Blackness, Performance, Freedom
What is the effect of reimagining the story of Harriet Jacobs? In “Harriet Jacobs” by Lydia Diamond, what does Diamond incorporate or leave out of her adaptation of The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and what effect does this have on the reading of this text? Take 1: Analysis of Act 1,…
To begin approaching an analysis of the chapter title “The Loophole of Retreat,” I asked a couple friends what their associations with the word “loophole” are. Words like “legal,” “white collar,” “politicians,” “corporations,” and “universities” were prevalent responses, confirming my original perspective of the word having a legal or professional connotation—implying someone in a position…
Consider the portion of Scene 2 in the “Harriet Jacobs” play by Lydia Diamond—from the top of page 12 through Harriet’s paragraph on page 14 ending with “…I live under the feet of the Whites who wish us to believe that we are animals”—in which Harriet’s picturesque portrayal of the cotton field is interspersed and…