In A Raisin in the Sun, we learn a lot about the main protagonists in the first scene of the first act. We learn that Walter is very aggressive and very persistent on the things that he wants. The way that he talks to his wife after she was giving him signs that she didn’t like his plans for the liquor store made me very shocked. He seems to be very demanding and unaware of how the way he speaks can effect his wife. We also learn a lot about Mama based on the just the first act. We learn that she is extremely religious and will not allow her children to disrespect the lord’s name. Beneatha and her mother’s relationship is very interesting. In the beginning of the play, we see that Beneatha has very different opinions about God than her mother. Her mother believes that God deserves the credit and the respect of her family. After Mama slaps Beneatha, we see that she is very linear with her feelings with God and religion. The family dynamic is very interesting, everyone has their own little quirks.
Month: May 2021
Strong Black Women
Quote: “Centering black women and viewing Atlantic slaving through the lens of intimacy and kinship, la traversée emerges as a predatory network of exchanges, forced migrations, and acts of resistance rooted in war and conquest. For enslaved women and girls bound for the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic passage threw them into a world of repeated attempts to dismantle their womanhood, girlhood, and humanity, as slave traders, trading-company officials, and would-be slaveowners struggled to make a profit from their flesh” Jessica Marie Johnson’s Wicked Flesh
This specific quote from Jessica Marie Johnson’s Wicked Flesh inspires me because women had to go through so many things centuries ago. Women were forced to be stronger than necessary because they were treated like objects by white men with power. It is very interesting, and allows me to be appreciate for women fighting for their rights. African women were used for financial gain and were not respected at all. They were treated as if they were nothing continuously and it was worse for young girls who did not get to live out their lives.
Black Masculinity
In Willis Richardson’s The Chip Fortune, Jim and Silas both convey perfect examples of male masculinity. You can see that Jim is ready to protect the women and the Victrola. He makes it know that he will not hurt the men but they will not move until Aunt Nancy comes back with the money. I believe that this is an example of black masculinity because it directly shows that this man is willing to put his foot down and take charge of the situation. We can also see this in Silas when he tries to give Jim back the money, It is a thing of a proud man to give back money given to them. It also shown again when Jim tells Silas to keep the money because they have been very good to his mother. Black men are also very proud, Jim says, “No, she, Ah don’t want you to cramp yourself up on ma account. It won’t take us long to find another place”. Jim did not want to inconvenience Silas, Liza, and Emma. It is a normal thing for black men to be extremely proud and not want to take things from people.
Womanism and Preserving Black Land
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a web lecture on womanist placemaking ecologies in African American settlements presented by Dr. Andrea Roberts at the Texas Freedom Colonies Project. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project is a research project dedicated to the preservation and history of Black settlements. Kin keeping through preserving Black-owned land is apparently womanism at work. The preservation of Black settlements was aided by the Farmer’s Improvement Society and the Woman’s Barnyard Auxiliary, organizations that are largely composed of Black women preserving the land their families have lived and worked on. Direct opposition to this work would be companies like Hancock Timber that cared more about shareholders than the land or ecology. Hancock Timber feels as if it owns the forest and the right to extract from it. This company also engages in legal subterfuge to remove Black land owners. All in all, this lecture taught me a great deal about the importance of Black land ownership and preservation. Our histories are in the land that our ancestors owned and cared for. As someone whose ancestors migrated North, I feel disconnected from the idea of land and land ownerships so this has really widened my perspective.
The lecture was recorded and is up on Youtube for viewing!
The Power Dynamic Between Black Men and White Women
The character of Lula contributes greatly to the surrealism of the play. Lula, a white woman, acts as a provocateur for most of the play and slowly reels Clay into her madness. We see Baraka early on in the play entertain the idea of the hyper-sexual or hyper-masculine black man and innocent white women. Even the stage directions read that Lula “is eating an apple daintily” and Clay is “smiling quizzically” at her. Lula is fully aware of her power and distorts the image by saying to Clay, “I’d turned around and saw you staring at my ass and legs” (Baraka 2). Throughout the play, Lula continues this playful yet incredibly dangerous banter with Clay. It’s dangerous because Lula wants Clay to behave in a way that he’s “supposed to”. She’ll say that he was looking at her body because that’s what she and the world expects of him. It’s not a stretch to say that as a white woman that she feels entitled to Clay’s attention and that she murdered him because he resisted to behave the way she wanted him to.
This definitely reminded me of the time where Lena Dunham assumed that because Odell Beckham Jr. didn’t speak to her at a dinner that he had found her sexually unattractive. She made the assumption that he wanted to hypersexualize her but couldn’t because of what she was wearing. If this doesn’t scream Lula then I don’t know what does.
Moral of the story: there’s an expectation of Black men to prey on white women because Black men are understood to be hypersexual beasts and white women are understood to be the most desirable women there are.
https://theundefeated.com/features/its-not-about-you-lena-dunham-it-never-was/
Black women and Sexual Stigma
For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntzoe Shange was experimental in a multitude of ways. Firstly, it’s a choreopoem––a form of dramatic expression invented by Shange herself. The choreo poetry of the play not only contributes to the surrealism but also communicates how intentional this work is. Shange is using the bodies of the characters intentionally; the song and dance aspect of this play serves a purpose. On page 20, all of the women in the play sing hand clapping songs like “Shortnin’ Bread” and “Little Sally Walker” to signify a lost innocence and a sense of friendship or togetherness. Shange also uses this choreopoetry of hers to relay the traumas of Black women, specifically sexual traumas. In a traditional play, sexual violence would be acted out on stage or a character would simply talk about sexual violence. For Colored Girls, however, captures the disorienting nature of sexual violence and the difficulty of coming forward. The poem “Latent Rapists” is a response to rape culture. All of the women recite that poem together because it’s easier for victims to come forward when they know they aren’t alone. Shange also presents sexual trauma in ways that we aren’t necessarily thinking about. “One” is about a woman who is an absolute goddess to men before they have sex and a “regla” woman afterward. Being hypersexualized, used for sex, and devalued after sex is traumatic; we don’t talk about that enough. “Positive” is another example of sexual trauma. Having a dishonest partner transmit a potentially terminal disease to you is also sexual trauma. In all of these instances, the women in these poems are experiencing the shame associated with Black women and sex. Shange wrote so heavily about this is in the play because it’s something we should recognize and free ourselves from.
Feeling toward Issues
The plays “Coloured Girls Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enough” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” have majored using music as one of the main themes. It has hard not to notice the style of music performance that has been used in the two plays. Imagery has been used to express the characters’ feelings toward issues that they find troubling in their life. The costumes of the” Coloured Girls” are full of imagery, “The rainbow,” as the choreopoem’s title suggests, is a prominent symbol in the play, one that is deliberately added to the ladies’ costumes, which are the rainbow’s colors plus brown. Brown’s inclusion in the rainbow of colors represents black identity within the rainbow of life. The rainbow images the diversity of life’s experiences and the many aspects of one’s personality. Each member of Ma Rainey’s band has a story to tell that embodies something unique to the African-American experience. Ma Rainey claims that white people do not understand the blues and that only black people can relate to them. The allusion in both plays is very evident as they use the songs to express their innermost feelings; they use music as a reference mirror to express their feelings towards burning issues like racism. Their steady pitch intensity and the timbre; quality of the tone music ensures that the intended message that was designed to be passed is done with more clarity. In both the plays, there are instances where a complex tone has been put at work, with a periodic pattern of repetition has been used to complement the quality and style of delivery in the two plays.
Bonding and surviving
Topdog/Underdog explores the topics of about racism, brotherhood, and bonding. We are introduced to a relationship between two brothers, Lincoln and Booth. The two of them are trying to build stable lives for themselves and are in a constant struggle to dominate the other. Usually it is very typical for an older child to dominate the younger one. The point of this occurring is to establish superiority or misery. The boys were left behind by both of their parents so therefore they only had each other and no role models to follow. Having no role models or some sort of guidance can disorient someone. As they had no support and lived in a place and time where black men were portrayed as violent they did anything they had to in order to establish themselves. One of the ways they try to establish themselves is where Booth tries to make an identity for his brother but Lincoln hesitates to do it on his own.
As the oldest sibling myself and my mom basically being the only parent around, I caught myself being the over dominant one. This kind of behavior was visible when I saw that my mom couldn’t handle all of us and my younger siblings were misbehaving. I felt like it was my responsibility to enforce rules or simply be the ‘big boss.’ As we all got older, I grew out of it and started acting more like a fun big sister (thats what I identify myself as) instead of the family’s mini ‘big boss’.
blog 9
The Ford Theatre was ringing with hysterical laughter at the time of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth. In Tom Taylor’s farcical comedy, our American cousin was a redneck American who traveled to England to assert an aristocratic family’s hereditary wealth. Lord Dundreary, the stumbling excentre, opened the spotlight despite only a few lines (Baraka, Amiri, & Richard 80). This is because actor EA Sothern made a point of remembering Lord Dundreary. Everything about the character, from the crazy suit to the ridiculous hairdo, funny faces, and advertisement, made him a crowd favorite. When he was learning English, his flaming sideburns were dubbed ‘Dundreary’s.’ Although Sothern was not in the cast when President Abraham Lincoln arrived on April 14, 1865, the night promised to be chaotic. As a former actor, John Wilkes Booth was familiar with the script and recognized the most amusing lines Gray, & Christine Rauchfuss. He could predict that his shot would coincide with a certain hoot, hoping that the laughing whirl would drown out the blow.
blog 8
Anything that makes me happier and something that happens since August Wilson’s hearing speaks to his place in the entire legacy of black theatre. I find it odd, but it’s not shocking that the “Black Power” music I have seldom spoken is used in paper and voice and that the Black Power campaign – a critical reform Movement led by the American ex-slaves – is also used as a part of the Civil Rights Movement.
It’s hard for me to differentiate my theatre concerns from my emotions about my life as a Black Man because one part of my life is hard to discern from another. I’ve sought, art and existence, indistinguishable and inseparable, to make all move together. When my idealism peaks in my middle ages, while idealism may be less than blooming, but weariness begins to flourish, I have not abandoned things I acquired and embraced in my youth. Auto determination, love for oneself, and self-defense were fundamental to my life in the 1960s, and in 1996 it remained real and self-determined I believe that the need to change our relationship with society and our mutual perceptions of ourselves as an ethnic community is more pressing now than it was then. I am a “race man,” at least amongst followers and supporters of the theories of Marcus Garvey. This is mostly because I believe that race matters — it is our identity’s most noticeable, distinctive and important feature. It is the sort of identification that is the most significant, as it has the biggest effect on your view of yourself and refers to people within the male culture. Race, since indeed the nation is made up of immigrants from all over the globe, is also an essential part of the American landscape.