ICCE

Identify: In her short story Shift, Nalo Hopkinson combines detailed visual imagery and second-person narration. With this combination, she describes Caliban’s actions like the stage directions of a play. One example of the combination is when the golden girl transforms Caliban into different things: “She takes your face in her hands, turns your eyes away…

Thesis Post

In her short story White Rat, Gayl Jones “curses” White Rat with a black club-footed baby after he decides to leave his black family and visit the white bar. By cursing him after he visits the white bar, Jones portrays how Rat essentially goes back on his ‘vow’ of being black and examines the idea…

Why Sycorax? – Shift

Nalo Hopkinson uses the characters of Caliban, Ariel, and Sycorax from Shakespeare’s The Tempest to portray the central themes of heritage and cultural identity in her short story, Shift. However, while in the original play Caliban is enslaved by Prospero, a man who was exiled to Caliban’s island and forced him into servitude, Hopkinson chooses…

“Backwacking” and Bias

Backwacking, a Plea to the Senator is a fictional text published in 1977 by Ralph Ellison.  Ellison’s text is formatted as a letter from Norm A. Mauler, a white Alabama citizen, to Senator Sunraider. In his letter, Mauler calls for action against “Backwacking” – a physical, seemingly sexual action performed by black males. Mauler condemns…