The following is an imagined letter written by Hilda to Mrs. Fitzhugh. This letter performs the relationship that binds Hilda to Mrs. Fitzhugh, and the way in which Hilda must speak in a way that pleases Mrs. Fitzhugh if Hilda wants the checks to continue rolling in which finance Sassafrass’s education. In Hilda’s letters to…
In many cultures, particularly Native American and West African, it is understood that a woman’s cycle is deeply interconnected with the water and the moon. For example, in the West African Yoruba religion, Yemoja is goddess who is associated with the moon, rivers, and motherhood. The goddess, Oshun, patron saint of the Osun river in…
In the scene with Sassafrass and Mitch in their L.A. apartment, Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, which at times can become fantastic or unreal, grounds itself in historical figures. Sassafrass makes “macrame hangings” of “Malcolm…Fidel, Garvey, Archie Shepp, and Coltrane” and wants to share but is forced to hide the “sequin-and-feather hanging shaped like a…
In the Part 2 of “Leaving Atlanta” Jones writes us a second person narrator who is has intimate insight into Rodney’s interior thoughts and feelings. It would seem on face value that this is an omniscient narrator, but the narrator only knows Rodney. The narrator is centered around Rodney and never provides that kind of…
I want to look at the way the narrator describes Daddy’s absent voice compared to how the narrator describes Mama’s present body. What happens is that the narrator attributes physical or sensual characteristics to Daddy (even when he isn’t present) and gives descriptions about the unwanted presence of Mama. This difference parallels Tasha’s confusion or…
Drawing on Professor Curseen’s theory from last class — that blackness gets defined differently in The Color Purple — I wanted to investigate how blackness represents itself between Sofia and Celie. The dialog between Sofia and Celie, as well as their interactions with Miss Millie’s family, identify blackness as something other than the conflict of…
In Chapter 5 of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois refers to the Greek myth of Hippomenes as a means to warn new educations systems of the south about the temptation to place material prosperity above cultural prosperity. This warning is relevant to Atlanta Season 1 in which many characters pursue material wealth. How…