Essay – The Writing of The Long Song Everyone have somethings he or she are ashamed of or proud of. It could be all from the way they look or the way they talk to who their ancestors were. One’s heritage is not something that can be changed or erased, but can and should be accepted and is not something that you should feel ashamed of. That is also what Andrea Levy is trying to convince her reader about in her essay “The Writing of The Long Song”, which was published in 2010. Levy explain how the idea behind her book “The Long Song” formed. The essay is well structured. The beginning resembles the end. It starts with her telling about a conference, how it made her want to write a book and her research for the book and ends with her talking …show more content…
Carmicheal, and you just didn’t get it!” (Page 9-10, line 223-225). She ends the question with an exclamation mark instead of a question mark, to emphasize her rhetorical question. We can see a little bit of irony as well from that quote. Slave ancestry is one of the main theme Levy focus on in the essay, as well as pride. It started by a woman, who shamed another woman by being a descendant of a slave, which inspired Levy to write her book “The Long Song”. The whole idea at first was to write a historical book, but after she learned that, she could not find much of the history of the slaves, she decided that she wanted to write a novel instead, but still based on the same theme. She wanted to give the slave ancestors a voice, and touch a subject not many people have written or talked about. “Writing fiction is a way of putting back the voices that were left out.” (Page 8, line 131-133). She felt that there they were not able to say anything about how unfairly they as slaves have treated, some maybe even against their own will. That was what inspired Levy write this book, to give them a voice, so that their descendants could get to know and learn about their ancestors and even be proud of
Instead, he implores them to be more political. His goal in writing is to make people aware of the social injustices occurring. The Negro writer who seeks to function within his race as a purposeful aren has a serious responsibility. In order to do justice to his subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in all of its manifold and intricate relationships, a deep, informed, and complex consciousness is necessary; a consciousness which draws for its strength upon the fluid lore of a great people, and more this lore with concepts that move and direct the forces of history today (Wright,
I read an Ethnography called "A Song Of Longing, An Ethiopian Journey", by Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Shelemay gathered a good amount of religious music in a town of Gondar, a city in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian rules and regulations upset her research and ended up studying the Ethiopian Christian service in Addis Ababa. During that time, she met and married a Jewish businessman, Jack Shelemay, from a Middle Eastern (Aden), whose family was permanently settled in Ethiopia. " A Song Of Longing" is not a book that was said it to be, she late changed it and made it about Ethiopian religious music, and also a story of Kaufman 's field experience.
Analogous in form to the spiritual autobiography, the slave narrative emphasizes the difficulty of upholding moral goodness under the weight of slavery. By revealing herself as a “fallen woman” Jacobs creates a hazardous problem, capable of eliminating the sympathies of a primarily white audience. Moreover, Jacobs risks portraying herself as an impure woman, whose virtuousness departs from the piousness and gracefulness typically exemplified by the ideal woman or “angel in the house,” according to the “Cult of True Womanhood.” Therefore, in an effort to preserve the ethos of her argument, Jacobs attributes her unchaste condition to the systemic effects of American slavery. Hoping to destroy the ideology of benign paternalism, Jacobs reveals her consequential ethical dilemma through a faint description of her master’s, Dr. Flint’s, licentious behavior.
Jacobs decided to write her autobiography “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” in order to share the true life of enslaved women, since men wrote most autobiographies. She wanted a woman’s perspective and she thought she was obliged to write it because she was well educated for a black woman during the times of slavery. Her life and other people alike her had their lives greatly affected by Andrew Jackson and his political roles during the late 1920’s to early 1950’s. Jackson’s policies, politics, and societal roles during and after his presidency affected the lives of enslaved women in the United States between 1828 and 1850.
In the poem “A Story” by Li- Young Lee, the audience is introduced to the intricate relationship between the father and the son. There is an obvious internal conflict ongoing within the father’s thoughts; the father desperately wants to tell his son a story but cannot come up with one. The author highlights the altering views held by the father and the son through the use of shifting points of view and the intended structure. These two devices adeptly establish the poem’s profundity and intensity of emotions; moreover, it brings light to a common battle that evolving filial relations face against time; as innocence eventuates into maturity, parents inevitably feel helpless and nostalgic.
She conveys ideas of internalised oppression, involuntarily imposed upon to follow strict social rules, the act of people erasing cultural heritage, as well as the importance of embracing personal heritage. Throughout her essay,
The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed.
Document Analysis #1 1) Why were Irish Nell and her descendants enslaved? Ans: Irish Nell and her descendants enslaved because of an Act. The Act was common and existed in the seventeenth-century that anyone who marries a slave will be enslaved along with their descendants. Also, when a person marries a slave they become a slave and has to serve the husband’s master. 2) What assumptions about race, gender, and social order contributed to their enslavement?
Which of the authors in this chapter provided you with the most useful information for improving your own writing, and why? Intro:I never find a way where I can easily start writing with no problem. I am either too distracted, too bored, or trying too hard to focus that I actually don’t get anything done. Forcing myself to sit down and focus doesn’t give me a great start, it worsens my mind because I’m feeling more pressured.
In the poem Heritage by Linda Hogan, Hogan uses the tone of the speaker to demonstrate the shame and hatred she has toward her family, but also her desire to learn about her family’s original heritage. The speaker describes each family member and how they represent their heritage. When describing each member, the speaker’s tone changes based on how she feels about them. The reader can identify the tone by Hogan’s word choices and the positive and negative outlooks on each member of the family.
One of his most famous works is “Negro,” which is a poem that highlights African American identity through the personification of African American heritage. The narrator is the personified figure that connects African Americans by explaining historical allusions that contributed to African American heritage and culture. This personified narrator enhances the theme of unified heritage among African Americans in the poem “Negro” with the use of structure, historical parallels, and historical context. One of the ways the use of personification in “Negro” enhances the theme of unified heritage is by manifesting African American history and experience structurally into one person, who is also the narrator. Hughes wrote this poem in the first person, so the poem is laden with “my,”
Both of these writers felt responsible to inform their white readership of the hardships slavery had on not only them but on other slaves. For example, Olaudah Equiano experienced being taken away by white people from his country. He even found himself wishing to be back at his former slavery in preference of his “present situation”. He states, “...I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, not had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death to relieve me..”(130).
In WW2 the holocaust clamed 6 million Jews lives, and over 7 million soviets died too and 1.7 million of those soviets were also counted towards the 6 million Jews. The holocaust was a genocide during World War II in when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany tried to take over then world and also attempted to kill off all the Jews. They would send Jews and people who opposed them to concentration camps where they were either durned or worked till they couldn’t. Night is an autobiography by Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. Auschwitz death camp is a video documentary with oprah winfrey and Elie Wiesel.
The book expounds more information on race information of the slaves in the land of the Caribbean. It further clarifies on the sexual relationship that existed between the masters who owned the slaves and enslaved women of color in the Caribbean Island. The author gives more light on the sexual assaults against young black girls had to undergo while in the hands of white planters who owned large track on sugar plantation on the Island, unlike the white who lived freely. Though Stuart is girl barely out of childhood age, she sees the glaring proof of affection as well as obligation on her part do something concerning dehumanization of women through sexual assault. Stuart knows pretty well that she can hardly speak of dedication or desire or choice in such unequal situation may be living in a hell of sexual assaults.
The gender of the speaker cannot be defined since there are no indications to suggest the speaker’s gender. The main idea of the poem is the integral part of music in African American culture as a “hypodermic needle / to [the] soul” soothing the weariness and pain from the “smoldering memor[ies]” of “slave ships” (6). In stanza 1, the larger theme of social inequality is addressed through the allusion of the slave trade by trumpet player’s memory “of slave ships / Blazed to the crack of whips,” (6-7).