Lester Update

Wow. I'm so pissed for not doing this earlier, but I emailed Julius Lester today and he emailed me back!!! So now I need to find where I can insert the info that he gave me in the email. I'm so upset with myself for not thinking of emailing him like, two freaking months ago, but late's better than never.

lol I am smacking myself

Julius Lester, author of my primary text has a blog. right here on blogger. I just found out today. dammit.

Revision aka Pain

Ms. Bates,

Okay, so you told me to find other stories that people would find as ordinary and incorporate them, but I don't know what they are for. My current argument is that they further reiterate the fact that Lester encompasses many different types of narratives, but then that creates a structural problem because anywhere I think to put them stops the flow of my paper. I know I need to refocus a little, but when I bring Lester's stories in sooner, I end up cutting off the issues that my secondary sources bring up and I can't figure out where to slip them back in. Can I come by right after class today?

Dinner Party Update

So, I had another dinner party which was more like a dinner party. (I actually got my sources to speak to each other). Spindel, who talks about reconsidering slave narratives from a psychological perspective, fears that memory loss and distortion can invalidate slave narratives. Yetman, who explains the Federal Writers' Project (from where Lester discovered these narratives) and agrees that memory does affect the stories. Even more, he considers something else that Spindel does not, which is the possibility that ex-slaves being interviewed by white reporters could be more likely to sugar-coat the tellings of their experiences.
The question arises of what makes Lester's book any good if he is using these narratives and I say that because of their cultural value they fulfill the purpose of Lester's book, which is to provide a more thorough view of slavery. Foster says that the stories are pretty basic and all the same; slave wants to be free and tells story of how he gained freedom. I replay to her with Lester's story of Charley Williams.

Plagarism?

Okay, so I found a fact in secondary sources number one, then I came up with an explicit explanation for it. Later, I found a statement similar to my response in secondary source number two that noted the same fact, but did a better job of implying the reason. Should I credit secondary source number two forthe explicit explanation that I originally came up since the idea is there? Would it be plagarism if i didn't?

(Our Nig page 68 vs. Five Slave Narratives page xvii)

Dinner Party Exercise

Sorry some of it cut off. I did the best I could.

AAAH

Ms. Bates,
I think one of the problems that I'm having is trying to incorporate my secondary findings with the pattern that I found in TBS. I want to argue that all slave narratives must be taken with a grain of salt and explain why. At the same time I want to argue that the personal experience of a person cannot be undermined even if it can't be proven. BUT, the pattern that I found in TBS was slave narratives that were not the usual textbook version and I can't really figure out how to incorporate that into everything else. Do I need for everthing to fall under an argument for the pattern that I found, or can my pattern be a sub-argument?

Five Minutes of Fame

Big Claim: The young girl from this excerpt of To Be A Slave, though imprisoned by slavery, still maintains a desire to physically control her own body and the ability to maintain control over her own mind, and makes her own decisions, though unrecognized by anyone else, about her life.

The girl constantly displays her distrust toward Ellison.
“No, I don’t want you to buy me. I want to stay here.”
“No, you won’t have much to eat. What do you have to eat?”
The girl is worried more about her survival than her desires.
She prefers low risk stability rather than high risk reward, which is seen when Ellison tells her that she will eat better if she leaves with him.
As much as she wants to ride in the buggy, she runs away because she sees the buggy as a gilded trap to an unwanted life
The girl does what she wants to do, regardless of what the rules are or what others tell her.
She runs away when she finds out that Ellison had bought her because she doesn’t want to leave.
She gets in the back of the buggy where she wants to ride even though Ellison had told her to come back to the front.

Works Cited for two articles

Spindel, Donna J. "Assessing Memory: Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives Reconsidered." Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Autumn, 1996), pp. 247-261

Byerman, Keith E. "Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery ." Journal of American History, Dec 2005, Vol. 92 Issue 3, p1071-1072

excerpt from To Be A Slave

Major Ellison bought me and carried me to Mississippi. I didn't want to go. They 'zamine you just like they do a horse; they look at your teeth, and pull your eyelids back and look at you eyes, and feel you just like you was a horse. He 'zamined me and said, "Where's your mother?" I said, "I don't know where my mother is, but I know her." He said, "Would you know your mother if you saw her?" I said, "Yes, sir. I would know her. I don't know where she is, but I would know heer." They had done sold her then. He said, "Do you want us to buy you?" I said, "No. I don't want you to buy me. I want to stay here." He said, "We'll be nice to you and give you plenty to eat." I said, "No, you won't have much to eat. What do you have to eat?" He said, "Lots of peas and cottonseed and things like that." But I said, "No, I'd rather stay here because I get plenty of pot licker and bread and buttermilk, and I don't want to go; I got plenty." I didn't know that that wasn't lots to eat. He said, "Well, I have married your mistress and she wants me to buy you." But I still said, "I don't want to go." They had done sold my mother to Mr. Armstrong then. So he kept talking to me, and he said, "Don't you want to see your sister?" I said, "Yes, but I don't want to go there to see her." They had sold her to Mississippi before that, and I knowed she was there, but I didn't want to go.
I went on back home, and the next day the old white woman whipped me, and I said to myself, "I wish that old white man had bought me." I didn't know he had bought me anyhow, but soon they took my cotton dresses and put 'em in a box, and they combed my hair, adn I heard them tell me taht Mr. Ellison had done come after me and he was in a buggy. I wanted to ride in the buggy, but I didn't want to go with him. So when I saw him I had a bucket of water on my head, and I set it on the shelf and ran just as fast as I could for the woods. They caught me, and Aunt Bet said, "Honey, don't do that. Mr. Ellison done bought you and you must go with him." She tied my clothes up in a bundle and he had me sitting up in the buggy with him, and we started to his house here. I had to get down to open the gate, and when I got back up I got behind in the little seat for servants, and he told me to come back and get inside, but I said I could ride behind up to the house, and he let me stay there, but he kept watching me. He was scared I would run away, because I had done run away that morning, but I wasn't going to run away, 'cause I wouldn't know which way to go after I got that far away.

Anonymous
Fisk, pp. 191-192

Narrowing Down

Unfortunately I was unprepared for my meeting because I didn't find any patterns within the two or three cultural objects I had chosen. However, afterwards, I had a better idea of what I needed to be doing. I decided to focus in on the book that I had chosen, To Be A Slave, because it seemed like it was the richest as far as finding patterns. I actually had no idea what I wanted to do before the meeting, and afterward I was probably even more frustrated because I was expecting to know what I wanted to do. After the meeting, I went back to my friends that I'd interviewed for a previous assignment and they helped me to realize that doing To Be A Slave was probably my best choice. Also, I had another friend to show me how to find patterns; anything from the font of the text (see previous post) to the subtle actions of the slaves, such as a repetition of bending over or the words of a song that they sang. I think that was the biggest help to me.

TBAS: Finding Patterns

The first thing I noticed about To Be a Slave was the separation between the voices- Lester is telling the story of slavery, as many people have done, yet he uses the voices of those who are best fit to tell a story of a slave: the slaves and their children. First noticed is a visual separation; Lester's voice is in italics as he narrates the story, and the accounts themselves are in regular print. Also, Lester's voice is articulate and scholarly, while the accounts tend to keep the distinctiveness of the dialect of the slaves. (In the preface, Lester points out that he tried to preserve the language as much as possible, but had to change somethings just to make some of the statements comprehensible.)

The stories the slaves are the brick of the story and Lester's commentary is the mortar that holds these stories together.

Also, something else that I see recurring throughout the book is the slave's cries. It seems that the slave actually has two cries for the fate of a fellow, the cry of praise and the cry of sorrow, which seem to be, at first glance, contradictory, like on pages 42 and 56, respectively: The cry of praise follows the death of a child, while the cry of sorrow follows the transport of slaves even though they are still alive. This illustrates that slavery is a worse fate than death.

Two More Possible Cultural Objects

I like this clip because it is funny, clean, and has an underlying message that can be contemplated long after the show is over: the many aspects of dating.
I think it would be interesting to talk about dating and how it changes over time, as well as why people choose to date and why they choose who they date. Another possiblility, even, is to analyze the relationship between father figure and son. There is so much that can be done with this clip.

Once again, Will Smith is hilarious, yet the underlying truthful message is ever obvious: there are expectations that men have of women in American culture and lots of relationship problems are based in scenes frightenly similar to this one...and be sure to notice: Will had been asleep and she had made herself some popcorn, and she opened the bag and decided to offer him some, even before she took the first handful. Would he have done the same for her?

Implementing Course Reader

During class today, we were talking about the validity of people's accounts as sources and how certain accounts made by blacks at one time had to be verified by a "legitimate" source, namely, a white person. I was thinking that maybe I could incorporate that into my final paper if I decide to use To be a Slave as my cultural object.

Two Possible Cultural Objects

First, Shining Through is a movie about an American woman who was a spy during World War II. She went to Germany and risked her life to help the U.S. government, and this movie tells her story of fear and courage. I am drawn to this movie becasue it is very rich in culture and the fact that this woman was so bold and brave makes me admire her.


Second is my book To Be a Slave. I had to read it in my AP American History class and it stirred me inside. The accounts of slavery given by slaves, ex-slaves, and the children of slaves is an amazing representation of the history of my people. It made me want to cry both tears of sadness and tears of pride.

REA Testimonial

My friends Brianna, Erica, and Gerald had really good advice to give me about writing my paper. They told me to make sure to have enough info about the topic first before it's too late; don't do the final copy the night before because it takes a lot to do final revisions. Talk to the teacher about the topic more than once and have a strong thesis adn get it checked by the teacher. A weak thesis makes it difficult to write the paper. Keeping track of sources while researching greatly decreases time spent on the biblography; you don't have to go back and reorganize your sources. Even if a book has very little info on your topic, don't just toss it aside, it could be great information. Pace yourself, don't wait til the last minute becasue all you do is lose sleep. Starting out with something very specific adn looking deeply into research causes the topic to be broadened in order to encompass the full idea of the object; be open-minded. Set small goals and work toward them regardless. Make your own due dates. Set goals as if the paper is due two weeks before it actually is due to give yourself plenty of time.