The realistic fiction novel, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” by Ernest J. Gaines, tells the life of a black woman whose life spanned from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Miss Jane Pittman herself narrates the novel as a schoolteacher records her accounts. Jane’s life entails a childhood spent as a slave. Once she gains her freedom from the white man, she leaves the plantation behind in search of Ohio. As the story of Jane’s life progresses and shows her personal growth, it includes the development of the lives around her. Ernest J. Gaines’ main character, Miss Jane Pittman, is one with an unordinary perspective. Gaines uses Jane’s life to convey the development of the south from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the novel, Gaines reveals the struggle of escaping one’s historical legacy and the concept a leader can play in society. The author captivates the entire spectrum of people that lived within society at this time. The thorough detail of this historical era explains how this resulted in a stagnant conflict.
When slavery was abolished, ex-slaves soon found out their newfound freedom was not like the white man’s. The societal structure of oppression was left intact, and many characters in the novel fought to escape past’s racial illusion lingering on in time. This deeply affected Tee Bob Samson who was the son of the sharecrop plantation owner. His half brother Timmy, who he loved, was simply sent away for taking
Ida B. Wells, an African-American woman, and feminist, shaped the image of empowerment and citizenship during post-reconstruction times. The essays, books, and newspaper articles she wrote, instigated the dialogue of race struggles between whites and blacks, while her personal narratives, including two diaries, a travel journal, and an autobiography, recorded the personal struggle of a woman to define womanhood during post-emancipation America. The novel, _THEY SAY: IDA B. WELLS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RACE_ , provides an insight into how Ida B. Wells's life paralleled that of
I learned how Ida B. Wells-Barnett started her life. Born as a slave, orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her surviving brothers and sisters. With the difficult circumstances brought upon her, it took an amazing amount of determination for her to fight for black civil rights and women’s rights in the 19th century. In a more civilized age, it’s harder to witness the courage she represented for the disadvantaged.
In his powerful memoir, Mississippi, Anthony Walton explores race relations in Mississippi in a historical context in an attempt to teach readers about Mississippi’s dark and muddled past. In the third section of the memoir, entitled “Rebels”, Walton focuses on the history of Mississippi through the lens of famous and not so famous changemakers who shaped Mississippi as it is today. Walton purposefully tells this story in chronological order, so that the reader can see the evolution of the Mississippi rebel; beginning with union and confederate troops, and ending with civil rights leaders and white supremacy groups. Walton’s purpose of creating such structure becomes abundantly clear at the end of the section, where he juxtaposes the success of the civil rights movement with that of the white supremacy movement in Mississippi. Walton argues that the ability of a cause to inspire fear ensures its continued survival.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman begins with a note from the editor, who is a local schoolteacher near the plantation where Jane Pittman lives. He has long been trying to hear her story, and, beginning in the summer of 1962, she finally tells it to him. When her memory lapses, her acquaintances help fill in the spaces. The recorded tale, with editing, then becomes The Autobiography of Miss Jane.
Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a compelling novel in and of itself. It incorporates the thrill of science fiction, the truth of historical fiction, and the power of a neo-slave narrative to create an unforgettable story. However, Kindred is also impressive on the front of literary techniques and style. A large part of what makes the novel so fascinating is its consistent use of parallelism. In particular, the major parallel between Dana’s experience as a black woman in antebellum America and 20th century America gives the plot depth by debunking the notion that the future is exclusively progressive in comparison to the past. In Kindred, the literary device of parallelism relates Dana’s experience as a black woman in the 19th century and the 20th century on the bases of education, gender, and race, all of which show that the two time periods in
Throughout the course of Coming of Age in Mississippi, readers observe as Anne Moody undergoes a rigorous transformation – the period of adolescence proves to be years of growth and exposure for Moody. As a child, she is aware of the difference in treatment between whites and blacks – however, she is oblivious to the reason why. It is not until Emmett Till’s murder that Moody really becomes aware of what is happening in the world around her. Prior to August of 1955, Moody had been so consumed with school, work and family that she didn’t pay very much attention to race relations. It’s a point of awakening when she finally grasps the hatred that whites in Mississippi have for blacks – she now begins to understand why her family had lived through such inhumane conditions. As Moody begins to understand the concept of race and equality, she thus realizes which side of the spectrum black people are placed on. On the other hand, Moody’s mama Toosweet, has long endured the brutal callousness of Chattel Slavery -- as a result she holds a different perspective than Moody. Their differing viewpoints often lead to tension between the two characters; this essay will examine and compare the psychological effects of Chattel Slavery on Moody and her mother.
An End to the Neglect of the Problem of the Negro Woman by Claudia Jones
Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she "came of age" with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.
In the 1940’s and the 1950’s, America was going through a world war and several difficulties that included problems in civil and woman rights on the home-front. In two different nonfiction memoirs by female authors, we see different yet similarities in the novels. Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone is a memoir by a Japanese-American woman, in which she describes her childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood while growing up in a Japanese immigrant family in Seattle, Washington in the 1930 's. In the second narrative, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody is a memoir by an African-American woman whom writes about her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood life and growing up in her home state during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s. Moody and Sone had childhoods that lacked positive influences in certain areas and tell their stories to help others in understanding the issues that surrounded them as being minority women in a society that don’t accept them.
Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, depicts the various stages of her life from childhood, to high school, then to college, and ends with her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel, Anne tells the reader her story through events, conversations, and emotional struggles. The reader can interpret various elements of cultural knowledge that Anne Moody learned from her family and community as a child. Her understanding of the culture and race relations of the time period was shaped by many forces. Anne Moody’s family, community, education, interactions with various races, and her experiences outside of her hometown, shaped her into a devout activist for equal rights. As a child, the most important
“Incidents in the Life of a Slave” by Harriet Jacobs is an autobiographical narrative. It gives us a look inside in how the lives of slave women were, the troubles they faced and how they met them, especially the sexual abuses they suffered by their masters. She tells us how her master had the “right” to impregnate the slave and then that child would have to follow in its mother’s life as a slave. It took a lot of courage to stand
Topics of great social impact have been dealt with in many different ways and in many different mediums. Beginning with the first women’s movement in the 1850’s, the role of women in society has been constantly written about, protested, and debated. Two women writers who have had the most impact in the on-going women’s movement are Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper are two of feminist literature’s cornerstones and have become prolific parts of American literature. Themes of entrapment by social dictates, circumstance, and the desire for personal independence reside within each work and bond the two together.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860, in the city of Hartford, CT. She would later move to California. She would end her own life in 1935, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought for women’s rights and was an advocate of socialism. She wrote novels, poetry and short stories. She was a woman who was educated; her writing reflected her knowledge, relating to her strong thoughts on woman’s rights and independence and how women of Victorian times suffered from this lack of rights. In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys her views on feminism and how women are treated through characters who represent this treatment. The characters she uses help the reader really get drawn into her story;
In this historical and realistic novel, Meridian, written by Alice Walker, portraying the brutalities of life which most African Americans, especially women in the deep South, were forced to endure during the civil rights movement in the 1960s was a both a universal hardship and triumph for all of society. As the main character, Meridian Hill, repeatedly questions the value of her life through death and rebirth, she also seeks to discover the idealized woman, whom certain people repeatedly try to see inside of her while she repeatedly tries to bury that notion in the ground. Recurrently throughout this novel, Meridian tries to discover past memories of her inner self once again as time goes by. Through the uses of characterization,
The plot, or basic storyline, of this short story is about a black woman, Annie Johnson, based in the United States before 1905. Her marriage had collapsed due to her husband leaving her to pursue religion in Oklahoma and leaving her with very little money. The plotline develops on to show her struggle to support herself and her two sons and how she has to use courage to support herself and her family.