\u201cBlackness\u201d is a short story written by Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid. The story consists of the narrator, a black woman, describing her identity in relation to a certain \u201cblackness\u201d that consumes her within her vivid imagination. The narrator begins to picture her daughter, a transparent figure that has dominance over Earth\u2019s features that were previously said to have been destroyed by a band of men. Her vision of her daughter causes her to realize that \u201cthe silent voice\u201d has conquered the blackness and made her identity whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The text begins and concludes by depicting the concept of \u201cblackness\u201d as it relates to the narrator\u2019s identity. \u201cBlackness\u201d lacks a clear sequence of events as it is written from the perspective of someone\u2019s consciousness and thoughts, having only one definite action mentioned when the narrator sits at a table. Kincaid also chooses to omit exposition of the characters-the narrator, her daughter, and the band of men-, as well as the setting. Kincaid employs repetition with the sentence structure \u201cThe blackness is not. . . though\u201d when comparing the lack of physical existence of the blackness to its presence within the woman (362). Imagery is used throughout as her perception of herself and blackness is illustrated in connection to the earth, the narrator\u2019s body, moments of joy, and silence. The scene of men destroying the narrator\u2019s home and its surrounding nature seems to be an analogy to British colonizers\u2019 destructive force and assimilation of Antiguans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBlackness\u201d was a very obscure and dark story to read for me. I appreciated the author\u2019s writing style as the narrator\u2019s consciousness is put into blunt and toneless words. By not implying any emotion that the narrator has of her circumstances, Kincaid helps give the feeling that blackness is a hopeless given that even takes away the voice of the narrator\u2019s opinions. The lack of emotion continues to the point when the silent voice erases blackness, with no sense of resolution as the narrator is \u201cno longer \u2018I\u2019,\u201d a stylistic decision that I also liked. \u201cSweetness\u201d by Toni Morrison also includes the concept of blackness and its takeover of a black person\u2019s identity. In the text, the narrator hardly views her offspring as her baby and therefore does not let her daughter call her mother. The sole characteristic of race changes how the mother sees her child. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBlackness\u201d is a short story written by Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid. The story consists of the narrator, a black woman, describing her identity in relation to a certain \u201cblackness\u201d that consumes her within her vivid imagination. The narrator begins to picture her daughter, a transparent figure that has dominance over Earth\u2019s features that were previously…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-group-b","category-sodo-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/uncommonsense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}