Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

It has been a long time since we have played with words. This is an effort to revive our blog and renew our relationship to the scholarship of reading fascinating texts like Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde.

Binopoet and I decided to read Cancer Journals and share with you our insight and thoughts on this little but powerful text. Audre Lorde was one of the first women in the U.S. to share her experiences with Breast Cancer. At the time, not many women were ready to expose the realities of mastectomy, chemotherapy, and the fear of having to deal with a terminal illness. But this fearless feminist warrior did just that. We will post our commentary on the text in a few weeks but in the meantime check out this excerpt from Cancer Journals.

"I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enable me to scrutinize the essentials of my living." pp. 19

Final Thoughts

As I finished the last page of T. Morrison's Playing in the Dark, I could not help but return to Fanon's Black Skin White Masks. Like Fanon and Sartre, Morrison's book was an existentialist text (in my opinion) and a critique of the ways in which the Africanist presence in the classic American literary texts have constructed and represented whiteness but through the portrayal of the African (non-white). While Fanon and Sartre, have eloquently argued this in response to the history of colonialism and racism. Morrison pushes the reader to rethink the ways in which the American literary canon has in fact through the negation of the Africanist as other constructed whiteness. 

One of the arguments that raised my eyebrows pertains to the ways the writers of young America engaged, imagined, and created the images of the Africanist presence and persona. It was clear to Morrison that the images of blackness were perceived as evil and protective, rebellious and forgiving, fearful and desirable--"all of the self-contradictory features of the self (59)." While whiteness, alone, is meaningless, frozen, static, veiled, implacable. Here I think of Fanon's view of this Manichean world where the negation of the Black is dependent on the construction of whiteness.

This little book provided a deep analysis on the Africanist presence in the fiction of these young authors who are considered the literary authorities and also representative of American literature. I agree with Morrison they have much to tell us about race relations and social & political thought in the U.S. We can apply her argument to more than just American literature. This argument can extend to other disciplines, film, media, and other American institutions not mentioned here. 

 

First impressions..

My first impression begs me to contend that her audience is the intellectual community of literary critics. However, as I continue to read (almost approaching chapter three) I begin to think it is for those academics who privilege highly the classics and those who dismiss it without a fair critique. Now after reading 'Romancing the Shadow' I think it is for a larger community in academe (Sociology, African American studies, etc.). While overall, i still believe it is for the academic community, I wonder how much of that is guided by her writing style and how I think it to be so dense in nature and not really accessible to the "non-academic community." There are moments that I believe she is speaking to writers and those who plan to write. What are your thoughts?

Some questions that she raises in the chapters to follow: (i noted in my book that i also believe them to be the research questions)

• How does literary utterance arrange itself when it tries to imagine an Africanist other?
• What are the signes, the codes, the literary strategies designed to accomodae this encounter?
• What does the inclusion of the Africans or African Americans do to and for the work?

I am definitely enjoying the text and I feel a little shortchanged that I did not read the works she is analyzing.

Peace!

My first couple of pages

Marie Cardinal:

http://www.narcissism101.com/Beginning/mariecardinal.html
http://www.the-womens-press.com/wordstosay.htm


Boileau:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Boileau-Despr%C3%A9aux

Antonia S. Byatt:

http://www.asbyatt.com/

Interesting concepts/articulations to me:

• "the Thing" (p. vi, viii-ix)
• A critical question raised by Morrison: "I was interested, as I had been for a long time, in the way black people ignite critical moments of discovery or change or emphasis in literature not written by them." (p. viii)
• the consequences of jazz
• "the subject of this book: the sources of these images and the effect they have on the literary imagination and its product." (p. x)

Morrison on reading and writing:
"writing and reading mean being aware of the writer's notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability." (p. xi)

?s she raises:

• how is "literary whitenes" and "literary blackness" made, and what is the consequence of that construction?
• how do embedded assumptions of racial (not racist) language work in the literary enterprise that hopes and sometimes claims to be "humanistic"?

SHE's BRILLIANT!!!!!

First Book: Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination

We agreed on five major themes as we read Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination (1993). 

1-Audience (s)

2-Sources (Who is the intellectual community?)

3-Writing Style

    Argumentation

    Literary Tools (irony, satire, allegory, etc.)

4-Methods/Evidence

5-What is (are) the arguments? What are the questions raised? 

Enjoy the book!

I look forward to the discussion! 

Peace & Blessings!

-BP