Race and Pedagogy Project - Teaching Resources

Class and Race In America: The Legacy of Hurricane Katrina

shirsch — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:19:01 +0000

The picture to the left of a father using the American flag as a blanket to shield his son points to the contradictions and complexity of the United States when it comes to dealing with race and class together. Images such as this broadcast across the nation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina illustrate the economic stratification and racial inequality that still exists in a country that refuses to come to terms with its history of slavery and economic disparity between the rich and the poor. Spike Lee’s four hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, serves to highlight this disparity, as well as the system wide failure of the government on all levels, and gives a voice to the survivors and victims of the storm. Lee interviewed over 100 people in producing his film. As Allsion Samules writes for Newsweek magazine August 21/August 28, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14322933/site/newsweek/, Lee interviewed, “the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, Sean Penn, Soledad O’Brien, Kayne West, engineers historians, journalists, radio DJs–even the guy who spotted the vice president during a post-Katrina photo-op and told him to ‘Go f— yourself Mr. Cheney’” (94). But Samuels is quick to point out that the voice with the most impact comes from Phyllis Montant LeBlanc, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward who noted the questions she posed to Lee when he asked her to be a part of the documentary, “‘Are you going to tell the whole story and make it clear that all black people aren’t poor, ignorant looters?’ And then I aksed if I could cuss. When he said yes to both, I said, ‘Hot damn, we’ve got a deal!’” (94).

Hurricane Katrina brought to the forefront a history of neglect and refusal to look at the social, political and cultural problems stemming from decades of classism and racism in the United States. As pictures such as the one above of a woman waiting outside the New Orleans Convention Center wrapped in an American flag blanket circulated around the country and around the world Americans were forced to look at an American legacy that was not about democracy, freedom and equality but about the denial of these American ideals.

Bibliography:

Samuels, Allison. “Spike’s Katrina.” Newsweek 21/28 Aug. 2006: 94-96.

Corregidora: The Blues as Narrative

shirsch — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:30:55 +0000

The blues and music play an integral part in Gayl Jones’ novel Corregiadora. Ursa as a blues singer uses music as a narrative to map the historical trajecotories of slavery onto the present. Because she cannot bear the children that her grandmother deems as necessary in preserving the hertiage of slavery and the seuxal exploitation her family endured the narrative becomes Ursa’s to bear alone. The blues in Corregidora serve as an outlet with which to negotaite this history of violence and degradation and ultimately Ursa’s performace of the blues transforms into an act of resistance. As Ashraf H.A. Rushdy notes in the African American Review, Summer 2000, “The sexual and racial categories inherited from plantation culture can be contested through the blues because they offer a productive cultural formation. Like the family narratives to which the blues are so closely aligned throughout Corregidora, the blues performance produces an enabling version of the past and reproduces a healthier set of resources for the reconstitution of the desiring subject, because the blues also follow the practice of the family narratives in contesting the representations of a desiring subject either utterly freed from or utterly imprisoned by the past” (273-297). The blues have a long history of serving as a vehicle for the articulation of suffering and ultimately the redemption of the spirit. Th inlfuence the blues had on jazz introduced blues singers such as Billie Holiday into the mainstream of American popular culture. See excerpts on the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes’s “Weary Blues” on this site for more on the blues. Remnants of the blues and its leagacy are prevalent in contemproray American, African American and World music such as hip-hop, rythm and blues, and rap.

Bibliography:

Rushday, Ashraf H.A. “‘Relate Sexual to Historical’: Race, Resistance and Desire in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora.” African American Review 34 (Summer 2000): 273-297.

Beloved: The Story of Margaret Garner

shirsch — 2e3c Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:08:10 +0000

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a fugtive slave who in her recaputre committed the act of infanticide rather than see her child grow up in slavery. Morrison’s rearticulation of Garner’s story through the character of Sethe is as much about telling and speaking as it is about silence; about the “unspeakable thoughts, unspoken” (Beloved 199). Morrison’s writing of a story “not to pass on” points to what is said in the silences, as that which is not said is often revealed through its very refusal of disclosure.

In a nation that repeatedly turns its head away from its racial history, the history of slavery and the vestiges of slavery that survive in institutional and idelogical racisms, Morrison’s repetiton of “It was a story not to pass on…This is a story not to pass on” (275) serves as a poignant reminder not to forget. Morrison articulates an alternate narrative occluded in American national discourse, especially in the years following the Civil War and national reconcilliation. But Morrison’s repeated turn towards the silences of slavery motions the reader to probe those silences and whay they say. The story of Sethe brings Margaret Garner’s story back into the United States consciousness and calls into question the silences and veilings that still remain in the legacy of slavery that still haunts America.

References and Further Reading Recommendations:

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and K.A. Appiah eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perpectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, 1993.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1993.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diapsora.” Jonathan Rutherford ed. Identity, Community, Culture Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1992.

Lesson Plan: Laviera’s Bilingual “AmeRíca”

K. V. — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:13:05 +0000

Assigned Reading:
“AmerRícan” by Tato Laviera

Discussion Questions:
1.La Bomba and La Plena: The influence of music on Laviera’s poetry.
In “AmeRícan” Laviera makes several references to traditional Puerto Rican music. He mentions the composer Pedro Flores (13), “sweet soft spanish danzas gypsies” (15), “beating jíbaro” (18) and “walking plena-rhythms in new york” (32).

Watch the film clip of Los Pleneros de los 21 playing “Testigo” at the Smithsonian Folk Folklife Festival, 2005. Also watch Los Pleneros’ demonstration of how the drums are played in Plena music. Los Pleneros de los 21 are a New York-based music group that plays Bomba and Plena, two African-based music styles that have flourished among the black communities of Puerto Rico proper and American Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Bomba and Plena are the result of the blending of various influences, including West African music, European music and Native Taino music.

What similarities do you notice between “AmerRíca” and the music of Los Pleneros de los 21? In what ways does Laviera structure his poem like a song? Why might Plena and Bomba music be especially suited to Laviera’s message?

http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/archives_03.aspx

2. The word “AmerRícan” is a combination of the English “America,” and the Spanish “Puerto Rícan.” Why does Laviera blend these two words in his title and then repeat this word at the beginning of each stanza? What is the significance of placing the accent on the “í” (instead of on the “é” as in the Spanish “América”)?

3. In “AmeRícan,” Laviera writes “AmerRícan, across forth and across back / back across and forth back / forth across and back and forth / our trips are walking bridges!” (21-24). How might Laviera’s playful use of “back and forth” here refer not only to a physical but also to a linguistic or cultural freedom of movement? What does he mean when he writes that the immigrant experience is like “walking bridges”? In these lines, does Laviera depict the Puerto Rican immigrant experience as disorienting, challenging, or liberating (or some combination thereof)?

4. Consider the following passage from an interview with Tato Laviera:

“Fortunately and unfortunately, my nation is bilingual. The people are into the English and into the Spanish, and if you do it right, no matter what language, it’s fine…Spanish is not an issue in this country; Spanish is the most grounded language in this country. No hay problema con el español. [Spanish is no problem.] For every five Nuyoricans who are speaking “Spanglish,” there’re ten Dominicans that come and bring the Spanish over; and there’re twenty-five salvadoreños that bring it over. Eso no es una problema. [That’s not a problem.]…Now being a Nuyorican, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that the world is in a bilingual tension: the Africans in Europe, the Turkish in Germany. There are movements from mother country to urban centers in conquering countries and it is not isolated to Puerto Rico. As Nuyoricans, we have captured the political and linguistic changes. People are looking for a Spanish or an English or a German point of view. But if you think about it, Europe tends to be multilingual. American isolates itself in the English only and it want to control biocenosis*. You can’t do that—it’s a stupid move. It’s exercising bigotry. But the broad world isn’t looking at it that way; the linguistic tension exists everywhere in the world and the Nuyorican element of it, prestigiously, has grown in many ways. I’m not saying that’s the only school of Puerto Rican writing, I’m not saying that I know, but, I’m saying that there’s nothing a Puerto Rican can do about bilingualism. It’s a fact of life and a fact of the world movement. That’s the way I see it.” (1031)

*OED: Biocenosis (n): An association of organisms forming a biotic community; the relationship that exists between such organisms.

From: Luis, William. “From New York to the World: An Interview With Tato Laviera,” Callaloo, Vol. 15, No. 4. (1992). 1022-1033.

Laviera sees bilingualism as a source of pride for Puerto Ricans. According to Laviera, why is bilingualism so important? What does it mean for America to “want to control biocenosis”? Which lines from “AmeRíca” highlight the poem’s bilingual nature? Laviera writes in “AmeRíca” that he is “defining the new america” (50). What is his vision for how “america” should be?

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Tato Laviera

K. V. — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 19:55:47 +0000

Tato Laviera was born in Puerto Rico and has lived in New York City since 1960. A second-generation Puerto Rican writer, a poet and playwright, he is deeply committed to the social and cultural development of Puerto Ricans in New York. In addition, he has taught creative writing at Rutgers and other universities on the East Coast.

His poetry and plays are linguistic and artistic celebrations of Puerto Rican culture, African Caribbean traditions, the fast rhythms of life in New York City, and of life in general. Laviera writes in English, Spanish, and Spanglish, a mixture of the two. His superior command of both languages and the playful yet serious value he imparts to Spanglish, distinguishes his writing from others of his generation. For example, the titles of his two books, Enclave and AmerRícan, suggest double readings in Spanish and English. Laviera’s poetry is highly relevant to the study of bilingual and bicultural issues, for in it he documents, examines, and questions what it means to be Puerto Rican in the United States. His texts have reflected the changes and transitions that his community has undergone since the major migrations of the 1940s and, moreover, offer a paradigm of what pluralistic America should really be all about.

Laviera has been called a “chronicler of life in El Barrio” and rightly so. His poetic language is not influenced by the written, academic tradition of poetry, but instead it is informed by popular culture, by the oral tradition of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and by the particular voices spoken and heard in El Barrio. Gossip, refrains, street language, idiomatic expressions, interjections, poetic declamation, and African Caribbean music such as salsa, rhumbas, mambos, sones and música jíbara, are but some of the raw material with which Laviera constructs his poems. Though published in a written format, Laviera’s poetry is mean to be sung and recited.

A central tenet to Laviera’s work is his identification with the African American community in this country. On the one hand, he reinforces the unity and common roots of blacks and Puerto Ricans: “it is called Africa in all of us.” This tendency also reflects the new multi-ethnic constitution of America, which has supplanted the old myth of the melting pot. In this context Laviera’s poems are reaffirmations of his Puertoricanness and of his community as a new national identity that diverges from the insular Puerto Rican. He proposes a new ethnic identity that includes other minority groups in the country. New York City becomes the space where this convergence and cultural mestizaje takes place. While maintaining a denunciative stance through the use of irony and tongue-in-cheek humor, Laviera’s work flourishes with a contagious optimism, and his poems are true songs to the joy of living which Puerto Ricans profoundly feel despite the harsh circumstances in which they live.

From: Aparicio, Frances R. “Tato Laviera b.1951,” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th Ed. Vol. E. Ed. Paul Lauter, 2005. 2960-2961.

Lesson Plan: Using/Misusing the Black Vernacular: Hurston, Hughes and Toomer

K. V. — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 23:25:35 +0000

“But now, the sun and the bossmen were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.”
–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Assigned Readings:
(From The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Ed. Paul Lauter, 5th Ed., 2005):
“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
“Blood Burning Moon” from Cane by Jean Toomer

Background:
One of the most striking qualities of Hurston’s prose is her use of the black vernacular. In Hurston’s novels and short stories it is often the dialogue and not the narration that drives the story forward. Consider the following passage from “Sweat”:

“Heah come Delia Jones,” Jim Merchant said, as the shaggy pony came ’round the bend of the road toward them. The rusty buckboard was heaped with baskets of crisp, clean laundry.
“Yep,” Joe Lindsay agreed. “hot or col’, rain or shine, jes es reg’lar ez de weeks roll roun’ Delia carries ‘em an’ fetches ‘em on Sat’day.”
“She better if she wanter eat,” said Moss. “Syke Jones aint wuth de shot an’ powder would tek tuch kill ‘em. Not to huh he ain’t.” (Lauter 1580)

In this passage Delia’s workday is narrated by a group “village men” sitting out on Joe Clarke’s porch. Note Hurston’s use of the black vernacular and the blurring of the boundaries between her narrative voice (“the shaggy pony came ’round the bend”) and the gossip of the men (“She better if she wanter eat”).

During the Harlem Renaissance there were many writers who attempted to portray black “folk culture” by incorporating black vernacular into their texts. Consider the following examples from Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” and from Jean Toomer’s Cane:

From “The Weary Blues” (1925) by Langston Hughes:
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—

“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.” (Lauter 1522)

From Cane, “Blood-Burning Moon” by Jean Toomer:
Figures shifted, restlesslike, between lamp and window in the front rooms of the shanties. Shadows of the figures fought each other on the gray dust of the road. Figures raised the windows and joined the old woman in song. Louisa and Tom, the whole street, singing:

Red nigger moon. Sinner!
Blood-burning moon. Sinner!
Come out that fact’ry door. (Lauter 1506)

Authors like Hughes, Toomer and Hurston felt that using black vernacular was a way to give both black and white readers an insight into black culture. However, these authors all had very different ways of incorporating the vernacular into their texts. Some writers like Hughes drew a sharp division between his “poet’s voice” and the voice of the “common folk” (for example, the blues singer in his poem). Others, like Hurston and Toomer at times allowed their narrative voice to blend with the dialogue of the characters in their stories. In addition, some authors (like Hurston) made extensive use of the black vernacular, while others limited their use to specific quotes or references to songs.

Small Group Discussion Questions:

1. What are the benefits of including the black vernacular in a text? Why do you think Hurston used so much black vernacular in her writing? For whom was she writing?

2. What are the downsides of using black vernacular extensively? What kind of audience would a text like “Sweat” attract? What kind of audience might it exclude?

3. Critiques of Hurston. There were many different critical reactions to Hurston’s use of the black vernacular, both at the time she was writing and afterwards. As Christa Smith Anderson writes in her article “Do You Speak American?”:

Hurston’s heavy use of dialect and folk speech drew both praise and criticism from her African-American contemporaries. Philosopher and critic Alain Locke praised Hurston’s “gift for poetic phrase… and rare dialect,” and considered it a welcome replacement “for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes.” Yet he also felt that Their Eyes Were Watching God lacked psychological depth (Locke). The harshest criticism came from Richard Wright, who wrote that Hurston “exploits that phase of Negro life which is ‘quaint.’” Wright said Hurston’s dialogue captured only the “psychological movements of the Negro folk-mind in their pure simplicity,” and likened Hurston’s technique to that of a minstrel show designed to appease a white audience. During a time of pervasive and overt racial oppression, Wright found in Their Eyes Were Watching God, “no theme, no message, no thought” (Wright). (Anderson)

Do you agree with Locke that Hurston’s use of the black vernacular adds a richness and authenticity to her writing? Or do you agree with Wright that Hurston’s depiction of black culture is simplistic and functions like a “minstrel show designed to appease a white audience”?

4. Who does a better job of incorporating the black vernacular into their work: Toomer, Hughes or Hurston. Why? Which text best gives readers an insight into black culture while avoiding the pitfalls that Wright identifies?

5. What modern day productions can you think of that incorporate a version of the vernacular? List some of the mainstream T.V. shows, movies, or songs that feature minority dialects. Are these representations of the minority culture accurate? What kinds of stereotypes do they play on?

Assignment:
Part 1: Write a short story or poem that incorporates a form of modern-day vernacular. Lanugage options include: Ebonics, Spanglish, “Surfer Slang” or regional dialects.

Part 2: Write a two-page analysis explaining why you chose this language and how you incorporated it into your text. In your analysis, be sure to answer the following questions:
1. Who is your audience? To whom would this text appeal?
2. How did you gather your knowledge about the dialect you included? What were your sources? (First-hand experience, movies, the Internet, etc.)
3. What makes your text difficult/easy to read?
4. Does your text give an accurate or realistic picture of the culture you are depicting? What stereotypes might your text be drawing on?
5. Which texts/authors provided you with examples for how to include a dialect into your writing? (Toomer, Hughes, Hurston, Gloria Anzaldúa, etc.)

Works Cited:
Anderson, Christa Smith. “Do You Speak American?” PBS. 4 Sept. 2006. http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/powerprose/hurston/#1

Lauter, Paul, Ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. Vol D. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Locke, Alain. Opportunity. June 1, 1938. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/znhhp.html, accessed March 14, 2004.

Wright, Richard. “Between Laughter and Tears.” (review) New Masses, 5 October 1937. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/znhhp.html, accessed March 14, 2004.

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Zora Neale Hurston

K. V. — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:06:06 +0000

Zora Neale Hurston was born in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida. She attended Howard University and then later Barnard College where she studied with the anthropologists Franz Boas and Gladys Reichard. While living in New York in the 1920’s she became an active participant in the literary and cultural innovations of The Harlem Renaissance. During this period she grew fascinated in the scholarly study of her hometown and, in 1927, revisited Eatonville to collect folktales, spirituals, sermons, work songs, blues, and children’s games. Hurston spent six years documenting the art of “the Negro farthest down,” who, she contended, had made the greatest contribution to American culture. The product of her “literary anthropology” was Mules and Men, a novel which she published in 1935.

Hurston published her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God two years later in 1937. Her other works include Moses, Man of the Mountain(1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), Tell My Horse (1938), a memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) and more than fifty published short stories, essays, and plays.

Hurston’s popularity declined in the 1940’s, particularly after the publication of Richard Wright’s Native Son when folk humor became passe. As Cheryl A. Wall writes, in the 1940’s, “Social realism and political protest were the black writers’ mandate. Critics missed the protest implicit in Hurston’s art: by rejecting the definitions of themselves the dominant society attempted to impose and by preserving, adapting, and creating their own cultural practices, Hurston asserted, African Americans waged a heroic struggle of resistance” (Wall, “Zora Neale Hurston”). Hurston died in 1960, forgotten and penniless, in a Fort Pierce, Florida. Her word was rediscovered years later by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple. Hurston’s best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God has sold over 200,000 copies since the mid-1980’s and more of her work is in print now than it ever was during her life.

Classroom Resources:

Syllabi:
Zora Neale Hurston Junior Pro-Seminar Syllabus
Professor Roxanne Mountford, University of Arizona

The Zora Neale Hurston Era
Professor Kevin Meehan, University of Central Florida

Other Web Resources:
The Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive. This site includes a biography, criticial material, photos, course syllabi and sound clips. It’s an excellent teaching resource, particularly for university courses.

The Florida Memory Project. A compilation of all of the known Zora Neale Hurston sound recordings created while she worked for the WPA in the 1930s. Today, the original recordings are housed at the Library of Congress. Hurston worked for the WPA in 1935 and again in 1939.

The Harlem Renaissance

K. V. — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:51:39 +0000

The Harlem Renaisssance occurred during the 1920s, a result of the confluence of black American writers and artists in a district which was already fashionable among the white smart set as the music-and-entertainment capital of New York. The early years of the century had seen the publication of works such as W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, indicating the future role of black people in America. In 1925, Alain Locke, a professor at Howard University, brought together a collection of short stories, poems, and prose by divers hands, under the title The New Negro. As the abstraction was held to characterize the ‘spiritual Coming of Age’ of the black race, so the volume itself could be seen as a mark of its cultural maturity.

Major figures in the Harlem Renaissance were Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston, many of whom treated the themes of black life in a way that felt modern, while borrowing elements from the folk literature of black tradition. Visual artists of the Renaissance, including Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson, incorporated African and primitive motifs into their work. Among the magazines founded at the time which devoted themselves to ‘Negro studies’ were Crisis (edited by DuBois), Opportunity, and the Messenger.

These magazines were not exclusively literary, but the significance of the Harlem Renaissance did not lie solely in its literary impact. Although much that was produced from Harlem in the 1920s is of greater historical than artistic importance, the Renaissance made white America aware for the first time of the modern art of a people it had not long before kept in slavery.

For an account of this development see Harlem Renaissance, by Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York, 1971). When Harlem Was in Vogue, by David Levering Lewis (New York, 1981) is a study of broader scope, with less emphasis on the literary life of the 1920s.

From: James Campbell, “Harlem Renaissance, The” The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. UC Santa Barbara. 2 September 2006

Harlem Renaissance Web Resources:

Harlem: 1900-1940. An Exhibition Portfolio from The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
This aesthetically appealing site provides lesson plans focused around the “Harlem: 1900-1940” photo exhibition at the Schomburg Center. Lessons are geared towards middle or high-school age students, although this material could also supplement a college-level course. In addition to teacher resources, this site also provides and overview of the photo exhibition, including historical material on each photo displayed.

“Rhapsodies in Black” Art Exhibition and Book
This site includes photos from “Rhapsodies in Black” a traveling art exhibition designed by Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey that toured London, the University of Warwick, Bristol, San Francisco and Washington D.C. in 1997-1998. The site also features selections from scholarly articles in the exhibition’s accompanying book. There is excellent material here on the art, music and culture of the Harlem Renaissance.

Yale-New Haven Teachers Institue Harlem Renaissance Unit (Gr.9-12)
This is a curriculum guide for a 9 week high school English unit on the Harlem Renaissance. It was designed by Caroline Jackson who works for the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. It includes an excellent historical background, a sequence of lessons, a student reading list and a bibliography for teachers.

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Lesson Plan: “The Weary Blues”: Langston Hughes and Bessie Smith

K. V. — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 22:07:49 +0000

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the first of the Harlem Renaissance poets to incorporate jazz, spirituals and the blues into his writing. In the 1920’s Hughes steeped himself in the jazz culture of Harlem and began to weave the rhythm and feeling of Harlem jazz into his poetry. Perhaps the most obvious example of Hughes’ experimentation with new musical forms appears Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues,” published first in 1923 in New York’s Amsterdam News and two years later in Hughes’ first collection The Weary Blues.

Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was unquestionably the greatest of the vaudeville blues singers and brought the emotional intensity, personal involvement, and expression of blues singing into the jazz repertory with unexcelled artistry. Baby Doll and After You’ve Gone, both made with Joe Smith, and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out, with Ed Allen on cornet, illustrate her capacity for sensitive interpretation of popular songs. Her broad phrasing, fine intonation, blue-note inflections, and wide, expressive range made hers the measure of jazz-blues singing in the 1920s. She made almost 200 recordings, of which her remarkable duets with Armstrong are among her best. Although she excelled in the performance of slow blues, she also recorded vigorous versions of jazz standards. Joe Smith was her preferred accompanist, but possibly her finest recording (and certainly the best known in her day) was Back Water Blues, with James P. Johnson. Her voice had coarsened by the time of her last session, but few jazz artists have been as consistently outstanding as she. This photo of Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues” was taken in 1925.
From: The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Ed. Barry Kernfeld. 2nd Ed. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, Inc., 2002.

For the Classroom:
Have students read “The Weary Blues” aloud in class. Discuss in small groups:

1. What did you notice about Hughes’ use of sound in this poem? What kinds of sounds (especially vowel sounds) were repeated?
2. How does Hughes incorporate the song of the Negro piano player into his poem? Why does he set this song off with quotes?
3. Where do you see the influence of the blues in this poem? (Identify specific lines.)

Play Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” for the class. Ask students to freewrite for 20 min. on the following questions. Then hold a class discussion based on their freewrites.:

1. Describe the feeling of Smith’s song? Is she expressing anger, sadness, frustration? If so, to whom are these feelings directed?
2. What are the similarities/differences between Smith’s song and Hughes’ poem?
3. Which lines of Smith’s song are most powerful/memorable. Why?
4. The OED definition of a “backwater” is: “Water dammed back in the channel of a swollen or obstructed river (or mill-race), or that has overflowed into shallow lagoons near it.” Backwater, in other words, is created when certain areas are artificially flooded in order to prevent flooding in other areas. Why did Smith choose to sing about “backwater”? How might “backwater” be a metaphor for the social pressures on blacks (or black women) in the 1920’s?
5. Why do you think Langston Hughes incorporated blues songs like “The Backwater Blues” into his poetry?

CLASS DEBATE:
Hughes ends his poem with the line: “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.” Consider this alongside Bessie Smith’s line, “Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go / Backwater blues done call me to pack my things and go / ‘Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more.”

Is the musical form of the blues an expression of futility or a source of hope for Hughes and Smith?

Lesson Plan:Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

K. V. — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:00:13 +0000

Anzaldúa’s book is theoretical, political, poetical, and personal. Writing about external, communal, and individual borderlands from a position on, around, and between those borders, Anzaldúa subversively advocates a political mobilization around the “mestiza consciousness,” for only multiplicity—internal as well as external—can break down the “subject-object duality that keeps her [one] a prisoner” (80). Anzaldúa identifies herself as a Chicana lesbian feminist from the tejas-Mexican border, and she writes of the contradictions and coalitions she must negotiate between these multiple identities. Her gender and sexuality, for example, are at odds with patriarchal culture, but she inhabits these contradictory positions tactically.

As she writes of her sexuality, “As a lesbian, I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is the queer of me in all races” (80). Similarly but in terms of gender, she explains “I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet” (80-81).

Anzaldúa’s mixed genre writing style pedagogically models her “mestiza consciousness” subject. Writing in multiple English and Spanish languages—she enumerates eight versions with which she is acquainted—and flowing between history, theory, poetry, and personal narrative, Anzaldúa teaches her own version of mestiza consciousness through example. The poem she begins with is not enough to inspire change, just as the history lesson that follows about the U.S.-Mexican border, while informative, does not tell the whole story. It is only in the multiplicity of forms and languages that Anzaldúa can teach us about the borderlands; it is only from the multiplicity of our own experiences that we can learn.

See also:

Anzaldúa, Gloria, ed. Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990.

Anzaldúa, Gloria and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown: Persephone, 1981.

Anzaldúa, Gloria and A. Keating. This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Anzaldúa Biography

When Gloria Anzaldúa described the United States and Mexico border as “una herida abierta” (an open wound), she spoke from her lived experience as a native border dweller. Born in the ranch settlement of Jesus Maria in south Texas, Anzaldúa grew up in the small town of Hargill, Texas, and later wrote and taught in Northern California. She received her B.A. from Pan American University and her M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. In her poetry, fiction, essays, and autobiography, she wrote eloquently of the indignities a Chicana lesbian feminist overcomes as she escapes the strictures of patriarchal Chicano traditions and confronts the injustices of dominant culture. She died on May 15, 2004 at her home in Santa Cruz, California from complications due to diabetes. She was within weeks of completing her dissertation and receiving her doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

(Adapted from Sonia Saldivar-Hull, “Gloria Anzaldua,” Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 5^th Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

Discussion Questions: Borderlands/La Frontera

“Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.”
-Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

1. Border figures and border identities. In Chapter 3 of Borderlands/La Frontera Anzaldúa describes la Virgen de Guadalupe (the Virgin of Guadalupe) as a figure that,

unites people of different races, religions, languages: Chicano protestants, American Indians and whites. “Nuestra abogada siempre serás/Our mediatrix you will always be.” She mediates between the Spanish and Indian cultures…and between Chicanos and the white world…La Virgen de Guadalupe is the symbol of ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity that Chicanos-mexicanos, people of mixed race, people who have Indian blood, people who cross cultures, by necessity possess. (Lauter 2744-5)

What makes the Virgin of Guadalupe such a powerful figure for Anzaldúa? Why might ambiguity or in-betweenness be a source of strength for her? To whom might a figure like the Virgin of Guadalupe appeal? Why?

2. Anzaldúa and W.E.B. Dubois. In Chapter 7, Anzaldúa addresses the downside of mestizaje, writing that, “The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. The mestiza’s dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness” (Lauter 2753).

How might we relate Anzaldúa’s discussion of mestizaje and the “clash of voices” to W.E.B. Dubois’ theory of double consciousness? What are the pluses and minuses of seeing the world from two perspectives at once? Gender certainly plays a larger role in Anzaldúa’s theory than it does in Dubois’s. How does gender affect the “dual or multiple personality” of the mestiza?

3. Multiple voices, multiple perspectives. In her book Anzaldúa includes a wide variety of writing styles: autobiography, poetry, song, mythology, prose and fiction, not to mention that she writes in Spanish, English and Nahuatl. Why does Anzaldúa incorporate so many different forms of writing and so many different languages into her narrative? What are the benefits of doing this? What are the drawbacks? How might her decision to write from multiple perspectives reflect a kind of border identity or mestizaje?

4. Snake talk. Anzaldúa spends a lot of time exploring the serpent figure in pre-Columbian culture. She writes that,

In pre-Columbian America the most notable symbol was the serpent. The Olmecs associated womanhood with the Serpent’s mouth which was guarded by rows of dangerous teeth…They considered it the most sacred place on earth, a place of refuge, the creative womb from which all things were born and to which all things returned. Snake people had holes, entrances to the body of the Earth Serpent; they followed the Serpent’s way, identified with the Serpent deity, with the mouth, both the eater and the eaten. (Lauter 2748)

Why is the Serpent such a powerful figure for Anzaldúa? What does the figure of the Serpent add to her discussion of mestizaje, and especially to female mestizaje? How does Anzaldúa mobilize Aztec and Mayan mythology to empower women? What does it mean to identify with “both the eater and the eaten”? How might this kind of dual-identification help solve some of the conflict that exists along the Mexico-U.S. border today?

Assignment: Borderlands/La Frontera and Maria Full of Grace (2004)

Write a letter from Gloria Anzaldúa to Maria from Maria Full of Grace advising her on how to adjust to life in New York. In this letter, make sure to address the following issues:

1. Introduction: Why does Gloria Anzaldúa feel she is well-positioned to give Maria advice? What kind of perspective does Anzaldúa (as a lesbian Chicana feminist) offer?

2. Maria’s body as a vessel (for drugs, but also for her unborn child): In what ways does Maria’s body empower her? In what ways does it disempower her?

3. Was Maria’s decision to be a drug mule a good decision? Why or why not? Did she have any other options?

4. Maria’s cultural transition: What are some strategies Maria could use to adapt to her new life in New York?

5. Old traditions/new traditions: How can Maria respect her Colombian heritage while adapting to life in New York?

6. Women immigrants: What special challenges do women immigrants face? Has Maria done a good job of dealing with these challenges? What might she have done better?

7. Maria’s decision to keep her baby: Was this a good decision? Why or why not?