This Morning, This Evening, so Soon

Moving from a childlike bliss to an awakening of the world's prejudice, the author makes the words take on flesh. The story is made alive as she breathes life into a time that is unpleasant yet not void of hope. "The hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations" disappeared when they were told the cold hard `truth' of their fate that some white man had already decided for them.

Many tragic events happen in this short story that allows the reader to create an assumption for an underlying theme of racism. John Baldwin has a way of telling the story of Sonny’s drug problem as a tragic reality of the African American experience. The reader has to depict textual evidence to prove how the lifestyle and Harlem has affected almost everything. The narrator describes Harlem as “... some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (Baldwin 60). Another key part in this story is when the narrator and Sonny’s mother is telling the story of a deceased uncle. The mother explains how dad’s brother was drunk crossing the road and got hit by a car full of drunk white men. Baldwin specifically puts emphasis on the word “white” to describe the men for a comparison to the culture of dad and his brother.

Rodriguez demonstrates this rhetorical style through the use of pity throughout the memoir. He attempts to pull the reader into complying with his conclusions through the use of pity in his stories, especially with racial incidents. Claiming that he “grew up wanting to be white,” Rodriguez uses his race and the desire of “wanting to be colorless” as a way to generate pity from the reader (140). Using the comparison of young kids picking sides, he expresses that “brown was like the skinny or fat kids left over after the team captains chose sides. ‘You take the rest’- my cue to wander away to the sidelines, to wander away” (5). Rodriguez tries to fabricate pity and sympathy from the reader by expressing a story of heartache, and comparing the atrocious classifications of race to innocent children picking teams. Not only does Rodrigues use the pity card when talking about his race but also with his lifestyle and social stature. Reaching out to the audience in his memoir, Rodriguez asks “does anybody know what I’m talking about? Ah, me. I am alone in my brown study. I can say anything I like. Nobody listens” (38). With this remark, Richard tries to portray himself as an outsider or an outcaste. People empathize with outcastes and usually do what they are capable of in pursuance of making the loner feel accepted. He uses pathos to spawn pity

African American individuals still faced inhumane discrimination and were often not looked at as people, let alone cared for or acknowledged. To anyone else, their opinions did not matter and their lives were not valued. The 1930?s was also a time in which America was being rebuilt after the detrimental effects of the Great Depression. Furthermore, there was a greater presence of African Americans in northern states, which brought about racial tension from powerful white figures who did not want African Americans in what they believed to be ?their cities?. The struggle to find jobs was present all over, and African Americans found it even more difficult to support themselves. The narrator faced all these obstacles throughout the course of this novel.

The idea Double Consciousness has been the overarching struggle in many Afro-Hispanic and Latin X literature. Double Consciousness is a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois to describe an individual whose identity is divided into several facets. Double Consciousness complicates the feeling of belonging because it makes it difficult for one to develop a sense of self. In the autobiography Down These Mean Streets, written by Peri Thomas, the reader gets to experience the authors struggles with Double Consciousness of being both Hispanic and Black. In a similar fashion, Langston Hughes’ autobiography, Big Sea, gives the reader understanding of the shortcoming of dealing with Double consciousness with class and economic status. In this essay, I will be exploring how movement and location has a strong impact on identity, while simultaneously highlighting the importance to the journey that help develops a sense of self.

In “Back to my own country,” Levy claims that today in modern society everybody is used to a mixture of cultures. She supports her claim by using allusion to tell black history and self experiences. Through her curiosity and experiences of racism, she grew passion towards the issue and chose to speak her mind through literature, resulting in

In this journey our main character also see’s the many faces of the black man, and how all of these faces where created in response to the actions of the white man never in response to one’s own actions. Towards the end of the novel the main character finds himself in a difficult predicament as he is being hounded by men who want him dead. Despite this, he manages to find a pair of glasses and a huge hat which he believes would disguise him just enough so that he can escape his potential murderers. As he walks around Harlem in his new guise, many begin to confuse him for someone called Rinehart who seems to be bookie, a pimp, and a preacher all at once. The ability to be so many things is at first attractive to the main character as he slowly begins to sink into the role of Rinehart, however he soon realizes that Rinehart’s multiple identities are merely a reflection of his inauthenthicity. Rinehart has no true self-consciousness and has allowed for others to create his image for him; Rinehart is only identified in the novel by others, never by himself. Rinehart’s character is representative of the notion of Double Consciousness as it shows the black men without the ability or better yet the privilege of self identity.

The narrator discovers that the issues are different, but still apparent in the North as African Americans faced racism on all ends of the spectrum. As a result, several groups emerged, such as the Brotherhood and the Black nationalists. Within these groups, there were many issues, especially when the narrator discovers the true motives of the Brotherhood. “No, it wasn't me he was worrying about becoming too big, it was the Brotherhood. And becoming big was exactly what the Brotherhood wanted.”

In late September 1963, the editors of Holiday magazine hired author John A. Williams for an unusual assignment; they wanted him to take a road trip. Williams was hesitant. Why would a man pass up the opportunity to drive a new car on an all-expense paid journey across America? Williams is black, and the issues surrounding civil rights were as Williams notes, “…burning before the public.” Williams had been hired to “…see and listen to America.” Ostensibly, the journey was not about civil rights, yet the issue would have been difficult to ignore. In the foreword of his account, This is My Country, Too Williams asks the reader: “Does a white American have to orient himself psychologically for some aimless wandering around the country? To a degree, yes, but not a great deal. For me some sort of psychological preparation was necessary. Eventually I became ready, but it was a costly process.” This paper will explore the reasons behind Mr. Williams’ trepidation to wander America as a black man; history gave him reason to be nervous. I will also examine how, and more importantly, why African-Americans managed to travel and recreate in an era when the law provided them scant protection from discrimination and worse.

This novel takes place in San Francisco where citizens are living in fear because of the racism happening in the world. Life is expressed throughout multiple characters like Robert Childan, Frank Frink, Tagomi and Juliana Frink. . As so many controversial issues a-rise, the character and spirituality shine through each of these main characters by the actions they take. Robert Childan,

The story happens on an unbearable hot day in an economically depressed neighborhood in Brooklyn. There are some critical scenes suggesting that the characters become more identified with their own racial group to gain the conformity and protect their prides. We can try to understand how these scenes finally lead to violence among different racial groups by analyzing each character carefully. We can separate these characters in terms of generation. In the younger generation, there are some

The story, for the most part, centers upon an African-American family, their dreams for the future and an insurance check coming in for death of the eldest man. Stirring into the mix later is the hugely oppressive,

The novel focuses on the struggle and hardships the characters had to face by the setting they lived in. Additionally, it shows how one event can make an impact, positively and negatively, on anyone's life. The bad times in world history that all the characters faced managed to change their actions, thoughts, feelings, choices, and emotions towards society.

He is a youthful college student who has succeeded in working his way to his present standing by academic means. He is put through a test of humiliation in front of the wealthy white men who also want the narrator to achieve a place in college. The author’s attitude towards racism was truthful because it was about a man trying to find himself through his hard times. He is forced to fight, scramble for money, and perform his graduation speech while a crowd laughs amongst him. The narrator had to fight blindfolded and when all the fighters scrambled for money on the rug they got electrocuted because it had a shock wave going through. The author chooses his diction and choice of language carefully to set the tone in this beginning section of the book. The author’s intention for tone throughout the text was thoughtful because he was not trying to start a feud against the two colors, but was describing the oppression against one another. Ellison uses slang and what is known as common "southern language" to describe the amount of racism and hatred towards the African American race. These events shaped the mind of the protagonist and it is described through the many different shifts in the

His novel explores the healing process as well as the digression and push back of those in the South unable to compromise with the loss and renewal of life they had to make. The complex and alternating speakers and stories are laced together disruptive families that carry ties back to one another. The problems of intermarriages between blacks and whites, incest, the individuality being stripped from what people had known reaches peoples limits. Faulkner plays with these important moments, memories, ages and thoughts that prove his beliefs of this broken image of America.