The shortest day of the year is somehow my longest

-6:45 a.m. Final exam. Please post any corrections/questions below, or email me.

-9:45 a.m. Spring syllabus. Of course we may revise this later. To the students applying for M.A. study... Use this as a guideline if you like; unfortunately I can't read the mind of the person composing your entrance examination, so I don't know if she is more or less "up-to-date" than me, or if her taste is just different. I will try to send some additional recommendations, but the one thing that should be obvious is that the Part II of our course contains no theatrical texts. In our edition of the Norton, you have your choice of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill. So be sure to read at least one of those plays.

-??? a.m. Ponder implications of the Vazquez/Cabrera trade. Then strategize how we can trade Cabeza de Vaca to acquire one of them in a second trade.

Class #15.1

So I think the party today was a success, but perhaps the lesson was not. Hopefully I can try to repair the situation a bit here. This is maybe the fourth time I've said this now, but I cannot thank you enough for making this a wonderful semester. You all make me want to sing, "Zippity Doo Dah."

Links: Speaking of that song, here is Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit, from Disney's Song of the South. I gave different interpretations of this in Lesson #14... in addition to this being an example of the long-lasting "plantation nostalgia genre," it's also an example of a new cultural idea about African-Americans that the white majority begin to develop in the 20th century. It will remind you of previous attitudes about American Indians... the idea is that blacks are somehow more magical or spiritual than whites. They live a more authentic life, in other words. Wait, what? Don't they live a life of alienated double consciousness? Well if you know any Marx or Hegel, you may recognize the idea here that the master himself is alienated because he does not do any work. Spiritual life is actually, in this theory, a sort of consequence of physical suffering; this is why the first modern musical genre that develops from slave spirituals is called "the blues." This article makes the analysis very well, and very concisely; look for the (surprising (to me)) comparison to Song Dynasty China!

Finally, Birth of a Nation. I showed you the movie's introduction, but you may also watch later scenes, as it seems the entire thing is on YouTube. Look for the later scenes of the white woman being sexually assaulted by the black slave man, and also the black Senators behaving idiotically and eating in a messy way during a legislative session. I stress that this is not historically accurate, but it is true there were black Senators from 1865-76. The next one was in 1969... almost a hundred years later (!), unless you count this baseball team. Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in 2005, making him only the third African-American Senator since the failure of "Reconstruction" (!). I remind you that this "black" or "African-American" group represents 36 million people, or 13% of the total U.S. population. Oh, and also I remembered why I showed you the Birth of a Nation video. It wasn't the idea of the political struggles over historical memory, or the idea of (white) American anxieties about "invasion"; these are just others I "discovered" through improvisation. My main point was supposed to be that Birth of a Nation disagrees with Twain's/Yankee's theory of training. We will discuss this in more detail next semester.

Homework Count: Has been updated. If you think I am wrong, just provide evidence by "copying and pasting" all of your posts into an email to me.

More Missing/Botched Lessons from Today:
-I did discuss Lucille's excellent answer to 120, wherein she compares Twain to Dubois as theorists of ideological "training" or "retraining." I mentioned that we will find this point explored elsewhere in Twain's work; for instance in Pudd'nhead Wilson he gives a demonstration that racial identities are cultural rather than genetic (see 2.2 and 2.3 here), and in "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" he questions whether "Americanization" training is effective, worthwhile, or even good at all. Then I think I lost myself when I began the movie clip. What I meant to say is that this is a major question in Early American Literature, as well as an open question for scientists and humanists today: what part of a personality is genetically determined, and what is culturally determined? Are we like "blank paper," or not? Of course the true answer is that it's the interaction of genetic and cultural determinants that makes a person, an idea that is developed quite well in the ancient world by both 孟子(Mencius) and Ἀριστοτέλης (Aristotle). This would certainly be a suitable topic for your final exam... either a "big essay" to replace the exam (on both the philosophical issue and its relevance to E.A.L.), or a "small essay" to replace one third of the exam (focusing more closely on its relevance to E.A.L.).
-I won't discuss 121. Hopefully Alyssa will give her answer, and you will consider other possibilities for the exam. You can see my idea just from the question; my idea is that Yankee≠Twain. And yet also sometimes, Yankee=Twain. So I suppose we can say that Yankee≈Twain?
-Tady's answer to 122 shows me that I wrote the question badly. Tady provides the cause of the war, which is the Church's desire to regain power from the Yankee; he then goes on to analyze the Church's anti-democratic and anti-technological orientation. But what I really meant to ask is what is the "catalyst" of the war? Tady describes the dry tinder, but let us also describe the match that lights it, and then we will truly understand the fire. Well, the catalyst is a financial panic, of a very modern sort. So Twain reminds us that warfare is not only "barbaric" or "ancient," but also modern. And indeed more common, more violent, and larger in scale in the modern era.
-I will await Zoe's answer to 123, because I sure as hell don't know how to answer it.

And even more:
-We discussed Letitia's answer to 124 about the connection between Reconstruction in the southern states from 1865-76 and the Yankee's "Man Factory." Let me also introduce some terminology. The white landlords in the south called the northern merchants and capitalists who came down with the army to try to modernize the southern economy by the name of "carpet-baggers," because they often carried their personal possessions in a certain kind of bag. They called people who helped the blacks and carpet-baggers by the name "scalawags." This was a terrible insult. One complicating factor is that there is an entire group of people we never discussed... what about poor white people living in the south who were not rich landowners/slavemasters? Well, the wealthy men used these insults like "scalawag" and "nigger-lover" insult to force their cooperation. In other words, they used racial affiliation and regional affiliation to overcome economic class alienation. This entire dynamic is captured quite well in Yankee, where we see that the carpet-bagger himself is not a perfect Man.
-Teresa's answer to 124 discusses the carpet-bagger concept more closely, although she does not use this name. She considers Hank Morgan to be the typical man of his era. Meaning a practical, resourceful, self-reliant man for a new industrial age. Sometimes historians call this age of American history "The Gilded Age," because there was great wealth (like gold), but the wealth was not solid, only an outer coating of gold. Why? Well they refer either to the era's recurring series of financial crises, or to the fact that only a very small number of people controlled the wealth despite American political rhetoric about equality and so forth. So many political critics in the U.S.A. now refer to our time as the "New Gilded Age."
-Winnie's answer to 125 discusses the Yankee's "duty to educate," and raises some suspicion of this idea. Let it be enough to say that the name of this duty, according to British writer Rudyard Kipling, was "the white man's burden." She also makes a smart comparison to early European imperialists like Columbus, Champlain, Williams, and so on, who spoke in similar terms. I would say, however, to be perfectly clear, that European imperialism in the 1500s-1600s is really quite different from European imperialism in the 1800s and 1900s. The sophistication, the scale of organization and impact, are quite bigger in the later case. The imperial network becomes much stronger. We saw this clearly in the sorrows of Cabeza de Vaca. So if Twain is making some comparison, he's probably comparing to European activities in Africa during the 1880s. (Example: Did you know that the most prestigious university scholarship for American students, which pays them to attend Oxford University in the U.K., is named for this horrible, horrible man.)
-Meg's answer to 125 is quite different. She discusses how the idea of something foreign presents an attraction, sexual and otherwise (很辣!), but that the "Pocohontas" myth is a false one because such relationships always feature inequities of power. The connection is that Twain shows this in the novel by means of the Yankee's love affair with Sandy. Hey, maybe this is also the answer to 123? Hello, Central!!!

And still more:
-On to your questions.
-Carol asks if Twain's novel is historically accurate, as we might expect from a writer associated with the development of "realism." Not, it's not. However, his main goal seems to be to destroy the idea that the original King Arthur stories themselves are historically accurate. So we may say that his depiction of England in the 500s is more accurate. He hasn't done any serious research; he's just pretty sure that the King Arthur mythology is 屁 and in this he is certainly correct.
-Clara asks a question related to genres. Can we say Twain is making a "satire" of the 6th century, or only that he is making a "satire" of the 19th century? Well this depends on how we want to use the term, but I tend to think that satire should be a fresh joke. In this case, not fresh to you and me, but fresh to Twain. So to write in the 1880s about medieval life is not really satire. Unless you are secretly making a commentary on modern life, and that would be satire. Twain helped to make the following idiom popular to describe social criticisms that are not fresh: "flogging a dead horse." Always be careful of someone flogging a dead horse, especially politicians; usually this means they are sneaking into your farm at night and flogging your live horse when you're not paying attention.
-Crystal asks if Twain has any interest in time-travel as a scientific concept. Well... he was certainly a scientific enthusiast, just like the Yankee. But I think the easier answer is that this is one of many similar novels in the industrializing Western nations in the 1880-90s, although probably the only funny one. Most of these novels imply that the modern, industrial world is better than the ancient, pre-industrial world. Oh, also this one. Twain's analysis is more complex than that, of course. In a related question, Zoe asked why the Yankee himself never tries to analyze why his time travel has occurred. You may consider this just a clumsy plot device for Twain, but perhaps it shows us the Yankee's pragmatic or practical character. He's more interested to "fix" a problem than to consider how it came to be.

There couldn't possibly... yes, there's more:
-Now the two most difficult questions.
-Qian-Yu asks how Americans felt about Catholicism in the 1880s. Well of course some of them were Catholics who immigrated from Ireland, Italy, Hungary, and so forth. So I guess they felt pretty good about Catholicism unless they had double consciousness (like O'Sullivan maybe?). But the majority were Protestants, and to consider Theodore Roosevelt's idea, Catholicism was the sort of belief you certainly had to 'wash yourself clean from' when Americanizing from Europe. In particular because Catholics believed the Pope in Rome was the central authority of their church. So American anti-Catholicism derives from British anti-Catholicism, but it's even stronger because Americans had no state-sponsored religion, and because they were supposed to be "self-reliant" instead of reliant on some distant Merlin. Certainly Twain is tapping this common anti-Catholic feeling in his book. But I also think that his satire isn't really against Catholicism, more like against Merlin in all forms, even perhaps the Yankee form of Merlin. Anti-Catholic literature is something we don't have much time for in our course. Here is a nice cartoon sample. Consider also our greatest U.S. president, Lincoln. He is famous for freeing the slaves, but less famous for suspending all of our laws and for being elected in large part by people who were strongly anti-Catholic. The first Catholic president of the U.S. was Kennedy (Irish family), much later, in 1960. But many people think he had the help of the Italian-American mafia to engineer the election. I find history disappointing sometimes. I look for 俠 and I find only 眩人.
-Zoe asks what the origin of the term "Yankee" is. I don't think there is any accurate information for its origin. At some point during the revolutionary era it comes to mean the American who opposes the British, so in this sense it is specifically anti-imperial. Consider the song "Yankee Doodle," about a humorous rural man who joins the army, wearing a feather in his cap to make fun of what he considers to be the ridiculous nature of army uniforms. Apparently the British-Americans first sang this song during the "French and Indian War" of the 1760s. Then the Americans sang it in the anti-British meaning in the 1770s. Later "Yankee" came to refer specifically to the "New England" area of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, etc. - the small states northeast of New York. It's one of the (nicer) words that people from the South use to describe people from the North; it's what they called my family, for instance, when we moved from New York to the "Carolinas" in 1985. I think this is where "New York Yankee" comes from when they named the team in 1913. Then of course there is the global meaning of Yankee, which refers to all U.S. Americans. What Marti might call "Your America." This meaning is also a kind of insult, I think. Certainly an insult if you're traveling around in South America. The basis of this insult, then, is the irony that the Yankee believes himself to be an anti-imperialist whereas he acts rather like an imperialist. A friend of Twain named Ernest Crosby wrote a novel that has one interesting scene in which a Chinese professor reverses a common stereotype, by accusing Americans of having no "sense of humor." His evidence? That they cannot perceive this irony in the meaning of their national song "Yankee Doodle."

Class #15 (Homework for 12/22)

Reminder: Mainly to myself... four students will meet in Aaron's office on 12/22 from 14:00-15:20 to make up Class #14.

Reading:
-Yankee, top of page 94 to middle of page 121
-Yankee, top of 132 to middle of 140
-Yankee, top of 157 to middle of 158
-Yankee, top of 180 to bottom of 183
-Yankee, middle of 196 to bottom of 201
-Yankee, top of 232 to top of 233
-Yankee, 291 to 343

Questions: Viola, Carol, Clara, Crystal, Qian-Yu

Answers:
Lucille (120). Analyze Twain's theory of "training" on page 119 and compare to a previous American author of your choice. Is it similar? Different? How? Please write an answer of double the usual length as this will count for two homework points instead of one.
Alyssa (121). In the previous question I gave an instance of Twain using the Yankee as a "spokesman" for his genuine views. Find an instance of narrative irony and analyze it. In other words, find at least one commentary that the Yankee gives in the novel that you do not think to be the genuine opinion of Twain himself, and analyze what Twain may really think, and why he is using the narrator in this contradictory way. One possibility might be page 183. Please write an answer of double the usual length as this will count for two homework points instead of one.
Tady (122). What causes the catastrophic civil war that begins on page 315? What kind of commentary do you think Twain is making by choosing this as the cause?
Zoe (123). This is probably the most difficult question I have assigned for the entire course. Develop a theory to explain why Twain makes the Yankee call his assistants "as pretty as girls" on page 330.
Letitia & Teresa (124). Many critics have argued that Connecticut Yankee is an allegory to describe the Reconstruction period. Explain why this theory makes pretty good sense. You can answer together by exchanging emails, or just answer separately.
Winnie & Meg (125). Many critics have argued that Connecticut Yankee is an allegory to describe U.S. imperialism in Western North America and Hawaii. Explain why this theory makes pretty good sense. You can answer together by exchanging emails, or just answer separately.

Class #14 (Homework for 12/17 or 12/18)

Reminder: Class will meet in two sessions, 12/17 from 10:15-10:45 or 12/18 from 10:15-10:45. Please attend one unless you have arranged with me otherwise.

Please note the new features on the blog: On the right you will now see a search bar; I'm glad Google added this as you may find it useful in preparing for your final exam. Below that one, the active poll, and my picture, you will see a list of completed homework for each student. This should assure you that I'm not just assigning the questions at random. I should have thought of this earlier. Please provide evidence if I've made a mistake, and I will change your count.

Reading: Yankee pages 5-76

Questions: Caleigh, Esther, Jenny, Tady, Zoe

Answers:
Viola (114). Why do you suppose Twain's novel about medieval England begins with a labor dispute in an industrial factory in the modern United States (page 9)? What does this tell us about the Yankee? What does it tell us about the scope of Twain's satire?
Emma (115). Briefly compare the themes and technique of Connecticut Yankee to those of Importance of Being Earnest.
Iris (116). How do you interpret the Yankee's speech about knowing Merlin "thirteen times" previously (page 34)? Obviously he's trying to manipulate the crowd, but what might be the meaning here for Twain's satire?
Rea (117). Who has power in King Arthur's England? How do they get it? How do they keep it?
Sherry (118). One interesting thing about Connecticut Yankee is that Twain, who is a satirist-humorist-comedian, or whatever you want to call it, comments many times on the theory and practice of humor. Analyze one of these instances and relate it to his broader theory of human nature; I'd suggest page 62 but you may find another that works.
Peggy (119). I have two feelings about Connecticut Yankee. First, I feel that it is maybe the most important novel ever for understanding the complexities of American ideology. Second, I feel that it is maybe not a very good novel. Provide arguments to support both theories.

Like I said, first they show you their cartoons, then they won't ever leave:
I apologize for doing the usual 3 hours today instead of 2, as we scheduled. I completely forgot. This explains to me why Ken asked when the class was going to end as we were leaving the bathroom. It seemed like an odd question, but now I see its point. So... I suppose we must leave the next session (Thursday/Friday) to be 1.5 hours, and then make our final session on Tuesday only 2 hours. Poor Twain! Well he shouldn't feel bad; he will have a starring role on the final exam, and what else could a savage and auntie like him ask for? This gives me an idea however. We should have a party for the third hour on Tuesday, 嗎 ? Don't trust him! He will try to use entertainment to colonize you and do more teaching with his Uncle Sam school! - Jose Marti Hmmm that was weird. Well, moving on... Even his humor is a weapon and a trap! He's like Franklin! He wants you to forget what his goals are. Even right now he is secretly making a thesis about the Connecticut Yankee! Ahem, anyway as I was saying, how about a party for the third hour of Tuesday, after our discussion of Twain is concluded? I will contribute a budget of... how about 1500 NTD? What can we buy for that? Maybe the easiest thing is to talk to the cafe next door and pre-order some drinks and snacks? What would you want? Now he's trying to buy your affection with his capital... careful, comrades!

That cartoon slideshow, if you missed class today: Here. Just use the pause key if it goes too fast for you. However I fear this link may only work on Apple computers.

Speaking of comrades:
First, Marti isn't really a socialist. He's actually rather more of a capitalist liberal. I am just pointing out the broader similarity to later Cuban revolutionary rhetoric. Anyway, following from my mention of Japan's proposal that it would make an anti-racist Pacific empire (a half success at best), we should also remember that both Soviet Russia and PRC under Mao deliberately included anti-racist ideas in their political rhetoric (so too Ho-Chi Minh in Vietnam). In point of fact they were not really anti-racist. But the ideology is important because they were indicating a flaw in Western liberal capitalism, which claims to be non-racist in theory but always seems to be racist somehow in practice. Consequences... there are Soviet propaganda films that propose an alliance with African-Americans! It's quite funny in a way since it was pure ideology and never took place. But you can be sure that racist opponents of Dubois, King, X, etc. accused them of being Communist spies, especially when they began using language with an internationalist and anti-capitalist flavor in the late 1960s. That's what really got King and X assassinated, perhaps. King was assassinated twice, in a sense, because everyone forgot about those ideas and came to see him as a safe radical (if this phrase makes sense) because his demands were "domestic" or "national," and phrased mainly in Jeffersonian and Christian vocabulary. All this ought to remind us of... the threat of the slave rebellion in Haiti! Remember, Thoreau and Emerson and so forth can talk revolution until they're "blue in the face." So long as they're not black in the face!

The ones that got away:
Great class today, I thought. You guys were really involved. Well except for when you were asleep. (This is too be expected at this phase of the term, ha ha.) Here are the missing questions. It appears that #110, about Dubois' views of the exact nature of "race," has now gone unanswered by me and Sherry both. Consider it an unsolved mystery. Sydney's answer to #111 is excellent, and quite sufficient. She says that Dubois uses poetry and music in his epigraphs because they have "higher" intellectual authority, but that this becomes more clever when we see that the music is actually a "lower" form, the black spiritual, and that this technique may then represent a theory of hybridization between intellectual modes, thus a theory of social integration. This analysis would also fit well with Dunbar and Chesnutt. Winnie asked a related question and added, why Byron of all poets? I think the answer is that Byron was known as an emotionally vibrant poet, and also because his politics were revolutionary and anti-imperial; he helped start the Greek revolution against the Ottomans, for instance. Ask Letitia about that; she is apparently doing translations of Ottoman legal history.

Ted explains in his answer to #112 that we shouldn't expect consistency from Teddy Roosevelt; he's a politician! But likewise I might say that American ideology itself is somewhat confused at that point in time; it seems like T.R. himself struggled to answer the question of who could be "Americanized." Here is the short essay I mentioned, in which an Irish-American named Finley Peter Dunne ridicules T.R.'s "Anglo-Saxon" theory; believe it or not they soon became friends. Finally, Teresa asked how American Indians felt about T.R.; clearly they are one of the excluded groups in his concept of the "American," which should make it clear that "His America" is 0% a geographic concept, rather 10% an ideological one and 90% a racial one. I had to look up the answer... apparently T.R. paid closer attention to the Indians' situation than some other Presidents of his time, and was considered as a kind of friend by some tribes, as this very old video shows. On the other hand his update of the "frontier" concept clearly takes the metaphor of "Indian hunting" and extends it to Cuba and the Philippines, etc. And he seemed to push much harder for the "preservation" of U.S. national parkland than the "reservation" of Indians who had previously lived on that land. But in this he's no worse than any other president before 1975, or possibly thereafter.

Extended thoughts on the philosophy of sunflower seeds: I realized that I didn't make a complete presentation of my case today. You see, the technique I was using to chew the seeds in class is not the true American technique. There was the complication of spitting into the bottle, which has a narrow opening. So I could only spit one shell at once; this is so unimpressive that even a dog can do it. Ordinarily, I would keep about 10 seeds (with the shell on) in my left cheek, then one by one use my back right teeth to crack them open and use my tongue to shift the empty shells to the front of my mouth just under my upper lip. Then the back right teeth chew the seed and the tongue sends it down my throat. Meanwhile, you see, the empty shells are accumulating under my upper lift. Once the entire magazine has been emptied, then I would spit ALL of those seeds simultaneously onto the ground in a big spray, and then reload. Also I can reverse the sides entirely; let's see the dog do that.

In addition to this technical point, I must also make an aesthetic one. I fail to see how the method that Zoe showed me, to crack the shell gingerly with your teeth and then take it out of your mouth to separate with your fingers, whereupon then reintroducing the shell-less seed into your mouth to chew (either one by one or several in a row)... I fail to see how this method takes advantage of the modern type of salted or otherwise flavored sunflower seeds. Because the flavor is all on the exterior of the shell. So in your method you are just eating the flavorless seeds, whereas in my method I get both the seeds and whatever zesty accompaniment they have. Indeed I find the flavor of the sunflower seeds at RT Mart (Da Ren Fa) to be outstanding. It has just a hint of sweet taste, and also salty. But not too salty; sometimes American sunflower seeds are much too salty, to the point that it burns your mouth. Also American seeds will sometimes have weird flavors like "barbecue." So in conclusion, I believe the combination of the Taiwanese sunflower seeds and the American style of chewing creates the best possible enjoyment. (This concludes my speech to the United Nations.)

Class #13 (Homework for 12/15)

Reading:
-Norton biographical note on Booker T. Washington (1628-30)... you can't understand Dubois without this
-Dubois biographical note & The Souls of Black Folk (1727-44)
-Norton headnote, "Debates over Americanization" (1851-52)
-Roosevelt biographical note & American Ideals (1857-60)
-Marti biographical note & "Our America" (1868-70)

Questions: Letitia, Meg, Teresa, Ting Ju, Tracy, Viola, Winnie

Answers:
Jane (107). How might the growth of an African-American reading audience as described at the bottom of page 1728 affect the styles and themes of African-American authors? How might this provide a solution to Emma's question about why 1890s authors like Dunbar and Chesnutt were criticized by black intellectuals in the 1920s?
Ken (108). Give at least two additional examples of a person or group who has experienced "double consciousness," and explain why you think the term is applicable.
Sharon (109). Explain how Chesnutt and Dunbar represent themes similar to Dubois' theory of "double consciousness" in their writing. Give examples.
Sherry (110). I am perturbed by Dubois' phrase "corruption from white adulterers" on 1733. Does he refer to sexual or moral corruption? Or does he refer to a kind of racial or biological corruption? I mean, does Dubois accept a theory of "race" even as he rejects a theory of racial superiority/inferiority? If so, does he accept it as a scientific fact, or as a sociological one (see 1734)?
Sydney (111). Why do you think Dubois starts each chapter of The Souls of Black Folk with a pairing of poetry and musical notes? And why does he make these specific choices of poetry and music?
Ted (112). Roosevelt is a fascinating figure to study, because his writing and political activity produce so many contradictions. For instance, he seems to have at least three contradictory attitudes about race. First, he often argued for the superiority of the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" race, similarly to O'Sullivan. Second, American Ideals seems to broaden the idea of a superior race to include a "mix" of Anglo-Saxons and other Europeans, most notably the Irish. And yet it is not all-inclusive; apparently those of African, Hispanic, Chinese, or aboriginal ancestry, etc. "do not assimilate readily" (1858) and therefore cannot be "Americanized." Third, Roosevelt sometimes acted as a supporter of African-Americans... even courting political controversy by dining with Booker T. Washington at the White House! Is there any way to reconcile these contradictory views?
Natalie (113). What does Marti mean by "America"? How is it different than what Roosevelt means? How is it similar? Finally, interpret Marti's metaphor "like silver in the veins of the Andes" (1869).

Bonus:
A few clips from the movie Bamboozled, in which the famous African-American filmmaker Spike Lee criticizes contemporary black entertainers and their white employers for perpetuating harmful stereotypes. The movie begins with this montage of stereotypes in U.S. popular entertainment from around 1920-1950. What we see there is a failure to control the means of representation, as white musicians, actors, and cartoonists ridicule not only the physical appearance or intellectual ability of African-Americans, but also ridicule their musical and religious traditions. (We may consider the early period of Disney cartoons in the same manner.) Later in the movie, Lee shows how even with all the political gains of blacks, they still have the same problem with controlling cultural representation. So there's this video, which makes fun of the marketing of the clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger; listen for the use of the word "authentic." And then this video, which makes fun of the use of the "gangster" image in hip-hop music and in liquor marketing.

The one that got away:
There's always one! I didn't answer Emma's question about why later black writers (the Harlem Renaissance school of the 1920s) criticized Dunbar (and Chesnutt) for "selling out" to the white majority audience. I think partly this expresses a generational conflict, as we see in all communities, but particularly in artistic/literary ones. It could be a class conflict insofar as Dunbar's family was quite poor whereas these new intellectuals were a highly educated "talented tenth." It's also possible that they just didn't see the subversive side of Dunbar's poetry or Chesnutt's stories that I discussed. To me, when we evaluate an artist, we must allow for his/her situation... in some situations it is easier to control the means of representation, and in some situations it is more difficult. The challenge of Dunbar in the 1890s is different from that of Hughes or Hurston in the 1920s, different from Baldwin, Wright, or Ellison in the 1950s, different from that of Morrison in the 1990s, different from that of Equiano in the 1780s, from Jacobs and Douglass in the 1850s, etc. etc. Oh, and here's Emma's link from the last blog post... "Malindy" read aloud in African-American dialect, and then in standard American English.

The other one that got away:
Clara discussed reunion scenes in African-American fiction and autobiography. Her post gave a good explanation of how this device refers to the separation of black families during slavery, their fleeting reunions, and their possibility to be reunified in freedom. The one thing I'd like to add about Chesnutt is that the reunion in "Wife of His Youth" is actually somewhat different. The danger here is not from slavery or exploitation by whites, but rather that of internal differences splitting the African-American community. You may compare it in some sense to the "jeremiads" of Bradford or Thoreau... warnings that a community has lost its values, or is in danger of losing them.