From: IN%"ZonaSur@aol.com" 12-DEC-1998
08:37:35.15
A friend recommends--not
African-American, unfortunately, Barry Unsworth's SACRED HUNGER. It has
just arrived on my bookshelf, so I protest total ignorance as yet.
My personal, and probably not very
academic, opinion is that the experience was so traumatic and the
long journey to manumission so fraught with the pressures of stark
survival, psychologically as much as literally, that it wasn't exactly a
story one sat around the campfire retelling. In the US, anyhow,
don't forget that the international trade was illegal after 1808--mind
you the illegal trade still went on, as did trade along the coasts. The
famous AMISTAD, as I'm sure you are aware, was an ILLEGAL slaver.
I guess what I'm saying is that, without literacy for so long--in
Frederick Douglass's AUTOBIOGRAPHY, he refers to the laws prohibiting
the education of slaves as being kept in darkness--you might not expect
more immediate written, let alone fictionalized responses to the African
holocaust, as one might, say, in the case of the Jews of Europe. I
am also thinking of how strongly linked to the oral traditions of
language and telling much of African American literature is in this
country--which doubles back to my remark about "sitting around the
campfire." Only recently, is it a subject in the public
discourse, don't forget, since the Civil Rights era--and despite the
endurance of racism and its fellow-travelers in this country. (I
have white students who say such charming things in their essays as, why
don't 'they' just get over it?) I myself am attempting some work
on it--it seems a rather long haul at the moment--and I'm not sure I can
say anything much at this point.
I could go on about the other stuff, but
that may not be all that helpful.
B. Mills
From: IN%"jcsjj@sprintmail.com"
"jon-christian suggs" 12-DEC-1998 21:36:43.03
I would just point out a) Martin
Delany's _Blake; or the Huts of America_, serialized between 1859 and
1861 erratically. Delany represents a slaving voyage from Cuba to West
Africa and back in the mid '50s and b) the stream-of-consciousness
sections recreating the Middle Passage via the sensibilities of Beloved
in the novel of that name.
If you will take film as a kind of
African-American narrative, then Julie Dash's _Daughters of the Dust_
has a meditation on the Middle Passage.
Jon-Christian Suggs
Professor, English
John Jay College/CUNY
jcsjj@sprintmail.com
From: IN%"ZonaSur@aol.com" 13-DEC-1998
11:28:04.37
<<The perspective in Barry
Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, is European. (Incidentally, what does B. Mills
mean when he describes Unsworth as 'not African-American,
unfortunately?')>>
You presume I am a male person,
interestingly.
What I meant was in response to the query
for an African American writer that Unsworth did not fit the request and
in that sense, it was "unfortunate". I think the
original query was quite specific--what about African American writers'
response to the experience in their writing, not whether anyone else
was qualified to /should or should
not write about it as well - was there something unique about its under-
representation in African American literature?
I do, however, think that you bring up an
important issue: market driven arts are being pressured to fit the
ideas of the publishers/producers about salability--certainly in the US
they are--not about art or historical accuracy. Certainly Brazil,
its long history or slavery, and the continued communication among
slaves and Africa is a logical possibility for a book about the MP.
In addition to explaining some things
about skewed topics, the marketing--ugh!--issue may also help to explain
why certain works are chosen/not chosen for public airing.
B. Mills