Post #4: Black Empire

So far, I've probably enjoyed Black Empire the most out of the three books we have read. While some of the happenings in the book are pretty damn absurd at times, it kind of helps when reading to remind myself that the novel was published serially in the Pittsburgh Courier. Due to that, I've always kind of imagined it in the same vain as a comic book. A lot of nonsensical things happen in most comic books as well, so I think that's another part of where my association comes from. And in all honesty, I think it would make a pretty great graphic novel.

Anyway, probably the most interesting thing I have found about Black Empire so far is how full of anti-white sentiments the novel is. While quite obviously the novel is completely fictional and the views of Dr. Belsidus don't necessarily represent that of George Schuyler himself, the fact of the matter is that it was still published in the 1930s. Racism and discrimination were still rampant, and while lynchings were not as common as they once were, they still happened at least semi-frequently.

Dr. Belsidus is probably the most extreme example of being anti-white I have ever of, in both fiction and real life. In fact, he murders a white women on the second page of the novel, because he "cannot tolerate failure" (p. 3). Not to mention that Belsidus has a goal to kill LITERALLY every white person in Africa. Even just the terminology used in the novel is extreme:

"They slaughtered white men, women, and children with great ferocity." (p. 129)

"Taken completely by surprise, the 40,000 or 50,000 whites in West Africa had been exterminated as quickly by the infuriated natives as had the whites in East Africa and the million whites in South Africa." (p.127)

One of the best examples I thought of off the top of my head is simply the title of chapter 18: "Belsidus Prepares to Wipe Out Two "Crackers" Who Know Too Much." I know the word "cracker" doesn't hold even close to as much weight as most other racial slurs, (nor did I know the term was even that old), but again, it was the 1930s. That was bound to piss someone off. Just think if the novel was published today, but replace the word "Cracker" with the n-word. How do you think the NAACP would feel about that?

Something that's interesting to note is that, at least according to Black Empire's Wikipedia page, Schuyler published each chapter under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. One can assume that he possibly published the serial novel under a pseudonym in case the anti-white sentiments caused too much of a ruckus and caught the attention from hate-groups such as the KKK. After all, black americans had been lynched for much less throughout history, and it's not like KKK members really needed a reason to want to lynch someone other than the fact that they were black in the first place.

Post #3: Of One Blood

Probably the thing that has interested me most about Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood is her style of writing. It's hard for me to describe my exact feelings about it, but I'll do my best. Keep in mind that, as of writing this, I have only finished about half the book, though I'll assume

I find the Hopkins' writing style (at least in Of One Blood) to be rather strange. Maybe it's just because I've been rather distracted during my time reading the book because I've been sick the entire time I've read it, but a lot of time's I'd read a page and then have to reread it because I had no idea what happened. It's not that the language in the book itself is inherently hard to read, it's just that I feel as if the Hopkins does not make everything important that happened very explicit. For example, at the end of Chapter IX, the last paragraph reads:

"Suddenly Aubrey's paddle was caught and held in the meshes of the water-lily stems that floated all about them. He leaned far over to extricate it and in a moment the frail craft was bottom up, its living freight struggling in the river. Once, thrice, a thrilling call for help echoed over the darkening land; then all was still." (p.74)

I can't help but think of rapper Aubrey "Drake" Graham (or the Artist Formerly Known as Jimmy from Degrassi) whenever I hear the name "Aubrey."

I suppose that after rereading and retyping that paragraph, it's pretty clear that Aubrey died, but upon my first time reading it, I just kind of thought "wait, what?" and had to reread the last page and a half tp figure out what I just read (though maybe my brain is just too clouded from cold medicine). I would just think that a passage about one of the main characters dying would be more exciting and catch my attention more. Even Imperium in Imperio got my heart racing more than Of One Blood so far, and that book uses some of the blandest, most dead-pan language I've ever read.

Another testament to this is the fact that I didn't even think about what races the characters were until they first used the horribly dated term "negress" to describe Dianthe. It wasn't until I read the back of the book that I found out that Griggs was black. Though I guess me not discerning who was what race until prompted kind of exemplifies the meaning behind the title, that we are all "of one blood" because all of our ancestors originated in Africa. However, I just thought it was interesting to point out that I didn't even think about it, considering race is supposed to be such a prominent theme in the book.

Though, again, maybe it's just the cough syrup.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you think Hopkins made a conscious decision to downplay the importance of race in the novel in order to perpetuate the theme and title of the book?

2. How would you describe Hopkins' writing style? Do you think it is too bland for the types of events that are occurring?

Post #2: Imperium in Imperio

EDIT: Now that I'm farther in the book, I have gotten to the part where they explain the actual "state within a state." Just keep in mind when reading this that I was not yet to that portion of the book when I wrote this entry.

The aspect of Sutton Griggs' Imperium in Imperio I have chosen to look at in this post is the meaning of the title of the book, and how it is related to the plot and events that occur in it. Titles, especially in books that are socially and politically motivated such as this one, can play a huge part in finding an author's meaning in a novel. Sometimes, it is not clear until the very end, but with Imperium in Imperio, it became perfectly clear what the title meant once I looked it up.

This assignment is what prompted me to finally look up what the phrase "Imperium in Imperio" actually means or refers to (even though I had been curious since before I even started reading the book). I'm about two thirds of the way done with the book (page 87 to be exact) as of writing this post, so I'm unsure if the book ever explains it at this point. However, Wikipedia states that it is a latin phrase meaning "an order within an order." More specifically, they go onto explain that the members of this "state within a state" subordinate the interests of the larger state in order to achieve the interests of the internal group.

In Imperium in Imperio, this "state within a state" is quite obviously and most generally referring to black Americans and the United States as a whole (with the internal group quite obviously being black Americans). The entire book (at least what I have read so far) is about Bernard and Belton's struggles as black men in a white man's America, and how they attempt to empower themselves and their fellow black Americans above all else. However, I believe this is also referring to groups within groups on a more micro level as well.

Which I guess would be a state within a state within a state???

The most prominent example of this, I would consider to be when Belton is working at the school in Virginia and starts his own "colored" newspaper that spoke out against many practices of the Virginian government, including the way Virginia went about their ballot system:

"One particularly meritorious article was copied in The Temps and commented upon editorially. This article caused a great stir in political circles.

A search was instituted as to the authorship. It was traced to Belton, and the politicians gave the school board orders to dump Belton forthwith, on the ground that they could not afford to feed and clothe a man who would so vigorously 'attack Southern Institutions.'" (p. 63).

While quite obviously, in my opinion, Virginia not having rigged ballots is probably better for Virginia as a whole, this is still being insubordinate to the larger state in order to improve the wellbeing of the internal one. On the flipside, one could also argue the same is true for the democrats who were rigging the ballot boxes in Virgina: they risked the corruption of the Virginian political system as a whole in order to further the democratic cause.

Another prime example of this earlier in the novel and prior to him working in Virginia is his organizing of the black students towards their "Equality or Death" movement (p. 33).

As we follow Belton throughout the rest of the book, we see him demonstrating this concept of Imperium in Imperio time and time again, especially during his time in Louisiana, where it gets the the point where the larger state feels so threatened by him that they try and have him lynched (p.75) in order to stop his subordination.

While, as I stated before, a lot of the things Belton did throughout the book I personally feel ARE actually towards the betterment of the United States/Virginia/Louisiana, the fact of the matter is that Belton was still putting the betterment of black Americans and their rights in front of the at the time current rules of the larger state.

Discussion Questions:
1. What other "states within states," literal or figurative, can you find within the novel in it's entirety?
2. In the last quarter of the novel or so, we find out the "true" Imperium in Imperio the title was referring to. Do you think that Griggs meant to insert these other, smaller in scale "states within states?"

Blog Post #1

"I have no idea where, in Africa, my black ancestors came from because, when they reached the slave markets of New Orleans, records of such things were automatically destroyed. If they spoke their own languages, they were beaten or killed. The slave pens in which they were stored by lots were set up so that no two slaves from the same area were allowed to be together. Children were regularly sold away from their parents. And every effort conceivable was made to destroy all vestiges if African cultural remnants."


I chose this quote because I feel that it embodies exactly how tarnished most African American's histories and ancestries are. I kind of wanted to choose the Alain Locke quote at the beginning of Mark Dery's piece, but I felt that was kind of a cop out so I will use it in my response as it relevant:

"There is nothing more galvanizing than the sense of a cultural past."

In all of the stories we have read for this week (well, at least the two that I have read so far), have to do with the protagonist and the group that they belong to being persecuted in someway in terms of their background, past, and/or ancestry. In Nisi Shawl's Deep End, this is most prominent physically: the story takes place upon a prison ship, wherein all the prisoners are bodies who have been uploaded with a criminal's mind. While their memories and mind are intact, they have lost all physical sense of the self: they are literally thrown into someone else's body without choice, rhyme, or reason. Whether or not these people deserve to be imprisoned...they are being persecuted in some way, and it is somewhat unclear in the story itself.

This has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted a picture to break up the text and the name "Deep End" reminded me that I was an avid Weird Al fan when I was in fourth grade.

Darryl Smith's The Pretended relates to the passage more specifically: the story features a robot named Mnemosyne, who over the course of the story we find out to be (what I interpreted as, at least), as an android in the form of a black person. Dictionary.com defines android as "an automaton in the form of a human being," and there is a distinction between the two because a robot could really be in the form of anything.

Later in the story, we find out that all black people were wiped out (reasons unknown), and then androids were made in the form of black people because of this. You really can't take culture away from someone any further than wiping out the culture itself.

At first, it is not explicitly stated that the androids are black. This quote is about as close as we get to it being explicitly stated: "the naked, shuffling brown slush of bodies."However, prior to knowing this, we are provided with what one could argue to be foreshadowing, but it is at the very least analogous with some of the struggles the black community went through throughout the history of the United States.

Specifically, the description of the boxcar in which the robots were being transported reminded me descriptions of the African slave ships in the 1600-1700s:

"Inside it was hot and overcrowded. Robots of all ages were crammed in from floor to roof, practically; the glistening deep blackness of their polyderm making darkness itself seem to crowd the car all the more."

Admittedly, Mnemosyne and Diva Eve's Boxcar escapades sounded slightly less fun than that of the Boxcar Children.

Anyway, as the story goes on, we come to realize that the robots are not just analogous with the plight of black people throughout the history of the United States...in The Pretended, the robots literally ARE an extension of the plight of black history and their plight, as we see through Mnemosyne and Diva Eve's back and forth discussion as to whether or not white people viewed them or the actual, live black people that predated them, as human beings. And sadly, in the end, their culture is literally obliterated once more as the robots are put into an incinerator.


Questions:
1. I had a bit of trouble putting into words how The Pretended was reminiscent of the passage in the Dery article. In what other ways is what happens in The Pretended an extension of the plight of black
history?
2. How do you interpret the following quote in terms of race relations? The piece is too analogous for it to not mean something.
"Mnemosyne sometimes thought that humans could not have made robots any more than the color white had made the color black."

Layered Questions

I will be answering the following question:
1. How does Harry Bittering react to being stranded on Mars and to the gradual assimilation of his friends and family? Discuss how his reaction relates to the concept of "the other." What might his reaction suggest about the social climate of the United States in 1949 (postwar culture)?


Harry initially reacts to being stranded on Mars extremely differently than his family and friends. While they quickly accepted their life on Mars when they found out that Earth had been nuked and there would be no more ships to and from Mars, Harry refused to do so. It is first shown by his reluctance to eat any of the food grown on Mars and then more explicitly when he begins to build the rocket and no one else wants to help him.

This relates to fear of the "other" because he refuses to eat the food specifically because it was grown on Mars. He even indirectly acknowledges this on page 134: "Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different." I feel as if the bolded phrase perfectly embodies this, as the "other" is one who is just that: the same, but different. His fear of the other is also shown by his desire to get back to Earth even after it was nuked to pieces and they were perfectly safe on Mars.

Harry's reaction towards the "other" suggests that the postwar social climate in the United States was largely built around fear of the "other" and the "unknown." Most prominently, this was around the time of the second Red Scare, in which the population was largely afraid of being taken over by communists (or, the "other") and feared them due to their different ideologies.

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