David Lamb was born in Queens, New York, and is a graduate of Hunter College, Princeton University, and New York University School of Law. He has written and produced two plays Plátanos y Collard Greens (based on his novel Do Plátanos Go Wit’ Collard Greens?) and From Auction Block to Hip Hop.
Entry Discussion: On the novel’s central conflict
After reading this short exchange discuss the question down below:
“Hey, what’s wrong, you sound upset? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing, tell me, what’s wrong?”
“I just got into an argument with my mother” “About what?”
“About you?”
“About me? Why me?”
“She doesn’t want me seein’ any Black guys.”
“Angelita, might I point out that your grandmom, your mother’s mother is like a couple of shades darker than me.”
“I know, it’s like we Dominicans say, ‘We all have a little black behind the ears,’ unfortunately, that’s where most of us want to keep it, behind the ears.” (406)
What do you understand by Angelita’s last statement? What does the phrase “behind the ears” in the context of this discussion imply?
8:00-11:00
“As I was explaining, about it being in the interest of the ruling class in the Dominican Republic to sell the masses this false notion of their whiteness, or at least their Indianness (as a sort of consolation prize if they so obviously weren’t ‘White’), in order to ensure their support against the Haitians.”
In this excerpt of the novel, David Lamb presents how Dominicans (and people from the Spanish—speaking Caribbean) face pressures to identify themselves as Black because being Black (in the US and globally) means being in the downtrodden class while being white or associating yourself with whiteness carries advantages.
Group Discussion
Instructions:
In groups analyze these characters and central quotes. How does your assigned character relates to and understand blackness?
Group 1
Angelita– is a young Dominican woman living in New York and in a relationship with an African American.
“Don’t you see, our ancestors didn’t just come from Spain, we are not conquistadores. Our ancestors came here just like the Blacks you look down on, like the Haitians you hate. In the hulls of ships, dragged off from their homelands … We are more like the Haitians than the Castilians.” (405)
Freeman– is an African American man in a relationship with a Dominican woman; intellectual; he wants to understand why Angelita’s mother rejects him.
“When Freeman got off the phone with Angelita, he was still tripping about her mother’s attitude. He could hear his pops typing downstairs, and he went to talk to him about it. He figured he’d have some insight.” (407)
Group 2
Samaná- Angelita’s Mother; has racial prejudices and is against Angelita and Freeman’s relationship.
“Like every other immigrant, she had been bombarded by negative images of African Americans blasted daily on the television, on the radio, in the newspapers and magazines. She, herself, had had a gold chain snatched by a young brotha during the chain-snatching craze of the early eighties. And that experience, coupled with the negative views and images ubiquitously dispersed throughout the media reinforced the negative connotations associated with Blackness that she learned growing up in the Dominican Republic.” (404)
Freeman’s Pop- an African American man; scholar and writer
“He figured he’d have some insight since he was at the moment writing a book about Black and Latino political coalitions in New York in addition to working on the Dinkins campaign.” (407)
“So let your girlfriend’s mother protest all she wants, the forces of society dictate that the younger ones will increasingly be drawn to see their connection with us, and all of our connections with Africa!” (409)
Group 3
Pablo– A young man of Dominican descent; Angelita’s brother
“Among all of their family, Angelita and Pablo shared a special bond. Their views and self—perception had been greatly influenced by the confluence of Afrocentricity and hip hop.” (407)
Julia– a recent migrant from the Dominican Republic who has similar racial views as Angelita’s mother; She works in a beauty salon; Angelita’s cousin
“Hair like grandma’s?”
“Yes, hair like grandma’s.”
“That’s bad.”
“And what makes it bad?”
“Because, you know, hair like ours is easy to manage. And girls with bad hair spend hours trying to get their hair like ours. I tell you Angelita, just the other day, I spent three hours working on this girl’s hair…”
“…there’s no such thing as pelo malo. How can hair be bad? Does it attack you? Is it mean? Does it enslave people? No it’s not bad, it’s just different. It’s only considered bad because the Spaniards put themselves on a pedestal, and made us want to look like them. Yeah, our hair is ‘good‘ you say, but it’s Black-Black, is blonde hair better? What about your complexion, is white skin better?” (407)
Conclusion
This excerpt of the novel Do Plátanos Go Wit Collard Greens presents how Dominicans like Samaná inherited racism and even self-hate as a product of their environment and the racial discourses prevalent in it. Samaná represents Dominicans (and Latin Americans) who have absorbed the views of the dominant classes and who continue to deify the Spanish and Catholic past, while simultaneously attempting to erase or minimize the African heritage. However, the novel does not argue that all or most Dominicans are racist (Dominicans are not a monolith), it presents characters with complex views on race and that understand the debate as generative. In the novel, the diaspora is a space that permits these conversations.