Daily Archives: 16 Nov ’14

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A Coon Alphabet

 

A Coon Alphabet Edward Windsor Kemble

There were a lot of things about “A Coon Alphabet” that were very striking. The language, the title. What really shocked me was the illustrations. The illustrations in the Coon Alphabet are pretty horrifying. To me, they dehumanized black people and almost made them seem animal-like. I found it so disturbing. It was seemingly meant to be a comedy, however I did some background research on this book. It was written after the Civil War, and during this time there were many books backing up the decision to free the slaves and show how horribly they were treated. However, according to digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu, this book was written to prove that blacks were

“deserving of their ill-treatment.”

Also, during this time, racial stereotypes were commonly used in writing and illustrations in children’s books. This was also during a time where white actors would put on “blackface”. The author, Edward Windsor Kemble, was a well-known “artist” for his cartoon of soldiers, Indians and blacks.

 

 

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A Coon Alphabet

   Just like my  fellow peers, the first thing that also caught my attention reading the alphabet was the use of  language and how things are misspelled and the funny looking drawings. I feel as if this is obviously making fun of slavery in a way for kids to understand, and also to portray how slavery was back then. Like some have noticed already that the word  “coon” is a derogatory term so I also find it hard to determine whether or not the author is supporting slavery by showing us how things were back then and how it should be remembered or if the author wants us to be against it in some way. I Just find the whole thing as mockery towards slavery, and it reminds me of modern day comedy  that we see nowadays in newspapers and such of those little sketch cartoons that are made to make us laugh or find a social situation as a joke. Although this is made for children, we have to always keep in mind that their is always something morally off when it comes to children’s stories and their is always some kind of hidden bigger picture behind it, and in this case I automatically get the impression that this is made to make fun of slavery and nothing more.

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A Coon Alphabet

As most others who read this alphabet, what struck me the most were both the language used, and the crude drawings portrayed. Particularly for the letter A, the donkey bucks Amos into ‘Gramer Schole’ or, when someone is suffering some sort of punishment, their faces get screwed up into a somewhat humorous position. I do think that these things make the story easier for children to understand but, I’m kinda uncertain as to whether the author is trying to entertain or make a statement and to that point I’m not really sure as to what that statement is. It seems to be that according to a few different dictionaries, “coon” is a derogatory term. I’m not really sure then, linked with everything else, if this is all meant to be a mockery of slavery or to support it. In most of the letters the characters tend to be doing something fundamentally wrong and are therefore punished for it in some way or another: the children take too many grapes and are then sick or, Hiram tries to open the door with his foot and the whole soup spills on him. I think what I’m trying to show is that it seems that when these “coons” are doing some sort of activity that was normal for a slave at that time, they mess it up but when they are left to themselves, they get in all kinds of mischief and seem to hurt someone or another. In that I am unsure as to what the author is trying to get at…

I also found it really interesting to think more about some of the names used: Didimus, Ezra, Amos, Hiram, Xerxy [back to the Xerxes post from before]…etc. These all seem to be biblical names of a sort. This could be stressing the importance of the bible at that time? The other thing that was really interesting was the use of the word mendicant. I actually had to look it up because I was unsure as to what it meant. It Means one who relies chiefly on donations to survive, which I wonder whether children would know or not.

I feel like perhaps this could really be compared to slapstick comedy of today. Today, the three stooges would knock each other around but, before a child would cause mischief and have a soup dumped on him. Perhaps enjoyable to children but a kinda mixed up message.