Beloved is frequently challenged by parents who deem the novel too graphic for children to read in schools; the novel currently ranks 26th on the American Library Association’s list of top 100 books most frequently banned over the previous decade.
This is evidence that many are still unwilling to digest the complete and jarring slave narrative.
But black writers are ripping the veil, and I’m grateful to see.
Although any story told in the perspective of a slave will be difficult to sit through, actively acknowledging the tragedies that took place is crucial. Only then can one pay respect to the victims of slavery.
Two centuries later, black writers, inheritors of this literary legacy, continue to tell stories about slavery in a moment when white audiences are eager to consume them, but often still reluctant to engage with their brutality.
Although the literary landscape for slavery has changed, the dark reality of its history remains somewhat hidden primarily in the minds of white audiences.
In The Underground Railroad, the veil exists not to protect the reader, but to challenge us. Whitehead forces us to see through the veil to witness the violence a nineteenth-century narrator might have been forced to hide.
Imagining a gruesome scene take place may be even more graphic that if it were detailed by the author. Even though the veil Bennett writes about is still in place in The Underground Railroad, it forces readers to inspect a scene rather than dismiss it.
Whitehead shatters the comforting mythology of the Underground Railroad as a system that rescued enslaved people from terror by whisking them away to a utopian North. No matter where Cora flees, “America remained her warden.”
To break the expectation surrounding slave narratives, Whitehead puts her protagonist in untold, nerve-wracking circumstances.
“two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other.” Sethe holds her dead child’s face “so her head wouldn’t fall off.” After killing one daughter, Sethe tries to nurse the other, “aiming a bloody nipple into the baby’s mouth.”
The psychological toll of being a slave pushes a mother to associate murder with protection. It seems that any alternative is better than allowing your own children to suffer to the hands of a slave owner.
To seem truthful, a story needed to sound familiar. But over time, the stories became so familiar, readers doubted their truth.
The standard that was established to make these autobiographies seem truthful actually backfired. While these narratives were genuine, their authors obscured aspects of their lives that made each story its own.
Slave narratives “provided antislavery propaganda,”
Many former slaves propelled the abolitionist movement by telling their personal stories. These published stories may have also shown how intelligence and literacy were not only characteristic of white people.
We feel its presence always, but we cannot bear to stare directly at it.
Slavery is ingrained in modern society. It is a sensitive subject, but one that may never cease to be addressed.
But I resented, or maybe envied, how easily they delighted in the spectacle of Walker’s art, while I found it hard even to look.
As a black woman, Bennett cannot relate to the white couple in this scenario. Knowing her ancestry is linked to what Walker was trying to portray, Bennett finds it almost impossible to bear witness to the images that are in front of her.
Slave-owning children represented the future of the institution, and a never-ending cycle of abuse.
No one is condoning killings of any form, but it is important to delve into the collective psyche of slaves, including Nat Turner.
The rebellion inspired the Virginia Slavery Debate that occurred during the 1831-32 sesson of the House of Delegates, and is considered one of the first significant strides toward the Civil War. Nat Turner’s rebellion, one of the most significant events of the 19th century, forced the nation to confront slavery.
The rebellion sparked contentious debate that would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery. Nat Turner was not able to see it happen, but his retaliation was met with the results he so wanted.
Nat’s most infamous entry into American history is woven through historical newspapers and letters from the era that mention the rebellion.
Although these accounts are many in number, they are not necessarily the most reliable. It is most likely the case that almost every news writer at the time depicted Nat Turner as a monster. While Nat Turner did in fact kill many whites along with his supporters, the institution of slavery was no less gruesome.
These soldiers have descendants, too, and a legacy to be defined alongside Turner.
This part of history is not just about a leader, but also about the supporters who made the rebellion possible.
Many slaveholders viewed literate slaves as dangerous to the institution of slavery, as literacy could be a doorway to faking passes or reading abolitionist newspapers.
Knowledge is power.
The white slave-owning South wanted obedience through Christianity.
There would be no tolerance, even in terms of religion. Slave owners used religion as a tool of control as well as a means for justifying their questionable actions.
Slave patrollers haunted the lands between plantations, waiting to catch a slave walking between properties without a pass. These patrollers were typically lower-class whites, and some abused their power to wrongfully accuse and punish enslaved people.
Slave patrollers seemed malicious in nature. Patrolling was their job, and bullying was their pastime.
By 1831, Nat Turner and his family had passed through the hands of several different owners.
1831 was also the year of his rebellion.
Historians face greater narrative challenges than novelists or filmmakers when trying to reconstruct Turner’s life and death.
While novelists or filmmakers have room to interpret the course of someone's life or a certain time period, historians are limited because they must reach as close to the objective truth as possible.
Living with the knowledge that his family could be taken away at any moment surely shaped Nat Turner’s outlook,
Nat Turner's rage was many years in the making, as well as those of other slaves brave enough to fight back.
It stoked panic all over the slave-holding South, resulting in the brutal lynchings of hundreds of African Americans, most of whom were not associated with Turner or his cause.
These sorts of consequences for insurrection were inevitable in the South. Any slave, innocent or guilty, could pay the price for the actions of few.
more than 20 years after the closing of the trans-atlantic slave trade in 1808
While the importation of slaves was illegal, slavery remained a heated domestic issue. It took 57 years after 1808 for slaves to be freed.
In the Colonies, slavery and resistance were restless bedfellows, as evidenced by several large-scale attempts to end the institution. Denmark Vesey’s 1822 plot in South Carolina, Gabriel Prosser’s 1800 conspiracy in Richmond, Virginia, Toussaint L’Ouverture’s successful liberation of Haiti in 1791, the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, and the countless revolts that took place on land and sea, shaped the revolutionary spirit of enslaved African people. Freedom was always on the minds of the enslaved, and Nat Turner was no exception.
Nat Turner was not the first nor the last to organize acts of resistance against slaveholders.
152
The author refers back to his original premise: that children make use of communication in an idealized manner. He builds on this idea by claiming that comics offer "virtually unlimited" ways for words and pictures to combine. This demonstrates that good comics are more complex than most people think. There is much thought and deliberation that goes behind each scene.
pg. 143 - Modern language has a phonetic foundation, unlike more archaic languages that sprouted as symbols of objects. When analyzing modern language, traces of the beginnings of language and communication are scarce at best.
140
The combination of words and pictures is often represented in propaganda. Both images and verbiage can appeal to a person's biases. This may be partly why this combination is not widely considered an art form.
161
"When to tell was to show-- -- and to show was to tell."
Here is a prime example of the use of antimetabole. The two phrases in this sentence mirror each other. This is because the author is trying to articulate how showing and telling ought to be interchangeable.
139
"It's considered normal in this society for children to combine words and pictures, so long as they grow out of it.
With this statement, the author shifts from portraying an anecdote to beginning his argument. It is clear that the author does not agree that children should disengage themselves from using visual communication. In fact, the purpose of using the comic book as a medium is to defy that expectation.
151
"And again, as long as we view comics as a genre of writing or a style of graphic art this attitude may never disappear."
In many ways amateur comics creators take away some of the dignity behind their art form, only relying on it as a stepping stone to a more prolific artistic career path. Here the author asserts that we must change our perception of comics to prevent it from being considered only a subset of a true art form (whether it be writing or graphic art) indefinitely.
156
Words and pictures are supposed to complement one another, regardless if one is represented in a comic more than the other. The same can be said about WOVEN communication. Relaying a message takes more than producing a certain phrase or portraying a certain image; communication is multifaceted.
145
Is there a reason why, despite there being an equilateral triangle, there is an unequal divide between resemblance/pictures and meaning/words?
pg. 143 (It seems like I cannot annotate this page) - The inventor of the printing press was Johannes Gutenberg, which may explain why there seems to be German writing on this page.
140
As we age, we are forced to visualize textual information. For this reason, novelists rely on the connotative meanings of words to set the mood, setting, and other aspects of their stories.