Nicole be Thinking...

Throughout the novel , Helga digs herself deeper into a hole as she relentlessly pursues fulfillment. Satisfaction escapes her and she can't figure out why. Much of her discontent is a result of a failure to "fit in" anywhere. Such is a common problem of biracial people, or the tragedy of the mulatto. Helga is the result of a white mother and a black father. Her father left her, and she is isolated from the rest of her family, presumably because of her mixed race: "They feared and hated her. She pitied and despised them" (41). Despite being abandoned, she identifies with black people and lives her life among them. However, Helga sees herself outside of, or even above, black people. She has trouble falling in line with them in Naxos and chooses to associate with black people of status in Harlem. Yet when she returns from Denmark, she admits that she "felt a slightly pitying superiority" over the black people there who were content with their lives. ...

Having the benefit of time and living in a Southern state affords me an interesting and mixed perspective of Frances Harper's Iola Leroy . The novel was published in 1892 and makes a case against slavery for those who would have been closest to it. Reading it now, the propaganda hits hard, but one of the most interesting things about the story is the use of setting to illustrate the complexity of slavery. "The South has not been a paradise to you all the time, and I should think that you would be willing to leave it" (203). This passage illustrates the attitude of many of the characters of the book. From the beginning, the goal of the younger oppressed generation is to move north for freedom. The north is seen as not only a beacon of freedom for the slaves, but also the center for education and culture for the rich, as Eugene has all of his fun there as a young man and Iola and Harry are sent north for school. On the other hand, the South is representative of antiqu...

It's been so long since I've posted that I wasn't even signed into Blogger anymore... [yikes!] I've been doing other things, reading more than writing. I don't want to promise that this will change anytime soon... BUT I will post my academic papers just to stay in touch. Right now I'm in a Black Women Writers course and that's where this semester's papers will come from (my other classes won't generate any interesting papers). Generally, we read a novel a week and write a response to it. They are short papers that I generally keep just in case I decide to expand and publish them. SO. They aren't super duper developed. At most, they are conversation starters, and at least you'll know some titles to some awesome books written by some awesome black women. =] first 2 immediately after this one and the rest as they come -- if I remember (aye! it's hard out here for a working stude-writer...)