Download or read book An Exploration of the Double Conscious African Americans on their Journey for an Identity along the Colour Line in Passing Quicksand The Autobiography of an Ex colored Man written by Kathleen Wehnert and published by diplom.de. This book was released on 2008-08-07 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I m gonna die. Being neither white nor black? These are the first words with which Nella Larsen commences her novel Quicksand in 1928. The quatrain belongs to the poem Cross (1925) by Larsen s contemporary Langston Hughes and addresses the issue of duality, where mixed racial heritage leads to self-doubt and struggle in the definition of identity. Larsen and other African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, explored the intricacies and contradictions of the concept of race at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular by addressing the phenomenon of passing . Passing has many definitions, most often it is associated with the term passing for white , which implies the crossing of the colour line from black to white in order to transcend racial barriers. Ratna Roy refers to it as assimilating into white society by concealing one s antecedents and according to Sollors, passing can be understood in a more general sense as the crossing of any line that divides social groups. Perhaps most importantly is to understand passing as the ability of a person to be completely accepted as a member of a sociological group other than their own. Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, writers hardly had addressed the passing figure in literature because racial passing only thrived in modern social systems in which as a primary condition, social and geographic mobility prevailed. Passing has always been a much camouflaged topic because the successful passer does not want their identity to be uncloaked. This constitutes probably also the main reason why only little, and rather pioneering, research has been conducted up to today and why it still remains difficult to investigate the issue. The sole witnesses of the concepts of passing in the time period are passing narratives. James Weldon Johnson s Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (initially published anonymously in 1912 but reissued under Johnson s authorship in 1927), Nella Larsen s Quicksand (1928) and her novella Passing (1929) are perhaps the most exemplary and promising examples of an analysis of the passing figure and classic epitomes of the racial situations during the Harlem Renaissance. The novels challenge stereotypes of race and disclose concepts of doubleness and visibility. In order to disentangle the complexities of the theme, these novels, [...]
Download or read book Passing written by Kathleen Wehnert and published by Diplomica Verlag. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Larsen and other African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, explored the intricacies and contradictions of the concept of race at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular by addressing the phenomenon of 'passing'. Passing has many definitions, most often it is associated with the term 'passing for white', which implies the crossing of the colour line from black to white in order to transcend racial barriers. Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, writers hardly had addressed the passing figure in literature. Passing has always been a much camouflaged topic because the successful passer does not want their identity to be uncloaked. This constitutes probably also the main reason why only little, and rather pioneering, research has been conducted up to today and why it still remains difficult to investigate the issue. The sole witnesses of the concepts of passing in the time period are passing narratives. James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and her novella Passing (1929) are perhaps the most exemplary examples of an analysis of the passing figure and classic epitomes of the racial situations during the Harlem Renaissance. The novels challenge stereotypes of race and disclose concepts of doubleness and visibility. In order to disentangle the complexities of the theme, these novels, will serve to examine in depth in the nature and the motifs of the phenomenon of passing. In this book, I will be exploring the motifs of passing in these novels of the Harlem Renaissance in the context of DuBois' concept of double consciousness and the discourse of race. Chapter One will set the critical historical and cultural context for the passing narratives, as this is indispensable and crucial for the understanding of the motifs of the theme. With this in mind, the second Chapter will account for what destabilizes the African-American identity and thus identify the motives of p
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man written by James Weldon Johnson and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2020-08-17T23:42:12Z with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The protagonist of this fictional autobiography wrestles with race in America from the perspective of someone who learns that he is considered black but also that he can pass as white if he wants to. His personal ambitiousness and racial ambivalence makes him a sort of American Hamlet: undone by indecision. Will he be “a credit to his race” by advancing an African-American heritage he loves and appreciates in the face of a hostile culture, or will he retreat into the mediocrity of a safe, white, middle-class family life? Along the way, he shares his penetrating observations about race relations in the American north and south, about the “freemasonry” of subterranean black American culture, about the emerging bohemian jazz subculture in New York City, and about traditions of African American religious music and oratory. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man written by James Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-17 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published anonymously in 1912, this resolutely unsentimental novel gave many white readers their first glimpse of the double standard -- and double consciousness -- that ruled the lives of black people in modern America. Republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man became a groundbreaking document of Afro-American culture; the first first-person novel ever written by a black, it became an eloquent model for later novelists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a journey through the strata of black society at the turn of the century -- from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel aristocrats to the musicians who hammered out the rhythms of ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is a complex and moving examination of the question of race and an unsparing look at what it meant to forge an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but color.
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex coloured Man written by James Weldon Johnson and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1951 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man written by JAMES WELDON. JOHNSON and published by . This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man Large Print written by James Weldon Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored ManJames Weldon JohnsonFirst published anonymously in 1912, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is James Weldon's Johnson fictional account of a young biracial man living in America during the second half of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. The so-called "Ex-Colored" man makes his living as a jazz pianist playing ragtime music at a popular New York club. It is here that he catches the attention of a wealthy white gentleman who takes a curious interest in him and employs him to play at his parties. While he becomes friends with the man a feeling of subservience reminiscent of slavery prompts him to part ways. He travels to the south where he intends to work on his music in an attempt to glorify the artistry of his race. After witnessing a terribly horrific lynching he abandons his desire to embrace his black heritage opting instead to "pass" as a white man. "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" masterfully explores the complexity of race relations between whites and blacks in America and the search for racial identity by one of mixed ethnicity. Through the experiences of its unnamed protagonist the issues of class, race, and discrimination are discussed with an openness uncommon to literature of the time, and which would establish it as a pivotal work of the Harlem Renaissance. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man written by James Johnson and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man James Weldon Johnson 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927) by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional account of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man", living in post-Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lives through a variety of experiences, including witnessing a lynching, that convince him to "pass" as white to secure his safety and advancement, but he feels as if he has given up his dream of "glorifying" the black race by composing ragtime music. The Ex-Colored Man's mother protected him as a child and teenager. Because of the money provided by his father, she had the means to raise him in an environment more middle-class than many blacks could enjoy at the time. After the boy's mother dies, he is a poor orphan and subject to harsh conditions. He adapted very well to life with lower-class blacks, and was able to move easily among the classes of black society. During this carefree period, he taught music and attended church, where he came in contact with upper-class blacks. Living in an all black community, he discovers and describes three classes of blacks: the desperate, domestic service, and the independent workman or professional. The Ex-Colored Man believed the desperate class consists of poor blacks who loathe the whites. The domestic worker class work as servants to whites. Artisans and skilled workers, as well as black professionals, had little interaction with the whites. Many white readers, who viewed all blacks as a stereotype of a single class, were unfamiliar with class distinctions described among blacks.
Download or read book The Concept of Self written by Richard L. Allen and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Institutional racism has had a major impact on the development of African American self-esteem and group identity. Through the years, African Americans have developed strong, tenacious concepts of self partially based on African cultural and philosophical retentions and as a reaction to historical injustices. The Concept of Self examines the historical basis for the widely misunderstood ideas of how African Americans think of themselves individually, and how they relate to being part of a group that has been subjected to challenges of their very humanity. Richard Allen examines past scholarship on African American identity to explore a wide range of issues leading to the formation of an individual and collective sense of self. Allen traces the significance of social forces that have impinged on the lives of African Americans and points to the uniqueness of their position in American society. He then focuses on the results from the National Survey of Black Americans-a national survey of African Americans on a wide range of political, social, and psychological issues-to develop a model of African self. Allen explores the idea of double-consciousness as put forth by W.E.B. DuBois against the more recent debates of Afrocentricity or an African-centered consciousness. He proposes a set of interrelated hypotheses regarding how African Americans might use an African worldview for the upliftment of Africans in the Diaspora. The Concept of Self will interest students and scholars of African American studies, sociology and population studies.
Download or read book Testimony written by Natasha Tarpley and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black youth, particularly college-educated youth, are the supposed inheritors of the civil-rights struggles. Today many of this new generation are engaged in a new struggle--for their own identities. In Testimony black students across the country express their own understandings of their generation's shared experiences--from racism in school to the politics of hair.
Download or read book The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man written by James Weldon Johnson and published by Barnes & Noble Classics. This book was released on 2007-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A coming-of-age story about a man whose light skin enables him to pass for white"--Page 4 of cover
Download or read book Dusk of Dawn written by W. E. B. DuBois and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her perceptive introduction to this edition, Irene Diggs sets this classic autobiography against its broad historical context and critically analyzes its theoretical and methodological significance.
Download or read book Double Consciousness in Black and White written by Mark Lawrence McPhail and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Malcolm X and African American Self Consciousness written by Magnus O. Bassey and published by Em Texts. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that Malcolm X told African Americans to affirm their blooming sense of self and to assert themselves in their own uniqueness. However, he realized that the first route to African American affirmation of self was to awaken black self-consciousness and he therefore called for black wide-awakeness. The book concludes that "Malcolm X's call for a psychological return to Africa through a process of historical reconstruction was aimed at overthrowing the enslavement of African American thought and thereby setting African Americans on the path to freedom and human dignity."
Download or read book Walter White written by Thomas Dyja and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Act Like You Know written by Crispin Sartwell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-07-20 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X—their words speak firmly, eloquently, personally of the impact of white America on the lives of African-Americans. Black autobiographical discourses, from the earliest slave narratives to the most contemporary urban raps, have each in their own way gauged and confronted the character of white society. For Crispin Sartwell, as philosopher, cultural critic, and white male, these texts, through their exacting insights and external perspective, provide a rare opportunity, a means of glimpsing and gaining access to contents and core of white identity. There is, Sartwell contends, a fundamental elusiveness to that identity. Whiteness defines itself as normative, as a neutral form of the human condition, marking all other forms of identity as "racial" or "ethnic" deviations. Invisible to itself, white identity seeks to define its essence over and against those other identities, in effect defining itself through opposition and oppression. By maintaining fictions of black licentiousness, violence, and corruption, white identity is able to cast itself as humane, benevolent, and pure; the stereotype fabricates not only the oppressed but the oppressor as well. Sartwell argues that African-American autobiography perceives white identity from a particular and unique vantage point; one that is knowledgeable and intimate, yet fundamentally removed from the white world and thus unencumbered by its obfuscating claims to normativity. Throughout this provocative work, Sartwell steadfastly recognizes the many ways in which he too is implicated in the formulation and perpetuation of racial attitudes and discourse. In Act Like You Know, he challenges both himself and others to take a long, hard look in the mirror of African-American autobiography, and to find there, in the light of those narratives, the visible features of white identity.
Download or read book The Making of Black Female Revolutionaries Growing Consciousness and Change of Identity in the Autobiographies of Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown written by Jessica Menz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,15, University of Bayreuth, 40 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this thesis I will first briefly outline general aspects of the autobiographical genre, with emphasis on the tradition of life narratives written by African Americans. As this thesis focuses on two autobiographies written by women, I will also go into major characteristic aspects that distinguish their personal accounts from men's before introducing the autobiographies of Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown within the larger context. Chapter three will be dedicated to a closer look on their works. I will focus on Shakur's and Brown's representations of themselves as black women and their becoming revolutionaries within the dynamics of gender and power. I will illustrate important aspects of their identity formation during childhood and adolescence, e.g. family backgrounds, school education, ghetto life and their relationship to male age mates, as well as their slow process of identity change due to growing critical awareness and introduction to the Black Power Movement. I will also focus on whether and if yes, how, their current identity is again challenged within the Black Power Movement and especially within and outside of the Black Panther Party. Lastly I will shortly concentrate on the autobiographies' respective closures and how the two women see themselves, directly after leaving organized struggle behind (Brown) or from exile several years later (Shakur). By writing their autobiographies Brown and Shakur take advantage of the opportunity to tell their version of the story. How the two women create their identity and depict themselves retrospectively as being quite different from their public image will be the central focus of this paper.
