Summer Reading

Three Poems

• Robert Hayden's Middle Passage - Coates talks about reading this poem at Howard.
• Alice Walker's, I Will Broken Things - All of Alice Walker's work is amazing.  Her short stories are also incredible.
• Maya Angelou's, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - (part of a much longer piece)

Three Documentaries

• When We Were Kings - A film about the Ali v. Forman fight in Zaire, but more generally about the relationship between African and African Americans in the 70s.
• Banished - History of racial purges from cities in the South and the difficulty of reconciliation and reparation.
• Through a Lens Darkly - Beautiful documentary about African American photography.

Three Articles

• Ta Nehisi Coates' article on the black family - Coates is regularly featured in the Atlantic, and this article is very powerful.
• Tera Hunter, Work That Body - Lance kept asking about the issue of leisure and its importance for African Americans.  Hunter is excellent on this subject.  
• Robin Kelley's Article on Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and Justice in America - This article has really challenged my own thinking about the nature of American justice.  

Three Fiction Books

• Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Langston Hughes short stories about Simple
• Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Three Non Fiction Books

• Michelle Alexander, the New Jim Crow
• Robin Kelley, Race Rebels - The introduction is worth reading.
• Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention - Marable's work has become the definitive work on Malcolm X.
• Aaron Dixon, My People are Rising - Dixon was the Seattle Panther Captain, for those interested in the panthers and the local story.

Three other items

• Barack Obama's, More Perfect Union speech on race in America
• A Conversation with Robin Kelley, the author of the Freedom Dreams article
• Listen to Gil Scott-Heron's compilation the Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Seriously, listen to it.

Debrief: Between the World and Me

Yesterday in class we discussed the book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. After reading the book and recollecting my thoughts, I realized how relevant and powerful Coates’ story truly is. Throughout the book, Coates is on a journey to understand things like; civil rights violence, the anger he witnessed from his parents, and what it means to be black in the United States. This same situation has been happening for the new generations of African American individuals because the Black Lives Matter campaign and the adherent racism that still exists within this country demonstrates that we are just in a similar cycle today as Coates’ experiences in his childhood. There was a good point brought up in class about why Coates went to Howard over all the other potential colleges. It was determined that Coates went to Howard because he could be black, and he would not be the token student or treated differently because his academic potential would not be in question. This struck me because Coates’ experience in a pristine example of how historically many African American people in education are unfairly subjugated and discriminatorily judged because of the color of their skin.

Between the World and Me is a letter written to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 15 year old son, containing an overall message of understanding the African American situation that still persists today in the United States. Coates wants his son to learn of the fear from his prior experiences but to be adverse, without letting society tell him who he is supposed to be and to have caution in doing so. I am going to leave this debrief off with a quote that directly and powerfully expresses his ending message to his son. “But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all” (Coates 151).

Brief | Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me has several quotes that really speak to anyone who reads the novel; Ta-Nehisi Coates does an amazing job of expressing the realities that black Americans must face in the United States on a regular basis. The novel is extremely eye opening, primarily focusing on the youth.

One of my favorite quotes from the last section of the novel is on page 150, Coates stated, "And this revolution has freed the Dreamers to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the Earth itself." In my opinion this is a very powerful quote because it represents the bigger picture, Coates is saying that the downfall of these individuals is not only found in the oppression pushed upon each one but on the world in which they live in itself. The foundation is already in pieces, so how can we as an observant society cast opinions on a group of people who do not have the resources to overcome these obstacles. Overall the novel is very inspiring, Coates does a great job of including his own experiences !! 

Bonus Material

In class on Wednesday, Alex posed a question along the lines of, how can a society that has a history of hating black people be so heavily influenced by black culture (just for clarification, these are my words, not Alex’s)? This question has an interesting answer tracing all the way back to the birth of this nation (no pun intended) and deserves a thorough answer. Christopher Small’s book Music of the Common Tongue does a really good job of breaking it down. I highly recommend it along with the documentary Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity. The book focuses more on the Blues and African/African-American roots in American culture while the documentary focuses on this issue more through the lens of history and hip-hop. It’s no coincidence that the dominant culture is, and has been, fascinated with black culture throughout this countries lifetime. I’d say that this topic is one that I hope we would have discussed if the class were longer.

This is a link to the documentary.

http://search.alexanderstreet.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/view/work/1857941

Brief

Between the world and me was a heart felt book and really had me thinking of what I would say to my son if he was old enough to understand the struggles that we face in America. I also see my son as naive to the struggles of his past anscestors and the ones he will face in his future because I never see it getting better for African American we came to America being oppressed and we will continue to be oppressed that just life. I don't want him to be a dreamer thinking of America as this places that is a big fat fairy tale where race doesn't matter and I respect every story Coates told his son. My favorite quote from Between the world and me as I wrapped up the book this afternoon was the second to the last page was  pg. 151

"and I still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for you name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all."

Then I look up the word struggle

"make forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction"

and I got what Coates was really trying to say he want his son to fight for freedom and the hold that the dreamer continue to have on America. This made the passage even more powerful and is something that I can tell my son or daughter one day. My grandmother use to always say to her kids

"What doesn't kill you can only make you stronger"

So whatever you go though, whatever struggle you encounter can make you want to fight against and become stronger. And that is why as an African American I have seen the most powerful and intelligent people come from the STRUGGLE.

There were many parts of the last section of the book that I found myself highlighting and re-reading. But there was one quote in particular that I felt added to the reflection of the course. The passage was, "The warmth of dark energies that drew me to The Mecca, that drew out Prince Jones, the warmth of our particular world, is beautiful, no matter how brief and breakable"(p. 147). This section in the text comes after the conversation with Dr. Jones, Prince Jones’ mother. I felt like this moment encompassed the larger picture of the history of the Black community in America. The conversation of struggle has been a major topic in this course, but also the art and the beauty in the community.

When he returns to Howard for the reunion in the paragraph following he talks about what it felt like to return to his community and states, “I felt myself disappearing into all of their bodies” (p. 147). This references not only the importance of the body, but also the importance of community and consenting to the sharing of his body. The body is mentioned so many times in this text and other mediums and the question of ownership and manipulation is debated thoroughly.

In this last section of the text the major themes of the course and the book converge: struggle, beauty and body. The third section demonstrates how they are all separate but how they also all relate to and influence each other.

-Ashley

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The discussion prompted by the student's Facebook post on Wednesday was perhaps one of the more interesting discussions for me this quarter. Not only did it break down a lot of walls, but it forced many to speak very candidly about their experiences in the class. More so, I think it forced everyone to solidify what they believe the purpose of the class to be. Or even, what the class should be to some. There are many different ways that Professor Marrow could have navigated the material of this course. What he did for me was give me a map of understanding of how deliberately the current system of inequality was created, and by understanding the creation, we have a chance to fight against it. 

           I took a Critical Race Theory course with Dr. Michelle Montgomery my first quarter at UWT in the fall. Three of the tenets that stood out to me in that course were:

                

(1) Critical Race Theory challenges ahistoricism and insists on historical/contextual analysis 

(2) Insists on the experiential knowledge of individuals of color. 

(3) CRT works toward eliminating racial oppression as part of a broader goal of ending all forms of oppression. 

            In attempt to challenge my own ahistoricism I decided to take this course. As mentioned in the discussion on June 1 there are a lot of pieces of American History, specifically African American History, that are left out of our education. As I have pieced together the purpose of this course, to me, it has been to fill all of those pieces 'conveniently' left behind. There are many examples of ways that Dr. Marrow utilized experiential voices through poetry, Anne Moody's text, film, music, etc.

            After gaining the knowledge from this course about the policy and people that created the current system manny of my own intellectual gaps have been bridged. In reference to the third tenant of CRT, I do think that the knowledge built in this course will not only help me understand oppression in all populations, but also how to create a path for those experiential voices to be heard above my own. 

-Ashley