew up in a section of Los Angeles I called “Asia Minor,” which appears in the upcoming novel The Land South of the Clouds.  We had an enclave of our own made up of Chinese, Philippine, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese women married to American men.  However, there were “outsiders” who wanted to convert us religiously, or tried their hardest to make us assimilate, but we wanted to do so on our own terms, at our own pace.  On the opposite end, there were those who did not want us to assimilate and just go away.  Vietnamese people for the most part settled according to their trade.  For instance, if you were skillful at fishing, you settled in the regions near the Gulf of Mexico or in the Pacific Northwest.  Also, they settled according to climate:  Louisiana’s humid climate is similar to Vietnam’s, for instance.  But you take New Orleans, for instance, or any parish in the southern regions of Louisiana, and it looks like home to them.  New Orleans, Grand Coteau, Lafayette, and many other places are influenced by French architecture and also by Catholicism, and so they easily identified with that since Vietnam was colonized for 100 years by the French.  New Orleans is a mirror image of Saigon, Cholon, Nha Trang, and so many other cities and villages.

Throughout The Land Baron’s Sun, the landscape takes on the appearance of God. In “Vacation,” Lý Loc describes the road to the beach as “the back of God’s hand” and the backdrop as “God’s spine.” Elsewhere, the cave in Italy where Michelle Jolibois experiences he sexual awakening appears like the mouth of God yawning with His molars on full display. How does the landscape and spirituality intermingle within these poems? Is there an intermingling?

There is an intermingling of landscape and religion.  We see it every day.  Some people, most people, I believe, take it for granted and don’t realize the magnitude of His creation, the beauty, bounty provided for us.  They’re all at our disposal to use for the greater good, and oftentimes, we don’t give thanks.  This intermingling of the landscape and God has been so prevalent with Southern literature, and I notice it with Asian literature:  the idea of Asians being thankful for what the land has provided for them to sustain their lives through Buddha or God.  I wanted to treat the landscape as something sacred and personal as faith.   I also treat the landscape as though it were a woman:  beautiful, and we want to covet it/her.  But through our actions, we rape the land, mistreat the land, and a woman’s body, to me, is something I cherish and worship, though I know that sounds sacrilegious.

After reading Ernest J. Gaines, William Faulkner, and other Southern authors, I am always drawn to the use of dust in literature. Sometimes it’s just used as a descriptive item and nothing more; however, with poetry, where every word means so much, dust appears in “The Land Baron’s Sun,” a poem that shows Lý Loc’s “collecting” rent from his tenants. After the father collects sex for the rent, the boys gathered outside resume their playing, “filling the morning with laughter and rising dust” as they chase the ball around the yard and “kick up a storm of dust that linger/ among the trees, coating the pears.” Does the dust have a significance here? Or, is it just a descriptive word for the scene? I ask this because the scene makes me think of Gaines’s Of Love and Dust (1967) where dust chokes out the idea of love amongst the characters. 

Dust plays a significant role in my faith and writing.  We often see it as decay, and in a sense, in “The Land Baron’s Sun” when Lý Loc sees his father “collecting” the rent from a female tenant, there is that shattering or decaying of his innocence when espying something he does not understand.  But dust represents a rebirth, and I’ve always been intrigued by the concept that something can be reborn or recreated from the dust and ruins.  His idea of who his father is has been shattered, and from this incident he is reborn in a sense, and he becomes his father later in the book, but he also becomes a better father and husband than his father ever was.

Reading The Land Baron’s Sun, I couldn’t help but think about the ways that the experiences of Vietnamese immigrants and African Americans overlapped in the South during the mid to late part of the twentieth century. This becomes apparent in the “The Bottom Dreamers: Tú Đức, Minh, Thanh, and Bảo,” “Fidéle,” and “The Shape of Things.” Do you see similarities between these experiences?

The similarities are always the same: trying to recreate themselves in a new environment, in a new country but also holding onto their roots.  “Fidéle” was inspired by an incident where a couple took walks every early evening, and they invited my mom to come to their church.  This went on for several weeks until she agreed only if they would attend her temple for service to see how she worshipped.  I just see the hypocrisy in religious people and it doesn’t matter what the religion:  you want my mom or anyone to come to your church but when invited to do the same, you decline.  That has always stuck with me.  Because we’re minorities, because we exist in a dominant society, it’s like we have to reeducate ourselves in coexisting with different people.  What we’re also doing is trying to ingratiate ourselves so that we are not discriminated against, and it’s not just with blacks, and Asians, but anyone, anyone who is not white.

Food plays an important role in The Land Baron’s Sun. The first poem, “In the House of Snails,” sees Lý Loc’s seven wives gathered in the kitchen plucking “snails from their spiraled homes.” Elsewhere, in the reeducation camp, Lý Loc recalls the food he eat at home. What is the importance of food within the context of the poems?

Food or eating is a sacred act.  We wash our hands before we eat, we say grace before we take the first bite, and so I wanted to show the importance of being nourished not just by food but through what is a sacred act: eating.  What I also wanted to show is this juxtaposition or contrast of a time before the fall of Saigon where “plenty” is set before them in “great abundance,” and so with the first poem, they have all they could ever ask for, or all they could ever consume.  It portrays a time of leisure, of gathering as a family unit, and then of course with the fall, that abundance is absent and the characters are starving physically, religiously, and spiritually.  When you’re reduced to eating just rice and greens, your body and mind pine for what you’ve always enjoyed: fish, pork, beef, chicken, ducks.

Part III, “What of My Wives and Children,” chronicles Lý Loc’s loved ones as they either remain in 

Vietnam or migrate elsewhere. This section confronts the idea of the American Dream head on, presenting the immigrant experience in Louisiana specifically. Rather than becoming the land of opportunity that would provide a better life, America suffocates even more. The collection even concludes with the image of fish in a market stall. Their mouths open, “only to discover the world outside their oceans/ is empty of the promise of breathing.” For me, these lines comment on the American Dream. For you, should we even still consider the idea of the American Dream as something that everyone, immigrants and citizens, can attain? Are their fallacies with the very principal of that dream? 

There are fallacies with the American Dream just like The Great Migration for Negroes.  There are those who go through the right channels, work hard, and discipline themselves, and many obtain the dream.  There are plenty of stories of immigrants achieving the American Dream.  Look at Marco Rubio, for example.  However, some gain the dream through ill and illegal actions because of outside forces that prevent them from obtaining it the right way.  And then there are those who try but fail due to circumstances, or by the dominant culture obstructing their paths.  There are laws they do not understand or do not know exist that could have aided them in receiving a better education, better housing, better line of employment, just an overall better standard of living.  What troubles me is that there are those will be born poor and starving, born without being exposed to the simplest things like art, film, and literature, and they will die poor and starving and never learning the aesthetics of watching classics, traveling abroad for vacation, or reading a poem and be moved by it.  And that is what inspired the lines regarding the world outside their oceans empty with the promise of breathing.  There is this suffocation they only know, and that is the sad part about living:  existing one way and never being exposed to something positive, fulfilling, satisfying, joyful, something that is out of their grasp.    

Note: Stay tuned next post for an interview with Genarao Kỳ Lý Smith on The Land Baron's Sun!   Genarao Kỳ Lý Smith’s The Land Baron’s Sun: The Story of LýLoc and His Seven Wives (2014) tells Lý Loc’s story from childhood through his through his time in a reeducation camp after the fall of Saigon. Along with Lý Loc’s story, Smith chronicles the stories of Lý Loc’s wives, children, and grandchildren. Some remained in Vietnam and other left, even settling in Louisiana. It is the latter part of this narrative, the ones who came to American and specifically Louisiana that I want to touch on in this blog post.

The poem in Part III, "What of My Wives and Children," records the stories of those who sought to come to America for a better life and those who actually did. In "The Letter Readers," Lý Loc’s Thursday wife Phựợng speaks about her job censoring incoming mail to Vietnam. For twelve to sixteen hours a day, she applies a black marker to incoming and outgoing letters. The fleeing letters seek those who escaped to England, Canada, and America 

where pockets are filled with loose change for payphones, keys to apartments and rent houses,bus transfers to get from one city to the nextto purchase abundance in bulkand cart it home. (73)

Phựợng sits oppressed as she looks through envelopes that contain words and Polaroids of a better life,where Halloween and Christmas picture emerge. These images, along with the "loose change: and "abundance in bulk" paint a picture of happiness and freedom; however, the actual existence becomes one of discrimination and aggression as those who fled encounter a society that views them as "Other," as people who must assimilate or perish.  In many ways, the ways that Smith describes those who immigrated to America can be viewed in relation the African American experience in the South. Writing about fisherman on the Gulf of Mexico in “The Bottom Dreamers: Tú Đức, Minh, Thanh, and Bảo," Smith shows the similarities between the African American and Asian American experience. On the water, the fishermen continually encountered "the parade of boats brandishing burning crosses/ to ward off the Negro and Asian fishermen" (82). They experienced deception when returning to land only to discover that the "market prices" for the gifts they hauled in had "dropped suddenly" and without explanation. Even with all of this, though, the men make a living and hold out hope for the American Dream, thinking about the day they can buy that "building long abandoned/ on 9th Avenue and 7th Street" and convert it into a restaurant where the community can gather, recall home, and "let loose the weight/ of [their] language's syllable to stress [their] loses" (83). For me, this discussion recalls the sharecropping experience of African Americans and the hope of building a better life, one that could support the community. Unfortunately, that life, in both cases, would not come so easily.   Following "The Bottom Dreamers," Smith provides a poem about immigrants who settled in the predominately protestant North Louisiana town of Ruston. "Fidéle" explores the aspects of religious assimilation that I touched on briefly in the "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)" post from last week. In the poem, the narrator relates how her neighbors continually ask her to go to church with them and pray to God. At first, she politely declines, but eventually she tells them she will attend services with them, However, when she mentions that next week they should come with her to a Buddhist temple in Shreveport, the couple shuts down and leaves. The narrator tells them, 

"I will pray to your God, and next week you can light incense sticks,  kneel and chant prayers to Buddah for my dead ancestors." (85)  

Immediately after this, the man tugs on the dog he is walking and leaves. Since the family does not "convert" to teh dominant religion, they experience discrimination and ridicule: "the words gooks and slopes accompanied with go home spray-painted on our driveway" (85). Wrath consumes the narrator as she envisions the "Christians" festering with sores. The community's "faith [exists] as tiny as the type" on the thin Bible pages (86). Because of the "forced" attempts at conversion, the narrator and her family leave for California where they can live in "a place called Little Saigon," a place that does not force them to assimilate to a new religion in order to succeed and receive acceptance (86).  "The Starving City: Nha Trang '75" concludes The Land's Baron's Sun, and one can read in the closing lines a comment on the false hope of the true accessibility of  the American Dream for everyone. Walking through a market, the speaker describes the scene of market stalls and vendors selling various items. The closing image is of 

fish whose lips part for air   only to discover the world outside their oceans is empty of the promise of breathing. (96)