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ENG 338
INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF BLACK DIASPORA

Disclaimer: Although efforts have been made to ensure this note is 100% in
conformity with the lecture delivered by the lecturer in class, you are still expected to
use it as per your own discretion
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LECTURE NOTES
23rd June, 2023
Background/Introduction
Diaspora is a term that refers to a segment of a race or clan which is scattered,
extracted or forced out of their original environment and have settled in another
place where they still maintain a sense of their community and culture
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The extraction came as a result of a
major historical blight – the slave trade
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It
spanned 400 years and lasted from 1401 – 1800
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Their exploration soon included the need for manpower to grow the industries in
Europe, so, they exchanged some articles for some African ancestors who were then
taken as slaves to work in European industries and plantations (cocoa, sugar, etc
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As a result, the Blacks dominated New England (America) and the Caribbean Islands
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Places like Badagry and Ghana served as ports from which
slaves were transported
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So, when the
ancestors sold their brothers and sisters to the whites, they were ignorant of the
philosophy of the whites
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Thus, they bought able-bodied men
and beautiful ladies that would attract buyers over there in Europe
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Along the line, people fell sick, contracted diseases and so as not to jeopardise the
lives of the other slaves, the sick ones were thrown into the sea
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where people who needed slaves would come to buy them
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America is divided into two: the South and the North
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Thus, the South needed more hands and
possessed a large number of slaves
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These islands also had plantations owned by the
whites where the black slaves were taken to
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So, they made them work like animals in
the plantations, even locking their mouths with padlocks
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These continued until some events began to happen later on, one of which was the
American Civil War
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In the plantations also, some blacks who
felt their dignity assaulted began to revolt
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What the
gangs did was to train one another on warfare skills to attack plantations and rescue
willing slaves
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This group of whites was known as the ‘abolition group’ or
the ‘abolitionists’
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However, for abolition of slave trade to happen, both South and the North America
needed to come together
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This lack of agreement led to the American Civil War of 1861
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During the war, some blacks who thought the whites were superior and were
civilising them began to see that the same blood flows in both whites and blacks and
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that a white man when shot dies just like the black man also
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Even after the war, the South still sought to dominate the blacks, so, the blacks
began to move to the North
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Different factors lends credence to this, one of which is
‘structured racism’
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They were
only free in letter; structured racism persisted and gave room for different efforts to
keep the blacks still in bondage, such as the reduction of rent only in the slums of
America
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who have homes
abroad because they are not descendants of Negros
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The literature of black diaspora is that of transplantation
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Their culture was no longer in its
orginal form yet the black content was still residual, so, their literature is that of the
black culture modified by a new culture
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The black slaves sang
in the whites’ plantations
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They
composed and sang this when they were depressed, happy, etc
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Apart from spirituals, the first major written works are what is known as Slave
Narratives, which deal with the experiences of slaves from the port where they were
bought to their journey to Europe
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Some appear as Confessions, when slaves confess
a sin committed
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As such, they are called Neo-Slave
Narratives
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From the 1920s, there came a revival, rebirth and reawakening, wherein scholars,
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philosophers and writers of black origin came together to theorise on black identity,
a move that gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance
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This is because the lives of blacks are restricted
to the family; they are reduced to the family alone because of ‘structured’
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racism where whites were not put in positions of authority and so, couldn’t
write about them
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The most obvious is ‘return of Frank
back home to Lotus’, yet it can be related to the burial rite
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This is an
example of the aesthetic of rites and rituals in literature of black diaspora
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So, religion also plays a dominant role in the
success of Frank
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The
two lovers who are the narrators are residents of Haiti but the young man who is on
the wanted list of the government has to escape by sea
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The agreement between them is that they will keep
documenting everything about themselves during the run
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The man has a love for Haiti and never wants to
go to America
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Unfortunately, the ship sank and never gets to America
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Edwidge has borrowed the slavery experience and the journey on the sea from Africa
to America (the Middle Passage) in her work
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The question of race is dominant in this text and even, the first two sentences state
that blacks and negroes are stated somewhere different from the whites – racial
segregation
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The story is about how Joe and Missie May who are in love almost
fall out of love
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He praises Otis Slemmons as a rich
black person whom women are after
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However, his wife does not like the comparison
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Joe makes between himself and Slemmons and she tells him that he is also good
the way he is
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In the process, Missie May also gets carried away
and wishes Joe has the gold Slemmons has
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He sees some
movement going on and announces himself
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They scuffle and Slemmons escape, leaving his
golden wristwatch behind
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From that time, he engages in silent treatment with his wife
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Later,
while May was laying the bed, she discovers Slemmons’ gilded dollars on the bed
and notices that they are counterfeit
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She gets
angry and packs out of the house but on her way out, she meets Joe’s mother who
advises her not to move out of the house
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After a while, Missie May gives birth and Joe’s mum announces
to him that the child is his own image, this makes Joe begin to have faith in his wife
again
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At the store, they
discover that the money is only gilded, that is, it is fake
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In the text, there are references to white men who have money, e
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Rockefeller, Ford,
Packard, etc
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There is also allusion to prostitution, reason why Missie May gets angry after Joe
leaves money on the bed
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Were there no idea of prostitution
(LongHouse), Missie May wouldn’t have done it
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This can be judged from
the differences in the speech of Joe and Missie May to that of the storeman, who is
likely a white man
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This shows that Joe and Missie
May definitely love money because life is difficult there
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Thus, Otis Slemmon’s character is likened after the trickster,
Tortoise
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Also contained in the text are humour, irony and yearning for gold
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In the story is the idea of night women and day women, however, though not
comfortable, the protagonist would rather be a night woman for even the day women
struggle so much
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’ This is an allusion to the
Greek myth of Penelope, the wife of Odyssey
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20th July, 2023

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
This text contains the struggle by Blacks to survive in a hostile environment
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The Younger family rejects the offer and
this stands as an assertion of the Black identity
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This is a dream come true for the
family, however, there are some other dreams left hanging, which leads to the
epigraph:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over—
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Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load
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Thus, the theme of the African American dream is
central to the text
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Walter Lee
Younger belongs to a generation
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There is another, Joseph Asagai, who is also interested in
Beneatha
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The very first question Beneatha asks
him is about his identity
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So, the theme of the ‘Quest for Identity’ is present
in this play text
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In A Raisin to the Sun, there is also at least one spirituals: the song regularly
rendered by Ruth
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The ‘raisin’ is a symbol for Mama’s dream, which explains the present of the garden
tools given to her
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The play itself is set in the South like ‘Blood Burning Moon’ but the time
setting is different from that of ‘Blood Burning Moon’
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However, the affair central to Wedding Band began 10 years before,
in 1908, between Julia and Herman
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This work also contains a dream in the background
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Julia keeps moving and changing
locations but is always facing troubles because Herman would want to come
visiting, however, people always criticise Julia, that she is selling the black race
cheaply to a white man who would use and dump her
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Because Herman was raised
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to see the whites as superior to the blacks, he subtly takes side with the whites
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In Julia’s outburst against Herman when she wouldn’t agree to relocate with him, the
theme of the hurt of history is seen
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Thus, the text also
makes reference to how history has not favoured the blacks (hurt of history)
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This theme is also present
in Wedding Band
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This idea of
somebody working in such a place and taking peanuts as pay shows that are no
opportunities for the blacks
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The kind
present here, though, is syncretic religion
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Fanny, for example, is a Christian but practises divination
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There is the issue of
divining using teacups and tea leaves
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This aspect of reading tea
leaves is also alluded to in ‘The Lesson’ by Toni Cade Bambara
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This is because the black slaves also went along with their religion (African
Traditional Religion) into the alien land, one of the reasons for the presence of
traditional religion in European countries nowadays
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There is the allusion to slave trade
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They make reference to how their skins are in different shades, a result of whites
regarding blacks as objects of sex during slavery and dumping them later on
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A
salesman moves into the community in a bid to prostitute blacks, he enters Julia’s
bedroom and sits on her bed but she is able to withstand her ground against any
consummation
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********************
28th July, 2023
‘If We Must Die’ by Claude McKay
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This poem contains the use of animal images and is also a call for revolution and
abolition of racism
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Most of Claude McKay’s poems are
written in the sonnet
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‘The Tropics in New York’ by Claude McKay
The word ‘Tropics’ point to a hot location, whereas New York where McKay is located
is cold
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This first stanza paints the
picture of a place filled with wonderful fruits
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They bring to him memories of a distant place where fruit
trees are full, ‘laden by low-singing rills’ and where ‘blue skies’ are ‘in benediction
over nun-like hills
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Then, his eyes grow dim, ‘a wave of longing’ swept through his body
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He gets ‘hungry for the old, familiar ways,’
that is, the African land from which he was extracted and overwhelmed, he says, ‘I
turned aside and bowed my head and wept
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The poem is about ancestry and nostalgia about home
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This poem has a rhyme scheme of ABAB for each stanza and in the second stanza,
the reader gets to know the location of the fruits described in stanza – ‘set in the
window’
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It
is of ancestry and also deals with identity, that is, ‘I am in New York but not of New
York because my roots are elsewhere’
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The opening stanza of this poem, ‘The
difference between poetry and rhetoric/is being/ready to kill/yourself/instead of your
children
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The poem is about the question of race and talks about how a policeman who killed
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a 10-year-old black child is set free even after he says in his defense, “I didn’t notice
the size or nothing else/only the color”
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This black woman here surrenders
herself by aligning with the whites; she has power but has given up that power –
‘until she let go the first real power she ever had/and lined her own womb with
cement/to make a graveyard for our children
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This is not all, though, this teenager also
hopes to ‘beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed’
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She never hurt a soul
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The idea of racial violence is clearly evident here
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‘The House of Yemanja’ by Audre Lorde
The Yoruba myth of the goddess, Yemoja, is used here
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Three girl children are presented in this poem: one perfect daughter who is later seen
to be black, ‘dark and rich and hidden’, suggesting Africa; another who is believed to
be Europe, suggested by how it is hungry for ivory – ‘in the ivory hungers of the other’;
then, there is the speaker who is ‘the sun and moon and forever hungry/for her eyes’
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So, these three daughters represent Africa, Europe
and African-Americans
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’ The persona here, the African-American, also complains
about how these sisters are cruel to her, that is, the native Africans do not even care
about their race in Europe, just as the Europeans are treating their sister, the
African-American badly
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’ The poem ends on a note of yearning for blackness, where the voice of the
African-American daughter cries out to Yemoja, saying, ‘I need your blackness
now/as the august earth needs rain
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The poem also contains repetition
and allusion to Yoruba mythology
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Remember
that Derek Walcott is from the Caribbean Islands which had different colonial
authorities over it, colonised in different times by England and France
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Walcott has
decided to write a story about an island but has chosen to adopt the poetry genre,
this is the reason why it bears in its title the word ‘Tales’ and is divided into ‘Chapters’
just like a prose work
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We shall discuss the third chapter of this poem
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It is
titled ‘la belle qui fut’, which means, ‘A beautiful stock
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She is a character in this poem and the poem describes her: her religion,
what her life was before and what it is now
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‘She had white skin’ – The reader of this poem gets to know from this that Miss
Rossignol is a white woman
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She is also
compared to ‘bats’ and ‘Magdalen’ which is an allusion to the biblical Mary
Magdalene whom Jesus delivered of evil spirits
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Further in the poem, it is revealed that Miss Rossignol was once a rich lady with
coaches to ride in, ‘Coursing a green estate in gilded coaches
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’
So, the poem is about a white lady, once beautiful and proud and in turn hated by
some others, particularly the black persona and his mother
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This poem has fourteen lines which makes a sonnet and has clusters of lines which
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dwell on different topics as a means of bringing division to the lines
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This is a Caribbean poem because its writer, Derek Walcott, is from the Caribbean
Islands
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The phrase, ‘A Far Cry’ in
its title suggests something that is extremely ‘from Africa’
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In the end, racial confusion sets in, the poet/persona who
has the blood of both (Africa and Europe) is confused as to which side to take, so he
laments, ‘I who am poisoned with the blood of both/Where shall I turn, divided to the
vein?’
Some poetic devices used in the poem include symbolism, present in ‘A wind is
ruffling the tawny pelt’ (line 1)
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Simile is also
used as in such lines as ‘quick as flies’ (line 2)
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Present in the poem is also allusion to the holocaust, ‘To savages,
expendable as Jews?’
Other devices used include imagery
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Pun is also another figurative device used in this poem, such as in, ‘As natural law,
but upright man/Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain’
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It is a subtle mockery of both the whites
and blacks engaged in war
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An oxymoron is also present in the words ‘brutish
necessity’
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He says he is
‘poisoned with the blood of both’; ‘blood’ here points to ancestry and not just the
liquid, so it is also a synecdoche for the poet’s ancestry
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As a poem, it addresses ancestry and thus fits into the question
of race, identity and concern about Africa
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