Elise MacDougald

I really enjoyed MacDougald's piece which discussed the task of being a black female. She discusses how stereotypical race ideas actually affect these women. For example, she discusses how black females must constantly face the stereotype that they are more permiscuous than white women when in actuality they are not. It is this stereotype and many more that make being an African American woman rather difficult. They have to deal with day to day concerns of being a women and then the added racial implications as well.

After reading Cane I am rather confused. Part of the book seemed to be poetry while part seemed to be almost like a chapter out of a novel, maybe even somewhat biographical. I thought it was interesting how Toomer chose to describe the women he did, but I am confused as to how they all relate to one another. He seems to jump around a lot from topic to topic and I find myself wondering if anything will come together in the end. I think he is a pretty good writer, especially the way he can write a novel and poetry as well. Authors generally concentrate on one type of writing so I am impressed that he can take so much and put it all into one book. However, I'm not really sure if it makes too much sense to me (at least not yet).

Claude McKay

I really enjoyed these poems. McKay managed to relay his thoughts and feelings of being a black man in America while making it sound good at the same time. I am really impressed with the poetry. The poem I enjoyed the most was "The Dominant White". McKay eloquently tells the reader that the whites had such opportunity to help the blacks. They had the power and ability to help, they had laws to protect and yet they didn't help the blacks and they didn't protect the blacks. They took the tools they had to help and used them to hurt the minority races. My favorite line in the poem is "you've proved unworthy of your trust". I think it is a perfect way to describe the treatment of the blacks. We could have helped them, we could have put an end to unjust and unfair treatment but we didn't. We were trusted with helping them overcome the obstacles they faced as a minority race and instead we helped betray them. This poem is an amazing summary of the treatment of blacks in the US.

Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man Ch 6-9

I found this section of the novel very interesting. The reader sees the narrator in his new life in the city. We see him get into gambling and going to the clubs. What I found most interesting however was his fascination with the clubs. When I was reading and the narrator went into the club for the first time and heard the rag time music I could completely understand why it was so fascinating to him. Music had been such a major piece of his life from the time he was a child that it was really no surprise to me to see that he would later get into playing rag time himself. His musical training served him well in his stay in NYC. He began to play in the clubs and make some decent money. Then he meets the person he calls his benefactor. This man pays him well to entertain him and his guests. The benefactor even takes him to London and Paris and has him play there as well. I find it interesting that the narrator would choose to give up all he had, his promising career as a musician and the money and attention of his rich benefactor, to return to the south. I'm left wondering what will become of him and if he will regret giving up the life he has made for himself through his musical talent.

Introductory Blog

Hi, I hope this works.

My name is Alyssa. I'm a childhood education major with a concentration in English (the reason I'm taking this class).