Two Good Watches for Black History Month

"500 Years Later" is a great documentary to watch for Black History Month. Instead of just focusing on blacks in the United States, historians and professors, students and professionals, follow Africans through the centuries all over the world starting from the slave trade. Blacks are not termed as African American or African English or African Belizean, but together as African descendants. Through watching this I learned that many of the race issues that African Americans face are faced by the millions of blacks around the world who have descended from enslaved ancestors. It brings up issues about the legacy of slavery, the absence of African history/philosophy/art/spirituality in our history books,  and internalized racism. The documentary is very much supportive of the pan-africanist philosophy, which was a new take for me on how to approach black identity in a white world, but it broadened my perspective about who I have been as an African American and who I want to be as an African American. 

"The Color of Fear" is a dialogue project between eight American males - black, white, Asian, and Latino - specifically discussing racism in the United States. This documentary is not about black history or Black History Month but serves as a good follow up to "500 Years Later," which left me asking many more questions about race relations in the U.S.

This film addresses and asks questions such as:

What does it mean to be white vs. a person of color in the United States?

What does it mean to be American?

What is the definition of racism?

Is there a solution to contemporary racism?

The conversation between these men forces us to redefine racism as we know it and confront stereotypes that we all have about others and even ourselves. This is a must see for every American.

Below is a trailer to the film.

 

On Slave Narratives and Kate McCafferty's "Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl"

I just finished reading Kate McCafferty's Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl, a fictional slave narrative about an Irish child forced into slavery by her English overlords. After reading the autobiographical narratives Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass   by Frederick Douglass for two classes that I am currently taking, I thought it would be interesting to read a slave narrative from the seldom-studied point of view of a white European slave, captured, put on a ship, and forced into indentured servitude in much the same way as hundreds of thousands of Africans were. The crucial difference? The possibility of freedom. Although this work is fictional, I thought it captured the realities of what it may have been like to be a female Irish slave in the caribbean very well.

On the tiny caribbean island of Barbados during the mid 1600's, Cot Daley faces many of the same struggles that a black slave woman would have as she copes with coercion into the role of breeder and mate, while at the same time she superficially benefits by being one step higher on the social hierarchical ladder than the Africans by whose sides she works: if she behaves, she can eventually go home. While this possibility remains a ray of hope for Cot, she must still confront the alienation that comes with bearing the same shade of skin as her captors and the captors of the entire slave community. Her tale is not only one of survival, but one of trying to find a place and home within a community that is resistant to accepting her as one of their own.

"How to Write Good"

Here is a list of some rules about fiction writing and writing in general. I don't know where this came from, but some items on this list are pulled from William Safire's Rules for Writers. Some I agree with and some I don't. Most make me laugh.

"1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

3. Employ the vernacular.

4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

6. Remember to never split an infinitive.

7. Contractions aren't necessary.

8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

9. One should never generalize.

10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

12. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

13. Be more or less specific.

14. Understatement is always best.

15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

17. The passive voice is to be avoided.

18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

20. Who needs rhetorical questions?

21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

22. Don't never use a double negation.

23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point

24. Do not put statements in the negative form.

25. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

28. A writer must not shift your point of view.

29. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)

30. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!

31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.

32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

37. Always pick on the correct idiom.

38. The adverb always follows the verb.

39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives."

An Opportunity, A Tribute

Wilmott Proviso Ragsdale
(August 19, 1911 - January 16, 2009)

I wrote this essay in response to a contest prompt. The one who can best explain their reasons for wanting this prize (a 10 day trip to Africa with New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof) is the winner. It seemed the proper time to mull through some feelings about the recent death of an elderly friend of mine, Rags.

"I used to drive an old man around. He was modest and simple. He wouldn't step outside without a cap, a pair of loafers, and a kerchief in his breast pocket. He was that kind of an old man. Always put together, always a gentleman, and always abundantly kind. Wherever I drove him, somebody inevitably knew him; sometimes personally or simply as the great writer, journalist, and teacher that he was. While I drove or walked with him through grocery aisles he told me stories. He told me that his first car was a Ford Model T and that he remembered San Francisco, my hometown, before there was a Golden Gate Bridge. He told me what it was like working behind the scenes in the Oval Office under Roosevelt and how strange it was to see that strong man carried like a babe in the arms of a secret service officer. He told me about the scentless roses of Cairo and heat in India and how he had hunted a tiger there and was glad, though much later, that he had failed to kill “such a beautiful creature.” He told me many things. But the one thing he repeated to me often was that I should write always and read even more, even as his own eyes failed and no longer permitted him to do so.

While he was still alive I won a university fiction competition named for Esther Wagner who had been a professor and writer at the University of Puget Sound. When he learned of my achievement he bought me a bouquet of sunflowers and chowder to share while we chatted at his friend Rosa’s house.

He said between sips of soup, “Actually, Rosa and I used to spend a lot of time with Esther.”
“Yes,” Rosa interjected. “She used to sit right there, where you are sitting and eat soup with me, sometimes every week!”

That was when my writing became more deeply connected to me, through this man who had inspired me through a life he led many years ago.

His name was Wilmott Ragsdale (Rags) – the only journalism professor ever to teach at the University of Puget Sound, a veteran and war correspondent of WWII who reported on the Normandy invasion for Time Magazine, and writer for the Tacoma News Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.

I read this great man my prose and he told me never to stop. He told me to be a journalist, and while journalism is a field little known to me I feel that it is within my grasp because of him. I received an interdisciplinary grant last summer of $3000 to do my own writing project, at which time I wrote a collection of autobiographical stories. At the end of my project I did a reading of my work. Rags couldn’t make it because he had a stroke, so I read them to him while he was in the hospital. His earnest interest in my creative development has motivated me continuously throughout the time that I have known him and even after. Going to Africa and writing about it would be a grand accomplishment for me but it would also be a tribute to Rags, whom I have never been able to thank for his friendship, mentorship and steadfast belief in me."

After Rags passed away I learned the full meaning of his unique name in the most unlikeliest of places. I was in one of my classes and close to dozing in the middle of a lecture about the Mexican War, when his name seemed to bellow from my professor's mouth. He was talking about the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a campaign against slavery advancing westward as new territories were conquered by the United States. Here is a small blurb about the Proviso from Wikipedia.org:

"The Wilmot Proviso was introduced on August 8, 1846, in the United States House of Representatives as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican-American War. The intent of the proviso, submitted by Democratic Congressman David Wilmot, was to prevent the introduction of slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso did not pass in this session or in any other session when it was re-introduced over the course of the next several years, but many consider it as one of the first events on the long slide to secession and Civil War which would accelerate through the 1850s." 

The remainder of this article can be found at this url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmot_Proviso