A
ccess to diverse books is not only essential to a strong education and a free mind, it’s critical to a healthy democracy.

Reading is more than merely the decoding of texts. It’s the main road to basic information exchange, personal development, and the foundation of life-long learning.

More importantly, however, reading is our most powerful tool for developing analytic and critical thinking. It expands our conceptual capacities. It trains perspective-taking and cognitive empathy – social skills indispensable for informed citizens in a democratic society.[1]

But, we’re currently in the midst of a book banning crisis.

Well-funded pressure groups are mandating the removal of books from library and school shelves. They’re pushing state governments to impose educational gag orders on teachers and staff.

These laws silence discussion about race and gender in America, as well as difficult issues like poverty, domestic abuse, and drug addiction.

In doing so, they isolate and discriminate against LGBTQ+ students and students of color. They leave victims of abuse feeling detached, alone, and blaming themselves for what they have suffered.

They give us the impression that the cycle of poverty is easily broken, or that only people who are morally deficient suffer from addiction.

And…  they cast a long and shameful shadow of censorship across our libraries and schools.

Polling repeatedly shows that communities across our country agree that families should be able to decide for themselves what their children can and cannot read. Not another parent. And certainly not a politician. At their core, these laws are anti-family, anti-freedom, and anti-American. [2]

Put a stop to these policies at the ballot box.

These pressure groups won’t quit pushing for anti-education policies. Nor will state and local legislators refrain from introducing such bills until we put a stop to it at the ballot box. Like in the election that’s coming up in November.

So, we must use our votes up and down the ballot to demand that our policymakers protect students, public servants, and especially our right to read. That means voting for legislators who support the belief that our public institutions must serve diverse communities and remain a hallmark of a free people.

It means voting for lawmakers who will put forward legislation like the Books Save Lives Act and the Fight Book Bans Act, rather than the Don’t Say Gay bill or the Stop the Woke act – which impose educational gags, and undermine what libraries are all about.

HERE’S A VOTER CHECKLIST TO ENSURE THAT WE DO JUST THAT:

• PREPARE FOR THE ELECTION.
  • Register or confirm your voter registration.
  • Know what’s on your ballot.
  • Go to this site for state-by-state election information.
    .
• ADVOCATE WITH THIS ACTION TOOLKIT from Unite Against Book Bans.
  • Share the candidate questionnaire.
  • Or use it to ask key questions during public forums.
  • Review talking points, contact media, and more.

• ORGANIZE YOUR COMMUNITY.
  • Use your personal influence to help friends, family, and other community members prepare for elections and turn out to vote.
  • Check out these resources for library professionals, educators, faith groups, students, parents, and authors.
    .
• SHOW UP & SPEAK OUT.
  The freedom to read is a non-partisan, American value. Let’s mobilize our communities to vote in every election – for pro-library, anti-book banning candidates.
  .
• MOST IMPORTANTLY, GET TO THE POLLS AND CAST YOUR VOTE![3]

Because a democratic society – which is based on informed multi-stakeholder consensus – can only succeed with resilient readers. As Margaret Atwood points out in her oft-quoted warning:

If there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy…  will be dead as well”.[4]

#on censorship       #The Books Save Lives Act

Endnotes:

[1] The Ljubljana Reading Manifesto: Why higher-level reading is important. October 20, 2023. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. https://www.ifla.org/news/ljubljana-manifesto-on-higher-level-reading-launched-at-frankfurter-buchmesse/

[2] Take the Voter Pledge. Unite Against Book Bans. https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/vote/

[3] Take the Voter Pledge. Unite Against Book Bans. https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/vote/

[4] The Ljubljana Reading Manifesto: Why higher-level reading is important. October 20, 2023. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. https://www.ifla.org/news/ljubljana-manifesto-on-higher-level-reading-launched-at-frankfurter-buchmesse/

Images:

Vote: Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Book Banning Crisis: Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash

Ballot Box:  Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

D
escribing The Color Purple as a womanist work is like saying the Iliad is a heroic poem. It isn’t merely an example – it’s the defining text of that genre.[1]

Womanism emerged from the work of African-American author Alice Walker. And the term isn’t just a new label for Black feminism. While womanism does have an important relationship to feminism, it’s broader in scope than the earlier women’s movement. Okay. But that still doesn’t tell us what womanism actually is.

Strictly speaking, Walker doesn’t offer a definition of womanism itself. In true writerly (and, quite frankly, womanist) fashion, she shows her reader what a womanist is, leading them to an understanding of it.

Within the collection of her essays titled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker explains the origins of the term womanism. She paints a picture of who a womanist is – what kind of moral, mental, and emotional qualities encompass a womanist’s character. She reveals the types of things a womanist loves. Using metaphor, she imparts that womanism is more robust and nurturing than simple feminism. What Walker doesn’t do, however, is provide a strict formalization of womanism.

But, as academics are wont to do, Women’s Studies scholar Layli Phillips has developed the following definition of the movement born of Alice Walker’s work:

A social change perspective rooted in Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension.[2]

In the same way Walker leads us to an understanding of womanism rather than defining it, she acquaints us with what The Color Purple is intended to do without putting a label on the genre she has created. And, as Alice Walker herself phrases it… the book’s intent is:

To explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.[3]

 Therefore, The Color Purple is absolutely a genre-defining womanist novel.

Why Was The Color Purple Banned?

The Color Purple is simultaneously one of the most acclaimed and most banned books in history. Among other accolades, it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983, and made Alice Walker the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Yet, it remains among the most banned books in the United States.[4]

Walker’s work was first banned in 1984 Oakland schools. Donna Green, mother of one of the students there, complained about “explicit language,” saying she was “offended by the book’s subject matter and graphic material.”[5]

The complaints levied against The Color Purple in Oakland have set the timbre for the myriad of challenges ever since.

 Alice Walker had a thing or two to say about the Oakland banning at the National Writers Union and the Black Women’s Forum that same year:

Mrs. Green had not actually read the book, according to the papers; she’d “flipped” through it, scanned at least five pages, photocopied those five, and passed them out to the members of the Oakland school board…

 I feel I know what Mrs. Green was objecting to. When I learned she’d copied and distributed to the school board five pages from the book, I knew which five pages they were…  They are the pages that describe brutal sexual violence done to a nearly illiterate black womanchild, who then proceeds to write down what has happened to her in her own language, from her own point of view. She does not find rape thrilling; she thinks the rapist looks like a frog with a snake between his legs. How could this not be upsetting? Shocking? …

Even I found it almost impossible to let her say what had happened to her as she perceived it without euphemizing it a little. And why? Because once you strip away the lie that rape is pleasant, that rapists have anything at all attractive about them, that children are not permanently damaged by sexual pain, that violence done to them is washed away by fear, silence, and time, you are left with the positive horror of the lives of thousands of children (and who knows how many adults).[6]

As Walker further states, she could have written about Celie’s rape in such “pretty, distancing language that many people would have accepted it as normal” – the way a good number of romance novels do, a genre chockfull of scenarios revolving around “strong,” animalistic male characters, who are also handsome and somehow…  charming.[7] 

Mrs. Green also made it apparent that she “thought sex should be only heterosexual, and not pleasurable or God-inspired.”  Ultimately, as Walker observes, what probably upset Mrs. Green most was “the discovery that there [was] definitely a world view different from her own.”[8]

Most recently – December 2023 – The Color Purple was removed from schools in Orange County, Florida.[9]

What Makes The Color Purple an Important Book?

Alice Walker speaks to the contribution her book makes during a 2012 interview:

Great Literature is help for humans. It is medicine of the highest order. In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests. And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind. I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life. It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on. It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage. It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart. That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect.[10]

Oprah Winfrey was one of the victimized children Walker alluded to when addressing her choice to use direct, unvarnished language about the sexual violence visited upon Celie. Winfrey first read The Color Purple when she was cast as Sofia in the 1984 film. Telling the story of this experience, Winfrey declared:

The Color Purple changed my life forever. From the moment I read the book—that was my story. Celie’s story was my story. When Celie is writing the letter—‘Dear God, I’m 14 years old, please explain what’s happening to me?’—that was my story.

 Winfrey has revealed that she “was raped at 9 years old by a cousin, then again by another family member, and another family member. [11]

I couldn’t believe that Alice Walker had actually penned a story about a girl who was going through the same thing that I was going through in my life. Somebody else knew how I felt. I related so much to Celie’s story and found hope. [12]

 Winfrey’s response to The Color Purple exemplifies one of the chief reasons why stories like this need to be told. Girls like Celie and Oprah, those who have experienced sexual abuse, need to know they’re not alone. More importantly, they need to realize that what happened to them was not their fault – that they did nothing to deserve it.

But, it isn’t just girls who benefit from reading books like The Color Purple. It’s crucial that young men cultivate empathy. That they recognize women are not a commodity at their disposal. And understand how devastating actions like those described in Walker’s work are.

Young men also benefit from realizing that the hierarchical dynamic at play in The Color Purple, one that facilitates women being dominated and abused by men, is just as harmful to them as it is to the women being abused. And that point is missed if descriptions of difficult events are sugar-coated.

Those who grew up/are growing up on the other side of the proverbial tracks from the characters portrayed in Walker’s work also benefit from reading it. Her book shines a light on unexamined gender, class, and racial strife. It lays bare realities of history that many are trying to erase.

The Color Purple exposes members of majority culture to situations they’ve likely never had to deal with. It’s a window into the daily difficulties associated with being on the receiving end of racism. And, what it’s like to be at the mercy of a court system steeped in racial disparity.

Reading this epistolary novel helps them realize that many of the notions they’ve absorbed about Black history and African-Americans are one-dimensional and myopic –something Walker’s work simply does not allow.[13]

What’s the Difference Between Womanism and Feminism?

In a 1 984 interview, Walker said she chose the term Womanism because:

… it is better than feminism, I chose it because I prefer the sound, the feel, the fit of it; because I cherish the spirit of the women and because I share the old ethnic-American habit of offering society a new word when the old word it is using fails to describe the behavior Only a new word can help it more fully see.[14]

Historically, many first-wave feminists (from the mid-19^th to the mid-20^th century) quite simply ignored the concerns of women of color. These issues were considered questions of race, and consequently a distraction from the fight for the legal rights of women.

During and following the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, second-wave feminism emphasized “sisterhood,” insisting on mutual solidarity to achieve its goals. Though this emphasis appears to be “color-blind,” it effectively isolated feminists of color.

The third wave of feminism (beginning in the mid-1990s) consciously addressed issues of social justice, including racism and classism, in addition to sexism. Despite this expanded perspective and more inclusive activism, it still appeared that feminism did not fully appreciate the importance of intersectionality. And, that the feminist movement remained focused on the experiences of white middle-class (or non-working class) women.[15]

Womanism, on the other hand, situates the Black woman in history and [their development in a cultural context] – in opposition to negative and inaccurate stereotypes common within American society. It also frames the context of her survival within that of the larger community, where the fate of women and that of men are linked.[16]

Her characterization of womanism famously states, “womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender.”[17] This distinction suggests that womanism constitutes a broader movement, one capable of encompassing the wider array of experiences of women of color. And, as such, addresses the complexities of intersectional systems of oppression.[18]

What Are The Attributes of a Womanist?

As noted above, Alice Walker delineates the attributes of a womanist in her collection of essays In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. The term itself stems from the Southern black folk expression of mothers to their female children, “You acting womanish.” In other words, like a woman. Womanish girls behave in “outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful ways.”

Womanish girls want to “know more and in greater depth” than is considered good for them. They’re “interested in doing grown-up things. Acting grown-up. Being grown up.”

Walker notes that the term is “interchangeable with another black folk expression: ‘You trying to be grown. Responsible. In charge. Serious.”

She further states that a womanist is:

A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

A womanist also:

Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

And finally, as mentioned above, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”[19]

What is the Significance of Purple?

Purple is the color of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and has historically been associated with efforts to achieve gender equality.

In 1908, the color purple represented justice and dignity. Purple also symbolizes visionary thinking, and support for people who broke down career barriers making it possible for women to work in industries traditionally denied to them.

The significance of this color to the women’s movement of the 1930s was crystallized in Alice Walker’s work of the same name. [20]

And, here’s an interesting thing about the color purple, one that reflects the womanism it has come to represent… as a color on the light spectrum, it can’t exist on its own. And in color theory, purple appears as a line on the edge of the spectrum where the other colors are most saturated, stretching from one endpoint to the other.

It’s the color of relationship, touching all the other colors at the point when they are most fully themselves.[21]

Womanism Within The Color Purple

Alice Walker describes The Color Purple as a historical novel. Not one that starts with “the taking of lands, or the births, battles, and deaths of Great Men,” however. But, diverting from the typical patriarchal concerns, a history that starts “with one woman asking another for her underwear.”[22] Bearing this description in mind, The Color Purple is clearly about the bonding of women.

Walker’s protagonist Celie, whose evolution is depicted over the course of the book, is a product of the intersectional systems of oppression addressed by womanism. And there’s Sofia, who exemplifies defiance, whether against the gender oppression embodied in a husband who tries to make his wife “mind,” or racial oppression from the community’s social order.

Though Mary Agnes is a minor player, what she characterizes is significant. Which is, as her nickname Squeak

indicates, the societal expectation that women are meek and ineffectual, especially around men.

Shug Avery completes the sisterhood, personifying womanism itself. Not only with her audacious, personality, but womanism’s sexual and emotional aspects as well. Being a singer, she clearly loves music, as well as dancing to the blues songs she sings. And her extremely successful career proves she’s more than capable.

Shug also sees God as the spirit connecting us to all of nature. And gives voice to the idea that this spirit made the color purple just to please us, in order to get our attention.

As the face of womanism, she functions as the catalyst for Celie’s development. But as Walker explicitly states, she isn’t writing strictly for women any more than Tolstoy only wrote for Russians.[23]

As noted above, Walker’s work “explores the difficult path of someone who starts out in life as a spiritual captive.” And The Color Purple is indeed Celie’s story. However, in keeping with womanism’s commitment to “survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female,” it also reveals that patriarchy is damaging to men as well.

In Keeping With Womanism, Celie is Situated in History.

The Color Purple opens with a warning from Celie’s stepfather, who had just raped her. “You better never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.”[24] So, that’s exactly what Celie did – wrote a letter to God about what she has been enduring. Celie keeps writing letters to God, and the structure of Walker’s book is born.

According to Walker, she chose the epistolary structure because “it had a lot to do with understanding the character of Celie.”[25] Someone in Celie’s position would have no one else to tell. And, consistent with womanism, it situates Celie in history. Her position is similar to enslaved African American women, who would have no one to tell but God when something like this happened to them. Walker specifically states, “Celie is very much in this tradition.”[26]

Like enslaved African American women before her, Celie’s babies are taken from her. And, she has no idea where they are, what has happened to them, or even if they are still alive.[27]

.
When Mr         asks for Celie’s sister Nettie’s hand in marriage, their stepfather insists he take Celie instead – a deal that is arranged without Celie’s consent, or even knowledge. This forced marriage parallels the exploitation of enslaved African American women. And the scenario looks for all the world like a slave auction:

Mr.            come finally one day looking all drug out. The woman he had helping him done quit. His mammy done said No more.

 He say, Let me see her again.

 Pa call me. Celie, he say. Like it wasn’t nothing. Mr.             want to take a look at you.

 I go stand in the door. The sun shine in my e yes. He’s still up on his horse. He look me up and down.

Pa rattle his newspaper. Move up, he won’t bite, he say… Turn round, Pa say.

I turn round…

 Mr. say, That cow still coming? [28]

Walker Situates Celie in a Cultural Context As Well

Walker also situates Celie in the patriarchal culture that overlaps African American history. Like so many women before her, this male-dominated culture forces Celie into a position of powerlessness, without the ability to shape an identity. Celie’s lack of identity is confirmed by the fact that her letters to God go unsigned.

Mr.            repeatedly poisons Celie’s sense of self by taunting her, “Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman… you nothing at all.” [29] The pervasive and generational nature of this culture becomes evident in the following passage, when Harpo asks his father why he beats Celie:

Mr. say. Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good for— he don’t finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa.

Harpo ast me. How come you stubborn? He don’t ast How come you his wife? Nobody ast that. [30]

 The passage above isn’t just about Mr.            and his abusive nature. Celie has been at the receiving end of this abusive attitude from the other male authority in her life as well. And, though Harpo does talk to Celie about the conversation mentioned above, his response is to put the onus on Celie rather than consider the question that would acknowledge her personhood.

These tactics clearly work. Celie has been rendered incapable of fighting back, a reality she confesses to Sofia after being called out for telling Harpo he should beat her:

I say it cause I’m a fool, I say. I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t. What that? she say.

Fight. I say. [31]

 In an exchange with Mr            ’s sister about standing up to her brother, a defeated and dejected Celie responds with “What good it do? I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive.” [32] And to add insult to literal injury, Celie is economically dependent on Mr. . Which is precisely the state of voicelessness and negative self-perception this male dominated culture generates.

Shug is Portrayed in the Tradition of Great Blues Women

.
As alluded to above, Walker created the Shug Avery character in the tradition of the great female blues singers of the early 20th century. Mr  brought Shug into his house at a time when she was very ill and no one else would take her in… not even her own mother. Celie, of course, had not been consulted or even alerted to the fact that Shug would be staying with them. But Celie’s reaction is:

Come on in, I want to cry. To shout. Come on in. With God help, Celie going to make you well. But I don’t say nothing. It not my house. [33]

And, as Celie nurses Shug back to physical health, Shug helps Celie heal psychologically. She teaches Celie to love herself, introduces her to a more inclusive form of spirituality, and shows her how to be self-sufficient.

Celie is smitten with Shug. And through the intimate relationship that develops between them, she learns to see her body as something other than the location of her abuse and pain. She also begins to see herself as being worthy of love.

Shug also helps Celie make contact with her sister Nettie, who was driven away by Mr         for refusing to succumb to his advances. Directing his anger at Celie, Mr                                                   hid the countless letters Nettie had written to her over a number of years, leaving Celie feeling more isolated than ever.

When Shug realizes the “letters with a lot of funny looking stamps” she’d seen in Mr            ’s mailbox were probably from Nettie, she hatches a plan to get them to their intended receiver… Celie. [34]

This is the point when Celie finally lets herself feel her anger rather than shutting down:

I watch him so close, I begin to feel a lightening in the head…

All day long I act just like Sofia. I stutter. I mutter to myself. I stumble bout the house crazy for Mr. blood. In my mind, he falling dead every which a way. [35]

 But Shug keeps Celie from doing anything stupid in a fit of rage, and soothes her through the night, helping Celie redirect her anger.

Shug Helps Celie Reconcile with Spiritual Life

Now that she no longer sees her situation as normal or something she has brought on herself, Celie begins to question the patriarchal God she has been raised with. The one she’s been trying to please, seemingly to no avail. The one that informs the societal structures so damaging to her.

Celie tells Nettie in a letter that she doesn’t write to God anymore, and Shug asks why that is:

What God do for me? I ast…

… he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mamma, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know…

If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you. [36]

 So, Shug introduces Celie to the inclusive, womanistic view of a spirituality where God is in the world around them:

God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ast.

Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.

Shug relates that her first step away from the patriarchal religion she and Celie were both raised in “was trees”:

Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it. [37]

 Elaborating, Shug goes on to say that this concept of God is “always trying to please us back… making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect it” – the color purple, for example. [38]

Their conversation about God made Celie realize she had never truly noticed the beauty around her. More importantly, this understanding of God helped to diminish the debilitating sense of victimhood that had defined her identity since she was fourteen years old:

Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr.’s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a ‘tall. [39]

It’s interesting to note that at this point Celie begins closing her letters to Nettie with “Amen,” something she never did when her concept of God was patriarchal and judgmental in nature.

Ultimately, Celie did write to God again. As The Color Purple opens with a letter to God, so it closes with one. But this time, Celie’s salutation reflects the inclusive womanist spirituality Shug has opened her eyes to: “Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.” [40]

Celie’s Financial Independence By Way of Folkspants Unlimited

 Celie acts on her burgeoning sense of self during a dinner when Shug announces she’ll be returning to Memphis, that Celie will be going with her. As usual, Mr             directs his anger toward Celie.

Mr_____ start up from his seat, look at Shug, plop back down again. He look over at me. I thought you was finally happy, he say. What wrong now?

 You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. [41]

Celie’s response is pivotal. Not only because she’s standing up to Mr            , but because the image of entering into the Creation signifies her transformation into someone new. As the Memphis-bound group is about to drive away, Celie spits the words she’s heard so often back in Mr ____’s face, “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook,” finishing with “But I’m here.” Her sense of self has crystallized.

At one point, Mr_____ attacks Celie with the only thing he has left to hold over her head – financial dependence:

You not gitting a penny of my money, Mr. say to me. Not one thin dime. [42]

 Not surprisingly, a lack of Mr            ’s money doesn’t prove to be a problem. Celie is more than capable of supporting herself, when she turns the (significantly unisex) pants she has designed and starts making for friends and family into a full-blown business. And once again it’s Shug, the face of womanism, who aids in Celie’s development. Not only by pointing her an entrepreneurial direction, but supporting and encouraging her along the way.

It’s also noteworthy that Squeak – rather, Mary Agnes – goes to Memphis with them. Her doing so, touches on the importance of having a sense of purpose, financial independence aside:

You going What? say Harpo. He so surprise. He begin to sputter, sputter, just like his daddy. Sound like I don’t know what.

 I want to sing, say Squeak. Sing! say Harpo.

Yeah, say Squeak. Sing. I ain’t sung in public since Jolentha was born. Her name Jolentha. They call her Suzie Q.

You ain’t had to sing in public since Jolentha was born. Everything you need I done provided for. I need to sing, say Squeak.

Listen Squeak, say Harpo. You can’t go to Memphis. That’s all there is to it. Mary Agnes, say Squeak.

Squeak, Mary Agnes, what difference do it make?

It make a lot, say Squeak. When I was Mary Agnes I could sing in public. [43]

 It’s at this point in the story that Celie tells Nettie:

I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time. And you alive and be home soon. With our children. [44]

Her life and sense of self reflects the fundamental aspects of womanism. Celie’s evolution, and the sisterhood that developed along the way, is now complete.

Womanism Takes the Well-Being of Men Into Account Too

Let’s not forget, womanism also includes the well-being of men. And, that (ironically) patriarchal systems are damaging to men as well as women.

The most obvious example of the detrimental effects male dominant social structures have on men, is the way it destroys Harpo’s relationship with Sofia. Her strong personality was always front and center. And they were very much in love.

But after they married, Mr_____  insinuated Harpo was less than a man because he was lending a hand with their baby. Shortly thereafter, Harpo began trying to “make [Sofia] mind.” [45] Mr_____ advised Harpo to beat Sofia:

Well, how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let ‘em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. [46]

It gets to the point where Sofia has finally had enough of having to fight her own husband, so she leaves him. And Harpo is devastated. Not only does he actually love her, unlike the relationship between Mr_____ and Celie, the cultural requirement for a man to dominate his wife leaves him feeling inadequate.

The effect of patriarchy on Mr             is even sadder still. It’s important to note that Celie doesn’t even know his given name, that she refers to her husband by the title Mr                   for the majority of the book. As Celie’s unsigned letters to God indicates she lacks a sense of self, Mr_____ missing a name signifies an absence of personhood. He fulfills the patriarchal expectations of his title, but as the literary device suggests Mr_____  is only the shell of a man, one who is the bitter, vicious, and abusive.

Shug, however, calls Mr             by his given name – Albert. She knows the kind of man he used to be, and could still be if not for patriarchal hierarchy. He was once a vibrant and happy man who was funny and loved to dance, who loved Shug and loves her still.

But, his father didn’t approve of Shug. And, as Albert himself states, “I wanted Shug. But my daddy was the boss. He gave me the wife he wanted me to have.” [47]

Albert buckled under patriarchal pressure. He wound up with a woman he didn’t love, with children he didn’t want, working land that wouldn’t be his until his father passed away. It “ate him alive” as the expression goes, and he passed his misery forward, including a life impaired by patriarchal hierarchy to his son Harpo.

The Larger Effects of Womanism

Ultimately, Mr_____ becomes a changed man. He’s no longer quick to judge. He starts working hard, and even cooks and cleans “just like a woman.” He also learns to appreciate “some of the things God was playful enough to make.” [48] And finally, he and Celie form a genuine bond of friendship. She even starts referring to him as Albert, symbolizing his return to wholeness.

Celie’s departing curse, “until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble,” clearly had an effect. [49] That, combined with Shug severing relations because he was mistreating someone she loves.

After Celie and Shug went to Memphis, Mr_____ had a rough time of things. He shut himself up in his house. He couldn’t sleep. Harpo would find him “all cram up in a corner of the bed. Eyes clamp on different pieces of furniture, see if they move in his direction.” [50]  In true Poe-like fashion, the worst part was listening to his own heartbeat, which beat so loud at night it sounded like drums.

Harpo finally convinced his father to send Celie the rest of Nettie’s letters. Unbeknownst to him, of course, she had already read them, but he was finally doing right by her. And, it was then that he began to improve.

During Mr            ’s darkest days, Harpo frequently slept with his father to calm his fear about whatever he thought was haunting the house. And, that nurturing image of Harpo reignited Sofia’s feelings for him.

Mary Agnes realized her dream of becoming a successful singer.

And finally, Nettie returns from Africa, and Celie is reunited with her beloved sister and the children who were torn away from her all those years ago. In her final letter, this time to Dear Everything, Celie describes herself:

I feel a little peculiar round the children. For one thing, they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don’t know much what going on. But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. [51]

This sentiment is more than Walker simply wrapping her work up with the proverbial Hollywood ending, however. The Color Purple closes with a womanist concept reflected in Walker’s work The Gospel According to Shug:

HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, now any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.[52]

The people Walker introduces us to in The Color Purple have indeed been helped by the womanism this genre-defining work is grounded in.

That’s my take on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple — what’s yours?

For all you educators, download this free Teachers’ Guide.

#banned books        #Published 1980s      #Women’s History Month    #womanism    #The Color Purple     #Alice Walker

Endnotes:

[1] “Do you agree that The Color Purple is a “womanist” rather than a “feminist” text?” eNotes Editorial, 29 Oct. 2022. https://www.enotes.com/topics/color-purple/questions/do-you-agree-that-the-color-purple-is-a-womanist-3086589

[2] Phillips, Layli. “Introduction. Womanism: On Its Own.” In The Womanist Reader. Edited by Layli Phillips. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Pg xx.

[3] Walker, Alice. “Preface.” The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992.

[4] Cole, Olivia A. “The Color Purple and the Toppling of American Gods.” PEN America. September 21, 2016. https://pen.org/the-color-purple-and-the-toppling-of-american-gods/

Shaffer, Madelyn. “An Inspiration to African-American Women.” Millersville University.

[5] ‘The Color Purple,’ a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, has been…” UPI Archives. May 3, 1984.

[6] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[7] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[8] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[9] Briquelet, Kate. “’The Color Purple’ Removed From Schools Under New Florida Law.” Daily Beast. December 21, 2023. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-color-purple-removed-from-school-classrooms-under-new-florida-law

[10] “Alice Walker: Writing What’s Right.” Guernica/15 years of global arts & politics. October 1, 2012. https://www.guernicamag.com/alice-walker-writing-whats-right/

[11] Morris-Marr, Lucie. “Oprah Winfrey in Melbourne for Australian tour 2015 spreads a message of love, reveals lost child.” News.com.au December 3, 2015.

[12] Chi, Paul. “Oprah Comes Full Circle with The Color Purple: “That Was My Story.” Vanity Fair. December 7, 2023.

[13] King, Amy. “On Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” PEN America. October 24, 2012. https://pen.org/on-alice-walkers-the-color-purple/

[14] Bradley, David. “Novelist Alice Walker Telling the Black Woman’s Story.” The New York Times. January 8, 1984.

[15] Weida, Kaz. “Womanism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/womanism

Little, Becky. “How Early Suffragists Left Black Women Out of Their Fight.” November 8, 2017. History.com

https://www.history.com/news/suffragists-vote-black-women

[16] Shi, Long. “Womanism and The Color Purple.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research,

volume 490. Pp653-656.

^[17] Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg xii.

[18] Weida, Kaz. “Womanism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/womanism

[19] Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg xi-xii.

[20] Hall, Stephanie. “Symbolism in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.” Library of Congress blog. August 24, 2020. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2020/08/symbolism-in-the-womens-suffrage-movement/#

“Celebrating Women’s History Month.” March 8, 2023.Rutgers University Libraries. https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/celebrating-womens-history-month

[21] Color Perception. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colper.html

Reverend Doyt Conn. “The Color Purple.” https://epiphanyseattle.org/sermon/the-color-purple/

[22] Walker, Alice. “Writing The Color Purple.” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg 356.

[23] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[24] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 1.

[25] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[26] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[27] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 3.

[28] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pp 10-11.

[29] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 206.

[30] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 22.

[31] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 40.

[32] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 21.

[33] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 45.

[34] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 118.

[35] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 120.

[36] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 192.

[37] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 195-6.

[38] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 196.

[39] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 197.

[40] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 285.

[41] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 199.

[42] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 201.

[43] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 203.

[44] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 215.

[45] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 35.

[46] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 35.

[47] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 270.

[48] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 222.

[49] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 206.

[50] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 224.

[51] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 288.

[52] Walker, Alice. “The Gospel According to Shug.” The Temple of My Familiar. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1989.

Images:

 Why Was The Color Purple Banned: Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash julia-joppien–3wygakaeQc-unsplash

What Makes The Color Purple an Important Book: Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash
susan-wilkinson-EDJKEXFbzHA-unsplash

What’s the Difference Between Womanism and Feminism: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Articles_by_and_photo_of_Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman_in_1916.j pg

What are the Attributes of a Womanist: Photo by Monique Pongan on Unsplash
monique-pongan-ItzbIyqj6X4-unsplash

What is the Significance of Purple: Photo by Artiom Vallat on Unsplash
artiom-vallat-mFrLqRZMx7o-unsplash

Womanism Within The Color Purple: Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/five-woman-sitting-on-the-ground-hx87JWG4yCI

Celie, Situated in History: American Anti-Slavery Almanac. Illustrations of the American anti-slavery almanac for New York, New York.
United States New York, 1840. New York. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2007680126/

Mary Bailey Searching for Her Children: Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery Project. Daily Dispatch. Richmond, VA. November 24, 1866. https://informationwanted.org/search?query=mary+bailey&submit_search=Search&query_type=keyword&record_types
%5B%5D=Item

Celie, Situated in Culture: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-in-black-tank-top-sitting-on-black-couch-BH8-YFSNEIw

Shug is Portrayed in the Tradition of Early Blueswomen: “Mamie Smith.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/bbed05d3-d91f-4a43-e040-e00a180636e4

Shug Helps Celie Reconcile with Spiritual Life: Photo by Cadabullos Diseño Web on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/purple-petaled-flower-YPf2f95m1Uo

Celie’s Financian Independence By Way of Folkspants, Unlimited: Photo by Bozhin Karaivanov on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-red-thread-on-brown-wooden-rack-Sn_Y0jTyS94

Womanism Takes the Well-Being of Men Into Account Too: Photo by Cassandra Hamer on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-of-man-half-face-leaning-on-wall-wOGyuqXC8Xg

The Larger Effects of Womanism:  Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/red-string-on-clear-surface-uezt7zcwsKo

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

Since it was the master of macabre himself who made this literary proclamation, we’re highlighting a few of Poe’s short stories to read aloud today.

We’re all familiar with his eerie stories, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. (And yes, a good number of his works have been banned.) But, it may surprise you to know that Poe wrote his share of love stories –macabre and often ghoulish (it’s still Poe after all), but love stories nonetheless.

Poe seems to have a complicated relationship with women. Most of the women in his stories are sickly and die from a mysterious illness or wasting disease, with something horrible resulting from their deaths. Perhaps because that was Poe’s experience in life. More than one woman he loved (either platonically or romantically) died from such causes…  Or it’s simply the result of a dark and feverish mind.

But whatever the reason for this pattern, the women in Poe’s stories are greatly loved – often to the point of obsession.[5]

Ligeia is one such story – download it here.

.
Speaking of a dark and feverish mind… what may not surprise you is the fact that some of Poe’s short stories anticipate the cosmic horror of Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and H. P. Lovecraft.

As Lovecraft observed:

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown… [this] admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.[6]

Writing about Poe, Lovecraft also noted:

In the eighteen-thirties occurred a literary dawn directly affecting not only the history of the weird tale, but that of short fiction as a whole…   Before Poe the bulk of weird writers had worked largely in the dark; without an understanding of the psychological basis of the horror appeal.[7]

Poe’s short story Silence addresses the existential desperation buried within mankind’s psyche. If you’re up for what has been described as Poe’s “most psychedelic work,” this one’s for you on Read Aloud Day.

#Read Aloud Day     #benefits of reading      #Edgar Allan Poe      #Ligeia        #Silence-a fable   #Published 1840s

Endnotes:

[1] Hardach, Sophie. “Why You Should read This Out Loud.” BBC.com  September 17, 2002.

[2] Hardach, Sophie. “Why You Should read This Out Loud.” BBC.com  September 17, 2002.

[3] “Say It Loud: 5 Benefits of Readinng Aloud in Your Classroom.” Carnegie Learning. https://www.carnegielearning.com/blog/5-benefits-reading-aloud/

[4] Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition” Graham’s Magazine, vol. 28, no. 4, April 1846. (Pp163-167).

[5] “Ligeia, Morella, and Annabel Lee: The Women of Poe.” Westlake Porter Public Library Blog. June 2022.
https://blogs.westlakelibrary.org/2022/06/ligeia-morella-and-annabel-lee-the-women-of-poe/

[6] Lovecraft, H. P. “Introduction.” In Supernatural Horror in Literature.

[7] Lovecraft, H. P. “Edgar Allen Poe.” In Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Images:

It’s World Read Aloud Day:  Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Edgar Allan Poe: June 1849. Daguerreotype “Annie”, given to Poe’s friend Mrs. Annie L. Richmond; probably taken in June 1849 in Lowell, Massachusetts, photographer unknown. Wikipedia.com  Public Domain.

Ligeia: by Harry Clarke. From Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Illustrated by Harry Clarke. London: George G. Harrap & Co, Ltd. 1919

Silence–a Fable: by Harry Clarke. From Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Illustrated by Harry Clarke. London: George G. Harrap & Co, Ltd. 1919

W
e’re celebrating Black History Month by shining a spotlight on Phillis Wheatley and William Wells Brown. Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book of poetry. And Brown authored the first novel written by an African-American.

The story of Black History Month begins in 1915 in Chicago, with African-American historian Carter G. Woodson. Despite being a dues-paying member, Woodson was barred from attending American Historical Association conferences, leading him to believe that the white-dominated historical profession wasn’t interested in Black history.

So Woodson created a separate institutional structure. That organization has come to be known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements by Black Americans and other peoples of African descent.

In 1926, the organization launched a week-long celebration, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. This event inspired schools and communities across the nation to organize local celebrations, establish history clubs, and host lectures.

Thanks in part to the civil rights movement and a growing awareness of Black identity, by the late 1960s this week-long event evolved into Black History Month on many college campuses.[1]

In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, calling on the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”[2]

Let’s take it one step further still. Interest in African-American accomplishments and contributions shouldn’t be limited to a single month. Acknowledge the contributions of African Americans all year long. Especially these days, when books by African American authors are heavily targeted for book banning.

Woodson did, however, establish February as the month to bring African-Americans’ contributions to the fore. So, we’re putting Phillis Wheatley and William Wells Brown in the spotlight – with resources to download their history-making works for free.

Phillis Wheatley is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry.[3] She landed in Boston on July 11, 1761, on board a slave ship named Phillis… Yes, disturbingly, that is where her name comes from. Her front teeth were missing, so she was thought to be about seven years old when Susanna Wheatley, wife of a prosperous merchant and tailor, acquired her as a house servant.

Not surprisingly, Phillis didn’t speak English when she arrived in the Wheatley house. What is surprising, is that Susanna Wheatley encouraged her daughter Mary to teach Phillis to read and write, tutoring her in English, Latin, and the Bible. And, by 1765 Phillis had penned the first of many poems.

In 1770, at about the age of seventeen, she wrote an elegy on the death of the Reverend George Whitefield that appeared in several newspapers along the eastern seaboard. Whitfield was the spiritual advisor of English philanthropist, and supporter of abolitionist causes, Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. Wheatley not only mentioned Hastings in her elegy of Whitfield, she sent the countess a letter of condolence with the poem enclosed.

As a result, Wheatley’s literary reputation grew – on both sides of the ocean. But, so was incredulity at the idea of a black writer of literary works. In an effort to get Phillis’ poetry published, John Wheatley assembled a group of interrogators, in the hope that they would support her claim of authorship.

Just picture it… eighteen “esteemed Bostonians” gathered in a semicircle around Phillis, for the purpose of determining whether she was “qualified” to write poetry.[4] They decided she was. American publishers, however, still refused to print her manuscript. So, Susanna Wheatley took it to London, where the publishing environment was more amenable to black authors. And with the help of Selina Hastings, a collection of Phillis Wheatley’s poems titled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published, establishing her as the first African-American to do so.

From the moment her poems were published, Phillis Wheatley has been accused of “neglect[ing] almost entirely her own state of slavery,” that she was “oblivious to the lot of her fellow blacks.”[5] But, think about it… given the atmosphere of the times, it can hardly be expected that she would write explicit poetry of racial protest. Not only would her poems have remained unpublished, there would most certainly have been dire consequences for having written them at all.

So, Wheatley employed stylistic strategies for conveying these concerns indirectly. She often used suggestion, innuendo, and irony but her message is clear – if, as historian David Grimsted suggests, “one attunes the ear to the subtle intelligence of her ladylike murmur.”[6]  Her poetry is yet another example of why it’s important to read beyond simple narrative and plot.

Whether it’s funeral elegies about New England’s elite, or patriotic lyrics about American independence, Wheatley’s central concern is consistently freedom: spiritual freedom, from the shackles of sickness and death; political freedom, from British tyranny; not to mention imaginative freedom (through poetic style), from “the censoring hands of bigoted editors and publishers.”[7]

Download Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
by Phillis Wheatley here.

William Wells Brown wrote the first novel by an African-American. Born a slave in Kentucky (1814), he escaped at the age of 19, and became an agent of the Underground Railroad, an antislavery activist, and self-taught writer and orator.

Brown began his career in the abolitionist movement by boarding antislavery lecturers at his home, speaking at local gatherings, and traveling to Haiti and Cuba to investigate emigration possibilities.

His abolitionist career took a turn in 1843, when Buffalo, New York (the city where he lived at the time) hosted a national antislavery convention and the National Convention of Colored Citizens. He attended both conferences, sat on several committees, and befriended a number of black abolitionists, including Charles Lenox Remond and Frederick Douglass.

In 1849 Brown began a lecture of Britain for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and remained abroad until 1854. He was elated by the tour. It which gave him time to write, and he understandably enjoyed life among reform circle society.

While abroad, Brown wrote Clotel, a foundational text of the African-American novelistic tradition. It’s the melodramatic story of three generations of black women, all struggling with the constrictions of slavery, miscegenation, and concubinage.

Clotel is a fictionalized account of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters and granddaughters with an enslaved woman named Currer. Brown wrote Clotel amid rumors (which have since been confirmed) that Jefferson had fathered children with Sally Hemmings (a woman enslaved by him). Needless to say, Brown’s book was highly controversial when it was published.[8]

Like Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, Clotel was published in London. But the reason is very different. While Brown was abroad, America passed the Fugitive Slave Law, making it was dangerous for him to return.
Clotel had already been published in England when he was able to do so, made possible in 1854 by British abolitionists who “purchased” Brown’s freedom.[9]

Over the years, Brown wrote four different versions of Clotel, in 1854, 1860-1861, 1864, and finally in 1867. Each rendition was published with a different title, in a different format, one suitable for different readerships.

Little exists in the way of direct records regarding the reception of Clotel’s during the nineteenth century. Perhaps because, as scholar Henry Louis Gates has pointed out, “black fiction was not popularly reviewed.”[10] That said, four editors did publish Brown’s novel, after all. And they did so, seemingly, as a different book each time. This in itself is a testament to its worthiness as a book, as well as a lack of critical reaction successive editors would be aware of.

But, twenty-first century interest in Clotel has been stimulated by new readings resulting from the digitization of Brown’s work. Digitizing allowed scholars to not only chart his deletions and additions, but his reorderings (the greatest of which took place between the 1853 and 1860-1861 versions). Digitization also showed consistencies among the four version, making the unity of Brown’s work(s) evident.

Twentieth-century response to Clotel was initially hindered by a difficulty finding copies of the novel. Not to mention people’s presumption that they were reading the only version of the book. Scholars and critics who did comment considered it stylistically lacking, and its extranarrative material to be a weakness.

Twenty-first-century reception of Clotel, on the hand, has been stimulated by new digitized versions of Brown’s work. With a full comparative reading of all four versions, they carry the reader from a Virginia slave auction in the 1820s to a Mississippi plantation in 1867. The varying renditions function as a single text exposing Southern slavery from Virginia to Louisiana, from antebellum America to postwar America.[11]

More significantly, Clotel is the first instance of an African-American writer dramatizing America’s underlying hypocrisy of democratic principles in the face of institutional slavery.[v]

Download Clotel; or The President’s Daughter here.
Find resources for the compiled versions here.

And, kick off Black History Month with an African-American Read-In. What better books to start with than the groundbreaking works written by these history-making authors?

Here’s a toolkit to get your read-in started.

#History     #Celebrations      #The Art of Reading      #Published in 1770s 
#Published in 1850s         #banned authors

Endnotes:

[1] “Carter G. Woodson.” Civil Rights Leaders. NAACP
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/carter-g-woodson#:~:text=Woodson’s%20devotion%20to%20showcasing%20the,expanded %20into%20Black%20History%20Month.

“Black History Month.” History.com https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month

[2] President Gerald R. Ford’s Message on the Observance of Black History Month. February 10, 1976. Ford Library Museum. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/760074.htm

[3] Gates Jr., Henry Louis. Trials of Phillis Wheatley: The First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers.  New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2010. Pg 5.

[4] Gates Jr., Henry Louis. Phillis Wheatley on Trial. The New Yorker, January 20, 2003. Pg 83.

[5] Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. Pg 24.

Gayle, Addison. Black Aesthetic. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971. Pg 384.

[6] Grimsted, David. “Anglo-American Racism and Phillis Wheatley’ s ‘Sable Veil,’ ‘Length’ned Chain,’ and ‘Knitted Heart.'” Women in the Age of the American Revolution. Ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989. (Pp 338-444). Pg. 349.

[7] Levernier, James A. “Style as Protest in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley.” Style. Vol. 27, No 2. African-American Poetics. (Pp 172-193) Pg 175.

[8] “Documenting the American South.”  https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/brownw/bio.html

“Clotel or the President’s Daughter (1853)” Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-1853/

Penguin Books. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288980/clotel-by-william-wells-brown/

[9] “Documenting the American South.”  https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/brownw/bio.html

[10] “Clotel or the President’s Daughter (1853)” Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-1853/

[11] “Clotel or the President’s Daughter (1853)” Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-1853/

[12] Gabler-Hover, Janet. “‘Clotel’,” American History Through Literature, 1820–1870. New York: Scribner’s, 2005 (Pp 248–253). Pg 249.

Images:

Parchment Background on Main Image: Photo by Loren Biser on Unsplash

William Wells Brown: Three Years in Europe: Or, Places I have Seen and People I Have Met. London: Charles Gilpin, 1852. (Flipped.)

Phillis Wheatley: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London: A. Bell, Bookseller, Aldgate, 1773.

T
his piece from guest essayist Dr. Allen Schwab reflects thoughts and memories evoked by our previous post I Took the Road Less Traveled By. . Schwab considers parallel themes in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and Henry James’ short story “The Jolly Corner,” topped off with a dash of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” What can these works possibly have in common, you may ask? Give it a read and find out.

The central character [of Henry James’ The Jolly Corner] is fifty-six year old Spencer Brydon, recently returned to his native New York after spending thirty-three years abroad.  (In 1908, the year the story appeared, James was sixty-five, having returned to America from Europe in 1905 for the first time in twenty  years.)

Relishing late night strolls through his now empty boyhood home, the abandoned family property on the “jolly corner” of a once fashionable street, Spencer is simultaneously drawn to the alteration of another family owned larger structure being converted to an apartment building, one which has previously been a primary source of office rental income since his family deaths.

Spencer surprises himself while supervising the renovation.  Though he has never before done such work, he learns that he has real diagnostic and business leadership abilities, perhaps long hidden in him, unsuspected and unused.  Now, with the echoed names of great British authors Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, and George Gordon Lord Byron, Spencer begins to imagine the life he might have had had he stayed in America to make gobs of real estate money, rather than to have spent the bulk of his adult life using his considerable inheritance to wander through Europe as a rather shallow bon vivant.

Now as he rekindles a relationship with old acquaintance Alice Staverton (“saving him”?) who has always lived in New York City, she suggests he has a real gift for business and construction, subjects he had always found “vulgar and sordid.”  In typical fashion of the model Jamesian woman confidante, demure, unassuming but keenly sensitive to the circumstances of the man in her life, she comes to the house one night because she senses he is in danger.  There, creeping through the darkened family home, he has encountered the portrait of a man trying to hide his face with a mutilated hand, the sight of which causes him to collapse, swooning in horror at the thought that this is who he might have become in the life he would have lived in America.

When he comes to, cradled in Alice’s lap, he tells her of his nightmare experience, of his fear of the man with the malformed hand.  As she bends toward him, she murmurs how she would have loved him either way.  She kisses him — and the stars explode.

[It’s worth noting how in James’ twenty-two novels and 112 stories, there are two kisses, but Isabel Archer’s with Caspar Goodwood in The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is nothing like this bombshell.  We’re talking about a Victorian America where men fainted at the sight of a woman’s ankle.  It’s possible, given fashions of the time, some men weren’t convinced women even had ankles . . . .]

I have loved this work since I found it as an undergraduate, later drawing on it as a model for several stories in the collection which became my Creative Writing master’s thesis.  Right off it reminded me of Robert Frost’s famous poem, which I’ve always felt to suggest (at least in hindsight) we greatly overestimate the importance of life decisions we think at the time represent fundamental forks in our roads.  Which of us has not thought at some point, “If I’d only gone to college where I wanted; if I’d only gotten that special job I deserved; if I’d only married so and so; my whole life would have been different — and better.”

Well, maybe.  Maybe not.  Frost and James may be suggesting something else, that we can daydream on the subject all we want, but the reality is that who we are as human beings has been set long before those work and relationships forks in the road present themselves.  “I would have loved you either way” then represents a memorably cherished corrective.

As someone who does some of his best thinking underwater, in the shower the other day I remembered a Richard Roeper review I’d recently read of Interstellar (2014), an epic science fiction film about a NASA pilot who leads a team of researchers across the galaxy and through a wormhole near Saturn in search of an inhabitable planet for the environmentally endangered Earth inhabitants.  En route, the male pilot and a female researcher argue over her wish to have the ship alter its course to detour to the intended destination of an astronaut who some ten years before had left on a similar exploratory mission, though not heard from since, whom she admits she still loves.

The pilot balks, saying that they have to observe science rather than make so irrational, emotional a decision.  With impressive self-possession, she responds:

The tiniest possibility of seeing [him] excites me.  That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Love isn’t something we invented; it’s observable, it’s powerful.  It has to mean something . . . .  I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead.  Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.  Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it.

 Roeper is obviously right — all the more so in a global pandemic in which life and death are daily at stake — to suggest we have to listen to science.  At the same time, we ignore powerful forces we cannot see or measure at our peril.  Like love.  “I would have loved you either way” provides each of us a stark reminder of such truth.

Guest Essayist:

Chicago native and diehard Cub fan, Allen Schwab, Ph.D., from the American Culture Studies Graduate Program faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, explores how American literature, music, visual art, history, political science, religion, history of science, and philosophy reveal qualities of the American character and our history of ideas. 

A long-time Pre-Concert Lecturer for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, he is a recipient of the national Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Education — given by The Lovejoy Society to the American educator whose actions reflect the ideals of Lovejoy’s commitment to free speech.

Pair this with the unplugged aphorism that inspired it:
 I Took the Road Less Traveled By.

#literary criticism          #the art of reading      #guest essayists

Image:

Photo by John Murphey on Unsplash

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This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

T
he phrase “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” is typically seen as an anthem of independence. These words have been borrowed for everything from high-school commencement speeches to product advertisements to episode titles of over a dozen television series. We’ve seen this verse printed on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and refrigerator magnets just to name a few.[1]

But the closing lines of Frost’s poem aren’t actually a paean of bold self-assertion and uniqueness. In fact, as is often the case with such aphorisms, it’s quite the opposite. One reason this happens is that, quite simply, language evolves. To further complicate matters, all too often the context of these popular wisdoms has been forgotten.

In the case of  “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” the aphorism comes from a poem that is typically misinterpreted.

As Frost himself warned audiences, “you have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.”[2] Even the person who inspired the poem didn’t “get it” at first. What, then, is Frost actually talking about?

What Inspired The Road Not Taken?

As with prose literature, when engaging poetry the author and their life experience comes into play.  Inspiration for The Road Not Taken came from Frost’s mirth over a personality trait of his closest friend in England, Edward Thomas.

While Frost was living in Gloucester, he and Thomas would take long walks through the countryside together. Repeatedly, Thomas would choose a route on the promise of showing his American friend rare wild-flowers or birds’ eggs, only to have the walk end in laments and self-reproach when his chosen path failed to produce any such marvels. Ribbing Thomas after one of their best flower-gathering walks, Frost chided, “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d taken another.”[3]

After Frost returned to the U.S., where he finished The Road Not Taken, he sent a copy to Thomas. Frost’s expectation was that his friend would understand the poem as a joke, and respond with something along the lines of “very funny”…  “stop teasing me.” But as noted above, that isn’t what happened.

Instead, Thomas praised the poem, his remarks indicating he missed the joke. Much to Frost’s chagrin, he would have to explain to Thomas that he’d been the butt of a joke. And, not surprisingly, Thomas didn’t find it the least bit funny. Frost’s joke had pricked Thomas’ already wavering confidence.

None too pleased, Thomas declared he doubted anyone would see the poem as a joke unless they had Frost to personally guide them through it. Frost came to realize just how tricky The Road Not Taken is when he read it for a group of college students – who didn’t get it either. Frost ultimately extended a “Mea culpa” to his good friend.[4]

It’s a Tricky Poem… Very Tricky

A careful reading begins with Frost’s title. His poem isn’t called The Road Less Traveled, though it’s often mistaken to be. Rather, it is titled The Road Not Taken. So, the poem is definitely not about the road the narrator chose to walk, less-traveled or otherwise.

When The Road Not Taken is read carefully, it becomes apparent that the poem functions on a fluctuating rhythm, one that reflects indecisiveness. More significantly, it is evident that the narrator isn’t simply telling us about these vacillating perspectives, he’s experiencing these emotions in real time.

But, here’s where Frost’s trickiness can trip up a reader. Given the way Frost structured The Road Not Taken, when read superficially it can act as a verbal thaumatrope – rotating two opposed visions in such a way that they, deceivingly, seem to merge.

Much like the Victorian-era toy in which two objects drawn on opposite sides of a card – a bird and a cage for instance – are, by quick spinning motion, made to appear as a single image of the bird in a cage.[5] In the case of The Road Not Taken, the illusion is that the poem is from a consistent viewpoint rather than fluctuating perspectives.

But if we engage Frost’s work deeply, and take it line-by-line, we can see the shifts in perspective that lead to the more nuanced understanding Frost indicated.

Line 1: Frost introduces his primary symbol, diverging roads in the woods.

Lines 2-3: The speaker expresses regret for the human limitation that restricts his travel to one road, forcing him to choose between them. It’s clear that making a choice isn’t easy for him, since “long I stood” before reaching a decision.

Lines 4-5: He examines one road as well as he can, but information is limited because the road takes a turn into an area covered by low-lying vegetation.

Lines 6-8: At first blush, these lines seem to suggest the speaker finds the second path a more attractive choice because it appears no one had traversed it recently.

Lines 9-12: Here’s a tricky bit. The speaker backpedals, pointing out that this road is no more or less worn that the first one, that they both “equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.”

Lines 13-15: Another slippery passage – the speaker tells himself he’ll take a walk on the first road another day. Given the exclamation point at the end of this line, he’s clearly excited about having solved his dilemma.  But, “knowing how way leads to way,” he immediately reverses himself, doubting if “I should ever come back.”

Lines 16-20: The tone clearly shifts here. The speaker is no longer in the moment. Rather, he imagines himself in the future, near the end of his days, talking about the life he’s lived. In perhaps the most subtle nugget of all, the speaker will be telling his audience that “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

The “I—I” ever-so-deftly suggests a pause before the speaker recounts the story, as if he’s taking a beat to remember/decide how to characterize his choice.[7]

Psychologically Speaking

The Latin origin of the verb “to decide” means to cut off (de=off, caedere=cut). The act of deciding is supposed to cut off the deliberation process after a choice has been made. But psychologically, that isn’t the way it works. Instead, the deliberation process actually binds the options together in our memory, and the unchosen option lingers in our minds.

This psychological development leads to an inverse inference of value. In other words, after we realize the consequences of our decision, the perceived value of the unchosen option is inversely related to that outcome. And the stronger our memory is of deliberating between options, the greater the disparity between the value attributed to the chosen and unchosen options.

For example, if Frost’s speaker ended up having a lovely walk on the road he ultimately chose, he’ll remember the other road as having been inferior in some way even if it wasn’t.[8] This phenomenon is commonly referred to as confirmation bias.  And, it’s precisely what occurs in the closing lines of The Road Not Taken.

Remember, he told us both roads were equally fair and equally traveled. And don’t forget the speaker’s pause, as he mines his memory before recounting his story in the future. Plus, we end where we began our examination of The Road Not Taken, by noting that Frost’s title refers to the road his speaker didn’t choose.

So, rather than being an anthem of independence, Frost’s The Road Not Taken is an ode to the decision-making process, and how that activity effects memory. Albeit one that closes with an ironic jest, a witticism meaning – in the parlance of a modern quip – “and that has made all the difference”…  not.

#aphorisms unplugged           #the art of reading

Endnotes:

[1] Orr, David. “The Most Misread Poem in America.” September 11, 2015. The Paris Review.

[2] Thompson, Lawrance. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1952. Pg xv. https://ia801500.us.archive.org/15/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.111084/2015.111084.Selected-Letters-Of-Robert-Frost_text.pdf

[3] Thompson, Lawrance. Robert Frost: A biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981. Pg 234.

Thompson, Lawrance. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1952. Pg xiv. https://ia801500.us.archive.org/15/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.111084/2015.111084.Selected-Letters-Of-Robert-Frost_text.pdf

Hollis, Matthew. “Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war.” July 26, 2011. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry

[4] Hollis, Matthew. “Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war.” July 26, 2011. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry

[5] Orr, David. “You’re Probably Misreading Robert Frost’s Most Famous Poem.” August 18, 2016. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/youre-probably-misreading-robert-frosts-most-famous-poem/#:~:text=Because%20the%20poem%20isn’t,the%20road%20he%20never%20tried.

[6] Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” The Atlantic Magazine. August 1915, Pg. 223.

[7] “The Road Not Taken.” Encyclopedia.com https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/road-not-taken

[8] Natalie Biderman, and Daphna Shohamy. “Memory and decision making interact to shape the value of unchosen options.” Nature Communications. 12, 4648 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24907-x

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Images:

The Road Not Taken. iStock.com/credit: Alex

What Inspired The Road Not Taken? Boulter, Liz. “Roads taken: the Gloucrstershire footpaths that were the making of Robert Frost.” The Guardian. June, 2021.  https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/jun/14/walking-gloucestershire-footpaths-making-of-robert-frost-and-revolutionary-poets

It’a a Tricky Poem… Very Tricky  https://teacherswebresources.com/2016/03/28/victorian-thaumatrope/  

Taking it Line by Line Photo by Johnny Briggs on Unsplash

Psychologically Speaking  Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

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This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

W
hy is it important to know about these literary devices? Like symbolic language, literary devices are techniques that authors use to take their writing beyond its straightforward, literal meaning. They’re tools to guide the reader in how to read a particular work for more than simple plot.

Literary devices are often employed for emphasis or clarity. They’re also used to get a reader to connect more strongly with the story as a whole, specific characters, or even particular themes. And sometimes, they just make the reading more fun… but even that tells us a lot about the author and what they have to say.

Here’s a crash course in some of the more common literary devices:

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Alliteration:

A series of words that start with the same sound. These sounds are typically consonants, so there’s more stress on that syllable. Think tongue twisters, book titles and often poetry.

Example: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” In this tongue twister, the “p”  sound is repeated at the beginning of all major words.

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Allusion:

No, this isn’t an illusion, though the two are often confused with one another. An allusion is a reference to a person, place, thing, or even an event outside the text. Many allusions refer to other works of literature.

Example: The title of Steinbeck’s work Of Mice and Men is an allusion to a line in Robert Burn’s 1785 poem To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough… “The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men Go oft awry.”

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Anachronism:

This is when someone or something associated with a particular historical time is put in the wrong time period for effect.

Example: The entire premise of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court hinges on this literary device.

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Anaphora:

When a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences to create rhythm or emphasis.

Example: J.D. Salinger employed anaphora in The Catcher in the Rye: “It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place.”

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Anecdote:

A brief story or narrative used to engage the reader, provide real-world context, or humanize abstract concepts.

Example: In Nora Roberts’ Dark Witch, Meara relays an anecdote that provides the audience with insight into the relationship between the book’s main characters:

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I’ll tell you they were in love. Young and wild for each other. Happy in it, though they scraped and squabbled. She was going into seventeen when they came together the first time. It was after they’d been together the mark came on him. He didn’t tell her. I don’t know whether to blame him for that, but he didn’t tell her. And when she found out, she was angry, but more, she was devastated.

Anthropomorphism:

When nonhuman figures become human-like characters.

Example: A lot of cartoon characters function on this device, think SpongeBob Square Pants – kitchen sponges just don’t do the things he does. For that matter, starfish don’t behave like Patrick does either.

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Colloquialism:

The use of informal language and slang, which gives a sense of realism to the way characters speak. But this devise isn’t restricted to dialogue, it can also make any text more relatable… as if the reader is having a conversation with the author.

Example: It’s more colloquial to say “What’s up?” instead of “How are you doing?”

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Double Entendre:

A form of word play where a word or phrase has two possible meanings.

Example: Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest functions on the double-meaning of the word earnest. Protagonist Jack Worthing leads a double life. To his lover in the countryside, he’s Jack, while his lover in the city knows him as Ernest. After a series of deceptions, this character realizes the necessity of being true to himself. In the final line of the play, Jack comes to understand the importance of being “earnest,” a double entendre on “Ernest.”

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Enjambment:

A literary device used in poetry. Simply put, it’s when the end of a phrase extends past the end of a line.

Example: T. S. Eliot uses enjambment in The Waste Land to evoke the changing seasons. He ends most lines with verbs to describe and emphasize the metamorphosis that is taking place.

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April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

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Epigraph:

A famous quotation or short passage placed at the beginning of a larger text. As an introduction to a book, or as the header to a chapter. They’re typically written by a different author (with credit given) and serve to introduce overall themes in the work or messages within the chapter in question.

Example: At the beginning of The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway included a quote from poet Gertrude Stein, “You are all a lost generation.” Stein’s words came to define the literary community Hemingway belonged to (which also includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, and Archibald MacLeish).

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Flashback:

An interruption in the narrative that portrays events that have already taken place… either before the work’s established “present” time, or before the time when the narration is taking place. It’s typically used to give the reader more background information about particular characters, plot points, and so on.

Example:  Most of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a flashback, as Nelly Dean tells the Lockwood character about the childhoods of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, their budding romance and tragic demise.

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Foreshadowing:

When the author hints at what’s going to happen later in the story, through things like description, dialogue, or characters’ actions.

Example: Atticus Finch’s explanation of courage to his children in To Kill a Mockingbird:

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It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

This passage foreshadows the outcome of Finch’s legal case.

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Hyperbole:

An exaggerated statement, one not meant to be taken literally by the reader. Used for emphasis, or often for comedic effect.

Example: “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” The speaker isn’t actually going to eat an entire horse. That’s a ludicrous proposition, but it serves to emphasize how hungry the speaker is.

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In Medias Res:

This latin phrase is used to describe when a story opens with the main character already in the middle of things, bringing the reader front and center into the fray.

Example: Within the first lines of Homer’s Iliad, the reader is dropped directly into the midst of the Trojan War, the actions of warring Greeks and Trojans unfolding around them.

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Irony:

The colloquial use of this word highlights the difference between “what seems to be” and “what is.” Someone having a bad day, for example, might say that they’re doing “greaaat.” But, when it comes to literature, the irony is typically conditional, creating situations that unfold in ways contrary to what one would expect.

Example: O. Henry’s short story The Gift of the Magi is a classic example of situational irony.  The story revolves around a couple who can’t afford to buy Christmas gifts for each other.  They each sell their most treasured possession, so they buy a gift for the other one. However, they both discover that, because of what each of them chose to sell, their gifts for each other are now unusable.

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Jargon:

A word or phrase specific to a profession or industry, typically only understood by members of the group who use these terms as part of their field of expertise. When used in dialogue, this device can help define a text’s characters.

Example: In 1950s-diner-speak, scrambled eggs on toast is “Adam and Eve on a raft and wreck ’em.”

In the case of George Orwell’s 1984, however, jargon serves to establish Oceania’s dystopian nature.

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The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

We wouldn’t understand the highlighted words without context, because we’re not part of the world Orwell created.

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Juxtaposition:

Placing contrasting ideas next to each other, typically to produce a thought-proving or ironic effect.

Example: The opening lines of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…  

Dickens situates his characters into a world of contrasts, reflecting the extreme wealth disparities of pre-Revolution France.

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Metonym:

When a related word of phrase is substituted for the thing it’s referring to.

Example: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s statement contains two examples: “the pen” referring to the written word, and “the sword” which refers to military force/violence.

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Mood:

The general atmosphere and emotional complexion, designed to evoke particular feelings in the reader. This can be achieved through setting, description, dialogue, and word choice.

Example: Hamlet is about death, grief, and madness. Shakespeare establishes an ominous mood by setting the first scene at night, and there’s a lot of dialogue about being fearful. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, on the other hand, uses fantastical imagery, and lighthearted language set a whimsical mood.

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Motif:

A recurring theme or element in a literary work, typically used to emphasize or reinforce a particular idea or concept.  Motifs can be images, symbols, actions, or phrases, that appear throughout a text.

Example: The color green in Shakespeare’s Othello represents jealousy. And, fire is a motif that appears throughout Jane Eyre, appearing around situations dealing with strong emotions.

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Onomatopoeia:

A word, or group of words, that imitates the sound it stands for.

Example: Honk, pow, meow, bow-wow, boom, clip-clop, plop are just a few.

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Oxymoron:

A figure of speech where contradictory terms appear together. They’re useful in creating unexpected or comical contrast.

Example: In The Call of the Wild, Jack London describes the Aurora Borealis as “flaming coldly.” Jumbo shrimp, and deafening silence are a couple of others.

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Paradox:

A statement that seems illogical or self-contradictory, but upon investigation, might turn out to be true.

Example: Hamlet’s line, “I must be cruel only to be kind.” Or Yogi Berra’s observation “nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded.”

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Paronomasia, better known as a pun:

A form of word play that functions on multiple meanings of a term or similar-sounding words to create humor, or a sense of playfulness.

Example: “I used to be a baker, but I couldn’t make enough dough.” Here’s another one for ya’: “Time flies like an arrow; and fruit flies like a banana.”

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Personification:

When a nonhuman figure or abstract element is described as having human characteristics. This differs from anthropomorphism, where non-human figures become  human-like characters.

Example: A rug that’s tired of being stepped on. When Rita hears the last piece of pie calling her name. Or when lightning dances across the sky.

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Satire:

A genre that criticizes something, such as a person, belief, government, or society, typically employing humor, irony, and hyperbole to make the author’s point.

Example: In Gulliver’s Travels when Jonathan Swift depicts Lilliputians as being at war with the empire of Blefuscu over religious doctrine that mandates which end of an egg should be broken.

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Soliloquy:

A type of monologue often used in dramas, when a character speaks to themself, and in doing so, reveals their inner thoughts and feelings to the reader/audience.

Example: Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech is probably the best-known soliloquy in the world.

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Synecdoche:

When part of something is used to represent the whole. It’s similar to a metonym, the difference being that a metonym doesn’t necessarily represent the whole – merely something associated with the word used.

Example: “The crown” is a synecdoche for the monarchy. Shouting “all hands on deck” is clearly a call for whole human beings.

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Tone:

This device has the power to shape the entire narrative. It’s closely related to mood. While mood is the overall feeling of a text, however, tone conveys the narrator’s attitude, opinion, or feelings about the situation being described.

Example: When describing the setting of a party, does the narrator characterize the red light falling a door as “fallen rose petals” or as “a smear of blood”? Needless to say, the difference between these two phrases lets the reader know whether the narrator is looking forward to this event, or terrified of it.

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Verisimilitude:

The appearance of being real or true in a literary work. It’s employed to make stories more believable and convincing.

Example: Realistic dialogue that reflects how people actually speak, or spoke during a particular period in history. Detailed descriptions of settings create a sense of place. Accuracy is key when describing an actual location.

Check out these companion articles on The Art of Reading:

Novels Are Like a Layer Cake,
Be Sure to Get Every Bite.

#the art of reading      #literary devices     #symbolic language

Sources:

Muniz, Hannah, “The 31 Literary Devices You Must Know.” January 25, 2020. PrepScholar.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/list-of-literary-devices-techniques

Glatch, Sean. “112 Common Literary Devices: Definitions, Examples, and Exercises.” January 26, 2023. Writers.com.
https://writers.com/common-literary-devices

“Literary Devices: 55+ to Enrich Your Writing.” Self-Publishing School.
https://self-publishingschool.com/literary-devices/

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Photo by Hunter Haley on Unsplash

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I
t’s National Family Literacy Day, so carve out some time to read with your young ones today, or perhaps read to them. Families have a lot to gain from reading together. And that doesn’t just apply to toddlers and kindergartners.

Reading aloud with our tweens and teens addresses a number of the issues that lead to the poor reading scores we see beyond the eighth grade.

As a parent, it’s easy to get caught up in daily concerns like deadlines, finances, and health. All too often, it seems like there just isn’t time to settle down with your children and crack open a good book.

But it’s never too late to start a good habit like family reading hour. Reading together not only provides valuable family bonding time, it helps your kids become better students and thinkers. And not just toddlers and kindergartners.

Over 50% of five-year-olds are read aloud to 5-7 days a week. But, this number drops dramatically with each additional year of age. The most common reason cited is that at this point “children can read on their own.”[1] But, it’s beneficial to continue reading to kids even after they become tweens and teens.

This diminishing percentage of children who are read aloud to parallels the striking drop in reading test scores between fourth and eighth grade testing brackets.

International statistics indicate that American children under the age of 10 are proficient at identifying words and summarizing the main topic of a text. By age 15, however, only 14% of U.S. children excel at reading.[2]

Reading aloud to our tweens and teens addresses a number of the issues that lead to the poor reading scores we see beyond the eighth grade.

As Susan Engel (senior lecturer of developmental psychology and founding director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College), and Catherine Snow (linguist and professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of  Education) point out, “probing conversation is key to helping children become good readers.” [3]

When kids are more engaged, comprehension improves. Reading aloud allows you to tweak their engagement by asking what they think might happen next, why a character behaves they way they do, and so on.

You can boost knowledge acquisition by talking about the work’s genre, for example, and how it connects to the era in which the writer lived. And, by identifying common themes between different books.

In addition, according to educator Jim Trelease, a child’s reading level doesn’t catch up to their listening capacity until about the eighth grade. As a result, reading aloud increases vocabulary.[4]

Not only do kids who are read to encounter more words than they otherwise would, they learn to recognize and pronounce them correctly. And, not surprisingly, studies show that having a large vocabulary helps students perform better in school.

In a world filled with fast-paced games and television shows, reading aloud to our children helps them develop an increased attention span. By virtue of the slower-paced medium, they learn to slow down, focus, and concentrate.

Needless to say, reading aloud to your children no matter their age, is in itself a bonding experience. But it also allows you to talk about difficult subject matter in a safe place, some of which (like bullying) they may be experiencing themselves.

Unfortunately, a lot of books with such important themes may have been banned. All the more reason to read them together at home. And today’s the perfect day to get started (or resume) reading aloud with your young ones.

#benefits of reading            #literacy

Endnotes:

[1] Kids & Family Reading Report. 7^th Edition. The Rise of Read-Aloud. Scholastic, 2019.

[2] Susan Engel and Catherine Snow. “Our kids aren’t good readers. Here’s the reason.” Washington Post Opinion. October 4, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/04/reading-comprehension-knowledge/

[3] Susan Engel and Catherine Snow. “Our kids aren’t good readers. Here’s the reason.” Washington Post Opinion. October 4, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/04/reading-comprehension-knowledge/

[4] McMahon, Regan. “10 Reasons You Should Read Aloud to Big Kids, Too.” January 30, 2020. Common Sense Media.
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/10-reasons-you-should-read-aloud-to-big-kids-too

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Reading Family:    From Freepik.com

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This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

T
he Crucible is a notable example of how literature is like a layer cake. Arthur Miller’s account of why he came to write this play also touches upon how it is written, outlining the multi-layered nature of the work. Miller’s delineation of his play’s layers demonstrates why it’s important to get every bite of literary confections like The Crucible.

When The Crucible first opened on the Broadway stage in 1953, America was in the midst of what’s known as the Red Scare, a period of public hysteria about a perceived internal Communist threat.[1] The American psyche was fixated on the Congressional investigations being conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.[2]

The House Un-American Activities Committee targeted the Hollywood film industry, ushering in an era of blacklisting media workers. In order to promote their patriotic credentials, Hollywood studios implemented a blacklist. Scores of writers and media workers were banned from employment because of their perceived political leanings. And all it took was a rumored association with so-called “subversives” to ruin a career.[3]

In fact, Miller himself was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (in 1956). And he was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to point a proverbial finger in any other writers’ direction.[4]

Miller was motivated to write The Crucible in large part by what he describes as the “paralysis that had set in” among those who were unsettled by the committee’s violations of civil rights, but fearful of being identified as a covert Communists themselves if they protested too strongly.[5]

“In one sense,” Miller has stated, “The Crucible was an attempt to make life real again, palpable and structured.”[6] His hope was that the play “might illuminate the tragic absurdities” of what was going on in America during this period.[7]

The Crucible, as Miller characterizes it:

straddles two different worlds to make them one, but it is but it is not history in the usual sense of the word, but a moral, political and psychological construct that floats on the fluid emotions of both eras.[8]

He further notes that writing a play about the Salem witch trials probably wouldn’t have occurred to him if he hadn’t noticed “some astonishing correspondences with the calamity” of the period.[9]

While both historical moments involved the menace of concealed plots, the most startling thing for Miller were the similarities in their investigative routines, and “rituals of defense.”[10] Prosecutorial practices of the Salem witch trials were remarkably similar to those employed by the congressional committees.[11]

They were 300 years apart, yet both prosecutions charged membership of a clandestine, disloyal group. And, even if the accused confessed, their honesty could only be proven by naming others who were in league with them.[12]

Miller also noticed corresponding behaviors between members of the two communities. For example, avoiding old friends so as not to be seen associating with them, and zealous confirmations of loyalty. Not to mention a despairing pity for the accused mixed with an underlying sentiment that they “must have done something.”[13]

With this realization, Miller explains:.

My basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say paralyzed a whole generation and in a short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse.[14]  

Miller was only certain a play about the Salem witch trials was possible, however, when a particular entry in the documents he was researching “jogged” the thousands of pieces of information he had found into place.[15]

It became apparent to him that Abigail Williams was fired from domestic service in the Proctor household because Elizabeth’s husband John had “bedded” the young woman. He saw the bad blood between the two women as being what prompted Abigail to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft.

“All this I understood,” Miller points out, “I had not approached the witchcraft out of nowhere, or from purely social and political considerations.”[16]

His own marriage of twelve years was teetering, and he was painfully aware that the blame lay with him. He had “at last found something of [him]self in it.”[17]

So, Miller began to build the play around the character of John Proctor. That Proctor might overturn his personal guilt and emerge as the most forthright voice against the lunacy that had a grip on the community was a reassurance to Miller. For him, it demonstrated that a “clear moral outcry could still spring” from a tarnished soul like his own.[18]

Miller sought a title that would literally indicate the burning away of impurities, “which,” as he explicitly states, “is what the play is doing.”[19] And the term crucible… well, it crystalizes that concept in a single word.

As Miller states, he couldn’t have written The Crucible simply to write a play about blacklisting – or about Salem’s witch trials for that matter.  His play centers on “the guilt of John Proctor and the working out of that guilt,” exemplifying “the guilt of man in general.”[20] And there we have the fourth layer in our literary cake… universal themes.

Though many people still consider The Crucible to be a tract-like against McCarthyism, it’s more than a political metaphor. It’s also more than a simple morality tale. As Miller maintains:.

On its most universal level, The Crucible is about community hysteria, fear of the unknown, the psychology of betrayal, the cast of mind that insists on absolute truth and resorts to fear and violence to assert it, and not least about the fortitude it takes to protect the innocent and resist unjust authority.”[21]

He draws a comparison between turning to Salem and looking in a petri dish. Three centuries before the cold-war, as Miller points out, Salem village displayed what he describes as a human “fatality forever awaiting the right conditions for its always unique, forever unprecedented outbreak of trust, alarm, suspicion.”[22]

And, he calls attention to the fact that this “fatality” isn’t about “just a crazy situation in a far-off place.”[23] Such events could (and often do) occur in a corporate boardroom, for example, or anywhere else unchecked power is prodigious. So, we can add ongoing relevance to the list of layers in our literary cake.

It’s important to remember that, as Miller makes abundantly clear, literary works like The Crucible function on multiple levels. As such, they aren’t intended to be read on a single level, whether that’s for plot and simple enjoyment, or the exploration of universal themes at the expense of historical and societal context.

Either of these common approaches flattens literary works, minimizing the diverse perspectives of unique identities, as well as the histories of various communities. Not to mention the fact that flattening a work hinders engaging it through the filter of current pressing civic issues.[24]

Where we arrive at what the reader “bring[s] to the party,” as Toni Morrison puts it.[25] This perspective also contributes to the layer count of our literary confection (which at this point is tall enough to resemble something out of Dr. Seuss.)

For example, educators have recently been teaching The Crucible with a view toward how mass hysteria, patriarchy, sexism, and scapegoating continue to operate today.

Some teachers use Miller’s play to initiate conversations about prison and bail reform. Still others employ The Crucible as a way to examine systems of privilege and power that marginalize people of color and other marginalized populations. [26]

When we examine all the layers within works like The Crucible, we begin to comprehend the real power of literature – to build understanding about the world we live in, to provoke questioning power structures that produce inequality, to foster empathy for those whose life circumstances are different than our own. And as a result, perhaps make our piece of the world a little better for everyone.[27] Which is why it’s so important to get every bite of these literary confections.

#the art of reading      #banned books      #witch trials     #published 1950s     #english literature   #Benefits of the Humanities

Endnotes:

[1] Navaskh, Victor. “The Demons of Salem, With Us Still.” Sept. 8, 1996. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/08/movies/the-demons-of-salem-with-us-still.html

“Red Scare.” April 21, 2023. The History Channel  https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare

“McCarthyism and the Red Scare.” University of Virginia Miller Center.  https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare

[2] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[3] Perlman, Allison. “Hollywood blacklist.”Sept. 22, 2023.  Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hollywood-blacklist

“A look back at the Hollywood blacklist.” July 8, 2018. BrandeisNOW. https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2018/june/blacklist-qa-tom-doherty.html

[4] “Excerpts from Arthur Miller’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.” American Masters. April 2020. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/excerpts-from-arthur-millers-testimony-before-the-house-un-american-activities-committee/14006/

[5] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[6] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[7] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[8] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[9] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[10] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[11] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[12] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[13] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[14] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[15] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[16] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[17] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[18] Miller, Arthur. “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible.’” Oct. 13, 1996. The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible

[19] Mel Gussow and Arthur Miller. Conversations with Miller. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002. Pg 185.

[20] Mel Gussow and Arthur Miller. Conversations with Miller. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002. Pg 7.

[21] Navaskh, Victor. “The Demons of Salem, With Us Still.” Sept. 8, 1996. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/08/movies/the-demons-of-salem-with-us-still.html

[22] Miller, Arthur. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?” The  Guardian/The Observer (online), June 17, 2002. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/miller-mccarthyism.html

[23] Mel Gussow and Arthur Miller. Conversations with Miller. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002.Pg 37.

[24] Mirra, Nicole. Reading, Writing, & Raising Voices: The Centrality of Literacy to Civic Education. 2022. NCTE: National Council of Teachers of English. Pg 5.

[25] Morrison, Toni. “The Reader as Artist.” O, the Oprah Magazine. Vol. 7, Issue 7. (July 2006), 174.

[26] Torres, Julia E. “Chat: Disrupting The Crucible.” June 12k 2018. DisruptTexts
https://disrupttexts.org/2018/06/12/disrupting-the-crucible/

[27] Ebarvia, Tricia. Disrupting Texts as a Restorative Practice.
https://triciaebarvia.org/2018/07/11/disrupting-texts-as-a-restorative-practice/#:~:text=%23DisruptTexts%20is%20a%20type%20of,choices%20we%20make%20as%20educators

Images:

First Edition Cover with “banned” lock.

The Environment of the Day: Senate Hearings http://www.senate.gov 

Reference to American History: Cauldron-Photo by Matt Benson on Unsplash

The Personal Level: Broken pocket watch-Photo by Gaspar Uhas on Unsplash

Symbolism of the Title: A crucible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible 

Ongoing Relevance: Fanned Book-Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash

Beyond Themes of Paranoia: Silhouette and bird-Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

The 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival takes place in Washington D.C. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday, August 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. It’s free and open to the public.

This year’s theme is Everyone Has a Story,
celebrating the storyteller in us all. 

If you can’t attend in person, never fear, experience the LOC’s National Book Festival online. There are plenty of programs and activities available before (beginning July 20th), during, and continuing after the Festival.

In contrast to the book banners who target works advancing diversity, Rich Homberg, president and CEO of Detroit Public Television (which is partnering with the LOC in this event) asserted that “everyone has a story that needs to be told and we’re now living in an exciting time when more diverse voices are sharing their journeys, their rite of passage, as well as their challenges and opportunities, which are all preserved within the pages of books. That’s how we learn empathy, and that’s how we bridge great divides.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden affirmed the sentiment, stating “the Library believes that everyone has a story to tell, and we’re proud to share the stories of so many groundbreaking authors, writers, poets and illustrators at the National Book Festival.”

The 2023 series features interviews with authors including Claribel A. Ortega, Shelby Van Pelt, Tananarive Due, S.A. Cosby, Luis Alberto Urrea, Beverly Gage, TJ Klune, Matthew Desmond, Héctor Tobar, Angeline Boulley and Trang Thanh Tran. You can find them at PBSbooks.org/LOCBookFest23

The Library of Congress is an amazing place, one you might not have thought of for personal use. But they have hundreds of incredible digital collections that include manuscripts from historic figures, newspaper archives, photographs, just to name a few…  not to mention the legislation we would expect them to house.

And then there’s our favorite, a source called banned books online –a listing of books that have been banned, complete with links to those books so we can be sure to read them. If you haven’t already discovered the Library of Congress, make the National Book Festival your first point of contact.

And then, be sure to tell us about the banned books
you were inspired to read as a result.

 #Library of Congress            #celebrations