literature

4Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BOOKS

One Of The Most Revered Works In English Literature ‘Great Expectations’

Great Expectations traces the coming-of-age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire. Raised by a humble blacksmith, Pip is recruited by the wealthy Miss Havisham to be a companion to her ward, the cold but beautiful Estella. There, Pip learns to despise his rough origins as Estella torments him about his low prospects. When Pip is informed that an unknown benefactor expects to make him his heir, he sets off to London to realize his “great expectations.” But true gentleman stature, he will find, is a matter of character, not fort...

Shut Out From The Whitewashed World Of Children’s Literature – Black Kids Took Matters Into Their Own Hands

5Feb

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Journalism

Shut Out From The Whitewashed World Of Children’s Literature – Black Kids Took Matters Into Their Own Hands

Hanging on the wall in my office is the framed cover of the inaugural issue of The Brownies’ Book, a monthly periodical for Black youths created by W.E.B. Du Bois and other members of the NAACP in 1920. A newspaper boy hawks copies of the Chicago Defender. Library of Congress The magazine – the first of its kind – includes poems and stories that speak of Black achievement and history, while also showcasing children’s writing. Although much of American children’s literature published near the turn of the last century – and even today – filters childhood through the eyes of white children, The Brownies’ Book gave African American children a platform to explore their lives, interests and aspirations. And it reinforced what 20th-century American literature scholar Katharine Capshaw has descr...

Toni Morrison on the Necessity of Literature

26Aug

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Journalism

Toni Morrison on the Necessity of Literature

Reading the celebrated author is a fitting way to mark the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship arriving on U.S. shores. It was a tough week to lose Toni Morrison, one of America’s most esteemed writers and public figures. She died August 5, after a weekend of mass shootings, one clearly motivated by White nationalism. A few days later, ICE arrested 680 people in mass raids on Mississippi factories, an escalation of policies that intentionally inflict trauma on immigrant and refugee families. Those events were enabled by American racism. That racism is a foundational reality of our nation, both in our history and present society, was a theme that Morrison, a Black woman, tackled in her writing for five decades. Her novels focus on the African American experience, ...

17May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Does African-American Literature Exist?

The question of what makes a piece of writing African American literature or not is one that I have never been confronted with before. I have certainly never been challenged to question the entire existence of the genre before taking a course entitled "ENGL 234: Major Writers in African American Literature". On the contrary, frequent evenings spent perusing bookstores have fortified the notion in my mind that the genre is alive and well. Other literature courses have not touched on this subject at all much less brought this question to light. Through that course, however, I found that it is certainly one worth exploring and one that deserves a definitive answer. I have come to understand the genre of African American literature as encompassing any piece of literature that deals specific...