Aegis 2022-23 Editorial Board
Editors: Mitzi Cuaxico and Seth Stobart Board Members: Ayan Abdi, Blaine Bishop, Wesley Engel, Maggie Glanc, Marygrace Gorensek, Grace Guichard, Natalie Hu, Isaac Jones, Finley Lopez, Lauren Mlynarek, Dalton Mosley, Addie Richmond, Gray Takahashi, and Ellyse Tillyerr Advisor: Dr. Amy Sheeran
Front Cover: Lauren Craig, Untitled (2022), oil paint
Back Cover: Tara Jones, Flower Crown (2021), acrylic on canvas
Perhaps the first question readers will ask about Aegis is "What does it mean?"
The word "aegis" is Latin for "shield" but may be more specifically associated with Greek mythology, as it refers to the shield carried by Zeus, god of thunder. Made from the hide of the goat Amaltheia, the shield came to represent not only a practical tool of protection, but also a godly power. "As the Greeks prided themselves greatly on the rich and splendid ornaments of their shields, they supposed the aegis to be adorned in a style corresponding to the might and majesty of the father of the gods."1Myths have even suggested that the shield was worn by both the god Apollo and the goddess Athena, adding to the prestige of the shield throughout tales of mythology 2
Much like the myths and literary representations of Zeus's shield, Otterbein's journal, Aegis, seeks to transport readers into a deeper study of literature and humanities through the fields of history, philosophy, language, linguistics, literature, archeology, jurisprudence, ethics, comparative religion, and the hi st ory, theory, and criticism of the arts (in accordance with the National Endowment for the Humanities' [NEH] definition). Every year, Aegis includes a collection of undergraduate scholarly book reviews, essays, and interviews prepared and edited by Otterbein students.
Since its first edition in 2004, the journal has come a long way and has showcased the exemplary work that Otterbein students continue to produce. Aegis is a journal designed to catalyze a deeper critical appreciation of the humanities at Otterbein University and is published once every spring semester. It strives to advance the presence and values of the humanities on campus and beyond. An editorial board comprised of Otterbein students is responsible for selecting books, writing, and publishing book reviews , as well as revising any essay submissions to the journal and determining their suitability for Aegis.
The 2023 Editorial Board and its editors hope that readers will approach each piece in the journal with curiosity and wonder, just as they may have approached the Latin term "aegis" with such curiosity. Aegis is committed to nonsexist language and to wording free of hostile overtones. The Editorial Board, essay authors, and Otterbein faculty have worked hard to create a journal that showcases the humanities in a unique way. Please enjoy.
Submissions: Essay submissions should be 8-25 double-spaced pages. Use 12-point Times New Roman font with standard one-inch margins, and please number all pages. Use the MLA Manual Style for citations. Specific submission deadlines will be sent out to all Otterbein students in the early spring semester. Submissions are also accepted on a rolling basis. Submissions must be accompanied by an email or cover sheet noting the author's name and title of the essay. Electronic submissions are preferred. Please send any submissions to aegis@otterbein.edu.
Aegis is always looking for student volunteers to serve on the Editorial Board. To volunteer, submit an essay for review, or to ask questions, please send an email to aegis@otterbein.edu.
I James Yates, "Aegis,"University of Chicago, last modified April 13, 2018, http://penelope.uchicago.edunl1ayer/E/Roman/ Texts/ secondary/SMIGRA'/Aegis.html 2 Ibid.
5 Editors' Introduction
6 Editorial Board Members
Traditional Essays
8 " Aesthetic Disinterestedness and a Clockwork World : Influence of Natural Philosophy on Literature" »> Miranda Hilt
13 "Alexander Hamilton's Governmental Philosophy and its Impact on the Whiskey Rebellion" »> Aaron Mundziak
23 "On the Complexity of Consequence: Spike Lee's 25th Hour" »> Alex Cernelich
28 "Paradise and Queer Utopia" »> Seth Stobart
34 "Reworking the Western: Zinneman's High Noon" »> Claudia Smallwood
39 "The Little Rock Nine Integration Experience: Was it Worth it?" »> Emily Bueter
48 "The New York Age and Women's Suffrage" »> Elizabeth Post
Interview
63 An interview with Dr. Matthew Strohl
Book Reviews: (Review Authors)
68 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents »> Isaac Jones
70 Convenience Store Woman »> Addie Richmond
72 Devotion »> Lauren Mlynarek
74 Fake Accounts »> Seth Stobart
76 Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol »> Maggie Glanc
78 Groundskeeping »> Grace Guichard
80 How to Stand up to a Dictator »> Marygrace Gorensek
82 / Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times »> Blaine Bishop
84 Motherthing »> Finley Lopez
86 Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance »> Wesley Engel
88 The Pianist from Syria »> Natalie Hu
90 The Testaments »> Ellyse Tillyer
92 The Trees »> Ayan Abdi
94 The Undocumented Americans »> Mitzi Cuaxico
96 Unwieldy Creatures »> Gray Takahashi
98 Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America >» Dalton Mosley
As this year's editors, we are pleased to present the campus community with the 2023 edition of Aegis: The Otterbein Humanities Journal. The essays that have been selected for this year's edition of Aegis exemplify the talent and commitment to academics that are continuously exhibited by students at Otterbein University. The topics covered examine the western, early American political philosophy, Black feminist periodicals, and Queerness within literature. All of the essays in the journal meet the standards of rigorous research in the humanities, but more importantly, they are engaging pieces that work to address a variety of complex issues .
"Aesthetic Disinterestedness and a Clockwork World: Influence of Natural Philosophy on Literature" by Miranda Hilt discusses figurative language as a response to increasing empiricism in the 18th century. In his essay "AlexanderHamilton's Governmental Philosophy and its Impact on the Whiskey Rebellion," Aaron Mundziak explores the nuances of Alexander Hamilton's arguments in support of a strong central government and their effect on the new American government's response to early rebellion. "On the Complexity of Consequence: Spike Lee's 25th Hour" by Alex Cernelich argues that Spike Lee's 25th Hour is one of the first films after 9/ 11 to capture and critique American attitudes following the incident. "Paradise and Queer Utopia" by Seth Stobart explores Toni Morrison's Paradise through Queer theory, focusing on the anti-normative subtleties within the community of Ruby and the Convent. Claudia Smallwood argues that Fred Zinnemann's High Noon breaks away from and advances the generic norms of the Western in "Reworking the Western: Zinneman's High Noon." In "The Little Rock Nine Integration Experience: Was It Worth It?" Emily Bueter explores the memoirs of the iconic Civil Rights activists in their differing perspectives and encounters at the all-white Central High School. "The New York Age and Women's Suffrage" by Elizabeth Post compares two Black periodicals on their stance on women's suffrage from the Civil War to the early 1920s, noting the media's slow shift from mockery to support of the movement. These essays represent the fine work being done by students in the humanities at Otterbein.
Also included in this edition of Aegis is a selection of book reviews written by the Editorial Board that reflect their intellectual interests and speak to their respective disciplines. The books reviewed in this year's edition include The Trees by Percival Everett, a novel about the truths and legacies oflynching and white supremacy in the United States. Queer Voices in Hip Hop by Lauron J. Kehrer sheds light on the oftignored common history and musical traditions shared by hip-hop, rap, and queer culture. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata delivers the adventures of an unconventional character as they explore relationships, unaccomplished societal milestones, and what it means to be "normal." Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai is a retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a diverse set of characters, where they explore the horrors of trauma and monstrosity while holding on to hope . These and other fiction and nonfiction titles are discussed in the following pages.
We'd like to thank all of this year's contributors for remaining appreciative of Aegis during this time and providing your insight, art, and passions to this journal.
Aegis is proud to belong to a strong scholarly community of students and faculty within the humanities at Otterbein University. The reviews, essays and interviews included within Aegis speak to Otterbein's commitment to that community. We hope that our readers find engaging, stimulating, and thought-provoking work throughout this year's edition.
Seth Stob ar t & Mi t zi Cuaxic o
Mitzi Cuaxico (head editor) is a junior English literary studies and Psychology major with a minor in Race and Ethnic Studies. As co-editor of this edition of Aegis, she is excited to deliver the work of the amazingly talented writers of Otterbein University.
Seth Stobart (head editor) is a fourth-year English Literary Studies and Philosophy student with minors in Film Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He plans on pursuing a Ph.D. after graduation His interest areas include post-45 American literature, queer theory, and critical theory. This is his second year as a head editor for Aegis.
Ayan Abdi is a junior double-majoring in Political Science and English with a concentration in creative writing. This is her first year serving on the Aegis editorial board. She is grateful for the space created for students to present their work to their peers. She hopes that readers of this publications thoroughly enjoy it!
Wesley Engel is a non-traditional senior, majoring in History with a minor in Spanish and Latin American Studies He arrived at Otterbein as a transfer student after obtaining his associate 's degree from Columbus State Community College Wesley may only have been a part of Aegis for his last semester, but he has still found it a rewarding experience After graduation , Wesley plans to work in education and attend graduate school for a master 's and teaching licensure .
Maggie Glanc is a sophomore History and Education double-major with a minor in Race and Ethnic Studies. Maggie is involved on campus as a Resident Assistant, Orientation Leader, and as a member of Tau Epsilon Mu and Cardinal Singers. This is her first year as part of Aegis, and she hopes everyone enjoys reading this year's edition. She would also like to thank Dr. Destefanis for recommending her and encouraging her to join the Aegis board!
Marygrace Gorensek is a Global Studies major with a concentration in Global Histories and Cultures. She also has minors in History and Race and Ethnic Studies Currently, she is looking forward to a study abroad in Vietnam and Cambodia in May. She enjoys reading and is thankful for the chance to read a book she may not have read otherwise.
Grace Guichard is a senior BFA Acting major with a minor in Philosophy. While at Otterbein, Grace directed a workshop and an ADP, performed on the Otterbein Mainstage, and was a member and president of MainStage lmprov Troupe. For the spring semester, she moved to New York City to intern with Stephanie Klapper Casting. She looks forward to continuing to build her life in New York. This is Grace's second year serving on the Aegis board She would like to thank Otterbein's Philosophy department for being her home outside of the theatre department. She is grateful for the opportunity to read and reflect on students' work
Natalie Hu is a fifth-year Music and Spanish and Latin American Studies double-major. She is a pianist, composer, and violinist and is involved in various music ensembles at Otterbein. She enjoys working with her fellow musicians and traveling abroad Natalie is thankful for the opportunity to be a part of Aegis during her last year at Otterbein
Isaac Jones is a first-year majoring in Creative Writing, Literary Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. They are involved in student government, URGE, and the editing boards of Aegis and Quiz and Quill.
Finley Lopez is a senior majoring in English Literature and WGSS with a minor in Psychology. This is his second year as a board member for Aegis. He is a member of Otterbein's Tri-Iota chapter and a peer advocate for the WGSRC. Finn feels highly honored to have read submissions from students all around Otterbein.
Lauren Mlynarek is a third-year Psychology major and Philosophy minor. After graduating from Otterbein, she will continue her education, getting a masters to become a therapist. She looks forward to combining the elements of psychology and philosophy in her work. She loves to write and wishes to delve more into the career of journalism , as well. She hopes you find her book review to be delightful and inspiring to read , and hopes you, too , will be inspired to write yourself. Thank you, Aegis, for this opportunity to share my passion. Well wishes to all.
Dalton Mosley is a sophomore Creative Writ ing BFA and Film Studies major He is an aspiring author and scholar looking to enhance the presence of both the creative arts and the humanities wherever he can This is his first year with Aegis , and he is very grateful and proud to be an editor on the board ; w ith passion for scholarly work, he w ill enjoy helping to work on the journal for the rest of his tenure as a student at Otterbein.
Addie Richmond is a fourth-year student double-majoring in art History and Theatre, with a focus in costuming She recently returned from studying abroad at Shakespeare 's Globe in London over the summer and participating in the Asian Studies Program at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan for the fall semester. She looks forward to continuing her travels and language studies after graduating th is spring This is her second year on the Aegis editorial board.
Gray Takahashi is a senior majoring in Biology, English Literary Studies , and Women 's , Gender, and Sexuality Studies He is a co-president of Iota Iota Iota , the vice president of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity and the Panhellenic Council, the treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta and Tau Delta , a lead peer advocate at 150 W. Main , a facilitator of Team Consent , and a core member of the Coordinated Community Response Team Gray loves spending time with his cat Suki and playing video games. This is his second year with Aegis
Ellyse Tillyer is a freshman majoring in English Education and minoring in Film Studies. Ellyse is a member of Tau Delta sorority and finds herself at home in the humanities departments here at Otterbein She is grateful to have been given the opportunity to work on the Aegis board during her first year and greatly enjoyed working with and learning from so many kind and talented people
By Miranda Hilt
The emergence of natural philosophy, a broad discipline grounded in the idea that reasoning should be based on observations and experimental findings, during the late 17th century would have an unimaginable influence on the literary world and modem science. As experimental philosophers such as Sir Isaac Newton sought explanations for natural phenomena, a metaphor emerged comparing the world to a clock and God to a divine clockmaker. The clockwork-world metaphor emerged as a means of unifying a Christian understanding of the world and empiricist scientific explanations of the world. Moreover, the growing emphasis on the believed superiority of objectivity, observation, and experimentation led some 18th-century writers, such as Robert Hooke and James Thomson, to exhibit an aesthetic disinterestedness or personal detachment in their works. However, not all embraced the growing prominence of natural philosophy. In his widely popular novel Gullivers Travels (1726), Johnathan Swift satirizes inventions like the microscope and the emphasis on detailed observation. Nevertheless, achievements of the scientific revolution, such as the invention of the microscope and Isaac ewton's theory of gravity, profoundly influenced 18th-century British literature, sparking fierce debate over the extent of God's role in a clockwork world, promoting
poetry and analytical work emphasizing aesthetic disinterestedness, in addition to inspiring satirical critique of the new focus on observation and experimentation.
The metaphor of the clockwork world proposes that the world is a clock and God is the divine clockmaker that may or may not play some ongoing role in the functioning of the clock. Moreover, "since the world was a clock (mechanical, rational, and open-able), these new scientists could analyze, pick apart, and experiment in order to understand and replicate its regular workings" (Weiss Smith 70). Conceptualizing a world in which one's religious beliefs could co-exist with a more secular, scientific understanding of the world was essential in the 18th century, when one's morals and values were deeply rooted in religion. The use of figurative language (metaphor) to propose a religious scientific worldview in and of itself emphasizes how natural philosophy and literature influenced one another.
Despite the wide acceptance of the clockwork world metaphor, there was a spirited debate amongst scholars as to the extent of God's role in the clock. Following the publication of Philosophice Natura/is Principia Mathematica (1687), in which Sir Isaac Newton famously asserts "hypothesis non fingo," meaning "I feign no hypothesis" regarding the
ultimate cause of gravity, he revised his claim (or lack thereof) and proposed that God is in some way responsible for the existence of gravity (Newton, Philosophiae 484). Within the clockwork-world metaphor, God not only created the clock but provides its power source (Weiss Smith 71). In Miscellanea Curiosa (1705), Newton states that "no Man can doubt but the Wisdom of the Creator has provided for the Macrocosm by many more ways than I can imagine or express" (Newton, Miscellanea 54). As Courtney Weiss Smith notes, "Newton's understanding of gravity's cause was notoriously complex. Sometimes it was divine; sometimes it was not" (Weiss Smith76). ewton ultimately settled on a position that explained his meticulous observations and calculations but also accounted for the ultimate cause of gravity that his scientific inquiry could not explain by attributing it to a divine entity.
However, some, such as G.W Leibniz, another mathematician and philosopher, challenge this assertion, claiming Newton's theory about God's role in the clock was a setback to scientific inquiry and made God "a second-rate mechanic and the world into a faulty clock" (Weiss Smith 72). Leibniz argued that God created a perfectly functioning clock that worked according to "beautiful, preestablished order" (Weiss Smith 72). While he agreed that God was the divine creator of the natural world, Leibniz rejected the idea that God played an ongoing role in its operation. From Leibniz's perspective, God could not provide the power source for the clock to function, and therefore the cause of gravity could not be attributed to a divine source.
Other Newtonian thinkers, such as Samuel Clarke and J.T Desaguliers, rebutted Leibniz's critique of the Newtonian clockwork metaphor. Clarke argued that if nothing can affect that
clock, then God cannot perform miracles, and humans lack free will; humans are merely cogs in the machine (Weiss Smith 83). J.T. Desaguliers, Newton's assistant and the Royal Society's Curator of Experiments, offers a more conservative explanation of God's role in the cause of gravity, adopting Newton's "hypothesis non fingo, but maintains the centrality of God to other spheres, such as government. In his poem The Newtonian System of the World, The Best Model of Government ( 1728), Desaguliers states that "I have considera Government as a Phaenomenon, and look'd upon that Form of it to be the most perfect, which did most nearly resemble the atural Government of our System, according to the Laws settled by the All-wise and Almighty Architect of the Universe" (Desaguliers 2). The lively debate that precipitated from the clockwork metaphor and Newton's theory of gravity contributed greatly to the popularization of the idea that there was evidence of God's work everywhere in the natural world. Thus, the theories and works of natural philosophers inspired the work of other scholars and artists, some of whom embraced the scientific perspective and some who were more skeptical of the growing popularity of an objective, observational perspective.
The influence of natural philosophy on 18th-century literary works is evidenced by some authors' adoption of an aesthetically disinterested tone. Tita Chico suggests that "aesthetic disinterestedness imagines a stable, unbiased observer with an enlightened and exclusive ability for sensory perception. Aesthetic theory shares qualities with the modest witness at the core of experimental practice, though the end result is the production of aesthetic, rather than scientific knowledge" (Chico 136). Such aestheticism was adopted by poets like James Thomson and scientists like
Robert Hooke alike, but to different ends. Chico the scientific habit of quantitative observation; goes on to suggest that 18th-century poets like in his description of seaweed, he states that Thomson adapted aesthetic disinterestedness "the body of this moss is commonly, not more into aesthetic meditation, which "produces than the sixtieth part of an inch and finds by self-conscious discourse about art as art" calculation that the thickness of some trees in (Chico 137). In other words, 18th-century hot climates exceeds that of seaweed 2,985,984 poets assumed a more objective tone as a way millions of times" (Hooke 21). Hooke employs of facilitating conversation and evaluation aesthetic detachment as standard experimental of artistic work and challenging the growing philosophical practice aimed at producing pure belief in the superiority of observation and scientific knowledge. experimentation by demonstrating the aesthetic James Thomson uses aesthetic possibilities in creative works. disinterestedness in his 1726 poem "Winter"
Robert Hooke adopts a tone of aesthetic through his objective observation of the barren detachment in his groundbreaking descriptions landscape and inquiries about the natural in Micrographia (1780), creating the level of world. Thomson questions where the winds objectivity that was expected in experimental retreat to when things are calm, asking "Where philosophy. In "Observation 39. Of the Eyes and are your stores, ye viewless beings! Say, I Where Head of a Great Drone-Fly, and of Several Other are your aerial magazines reserv'd I against the Creatures," Hooke describes in impressive detail day of tempest perilous?/ In what untraveled the appearance and texture of the fly's head, country of the air / hushed in silence, sleep feet, and eyes, relying on both the visual and the you, when 'tis calm?" (169). Thomson's line tactile to accurately describe his observations. of inquiry here evokes a scientific tone, even Hooke also makes ample use ofliterary as it is conveyed in poetic form. Elsewhere, devices , such as analogy and simile, to draw Thomson describes the blinding bareness of meaningful connections and aid in the reader's winter, saying "Till Morn, late-rising, o'erthe understanding of his observations. For example, drooping world / Lifts her pale eye, unjoyous: Hooke says the fly "makes use of his two then appears / The various labour of the silent fore-feet, sweeping or brushing off whatever night,/ the pendant icicle, the frost-work fair, I hinders the prospect of any of his hemispheres Where thousand figures rise, the crusted snow, I and then, to free his legs from that dirt, he rubs Though white, made whiter by the fining north" them one against another ... he does cleanse (191). Thomson exhibits the observational them in the same manner as I have observed aspect oflandscape poetry in his description those that card wool to cleanse their cards by of the sun rising over the wintry landscape, playing their cards so as the teeth of both look the snow-crusted trees, and "pendant" icicles. the same way, and then rubbing them one However, Thomson simultaneously exposes against another" (Hooke 35). In employing such the limitations of such aesthetic detachment. literary devices, Hooke exposes the possible Tita Chico explains that "scientific observation inaccessibility of pure observation; sometimes promises to survey and render the landscape a more relevant, common example is needed knowable; its failure here unveils the limits to supplement the reader's understanding of of ocular apprehension" (162). In Thomson's scientific findings. Hooke's work also illustrates "Winter," the snow becomes blinding, obscuring
his observation of the landscape. In refusing to satire to critique experimental philosophy's
portray an unmistakable picture of the scenery, Thomson is also challenging the emphasis on discovery and intelligibility as the goal of objective observation.
Thomson was not the only one with doubts about the growing prominence of experimental philosophy. In his widely popular work Gulliver's Travels (1726), Johnathan Swift satirizes the invention of the microscope and the empiricist preoccupation with detailed observation. In "Part II. A Voyage to Brobdingnag;' the protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, is set upon the breast of a giant nurse, stating that it "stood a prominent six foot, and could not be less than fifteen in circumference. The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous ..." (Swift 22). This passage is both evidence of Swift's misogynistic attitude and a satirical portrayal of the distortions of the microscope. The giant's breast, seen on such a magnified scale as the result of Gulliver's comparatively miniature size, is rendered monstrous . Swift's distrust of the merits of microscopic observation can be interpreted from his portrayal of a sexualized body part as grotesque. Moreover, Swift uses
privileging of quantitative observation though Gulliver's description of the dimensions of the Nurse's breast.
The works of Hooke, Thomson, and Swift are but a few examples of the profound influence of natural philosophy on the literary world and modern scientific inquiry. Moreover, the clockwork metaphor provided an excellent means of unifying Christian and scientific understandings of the world, even with the spirited debate over the extent of God's role in the machine. Robert Hooke and James Thomson's aesthetic disinterestedness emphasizes the growing prominence of objective writing during the 18th century, whereas Swift's satirical critique of the microscope and quantitative observation demonstrates how literature was also used to denounce natural philosophy.
Accomplishments of the scientific revolution, such as the invention of the microscope and Isaac Newton's theory of gravity, played an essential role in the formation of the metaphor of a clockwork world and led to a proliferation of literary works both integrating and challenging the discipline of experimental philosophy.
Tita Chico. The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2018. pp.134-168. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN= 17423 74&site=edslive&scope=site.
Works Cited Continued
Desaguliers, John Theophilus. The newtonian system of the world, the best Model of Government: An Allegorical poem. With a plain and intelligible Account of the System of the World, by Way of Annotations: With Copper Plates: To which is added, Cambria's Complaint Against the Intercalary Day in the Leap- Year. By J. T. Desaguliers, LL. D. Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Chandos, and F. R. S. Printed by A. Campbell, for J. Roberts in Warwick Lane; and sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster, [1728]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link. gale.com/apps/doc/CW0 1062 l 2263/ECCO?u=ohlnk257&sid=bookmarkECCO&xid=a8ecbced&pg=5. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
Hooke, Robert. Microscopic observations; or, Dr. Hooke's wonderful discoveries by the microscope, illustrated by thirty-three copper-plates, curiously engraved: whereby the most valuable particulars in that celebrated author's Micrographia are brought together in a narrow Compass; and Intermixed, occasionally, with many Entertaining and Instructive Discoveries and Observations in Natural History. Printed for Robert Wilkinson, at No. 58, in Cornhill, MDCCLXXX. [1780]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/ doc/CW0 106825836/ECCO?u=ohlnk257&sid=bookmark- ECCO&xid=04896e59&pg= 1. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.
Newton, Isaac. Philosophae naturalis principia mathematica. Auctore Isaaco Newtono, Equite Aurato. [printed by Cornelius Crownfield], MDCCXIII. [1713]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0 107129727/ECCO?u=ohlnk257 &sid=bookmarkECCO&xid= 141 4el46&pg=512. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
ewton, Isaac et. al Miscellanea curiosa: being a collection ofsome of the principal phenomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age. Vol. 1, printed by J. B. for Jeffery Wale, at the Angel in St. Paul's Church-yard; and John Senex, in Hemlock-Court, near Temple-Bar, 1705-1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/ CBO 128266 l 43/ECCO?u=ohlnk257 &sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=2c698 l c2&pg=8. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
Swift, Jonathan. Travels into several remote nations of the world. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships . ... Vol. 1, printed for Benj. Motte, at the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleet-Street, MDCCXXVI. [1726]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link. gale.com/apps/doc/CW0109095940/ECCO?u=ohlnk257&sid=bookmarkECCO&xid=ceac9d3f&pg=2. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.
Thomson, James. "Winter." The Seasons. Printed for W Strahan, J. Rivington and Sons, W Owen, T. Longman, T. Caslon, T. Becket, T. Cadell, T. Lowndes, G. Robinson, and H. Baldwin, MDCCLXXVIII. [1778]. pp. 165-204. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/ apps/dodCW0l 14934276/ECCO?u=ohlnk257&sid=bookmarkECCO&xid=ddbb5dbS&pg=205. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.
Weiss Smith, Courtney. "Dues in Machina: Popular Newtonian ism's Visions of the Clockwork World." Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England. University of Virginia Press, 2016. pp. 69-105 JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttl9z38zz. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.
By Aaron Mundziak
Alexander Hamilton has recently become a popular figure in history, and the critically acclaimed musical Hamilton dramatically depicts his life story (Miranda). Despite his newfound popularity, few truly understand his ideology and philosophy regarding government and politics. In addition to his beliefs and theories, the Whiskey Rebellion is also an unfamiliar yet historically significant event. At first glance, these two matters appear to have nothing in common besides that Hamilton lived during the Whiskey Rebellion. These two subjects, however, share various aspects in common, which are important to examine. Alexander Hamilton's governmental philosophy had a direct impact on how President Washington and his administration ended the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
This topic is significant to explore because historians often write about how the Whiskey Rebellion showed that the United States needed a strong government. Throughout Hamilton's life, he modified his governmental philosophy, but seeing how his ideas are apparent in the resolution of the rebellion is especially interesting.
I argue that the foundation of Alexander Hamilton's governmental philosophy was
a strong central government, a productive financial system, and the ability to serve American interests. His governmental philosophies initially had very little impact on the rebels, but larger conspiracies grew, and they were distrustful of Hamilton. Eventually, the general public admired Hamilton's work in ending the insurrection. Federalist government officials praised Hamilton, but others were unsure and criticized him for his beliefs and work. Finally, his involvement in the Whiskey Rebellion shows us that his governmental philosophy was effective when put into practice, but at times, opponents prevented him from developing his theories further.
The first question to ask is what the foundation was for Alexander Hamilton's governmental philosophy. This question is complex because he modifies his philosophy over time, but a few components remain throughout his career as a politician. A second question to ask is what effect his governmental policies had on the Whiskey Rebellion. A third question is how the public and government officials viewed Hamilton during and after the insurrection. A final question to ask is what Hamilton's involvement in the Whiskey
Rebellion tells us about his governmental meet public interests in the United States. philosophy. This is the most important
As the Constitution was being written, question to address, and it will take some time Hamilton had multiple views regarding to develop. representative government. According to John When examining Hamilton's C. Koritansky, "Hamilton finds the co nditions governmental philosophy, it is important to for effectively representative government to see how his ideas came to fruition. Similar to be met by a large and commercial republic." how other major figures during the American He also believed that a new class of merchants Revolution educated themselves, he focused were the "natural representatives" for the on many popular European thinkers who grew public that had no particular interest in one in popularity during the Enlightenment. This industry (106). Along with the merchant class, learning style exposed Hamilton to an array of Hamilton also thought that the public had beliefs and ideas to be critiqued and examined various interests and thought the "government for their importance. A significant figure must represent only what those interests that influenced him was English philosopher all have in common" (107). Compared to John Locke, and his ideas on overthrowing contemporary politics, these beliefs seem rulers who endanger natural rights inspired peculiar because a merchant class does not Hamilton to adopt aspects of his philosophy exist to most people, and the American public (McDonald 31). Locke's political ideas on has various interests. However, a merchant natural rights spread across Europe and the class is similar to a middle class, and Hamilton British colonies, which led American figures believed the United States should become a such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, nation of middle-class merchants as opposed and George Washington to support the ideas, to Jefferson's yeoman-farming middle class. as well. With their commonalities, Americans tend to Another philosopher who inspired have more common interests than differences, Hamilton was the Scottish historian David despite the polarization that exists between the Hume. Hume's writings were skeptical about left and the right today. the English Parliament, and even though Hamilton also believed that the House of Hamilton never explicitly expressed his Representatives and the Senate in Congress intellectual debt to Hume, he referenced Hurne represented specific populations. He thought in numerous writings (McDonald 35). A major the House represented "the masses" and the point from Hume's writings is that "people Senate represented "the few," or the elites. would act in the public interest if government Hamilton also stated that the House should made it advantageous for them to do so, be more democratic than the Constitution and constitutions and laws should recognize outlines (Staloff 84). Despite Hamilton's that fact" (36). From Hume, Hamilton took beliefs and practices leaning towards elitist this idea and applied it in the future when values and goals, he did not purely seek to he became President Washington's treasury benefit the wealthy. Without both sides of secretary. Hamilton was significantly involved representation, the government would fall into in the writing of the Constitution, and he the hands of the elite and decide the nation's ensured that Hume's writing would live on and future. Hamilton also believed that "liberty
may be endangered by the abuses ofliberty, as well as by the abuses of power; that there are numerous instances of the former as well as of the latter; and that the former rather than the latter is apparently most to be apprehended by the United States" (The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 569). This is significant because Hamilton played on both sides of the fence; he advocated for democratic representation and discussed certain policies and establishments that would assist people like him. He was representing both the interests of the wealthy and the common people. The second quote shows that Hamilton, at the same time, was cautious about the government having too much power. He believed officials ignored abuses of power, and that the United States government needed to seriously investigate these crimes. With the power structure, the government had a clear role in the economy. For the economy, Hamilton had a clear perspective from an early point in his life. One important aspect to understand his economic vision is his take on laissez-faire. According to McCraw, the English economist Adam Smith did not convince him enough to adopt this policy. Hamilton, in fact, believed government regulation of the economy was necessary for success (McCraw 44). Along with regulation, he envisioned having a national bank "take priority over the states in its claim on the taxing power;' which meant the federal government had the power to tax over the states (50-53). Establishing a national bank was paramount to Hamilton because it would assist with post-Revolutionary War recovery and make the United States independent. Hamilton wrote, "It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burthensome" (The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 482). He sought
taxation on the people, but he did not want to
seem oppressive to Americans. If Hamilton enforced heavy taxes on citizens soon after the war ended, the people might have revolted much sooner. Assuming the role to tax was also a significant one because the country had just ended a war with a world power that was, in part, about taxation, and not every American was a staunch supporter of taxation like Hamilton was.
Another significant idea in his economic vision was to transition the country from an agrarian society to an industrial society. His Report on Manufactures explains his plan in detail. While this plan would rapidly industrialize the nation, it would also, as Darren Staloff explains, "ameliorate the growing sectoral tensions between North and South" (101). orthern states were already abolishing slavery in the late 1800s, and industrializing across the nation would reinforce interstate relationships. As many know, the United States did not rapidly industrialize until decades after Hamilton's death in 1804, and industrialization was underway in Great Britain in the 1790s. However, Henry Clay and others adopted important aspects in the future as they sought to eventually industrialize. His plan was too bold initially, but the future financers would take ownership of fulfilling Hamilton's dream (102). Despite his ideas for economic expansion and taxation being unpopular among many at the time, his plans for economic growth and taxation would be visible in later legislation and proposals in the mid- and late-19th century.
Hamilton also thought the military also had a significant role to play when it came to establishing power and dominance. According to Richard Kohn's account of the Whiskey
Rebellion, Hamilton "already leaned toward military suppression'' when the conflict first started and "had been waiting for such an incident" (570-571). These examples show Hamilton was not hesitant to use military force in any conflict where he saw it as necessary. The historian Forrest McDonald also stated that Hamilton believed the U.S. required a large military presence after Shay's Rebellion ended (102). The military was essential to Hamilton, and showing how the federal government was strong and had the power to end rebellions and other conflicts was significant for its success to Hamilton. Along with its strength, Hamilton also believed that "The States must sink under the Burden of Temporary Inlistments" so that "the Enemy" would not attack them when the country was weak (The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 473). This means he thought Americans should enlist in the military for a limited time to protect the nation. Doing this meant those of age could serve their country to gain experience and ensure the United States was not undefended.
Hamilton's time in the military also persuaded him to adopt certain values. During his time at Valley Forge, the American forces were short on supplies and were starving in the harsh winter. Alexander Hamilton acted as General Washington's eager aide-de-camp. He saw the conditions the soldiers faced, and this experience convinced Hamilton that the government needed to be stronger. Taxation was required to make the military healthy and strong because he believed a large military was necessary during peacetime to be prepared for war (Staloff 69). Surprisingly, this idea was not absurd or radical to anyone at the time or today. Although the contemporary United States has different reasons to maintain its
military than Hamilton did, the government y every currently spends billions on th e m ilit ar year in order to ensure the military has th e resources and training to be capable and ready when a threat emerges. Hamilton valued the military immensely, and his experience dunng the Revolutionary War certainly persuaded the aide-de - camp to take advantage of the federal government, use military force, and give supplies to the soldiers so that another incident like Valley Forge would not threaten national security again. Military importance and strength are only some ideas that Hamilton and the Federalists believed in.
A major part of Hamilton's political ideology revolved around his involvement with the Federalists. The Federalist Party, one of the first political parties, defended the Constitution and supported a powerful central government, unlike the Jeffersonians and the anti-Federalists, who focused on state and local powers. A key aspect of Federalism, according to Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara Oberg, is that it sought massive "economic growth, continental expansion, and the union of the states" ( 1). Federalists also represented mercantile and financial circles, and they desired to use the government to "protect the weak" and not remove government from the citizens (11). This is important to examine because even though Hamilton frequently discussed his political ideology as a Federalist, the Federalist Party as a whole helps us uncover the purpose behind many significant policy and administrative decisions. Hamiltonianism, which includes federalists' beliefs but has supplementary views, is significant to examine in addition to the Federalists. McDonald explains Hamiltonianism as follows: "how things are done governs what can and will be done: the
rules determine the nature and outcome of the game" (123). Hamilton implied that in order to make decisions that benefit a specific actor or group, the rules and policies need to be modified in a certain way. Hamilton also said that "a good administration will conciliate the confidence and affection of the people, and perhaps enable the government to acquire more consistency" (Representative Selections 42). This means that Hamilton viewed a good government as easing the worries of the people and performing at the standard rate. Hamilton behaved in specific ways in order to make his vision a reality. Many Hamiltonian theories and practices never came to fruition, but Hamilton's boldness to make his beliefs and dreams come true required acting in ways that made it easier for him to be remembered in history. For the final component of Alexander Hamilton's governmental philosophy, we will examine his views on social and civil activity within the government and in the general population.
For social and civil activity, Hamilton held many beliefs in this area According to Forrest McDonald, Hamilton believed that "social values and habits normally dictate economic activity" (234). Therefore, however a society behaves will determine what a country decides economically and practically. For example, if a society takes precautions in their social life and has conservative values economically, the economy will adopt that same behavior. One social behavior that Hamilton took note of was distilled spirits, or liquor, and he saw them as "a source of national extravagance and impoverishment" and sought to limit their consumption among the entire population (McDonald 170). This point will be crucial later through the examination of the Whiskey Rebellion, but this viewpoint makes Hamilton
take the position of an elite attempting to make change among the working-class people, primarily west of the original American colonies, such as in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
When it comes to civil activity and beliefs, Hamilton had popular ideas in this area.
According to Darren Staloff, Hamilton sought to extend liberties beyond white landowning men and eventually have more diversity with those who have civil responsibility and power (62). Stalofflater states that Alexander Hamilton also believed that the government must have "enough influence to interest the passions of individuals" (84). With these two passages, Hamilton, once assuming the role of an elite, takes the position of a populist politician. Therefore, one could view Hamilton as an elite when it came to finances and the economy, while he also advocated for the general population and their role in government. Along with his elitist beliefs, he also thought, "In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other, in the multiplicity of sects" (Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 501). He thought that religion, which was fiercely defended, was as important as civil rights were. With his governmental philosophy clearly established, we can uncover the Whiskey Rebellion and Hamilton's involvement in it.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a series of insurrections that took place from 1791 to 1794 that was a "clear-cut case of failure oflaw and the necessity of coercion, at least to the Federalist leaders who were responsible for executing the laws" (Kohn 567). The rebels were rioting due to an excise tax created by Alexander Hamilton that put a tax on distilled
spirits, primarily in Western Pennsylvania. He instituted the tax to help pay for the funding of the government after the Revolutionary War and the assumption of state debts that the federal government had obtained (Staloff 120). This decision, which primarily hurt the working class who made a living by distilling spirits and liquors, angered Pennsylvanians and caused them to organize.
In dealing with this issue, the federal government understood their management of the rebellion could tarnish the Washington administration's image. President Washington was hesitant about how to resolve the conflict, and he initially sought to end the insurrection peacefully. The protests were small and nonviolent in the earlier years, but some targeted and attacked tax collectors, which led to the mass organization of rebels (Kohn 571).
To make matters worse, the administration heard rumors about the rebels seeking help from Britain and Spain and planning to secede from the country (579). These rumors influenced the government to use military force and send a militia to Western Pennsylvania to end the rebellion. The conflict reached its climax when rebels almost killed Marshall Lenox and General John Neville in Pittsburgh when collecting excise taxes. The protesters burned the collectors' residence, and they barely fled the home and mob alive (McDonald 298-299). Soon after, President Washington and Alexander Hamilton rode to Western Pennsylvania with thousands of militiamen and the rebellion ended there with no casualties (Kohn 582).
Hamilton played a major role during the entirety of the conflict. First, the excise tax on distilled spirits, as mentioned earlier, was Hamilton's idea to impose on Pennsylvanian distillers. Second, Hamilton, along with
War Secretary Henry Knox, sought to use massive force to end the rebellion (Kohn 574 )Third when Knox had to attend to personal ' · · of matters, Hamilton assumed the position war secretary and orchestrated the movement of militia towards Pennsylvania (579). In addition to President Washington, Alexander Hamilton was one of the most important figures in shaping government response to the insurrection. He played a role in the insurrection's origins, speaking to Washington and other cabinet members about the conflict, and he attended the final defeat of the rebellion in mid-1794. With his involvement, his policies had direct consequences on the rebellion.
When the Western Pennsylvanians initially heard about the tax on distilled spirits, they believed it was an attack on their way oflife. According to Thomas P. Slaughter, Pennsylvanians thought since 1775 that a "conspiracy of men'' composed of urban elites from the East were seeking to undermine the "economic interests of the Country:' They believed it was threatening their liberty and if they did not resist the tax, the government would enslave them, and the state would dominate them and their agriculture (Slaughter 131). This belief comes off as alarmist, but at the time, the nation had just fought off the British and were terrified of being oppressed again. To many, little change in governance occurred between the shift from British to American rule. Western settlers also believed that Federalists and Republicans were all the same, and that the parties were just "a feint, a covert to their main design, that of subverting the Constitution'' (134). This is important because the settlers believed they were alone in defending the Constitution, and that no one could trust government officials.
This distrust shaped Hamilton's thoughts and actions in various ways over the course of the Whiskey Rebellion .
From the beginning to the end of the rebellion, Hamilton viewed the excise tax and the insurrection in a multitude of ways. In 1791, the first year Hamilton enforced the law, he worried about the tax collectors pushing distillers to pay when they could not afford it, and Hamilton "argued for sympathy to the intentions of those who failed to conform at first." In late 1791 and early 1792 , he made modifications to the tax and sought to lower the tax on spirits produced domestically while taxing foreign spirits at the original rate. This would make domestic spirits more able to compete with foreign spirits, which would benefit the American economy and help create the merchant class Hamilton sought to create (Slaughter 145) In 1792 and 1793 , critics questioned how effective the tax was and claimed that it marginalized rural distillers. Hamilton's responses showed that he did not understand rural life and was unsympathetic toward frontiers people (Slaughter 147). This is significant because Hamilton was initially considerate of rural distillers, but over the years, he grew tired of their complaints. When the violence picked up in Pennsylvania, Hamilton assumed an elitist position once more .
When Western Pennsylvanians became violent with their protests and attacked tax collectors , Hamilton believed negotiation was off the table. He saw the insurrectionists as uncooperative and believed that a militia would be the only solution to ending the violence (Slaughter 193). In a letter to Henry Lee, Hamilton wrote "nothing but an exertion of the Physical strength of the Union will bring them to a submission to the laws." He believed
that the rebellion had to be crushed , and that
"if this is not done, the spirit of disobedience will naturally extend and the authority of the Government will be prostrate" (Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 313). When President Washington and Hamilton arrived to end the rebellion in the summer of 1794, most rebels fled immediately at the sight of a trained militia , and Hamilton referred to the insurrectionists as a plague out of control (Slaughter 212) This statement shows that Hamilton played the sides of the common people and the elite. Hamilton's confusing behavior makes it difficult to describe him as an ally to either side. He originally wanted to cooperate with distillers and not treat them unfairly. When they deeply opposed the tax and began to violently protest, Hamilton immediately sought to end the rebellion using military force to prevent the destruction of the government . He never intended for a rebellion to occur, but he felt it had to end quickly. The rebellion had ended, but Hamilton's role in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion would shape public opinion of him . Once news spread about the rebellion ending, the Washington administration gained more supporters Looking at how the public viewed Hamilton is significant because it helps show us the effect of his governmental philosophies . According to Forrest McDonald , the Washington administration's decision to use a militia was seen as a success, especially in the East , and many praised Hamilton for his effective choice (McDonald 302). The Federalists especially applauded Hamilton. To them, using military force against the rebels was a perfect example of showing how a strong central government should act (Kohn 583). This is significant because, with the Federalists and the general population in support of the
administration, Hamilton could achieve much more in Congress as Treasury Secretary. Even after Hamilton resigned in 1795, citizens recognized and praised him for his work in ending the Whiskey Rebellion. Clearly, Hamilton had some supporters; he also had critics who were suspicious of him.
One critic of Hamilton's actions was occasional ally and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. When Hamilton was writing a presidential proclamation to Congress about the Whiskey Rebellion, he copyedited Hamilton's writing to prevent further public resentment. Randolph had to change areas where Hamilton used provocative and controversial language to describe the protestors (Kohn 570) . Several years after the rebellion, President Thomas Jefferson got rid of Hamilton's plan, and "the whiskey excise and all other federal internal taxes were struck down" because Jefferson decided the government would only tax domestic products and trade during "grave national emergencies" (Slaughter 226). While Randolph was not as oppositional to Hamilton as Jefferson was, both found something wrong with Hamilton's ideas. Hamilton's writing alarmed Randolph, and Jefferson found Hamilton's entire taxing system on domestic products unnecessary. From all the ways Alexander Hamilton was involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, particular aspects can shed more light on his governmental philosophy.
One aspect of Hamilton's governmental philosophy that the rebellion relates to is his views on taxation. As previously stated, Hamilton sought taxation to pay for the country's debt after the Revolutionary War. Some critics came to the forefront to rebuke taxation, since many Americans fought and died to eliminate British taxation and
oppression. Hamilton's plan for taxation ultimately went through, but more opposition in the form of rebels from Western Pennsylvania emerged years later. These moments tell us that despite the negative feelings and defiance against taxing the American people, Hamilton valued it deeply. He was a revolutionary in the 1770s and 1780s, but as he matured, he saw the importance of taxation for funding the government. A strong central government needed to be funded well to serve its constituents.
Hamilton used the Whiskey Rebellion to support his vision of a strong central government. In his Speech on the Compromises of the Constitution, Hamilton stated a "firm union is as necessary to perpetuate our liberties as it is to make us respectable" (Hamiltonian Principles 9). This means that for American liberty to be preserved, a strong government is necessary and would be the protector of liberties. To Hamilton, the massive display of force to end the rebellion sufficiently explained and supported the need for a powerful central government. Without a strong government, Hamilton believed rebels would take away American liberties and freedom, contrary to the beliefs of the rebelling distillers.
Through an examination of Alexander Hamilton's governmental philosophy and the Whiskey Rebellion, we can see how his philosophies affected the people and his Federalist supporters. Americans saluted Hamilton and the Washington administration for their success, and the rebellion could not have ended any better for them. There were no casualties, which meant the display of force successfully prevented more violence. Federalist supporters also commended Hamilton for his work in ending the
insurrection. If another rebellion occurred in America, which would come sooner than expected, the federal government could once again show how powerful the government could be. It was not to strike terror into the people, but to portray the government as stronger than the previous one under the Articles of Confederation. Shay's Rebellion, which occurred in the mid- l 780s, proved that the central government was weak and could not organize a military quickly enough. In comparison, the Whiskey Rebellion occurred with the Constitution in place, and the federal government ended the rebellion in a more efficient manner.
Some federal officials, however, were unsure about how Hamilton handled the insurrection. Attorney General Randolph's editing of the presidential proclamation showed that Hamilton was eager and strongly desired to use military force against the protesters. Hamilton's past military history explains his eagerness to use force, particularly at Valley Forge, where he saw a weak military. The Whiskey Rebellion was the first time the government used an organized militia under the new Constitution, which serves as a significant moment for military historians. From this moment, Hamilton was seeking a public display of an improved and functional military. It is interesting to note what kind of precedent he set based on how the rebellion ended. The military used force against U.S. citizens, and later protests, which focused on issues such as labor and civil rights, convinced federal and state government officials to respond with military strength.
Thomas Jefferson, President Washington's 21 Secretary of State and Hamilton's political rival, struck down Hamilton's plans for taxation. Jefferson and Hamilton's governmental philosophies were starkly different, and there were few things each agreed upon. Taking down the whiskey tax while he was president was a perfect opportunity to show Hamilton who was in power. Hamilton could only write about his complaints and no longer act on them through the government. From the rebellion, Hamilton gained allies , made previous allies wary of him, and his enemies even more against his values and actions. By examining the relationship between his philosophy and the Whiskey Rebellion, we can simplify the complex character of Alexander Hamilton. His core goals were building a strong central government, establishing a competent and national financial system, and protecting the interests of all Americans. However, were Hamilton's actions during the Whiskey Rebellion truly good for all Americans? His writings portrayed him as an ally to the common people, but his actions reflect the desires of an elite. He accomplished many things during his career, but he never fulfilled many of his goals. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel before he truly saw his governmental ideas fulfilled, but we can confirm one component about this figure. Alexander Hamilton had clear objectives as a government official, and regardless of his success in completing those objectives, he dedicated himself to a government that would protect and serve the American people.
Works Cited
Secondary Sources
Ben-Atar, Doron, and Barbara B. Odberg. Federalists Reconsidered. Press of Virginia, 1998. " Kohn, Richard H. "The Washington Administration's Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion. The Journal ofAmeric.an History, vol. 59, no. 3, 1972, pp. 567-584.
Koritansky, John C. "Hamilton's Philosophy of Government and Administration'.' Publius, vol. 9, no. 2, 1979, pp. 99-122.
McDonald, Forrest. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography. Penguin Books, 1979.
McCraw, Thomas K. "The Strategic Vision of Alexander Hamilton'.' The American Scholar, vol. 63, no. 1, 1994, pp. 31-57.
Miranda, Lin-Manuel. Hamilton: An American Music.al. Directed by Thomas Kail. Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the Americ.an Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1986.
Staloff, Darren. Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding. Hill and Wang, 2005.
Primary Sources
Hamilton, Alexander, and Thomas Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson; Representative Selections, with Introduction Bibliography, and Notes. Edited by Frederick C. Prescott, American Book Company, 1934.
Hamilton, Alexander, and Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersonian Principles and Hamiltonian Principles; Extracts from the Writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Edited by James Truslow Adams, Little, Brown, and Company, 1932.
Hamilton, Alexander. The Papers ofAlexander Hamilton. Edited by Harold C. Syrett and Jacob Ernest Cooke, Columbia University Press, 1961-87.
By Alex Cernelich
September 11th, 2001 remains a moment in history that is spoken of in hushed tones and somber reflections . Perhaps it's the fact that the attacks were relatively recent , or that they happened in the heart of American culture , but we dare not speak about 9/11 lightly. Harsh academic debate surrounding America's role and response to 9/11, as well as satirical mockeries of the incident, such as those seen on Saturday Night Live, are a rarity. There is a collective understanding that 9/ l l is to be held to a different standard than other historical terrorist attacks or mass murders. It's no surprise that Hollywood follows suit. In the months following 9/11, filmmakers were especially careful not to trigger negative emotions regarding the attacks Films such as Serendipity (2001) , Stuart Little 2 (2002) , and Zoolander (2001) all intentionally removed images of the World Trade Center from their movies to keep their films both historically updated and emotionally light-hearted. The films that were willing to tackle 9/11 did so years later and without the hesitation of the films that immediately followed the attack, as seen in Greengrass's United 93 (2006) and Stone's World Trade Center (2006). These movies were palatable to the general public because they were docudramas that honored the fallen Released during the early post-9/11 years, the movies aimed to retell the story in
the most accurate way possible, while leaving the audience with a sense of hope for the future . There was simply nothing controversial about them-nothing surprising, and nothing political . During a time in Hollywood that was overly concerned with safe storytelling and emotional sensitivity, Spike Lee was determined to capture a feeling of New York City immediately following the incident. Editors scrambled to remove any trace of9/l l from their films while Lee was busy adjusting his latest movie, 25th Hour (2002), to include references towards the attacks 25th Hour had completed filming by September 11 , 2001 , meaning that Lee's nods towards 9/11 were not a timing coincidence, but rather a conscious decision . In accordance with Lee's famously daring filmmaking , these inclusions did not leave the audience feeling warm and fuzzy. Spike Lee's 25th Hour provides a bold political critique of America's role in the 9/11 attacks through Monty's portrayal as both a perpetrator and the victim of his own actions .
In one of the most haunting scenes in 25th Hour , Monty Brogan's (Edward Norton's) two best friends , Jacob Elinsky (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Frank Slaughtery (Bary Pepper) get together at Frank's apartment before going out to celebrate Monty's last night of freedom before he is sent to prison for dealing drugs . As they enter the
apartment, Lee reveals the view from Frank's . h. are actively searc ing 1or f dead bodies. He's apartment by dramatically moving the camera also comfortable with Monty's consequences, over their heads and angling it downwards which Lee conveys through Fran k' s criticism through the window. Lee couples this shot of Monty's luxury car that is "paid for by th e with an eerie music selection that features misery of other people" (25th Hour 00:45:ZS). an Arabic Islamic voice, as it's unveiled that Frank even goes as far as to say, "I love hirn Frank lives directly next to Ground Zero. ·"(25th like a brother, but he fuckin' deserves it Before the conversation even begins, the tone Hour 00:45:35). This isn't to say that Frank of melancholy and doom is palpable. Jacob wants to see his best friend suffer or even die and Frank briefly chat about the apartment's in jail, but he won't pretend like the prison location and the air quality in the area, but sentence is uncalled for. Susan Sontag's piece, the majority of the conversation is concerned released less than a week after 9/11, views with Monty's fate. Jacob expresses his disbelief America's consequences in the same way. She and disgust about Monty being turned in, to writes, "Where is the acknowledgement that which Frank replies, "Oh, don't feed me that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' shit. Yeah, he got caught, but hello, Monty's or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' a fucking drug dealer" (25th Hour 00:45:13). but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed It's clear that Frank doesn't possess the same superpower, undertaken as a consequence sympathy for Monty that Jacob does. As they of specific American alliances and actions?" debate what Monty deserves over Ground (Sontag). Lee seems to be in agreement with Zero, Lee wants his audience to apply Monty's Sontag's ideology, as he repeatedly questions situation in a larger sense. His reference may those who show sympathy for Monty, and be indirect, but the question is there: Did subsequently towards America. Monty and America deserve what happened on 9/11? America got cocky and abusive with their Jacob represents the softer, sympathetic side power. By doing this, they made their bed. Lee of th is argumen t , as th e o ne who views both will not pretend to be shocked that they now Mon ty (a n d presu m abl y Am eri ca) as th e
have to lie in it.
Spike Lee produces one of his most victim. Jacob shi es away fr om th e 9/ l l sce nery, as h e expresses con ce rn s about the air quality famous and controversial directorial moments and asks Frank if he's considered moving. He in 25th Hour. Monty's "fuck you" monologue questions how to comfort Monty and even is a five-minute scene where he spews hate speech towards every social and ethnic wishes that Monty could bring his beloved dog to pri son with him as a companion. Jacob is group found in New York City. He verbally o pt imi sti c that Monty will survive his seven assaults everybody: Upper East Side wives, years of incarceration and come out the same the cops, abusive priests, Jesus Christ, and person , and he completely rejects the idea that the "brothers" playing basketball to his own Monty's consequences may kill him. On the father, girlfriend, and childhood friends. Lee's other hand, Frank isn't shy about his view of cinematic flourishes in this scene are perhaps Monty as a perpetrator. Frank is comfortable the most impressive in the entire film. He with America's consequences , hence why he's strategically places the camera behind Monty, abl e to continue living next to a site where they so that the audience can see both the back of
his head and his reflection in the mirror. As he carries out his deplorable rant, it's shown that Monty's physical body is not following the movements that we see in the mirror. The filming technique creates the effect of two different people, and in this case, the two people are on opposing sides to Monty's personality. For the first time in the film, Monty is alone with his thoughts, and he seems to be having a moment of reflection and conflict. Lee is giving him the space to express unconstrained emotions, which are those of distress, vengeance, and anxiety. Attempting to displace his anger, Monty resorts to blaming every person he can think of. He's willing to degrade those who have never crossed his path by reducing them down to their harmful stereotypes, as long as he doesn't have to reflect upon his own wrongdoings. Monty is, in part, reflecting on his love-hate relationship with ew York City. He's proud of where he comes from, but he blames the people of his city (some of whom were his former clients) for his downfall. In a 2002 interview, Spike Lee admits that, "Honestly, if you lived in New York, you would have some of those feelings about any one of those races. We named everyone. I think that it doesn't necessarily make you a racist or prejudiced. It's just part of living in NYC with all these different cultures combined and clashing with one another" (Morales). In other words, Lee believes it's unrealistic to expect different ethnic and social groups to be completely tolerant of one another all the time. At the end of his rant, Monty finally has an epiphany. He comes full circle by declaring, "No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and you threw it away, you dumb fuck" (25th Hour 00:40:10). Lee cuts from one version of Monty to the other, showing the other side of Monty's personality. He is hurt
by his admission that he may, in fact, be the only one to blame for his dire fate. In a larger sense, America's quick tendency to find a group to blame is reflected in the "fuck you" monologue. America unfairly stereotypes and diminishes certain ethnic or social groups because it gives us somewhere to point our anger. After 9/11, many Americans lacked the self-awareness to recognize America's role in its own demise. Perhaps even worse is the idea that many were aware of our evils but chose to displace their anger on the innocent. According to a Uniform Crime Report published by the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims skyrocketed immediately after 9/1 I, rising 1,617% from 2000 to 2001 (FBI).
Spike Lee allows 25th Hour to end on an ambiguous note. As Monty's father, James Brogan (Brian Cox), drives Monty to prison, he imagines an alternative life for Monty-one where he could work a job, get a license, and eventually have a family. Lee illustrates this fantasy lifestyle by indulging in the film's most remarkable scenery. Wide shots of deserts and small towns give the audience a sense that this dream world is the polar opposite of Monty's life in New York City. Lee wants the exploration of this alternate reality to evoke some kind of personal reflection for the viewer. In an article published in Chicago Reader regarding 25th Hour, Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, "We're asked to think about not just how such a plan might be carried out but whether this is the ending to the movie that we want. Is this what actually happens to Monty? And if we prefer the alternate ending, does that mean that we don't think drug dealers should go to prison?"
Preferring the alternate ending to this film, the one where Monty gets to live a comfortable life, also means to prefer a reality where Monty
events of 9/11. It leaves the audience to ask 26 is free from true consequence. Similarly, ail? Or allowing America to remain unchecked as themselves-did Monty really go to J · did he get his fairytale ending? Lee believes , the world's largest military superpower has its that an individual's perception of 25th Hours ethical concerns. This is certainly not to say th · b liefin that the innocent victims of9/l l deserved conclusion says volumes about eir e their fate, but to say that America did deserve consequence.
I have argued that Spike Lee provides to become conscious of their role as the a bold political critique of America's role in perpetrator. Lee's idealistic version of Monty's the 9/l 1 attacks through Monty's portrayal fate represents a fantasized American ideal of a as both the perpetrator and the victim. In world without consequence. Much like Monty and his father, until the very last moments, making this argument, I have focused, in particular, on the symbolism behind Monty's America believed they could inflict death and suffering upon others without ever receiving most emotionally significant moments in the a taste of their own medicine. Lee's seemingly film, as well as his relationships with those who are closest to him. In focusing on such small directorial choices in this scene are symbolic of a much larger idea. When James moments, I have sought to show how Lee used 25th Hour to capture the nation's attitude tells Monty, "You're a New Yorker. That will never change" (02:05:18), Lee cuts to shots in the months following the devastating of the city that very obviously give center attacks. It was a time when New York City stage to the American flag. Monty is New was in a state of despair and conflict, with no York City, and New York City is America. clear path leading to a brighter future. Lee Monty's story can be applied to America leans into this entanglement of emotions and in the sense that our unethical alliances uses his artistic filmmaking skills to ask his and actions make us a prisoner to our own audience to consider the complexity of9/l l, and the role in which America played in its circumstance. As James is driving the getaway car, he sings the lyrics to the Scottish song own tragedy. Monty's story, and the story of "Loch Lomond;' specifically the lyric, "You 9/11, have the ability to teach our nation a take the high road and I'll take the low road" valuable lesson if we are willing to accept it. Despite what happened on September 11th, (25th Hour 02:02:04-02:02:06). This lyric is 2001, many American citizens and politicians representative of the sacrifice James is making for his son. He's allowing his son to take the still see our country as infallible. Post-9 / 11, high road, which is a humble life of safety America reacted by asserting its power once and family. James takes the low road because again. We initiated an attack on Iraq without he'll never get to see his son again and will sufficient evidence of their involvement. We forever live with the burdensome secret of could not appear weak to the terrorists, but we having helped him dodge his prison time. learned that our quick need to react caused Lee chooses for the final shot of the movie unjustifiable and unnecessary loss of life in to be a cut back to Monty in the passenger Iraq. Our subsequent invasion of Afghanistan seat of the car, headed towards his unknown resulted in a 20-year-long military occupation. future. This ambiguous conclusion parallels America recently withdrew troops in the nation's sense of uncertainty following the Afghanistan, which has put the Afghan people
back at the mercy of al-Qaeda forces we sought world and then respond with surprise when to eliminate. And what will our consequences the treatment is the same for our country. be? It remains to be seen. America simply Much like Monty Brogan, America struggles must handle their international affairs with to accept responsibility for our role as the intention and respect. We cannot carelessly perpetrator. Our awakening is long overdue. continue to assert our dominance in ways that cause suffering in other parts of the
Works Cited
25th Hour. Dir. Spike Lee. Gamut Films, 2002. Federal Bureau of Investigation. "Hate Crime Statistics, 2001." FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2002, pp. 5-17.
Morales, Wilson. "25th Hour: An Interview with Spike Lee." Black Film, Dec. 2002. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "Feeling the Unthinkable (25th Hour)." Chicago Reader, 14 June 2020.
Sontag, Susan. "Tuesday, And After: New York Writers Respond to 9/11." The New Yorker, 16 Sept. 2001.
By Seth Stobart
In introducing the issue of Utopian Studies which would focus on Fredric Jameson's work on Utopia, critic Tom Moylan begins his introduction with the following quote from Toni Morrison's Paradise (1997): "How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin the human imagination became trying to achieve it" (Morrison 306). Moylan invokes Morrison's work in Paradise to illuminate Jameson's primary contribution to utopian studies, the argument that "Utopia is not about this or that n a rrated alternative but rather is a 'machine' that enables the historical process of reaching toward the horizon of freedom" (Moylan 1). Moylan suggests that this approach is helpful for coming to terms with the way Morrison's novel offers an "extensive, formal mediation on utopian desire" (Moylan 2). I will use Moylan's suggestion for approaching this text with Jameson in mind, focusing on the ways Morrison formally stages her vibrant mediation on separation (closure) and community. When reading the Utopian dimension of the text, I will follow one of Jameson's recommendations in Archaeologies of the Future. Jameson argues that it will be important for critics to look towards both the space of the city and the individual building to explore the allegorical processes of Utopian literature. For him, the conscious Utopian program necessitates an attempt to "project new spatial totalities, in the aesthetic of the city itself" (Jameson 3), whereas the Utopian impulse emerges in the expression
of the individual building: "we should make a place for the individual building as a space of Utopian investment, that monumental part which cannot be the whole and yet attempts to express it" (Jameson 3). In line with Jameson's work, I will look towards the way Morrison imagines the planning of social spaces in Paradise to uncover the way she reveals or gestures towards a mediation on the "complexities of Utopia itself" (Moylan 2) through the design of these spaces. I will argue that Morrison uses the linear structure of Ruby to communicate a type of patriarchal closure inherent in the Utopian program, whereas Morrison uses the queer design and openness of the Convent to present a hopeful vision of a queer Utopian impulse.
I will begin by taking up Mark A. Tabone's substantial interrogation of the Utopian form of Paradise in his essay, "Rethinking Paradise: Toni Morrison and Utopia at the Millennium." In his work, Tabone argues that the modern utopian enclave of Ruby and the postmodern utopian enclave of the Convent clash in a "dialectical turn that not only opens up the enclosure of the enclave but also gestures towards a new, post-postmodern utopian politics" (Tabone 133). By modern utopia, Tabone refers to the way Ruby follows the traditional narrative of Thomas More's Utopia, that it requires a certain disjunction or separation from dominant society and dramatizes what Tabone calls the "master trope of the separatist enclave" (Tabone 134). On the other hand, Tabone
defines the postmodern Convent as a kind of "postmodern feminist utopia ... [where the] liberating identities the Convent women fashion for themselves shatter the rigid boundaries of Ruby's particular construction of True Womanhood" (Tabone 137). The most critical insight to pull from Tabone's work on Paradise is that "the disruption of the town's narrative is a potentially utopian event it opens imaginative possibilities for change amid a formerly fossilized sameness" (Tabone 140). The suggestion here is that at the level of narrative structure, Morrison's text forces an interrogation of a radical break from an apparent hegemonic totality and closure. In their essay, "Queering Paradise: Toni Morrison's Anti-capitalist Production;' Heather Tapley echoes some ofTabone's argument. Tapley approaches Paradise by arguing that Morrison uses the text to disrupt dominant Western epistemologies of race, gender, and sexual identity (Tapley 23). What curiously unites these two approaches, and what I would like to discuss, is the way both queer and Utopian readings of the novel find an alliance in the resistant qualities of the Convent.
As I look forward to Paradise, I will pick up on the way Toni Morrison imagines the planning of space in both Ruby and the Convent. I will then tie these elements of the text back to Tabone and Tapley's critical arguments about Paradise, that Morrison's commitment to incompleteness and resistance is an essential aspect of both her radically queer and Utopian politics. Ultimately, I hope to show that Ruby's commitment to patriarchal finance closes or shuts down its potential for radical queer or Utopian politics. For the Convent, I hope to establish that its commitment to an anti-normative queerness
opens its potential for Utopian politics. That
is, in Paradise, Morrison uses queerness to communicate a vision of how one would "reach toward the horizon of freedom" (Moylan 2).
I will begin by looking towards the way city planning in Ruby reveals something to us about the way Morrison imagines a Utopia built on separation, what Tabone would call a modern Utopia. Jameson himself names this kind of Utopian form the Utopian program, defined by its attempt to project "new spatial totalities, in the aesthetic of the city itself" (Jameson 3). Then, when we look towards Ruby, we should expect a commitment to communicating a type of closure and cessation in its model for an intentional community. Morrison gives a description of Ruby in the Seneca chapter, pointing to its particularly arborescent structure. Central Avenue travels north to south for three miles, the approximate distance from the Oven (in the south) to Sargeant's Feed and Seed (in the north). From Central Avenue, five branch streets emerge to the East (named after the gospels and St. Peter), and five branch streets emerge to the West (named after the streets to the East). Ruby's highly structured streets put the inhabitants at ease; Morrison's narrator even remarks, "the sanity of this pleased most everybody" (Morrison 114). The parallel structure of the city streets ensures that there is always opportunity for neat and organized expansion, that is, expansion to an already established model. Here, it is the grid-like structure of the Ruby itself that dictates a model for an already approved method of expansion. Morrison's narrator keys us into Deek's thoughts about this potential for
expansion, saying, "there was always room for slackly against their thighs" (Morrison 13). additional houses (financed, if need be, by the In this passage, Morrison displays the way Morgan brothers bank) in the plots and acres the men of the town police and monitor the behind and beyond" (Morrison 114). There sexual experiences of the women. By design, are two elements of this phrase I would like to the town is separate from any police presence, analyze. First, that the "plots and acres behind "ninety miles from the nearest O for operator and beyond" are the kinds of pre-approved and ninety from the nearest badge" (Morrison methods of expansion I am discussing. 13), which means it is solely the responsibility Second, the parenthetic here points us to a key of the men to police the Ruby. Through aspect of this expansion. Expansion within their acts of protection, the men enforce this Utopian enclave requires the finance of the the closure of the Utopian enclave while Black-owned banks of the Old Fathers. Misner simultaneously closing/limiting the sexual goes as far as to say that the Morgan's money experiences of the women of the town. Thus, "financed the town" (Morrison 115). I stress once again, the design of the city of Ruby, its this point to emphasize the way Morrison ties separation from the police, necessitates the the strict and controlled arborescent structure patriarchal enforcement of closure and control of the city streets to the tight financial of women tying modern Utopian closure to patriarchal control of Ruby's founders. Thus, patriarchal control, particularly the policing in Morrison's work, elements of patriarchal and surveillance over the women of the town's finance oversee or preside over the very sexuality. structure of the Utopian city itself.
The separation of Ruby from medical Morrison continues in this exploration facilities also drastically influences the of the way patriarchal control influences the reproductive rights of the women of the town, structure of the city and vice versa when again tying designs of closure to patriarchal Morrison's narrator points to an anxiety control. Morrison's narrator communicates associated with this isolation: "now everything worries over abortion access in the Convent requires [the twins'] protection. From the through the whispers and rumors of the beginning when the town was founded they town. When discussing a pregnancy, Arnette knew isolation did not guarantee safety" asks, "what are you going to do about it?" (Morrison 12). This "protection" serves as and Morrison's narrator keys us into a secret a guise for the men's control over the town's meaning behind her words: "what she meant women. The example Morrison gives after was: I'm going to Langston in September, through her narrator is an incident when and I don't want to be pregnant or to abort strangers visit the town driving around, "their or get married or feel bad by myself or face eyes crinkled in mischief [as] they drive my family" (Morrison 54). There are two around the girls, making U-turns and K's" important aspects about reproductive care (Morrison 12-13). In response, the men of in Ruby in this passage. First, in the content the town emerge from every building: "out of what Arnette says, she needs some form of houses, the backyards, off the scaffold of of separation from the restricted Ruby to get the bank ... more men come out, and more. what she truly desires. Second, in the form of Their guns are not pointing at anything, just what she says, Arnette fails to communicate
this desire with K.D., instead speaking through coded or indirect language. The reader needs the narrator's intervention to see Arnette's frustration with Ruby's limitations in a way her dialogue with him alone would not. Additionally, when discussing the meeting between the nine men who would enter the Convent and massacre its inhabitants, Morrison's narrator remarks, "outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence ... four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons one thing that connected all these catastrophes was in the Convent" (Morrison 11 ). Morrison beautifully displays in this passage how the Convent not only threatens the closure of Ruby's Utopian structure, but also threatens the men's control over the reproductive rights of women of the town, tying Utopian closure to patriarchal control once again. Throughout this section on the design of Ruby as a city, Morrison continually ties the town's closure (or supposed closure), whether that be financial, racial, sexual, or even medical closure, to its patriarchal control of its inhabitants, particularly the women. Turning towards the aspects of queer design in the Convent, I will argue that Morrison imbues this social space with an openness that the town of Ruby does not have.
The Convent as a space offers a wholly different type of structural architecture, one built on top of a history of oppositional forces, one that I will argue exists in a space of queerness. I intend to draw on definitions from queer theory which point towards anti-normativity as an integral aspect of
queerness.i Initially a safehouse for criminality, 31 the "embezzler's folly" (Morrison 3) seems to have always existed outside the realm of that which is acceptable. The Sisters of the Sacred Cross then convert the embezzler's folly into a school for Arapaho girls, and finally the space becomes the Convent as we know it in Paradise. Morrison imagines remnants of this initial design, particularly its explicit sensuality, in the interior design of the Convent. When the men first enter the convent, Morrison's narrator describes the remnants of several of these objects: "the ornate bathroom fixtures, which sickened the nuns, were replaced with good plain spigots The Sisters of the Sacred Cross chipped away all the nymphs, but curves of their marble hair still strangle grape leaves" (Morrison 3). Morrison designs the space of the Convent such that traces of a previous sexual liberation creep their way through its interior design. Thus, these items of interior decor, bathroom fixtures and nymphs, were aesthetic objects that were not accepted by the normative culture of the nuns and therefore stamped out. Other aspects of the design of the Convent follow this consistent thread. The design of the Convent as a building will consistently contain queer aesthetic expressions that offer an alternative to the dominant normative expressions of Ruby.
The most significant addition the women of the convent make to its design is during Consolata's ritual. During this collective act of aesthetic expression, the women of the convent project their bodies into the design of the building: first with natural features: breast and pudenda, toes, ears and head hair. Seneca duplicated in robin's egg blue one of her more elegant scars, one drop of red at its tip.
Later on, when she had the hunger to slice her inner thigh, she chose instead to mark the open body on the cellar floor. (Morrison 265)
Through this ritualistic act, Morrison displays a profound focus on integrating the women's bodies with the social space of the Convent. It is a form of collective, ritualistic, and symbolic expression through which the women are "reminded of the moving bodies they wore" (Morrison 265). Sara Ahmed argues in Queer Phenomenology that "bodies take the shape of norms that are repeated over time and with force" (Ahmed 91), and that the straight body and the heterosexual couple are allowed to "extend into [a normative] space" whereas the queer body "does not extend into such a space" (Ahmed 91-92). Ahmed's arguments allow us to see the way the social norms of Ruby fail the women of the Convent in Morrison's writing, disallowing certain somatic expressions. What the women achieve through this ritual is a queer somatic expression through the aesthetic integration with the physical building of the Convent. In fact, when the normative aesthetic taste meets this queer somatic expression, Deek and K.D. look on with disgust. When Deek and K.D. enter the cellar, they focus their gaze on its "defilement and violence and perversions beyond imagination ... [the] sea of depravity" (Morrison 287). The discomfort Deek and K.D. experience when they enter the Convent, that which makes K.D. "finger his cross" and pushes Deek to consider shielding his eyes with sunglasses, is a confrontation with its non-normative queer design. Additionally, the Convent contains nooks and crannies, which make it possible for the women to hide from the men. In fact, Morrison's opening paragraph remarks on
the fact that, "hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent" (Morrison 3). The Convent gives its inhabitant the ability to escape from the confines of a society that looks down on, confines, and harms them. Morrison points to this liberatory feeling at the end of the Consolata chapter, finishing with the phrase "the Convent women were no longer haunted. Or hunted" (Morrison 266). This is a social space defined by its acceptance of that which is haunted or hunted by the social norms of the Out There. In Lone's chapter, the narration reflects on these thoughts for a moment: "[they were] not women locked away from men; but worse, women who chose themselves for company, which is to say not a convent but a coven" (Morrison 276). To Lone, the Convent represents a resistant refuge from the patriarchal Out There of the text. In Paradise, the design of the Convent represents a queer resistance to the closure and hierarchy of the male-dominated Ruby. It offers a vastly different vision of Utopia, more akin to Jameson's view of Utopia as a process, one that is open and integrated. Importantly, it is also a vision of Utopia that is, by definition, resistant to the closure and totality of represented through Ruby's closure.ii
In concluding, I would like to turn explicitly back towards Tabone's work. Remember, as this essay is concerned, Tabone's most critical insight is that Morrison is trying to formally stage a clash between postmodern and modern visions of Utopia. Through studying the way Morrison designs space in Paradise, Morrison enacts this formal dialectic through even the most mundane elements of the text's content. I argued that the rigid and arborescent city planning of Ruby emerges
out of the town's notions of Black patriarchal disruption necessarily takes. (Jameson separatism. In the aesthetics of Ruby, I read an ideal of a projected totality and a commitment to closure built on the financial separatism of the Black-owned town and the policing of its inhabitants' sexuality. The Convent came to represent a queer resistance to that very same closure. Its vulgarity, sexuality, its queer bodies, and lifestyle offer a resistant strain of community that drives the Utopian politics of Morrison's novel. Jameson himself in Archaeologies concludes on a vision of Utopia not unlike Morrison's. In his closing chapter, Jameson writes:
This is indeed how Utopia recovers its vocation at the very moment where the undesirability of change is everywhere dogmatically affirmed disruption is, then, the name for a new discursive strategy, and Utopia is the form such
231, emphasis added) My hope here is to point to an intersection between Jameson's work on Utopia as resistance to narrative closure and queerness as a resistance to the closure ofheteronormativity and patriarchy. This seemingly unlikely alliance establishes queer theory as a mechanism through which we can establish the kind of resistance Jameson looks for in Utopia. Morrison enacts this intersection through the form of her conclusion, as Tabone points to this in his essay arguing that Paradise "mov[ es] beyond the ambiguity or outright refusal of representation it fully, if tentatively, represents an 'impossible' but affirmative vision of the future" (Tabone 140). Morrison builds this tentative but affirmative vision of the future into the design and structure of the social spaces of the novel.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Verso Books, 2007, p. 431.
Morrison, Toni. Paradise. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007.
Moylan, Tom. "Special Section on the Work of Fredric Jameson." Utopian Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, Dec. 1998, p. 1.
Tabone, Mark A. "Rethinking Paradise: Toni Morrison and Utopia at the Millennium." African American Review, vol. 49, no. 2, Summer 2016, pp. 129-44. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2016.0026.
Tapley, Heather. "Queering Paradise: Toni Morrison's Anti-Capitalist Production." Feminist Theory, vol. 14, no. 1, 2013, pp. 21-37. PhilPapers, https://doi.org/10.l 177/1464700112468568.
By Claudia Smallwood
The film High Noon (1952), directed by Fred Zinnemann, is a category of the Western film genre that Andre Bazin has deemed the "super western:' In "The Evolution of the Western;' Bazin categorizes High Noon, as well as a number of other westerns that appeared in the 1950s, as "super westerns;' arguing that the formal qualities of the films distinguish them from the traditional western genre. Bazin and the critics Gary Johnson and Austin Fisher believe that the addition of political or sociological commentaries and allegories that appear in more modern westerns such as High Noon differentiate them from the generic traditions of"real" westerns. He believes that the addition of these qualities, along with the lack of stereotypical western elements in High Noon, dilutes the film's overall power to be deemed a traditional western. Although many critics such as Bazin may argue that these qualities introduced are not endemic to the western genre, I will argue these newer, extrinsic qualities allow the western to live on and enrich the viewer's understanding of the westerns epic mythology and inherent contradictions, rather than reinforce the same themes and ideas that traditional westerns relay over and over. It is High Noon's portrayal of women, the absence of traditional western film characteristics, and allegories of democracy that allow the film to function as a western that works out its political, aesthetic, and ethical implications. In this case, political implications should be thought of as an indirect suggestion or commentary
about a certain political climate, whether it be past or current. Aesthetic implications relate to the perception of how pleasing, or in this case different, a film's visual and aural features are used to create non-narrative dimensions. Ethical implications will refer to the principles previously relayed in "real" westerns that are rooted in systemic issues.
It is evident to any viewer that High Noon offers a different approach to women than that of a more traditional, stereotypical western . Zinnemann effectively plays off the traditional stereotypes of women during this period, all whilst giving them more of a voice, feelings, and a liberating metanarrative. Bazin argues something similar: "The myth of the western illustrates, and both initiates and confirms woman in her role as vestal of the social virtues ... within her is concealed the physical future, and by way of the institution of the family to which she aspires as the root is drawn to the earth, its moral foundation" (Bazin 145). However, Zinnemann takes a different approach than this when portraying the women within High Noon. He introduces the two lead female characters, Amy Fowler Kane and Helen Ramirez, in what one would first assume were stereotypes. There is the traditional, Quaker woman (Amy) dressed in all white, opposing the Mexican American woman (Helen) dressed in all black. It is first assumed by the audience that there will be the classic good-girl-versusbad-girl narrative between these two characters, especially considering they are both emotionally
involved with the leading man. However, Zinnemann breaks western convention, as viewers soon learn that neither woman fits the mold one would expect them to. Instead, they survive the narrative in ways unimaginable for a traditional western, both taking action and authority over their own bodies. These women do not obtain the "social virtues" expected of them, but instead criticize the patriarchal system, all while recognizing and drawing attention to their own racial differences (High Noon, 55:36-57:07). Zinnemann abandons the traditional "spirit" of the western here, as he does not idolize the American in any way, nor is there a prevalent theme of hegemony, which is typically seen in westerns. It would have been expected for Amy to remain the submissive Quaker female and for Helen Ramirez to be villainized in one form or another due to her race. Yet High Noon abandons these stereotypes to instead enrich the viewers' understanding of western mythology. In the article, "The Women in High Noon: A Metanarrative of Difference;' Gwendolyn Foster makes a similar argument: "Zinnemann allows for the difference to exist between the women's world views, and Helen and Amy form a union which is continually visually reinforced through the inscription of shots of the women together, watching and waiting, until the climatic male killing spree is over" (Foster 75). Viewers can see Zinnemann breaking conventional western stereotypes through his scenes of the female characters alone, as he allows them to fulfill different roles as women, as well as form a relationship between each other, despite differing in race. It is through these two characters' dialogue and interactions with one another that viewers recognize the voice of the repressed and what it means to be a woman, or a member of a marginalized racial group, in America. In High
Noon, Zinnemann highlights the voices of the
repressed whilst breaking down the traditional generic conventions of the western through the unconventional portrayal of these female characters.
Perhaps one of the most noticeable qualities of High Noon that separates it from other films within the western genre is its overall aesthetic, or the lack of a "western aesthetic:' Zinnemann abandons the Fordian landscapes of the traditional western film, as well as the idea and overall theme of expansion itself. The storyline does not center around claiming new land or territory, so shots of the west as extensive land are not necessary-there is no presence oflandscape visuals, cattle, or cowboy chases. Instead, High Noon is more visually creative and expressive than traditional westerns, as it draws you into meaningful character storylines that convey a relevant message. Zinnemann takes a different approach, allowing the storyline of High Noon to take place in real time. This technique creates a tension throughout the entire film, as viewers can see the minutes ticking by to high noon on the close-ups of the clock, serving as a reminder of Frank Miller's dreaded arrival. Zinnemann includes several close-ups, allowing viewers to feel the emotion of the moment, rather than just being told it through dialogue. However, Bazin argues: "The western has virtually no use for the close-up, even for the medium shot, preferring by contrast, the travelling shot and the pan which refuse to be limited by the frame line and which restore to space its fullness" (Bazin 147). Although Bazin argues that the western has no usage for the close-up, it can be counterargued that these close-ups allow viewers a better understanding of the characters' thoughts and emotions. Without the close-up, Zinnemann would not build suspense as effectively. It is
through the close-ups of Kane's sweat-covered face that viewers can recognize his distress. High Noon utilizes camera techniques unique for a western, such as close-ups, to enhance the visual storytelling, and create an overall personal feel to the film. For example, towards the end of the film, the camera begins with a close-up of Kane's face, then slowly pulls back, rising on a crane, to further exemplify the empty street that Kane is heading down to face Miller alone. This unique visual technique allows viewers to understand the gravity of the situation, as well as what it may feel like to be Kane at this moment. The absence of typical traditional western aesthetics, along with the addition of newer film techniques, allows High Noon to enrich viewers' understanding of the western genre as it introduces newer aspects to the mise-en-scene. When speaking on the genre of the western and what allows a film to be classified as a western, Jim Kitses' article, "Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western" states, "The model we most hold before us is of a varied and flexible structure, a thematically fertile and ambiguous world of historical material shot through with archetypal elements which are themselves ever in flux" (Kitses 63 ). Kitses' argument means that just because a western film introduces new aspects and techniques that are not endemic to the western, critics cannot dismiss them from being labeled as a western. Critics should not be thinking about the elements that must remain in a film to categorize it as a western, but instead about what can be added to enrich and improve viewers' understandings that the western is susceptible to being challenged and changed. Lastly, High Noon functions as a western that challenges traditional political ideologies through its portrayal of and commentary on democracy. Instead of introducing themes
of betrayal and loyalty between two separate characters, Zinnemann takes the approach of focusing on an entire town's betrayal of the lead protagonist. Kane is adamant that all people have a responsibility to society, and that the town must help him as they prepare for the arrival of Frank Miller. However, as he is outvoted in the church scene, it is soon evident that the town has no interest in defending their democracy or helping Kane, as the issue does not affect them directly. Kane even approaches the town's retired marshal, who tells him, "People got to talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it ... maybe because deep down they just don't care" (High Noon, 53:10-53:15). This can function as an allegory within the film for speaking up to defend those who are unfairly attacked. It is a testament to law and order, and a unique theme for a western to portray. The traditional western convention usually consists of a town or group of people coming together to create a democracy and protect themselves, whatever the scenario may be. However, it is through High Noon that viewers see the reality of what a democracy consists of in America. It is ironic that the only other character who understands the concept of defending one's own liberty is an immigrant from a country that was neither free nor democratic. Helen Ramirez, being one of the only characters to understand the importance of this, serves to remind viewers that the democracy that America is built on is not as stable as it may appear to be in other western films. The article "Fred Zinnemann's High Noon" by Louis Giannetti states, "Like a sacrificial victim, Will Kane is trapped in the streets ofHadleyville, a reluctant candidate for heroism. Kane is as naive as he is civilized: he doesn't see the need for heroism in a civilized society" (Giannetti
6). Kane does not understand why he must become the hero and fend off Frank Miller by himself, without the help of any of his deputies, yet he reluctantly does so as he feels it is his obligation to the town. It is here that High Noon functions to promote the idea of democracy as an unstable ideological concept, critiquing the American myth of a democracy itself Critics such as Bazin may argue that introducing these allegories and themes of political controversy takes away from the western. However, it is the addition of these newer ideas of democracy that allows the western genre to remain relevant and thrive. One can argue that these ideals about democracy do not take away from the western at all, as they are what the western is founded on. Even though the typical western presumes itself to be an epic, and attempts to promote democracy, it is at its root not the story of democracy, but more about the ideological contradictions that appear at the heart of the epic. Introducing democracy as an unstable concept with ideological contradictions says more about the actual construction of the American frontier than the standard westerns, which simply promote it. Kitses makes the argument that, "In this context, the western appears a huge iceberg, the small tip of which has been the province of criticism, the great undifferentiated and submerged body below principally agitating the social critic, the student of mass media criticism has failed to explore the dialectic that keeps the form vigorous. For if mass production at the base exploits the peak, the existence of that base allows refinement and reinvigoration'' (Kitses 65). It is through these additions and ideas that critics must examine the structural narrative of the western.
If the western did not let us in on the secrets of the construction of the west, then our ideas about the American political conscious may be diluted, rather than the film itself being diluted for lacking these newer "super western" aspects. What is the purpose of the western genre if critics do not allow it to expand and explore the societal and political issues that it is itself built on?
Overall, the extrinsic qualities seen in "super westerns" function to enrich the genre of the western itself, rather than diminish it. Although critics may argue that these newer qualities dilute the power of the western, it is evident that they function to do the exact opposite. Zinnemann's choices to portray women differently, utilize non-traditional camera techniques, and promote differing ideas about democracy all operate to work through aesthetic, political, and ethical concerns within this genre. High Noon is primarily a film about the critique of the western itself, as it works to expose the frontier mythology without ever actually mentioning what happened. The production of ideologies that reject the idea of American western expansion opens up a platform in which the western genre can be transformed. Although this abandons the typical approach to a western, it is necessary to break apart the genre's classical structure to produce and critique the construction of the west itself. These added qualities that are extrinsic to the western allow viewers to have an enriched understanding about the genre and its inherent contradictions as they now understand the ways in which it can allegorize an American public ideal.
Works Cited
Bazin, Andre. "The Evolution of the Western." The Evolution of the Western, University of California Press, 2004, pp. 149-57. www.degruyter.com, https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520931268-014.
Foster, Gwendolyn. "The Women in 'High Noon:' A Metanarrative of Difference." Film Criticism, vol. 18/19, no. 3/1, 1994, pp. 72-81.
Giannetti, Louis. "Fred Zinnemann's 'High Noon." Film Criticism, vol.1, no. 3, 1976, PP· 2-12. High Noon. Directed by Fred Zinnemann, Stanley Kramer Productions, 1952. Hollows, Joanne, et al., editors. The Film Studies Reader. Hodder Education Publishers, 2000. Kitses, Jim. "Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western." The Film Studies Reader, edited by Joanne Hollows et al., Hodder Education Publishers, 2000.
By Emily Bueter
On May 17th, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court came to an important decision that would forever affect the American education system. The ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education was nine to zero, in which the justices declared, "In the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place" (Telgen xxx) This decision was met with great opposition from the Southern states because of how segregated they were. Segregation, the method that was employed to separate races, was deeply rooted in the Southern states and was practiced in almost all public institutions including schools. This ruling was an atomic bomb that had been dropped on Southern American society, and there were many attempts to stop this verdict from infiltrating the Southern school systems
On February 3rd, 1956, riots broke out as Autherine Lucy attempted to integrate the University of Alabama On August 30th to 31st of the same year, Texas Governor Allan Shivers called the Texas Rangers to prevent the enrollment of Black students at Mansfield High School (ibid. xxxi).
On September 2nd, 1957, one of the first successful attempts to integrate a high school in Arkansas began. This series of integration attempts became known as the Little Rock Crisis (ibid .) . This crisis of desegregation in schools is a well -known story in the chapter
of the Civil Rights Movement , which largely took place in the 1950s and the 1960s. When present-day American students are taught about school integration, they learn the names of the students who helped transform the education system. Ruby Bridges , Autherine Lucy, and other young Black students' pictures have become the token images of the desegregation process within Southern schools . The Little Rock Nine are no different. This group of students has become synonymous with the integration crisis. They are often taught like a collective experience, and not like they are nine different teenagers varying in age , grade levels, hobbies, and interests who were hand-picked to lead this charge. As a result, each one of the members had a vastly different perspective based on their age , gender, and home life. It is the uniqueness of their experiences that has allowed this story to be one of success that made Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford , Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Melba Patillo Beals, Minnijean Brown, and Thelma Mothershed key figures in the American Civil Rights Movement.
The members of the Little Rock Nine were not just a group of Black students who lived in the Little Rock city schools district and suddenly decided one day to enroll at the previously all-white Central High School.
Rather, these students attended the schools that were built for Black students by the Little Rock City School Board. They were hand-selected from a group of about 150 volunteer students through a screening process conducted by the Little Rock City School Board (Roberts 86). Originally, Central High School was not unlike the University of Alabama and Mansfield High School. They, too, dragged their feet in the school integration process until the NAACP got involved (Anderson 63).
Not only would the desegregation be a transition for the students, but so would the grade divide at Central High School. The Black schools in Little Rock split the grade levels up differently than Central High School did; Central served students from grades nine through twelve. Horace Mann High School, built in 1953, was intended to be for Black students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve, whereas Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior High School was for students in grades seven, eight, and nine (Roberts 83). It was from this group of volunteers that the Little Rock City School Board had chosen seventeen Black students to be the individuals to start the integration process in Central High School. However, the rumor on the street was that Little Rock City Schools' superintendent, Virgil Blossom, had told the school board to use the screening process as a way of diminishing the number of Black students who would attend Central High School. This caused the number of students to continue to fall until it reached the now-famous number nine (ibid. 86).
These nine students spent at least a year during one of the most formative stages in a person's life in an institution that did not want them and did not make it easy for them to succeed. The historical and profound experience that these students lived through
prompted some of them to recount it via memoirs or co-written works about their experience at Central High School during the 1957 school year. In this research paper, I hope to shed light on the experiences that the members of the Little Rock Nine lived through by using their memoirs. By doing so, I will show that although they were all from the same town and attended the same school, they each had a unique experience at Central High. Each member had a different experience based on their personal background, their reason for enrolling at Central High School, and their gender.
Ernest Green was the eldest member of the Little Rock Nine and was the only senior in the group. Green has a unique position in the Little Rock Crisis because in 1958, he became the first African American to graduate from Central High School (Telgen 90). Green described never feeling like he lived in the "Deep South," a place where there was more intense, and often violent, racial segregation, like in Jackson, Mississippi or Birmingham, Alabama. His logic for this was based on the fact that Little Rock had been able to desegregate both their public buses and the public library without issue (Wyman 169). He also cited the fact that the local university had accepted Black students, although that process was not as smooth as integrating the buses or library. However, Green described how Central High School made sure to limit the Black students' experience by not allowing them to participate in extracurricular activities like sports, clubs, and even prom. Green had played the tenor saxophone for five years in his school band at Horace Mann. Having this part of his school experience taken away from him while transitioning into a hostile environment was upsetting for Green (ibid. 170).
Green believed the integration of Central High School "was important enough to [miss out on] those other activities" and that he "could give them up" so he could participate in a greater cause (ibid. 174) . The desire to be a part of something greater and making a difference was important to Green in his youth, and it was an ideology that followed him throughout his life (ibid ). He wanted a better, fairer world , and he believed his volunteering would allow him to have a hand in doing that. Later in his life , Green spoke of"people like [his] mother and [his] grandfather, who was a postman and had attempted to vote in the Democratic primary" as really being "the backbone of the Southern resistance" (ibid 173) Green had the support of his mother, although she was not comfortable with his decision because she knew it would put her young son in danger. Green's mother participated in small acts of resistance that were "big enough to be seen, but still big enough to be noticed," but her teenage son enrolling at a previously all-white high school for his senior year was a big deal (ibid 178) She knew that while it may have been the right thing to do for the greater good, it would also paint a target on the entire family's back (ibid . 176) . Elizabe th Eck fo rd of th
apo
eCo unts . W ill "Scr eam Image,"pho tog raph, Vanity Fai r, Septembe r 2007.
One of the most unfortunately iconic moments from the Little Rock Crisis is the
image of Elizabeth Eckford with sunglasses 41 on, schoolbooks in hand, and walking away from a White girl who is yelling behind her. You can feel the hatred this girl, Hazel Bryan Massery, a student at Central, had towards the stoic Elizabeth. You can see it in her furrowed brow, her glaring eyes , and her seething mouth. This picture is from September 4th , 1957, the first day of school at Central High School, when the Little Rock Nine first tried to attend school (Margolick 36). However, that attempt was unsuccessful due to the angry mob and Governor Orval Faubus' use of the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students from entering the school. This became painfully ironic, as President Eisenhower later instructed the Arkansas National Guard to escort the students to their class, ensuring their safety inside the building (Telgen 148) Eckford's presence at the school was an accident, a miscommunication between her, the rest of the group, and the NAACP. She faced the mob alone for this reason and was bombarded with racial slurs , had things thrown at her, was spit on , followed , and continuously harassed as she left school property and waited for the bus . The events of September 4th shaped Eckford's experience at Central and the other eight members'. They were all terrified that something like that would also happen to them (LaNier 73).
As I stated previously, the Little Rock Nine were a group of teenagers with unique interests that often get lumped together as a collective. Their individuality is often forgotten The nine students all share the experience ofleading the charge for school integration in Arkansas, but the effect that this had on each student was different. The bullying, racism, and, at times, outright hatred that the students faced were based on their individual identity and
how their White peers and teachers perceived chose to participate in this process because it them . These students were made into walking just made sense. He lived in the neighborhood billboards , displaying what this process would that surrounded Central High School. To get to mean for the Arkansas education system, most his designated school, Paul Laurence Dunbar of all Elizabeth Eckford Her terrifying first day Junior High School, he would have to walk past led her to keep her head down. She participated Central on his way to the bus stop that took in school, but no more than she had to . She him across town. Many Black students had to would not answer questions in class and kept take long bus rides to Horace Mann or Dunbar her eyes on her feet in the hallway to hide from because the schools were not conveniently the vicious gaze of her classmates (Marigold located for most of the student population 195) (ibid . 86). Since the rules were changing, as Another Little Rock Nine member, Roberts recalls , why wouldn't he pick the Minnijean Brown, did not let Eckford's option that allowed him to walk to school? situation deter her from seeking the most out of During the time leading up to his her education at Central High . Brown followed enrollment at Central High School, Roberts the rules the Little Rock City School Board described being aware of the unfair advantage had laid out, but she did push the unwritten that his White neighbors had over him: boundaries as she would "try to act as the "nothing about the way things were ordered White students did in the classroom" (Roberts at the time made any sense to me. Legally, 101). She participated in class discussions socially, economically-everything was skewed and would volunteer to answer questions. She in favor of white people" (ibid. 87). Roberts walked through the hallway with confidence recalls a story of a White student kicking the because she had earned her spot and was back of his chair so hard that the soft wooden proud of it. However, this confident behavior chair bowed into his back. This was a defining was not received well by her White peers. This moment in Roberts's experience at Central attitude placed a target on her back and made High School. This attack served as a threat, her the victim of the most verbal and physical signifying that Roberts was not welcome at abuse that any member of the Little Rock Nine all (ibid. 130). This incident happened at an received at the hands of their White classmates. assembly following the expulsion of Minnijean The teachers turned a blind eye (ibid 85). Brown Brown was expelled for dumping her Terrence Roberts was one of the youngest bowl of chili onto a White student's head after members of the Little Rock ine The only one he intentionally pushed his chair out to trip younger than him was Carlotta Walls LaNier. her in the cafeteria. According to Roberts, Roberts chose to attend Central High School Brown had been singled out by a group of for the same reason as Green and the rest of students who regularly tormented her because the group. He, too, made it through the intense they felt she walked around the school "as if screening process that attempted to reduce the she belonged there." There students felt like number of students from seventeen to nine it was their duty to remind her that she did At the start of his sophomore year, he was not (ibid. 126). The cafeteria serving staff, the enrolled at Central. Roberts did not have the majority of whom were Black women , erupted same "called to action" mentality as Green ; he into thunderous applause at Brown's actions.
Roberts goes on to discuss the effects of choosing nonviolence (ibid. 120).
During another incident in which Minnijean Brown was involved, Roberts recalls how he began to adopt a pattern of negative self-talk. The Little Rock Nine had to be transported home for their safety, despite the school being within walking distance of most of their homes. One day after school, while Brown and Roberts were waiting outside for their transportation, a White male student ran up behind Brown and kicked her in the back. Most shocking of all was that the student did not run away after attacking Brown. He stood there staring at Roberts, as if daring Roberts to do something in retaliation. But the Little Rock Nine had agreed to nonviolent methods to ensure the success of their integration, so Roberts just stood there in silence (ibid. 126). Nonviolence began to feel like complacency in the face of the abuse the students suffered at the hands of their peers. It became easier for the students to become discouraged, and they began to lose confidence in themselves. Roberts often thought back to the incident on the school yard and continued to "[berate himself] for being cowardly and for not standing up in the defense ofBlack womanhood" (ibid. 127).
Carlotta Walls LaNier was the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine. In fact, she was just fourteen years old on September 4th, 1957. LaNier refers to September 23rd, 1957, the day the Little Rock Nine finally entered Central High School, as "D-Day" -because for those nine students it was. The students all met at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates, the leaders of the local NAACP chapter, and would arrive at school together (LaNier 24). There was intense anxiety that hung in the air because the students had seen what happened to Elizabeth Eckford just nineteen days prior.
All the students were very aware of what could
happen to them. They all saw the mob. LaNier recalls hearing the chants of "two, four, six, eight, we ain't gonna integrate" as the police cars escorting them to school approached the building (ibid. 80). The students were snuck in a side door of the building while decoy cars circled around the front. The nine students were silent while they received their class schedules. They were finally realizing the gravity of the situation in that moment, and there was no turning back. They had to forge on as the frenzy continued to grow outside of the building (ibid. 84-6).
Benjamin Fine, a New York Times reporter, gave an account of the mob's reaction to finding out that the Little Rock Nine had successfully entered the school: "A group of six girls, dressed in skirts and sweaters, hair in ponytails started to shriek and wail. '[They] are in our school; they howled hysterically" (ibid. 86). Only the vocabulary choice from this group of young women was not neutral nor passive; they used a racial slur. Unfortunately for the Little Rock Nine, this would only be the first of several experiences involving hate speech during their time at Central High Scnool, both written and spoken directly. As Terrence Roberts points out, racial slurs and hate speech did not always have to be spoken. The students could hear it in the looks they received from their White peers and even some of their teachers. Carlotta Walls LaNier had to leave her first day of school at Central in the back of a police car, hiding underneath a blanket so that the mob would not attack the car (ibid. 90). LaNier makes it clear that the hatred and danger she and the other members of the Little Rock Nine faced on the first day was not unique. In fact, it set the tone for the rest of the school year. It never got better. It remained at a
boiling point that caused mass rage. There may not have been mobs outside every day, but their White classmates let them know that they were not welcome every single day (ibid. 54).
Melba Patillo Beals had a very close relationship to her entire family, especially her grandmother, India. It was this close-knit relationship that gave her the strength to continue with the integration process, despite the unsafe environment in which she was trying to learn. Beals lived with her mother, Lois, and her father, Howell, as well as her grandmother and brother, Conrad (Beals 4). Beals has a different image of growing up in Little Rock than Ernest Green's description of it not being as bad as the "Deep South." The radio announcers at the time would boast that Little Rock was "a nice, clean Southern town, a place where [Black] people and Whites got along peacefully" (ibid. 14). However, that was not the reality of the Little Rock that Beals knew. She knew of a place where her father tried for seven years to get his college degree before eventually giving up because the university had made it so difficult for him to complete it (ibid. 15). So, when Beals was offered the opportunity to transfer to Central High School, she gladly volunteered. Little Rock had impeded her father's education, but those in charge would not impede her own.
Beals, however, soon realized why it was so difficult for her father to get an education. He was a Black man in a space that was deemed to be only acceptable for White people. And now, Beals found herself in the same situation. On her third day at Central High School, Beals was followed and cornered right after a school assembly by four football players. The guardsmen assigned to escort her was not allowed to go into the auditorium. One of the boys pinned her against the wall by her throat and threatened her (ibid. 109). When Beals arrived home, it was her grandmother who made a warm compress for her throat. She consoled her, agreeing that if she wanted to survive, she would have to come up with a way to better protect herself. This was a defining moment in Beals' experience at Central High School. She wrote in her diary that same night: "After three full days inside Central, I know that integration is a much bigger word than I thought" (ibid. 113).
Integration was a big process and an even bigger demand of the young students who led the change. Due to the adversity these nine students faced every day at Central High School, many of their grades began to slip (Telgen 124). This is truly a heartbreaking component of the integration crisis because these students hoped to achieve an equal and fair education, but the learning environment was too toxic for them, and it made it difficult to focus. How could someone focus on algebra when they knew that when the period was up, they would be subjected to threats and violence against them and their family, or possibly be jumped in the bathrooms when they are away from their escort? (Beals 23). Their grades also dropped because, even if students like Minnijean Brown and Jefferson Thomas raised their hands to offer an answer, teachers ignored them. Therefore, they had to rely on their own note-taking ability (Roberts 91). Removing the social aspect oflearning from these students during their maturation could only result in performance failure on assessments.
This was equally disappointing to the group of nine students who had made it through the intense screening process. The Little Rock City School Board had chosen these students based on their grades and extracurricular activities. Even with the
superintendent urging the school board to with them her entire life. Her grandma was her
continue to weed out the group, these students confidant, but Beals also used a journal to write made it through (Anderson 79). This meant down the thoughts and feelings she felt she that these were virtually perfect students, could not share with her grandmother. Beals and the only complaint that Little Rock City stated, "There were just some things about Schools had with them was their race. Because being a High School girl that she wouldn't these were good students who were now get" (Beals 126). Because Beals journaled and performing poorly in school, this environment talked with her grandmother, she was one of not only affected their academics, but also their the few of the nine students whose grades did mental health and personal self-image. not drop drastically upon enrolling at Central
One of the students from the group of High School. Her grades did drop early on in nine who struggled most with self-image was her time as a student at Central, but then she Terrence Roberts. Roberts struggled because took up journaling. She began her journal in he felt like he was not doing enough to protect the diary her grandmother had given her. Her Black womanhood from his White peers, grades picked back up (Beals 109). who constantly sought to attack his friend
There are obvious differences between Minnijean Brown. Roberts felt a personal teenage boys and girls. I would argue that boys responsibility to protect Brown from her and girls are the most different during the attackers, but when faced with them, he high school years as they mature, and their remained silent. He had an internal battle with bodies change. Alternatively, there are different himself, where he would ask himself questions societal and behavioral stereotypes attributed to like, "What would Grandpa think?" But these both teenage boys and teenage girls. However, hypothetical questions about his grandfather, these supposed commonalities do not mean whom he looked up to, would quickly turn that the male members of the Little Rock Nine into, "Grandpa would be disappointed in you." processed their situation and role in integration This led to Roberts telling his parents and the same way, nor did the girls. other family members that everything was
As discussed previously, Terrence Roberts fine at Central High despite his reports not struggled with his mental health and self-image matching those of his peers. He did not want during the year he was enrolled at Central. to disappoint his family and have them think His grandfather had instilled in him a sense of that he was acting cowardly, so instead he kept chivalry and duty to protect Black womanhood quiet-just as he did with Minnijean's bullies from a young age (Roberts 27). Roberts (Roberts 91). understood why he and his peers had to seek Roberts's experience of shutting his family a nonviolent approach to ensure the success of out and only telling them what they absolutely their mission, but it went against everything needed to know is very different from his he was taught growing up. On the other hand, fellow Little Rock Nine group member, Melba Ernest Green was raised by a single mother Patillo Beals. Beals was also very close with a and knew the power and independence that grandparent, her grandmother India. Beals told Black women were capable of even in 1950s her grandmother everything. It was easy for Little Rock (Wyman 175). Because of this her to do this, as her grandmother had lived difference in their upbringings, Green was able
to focus more on himself and his academics during his time at Central High, as opposed to Roberts, who faced a moral struggle. This is also reflected in their writing about their time there. Roberts' recounts specific details from the abuse he sustained at Central, and he discusses the effect that this had on him later in life, whereas Green seems to have a more optimistic outlook. He does still acknowledge the blatant racism and bullying he faced every day, but he does not recount them in full detail like Roberts. He instead talks about how those moments caused an attitude shift for him in that moment rather than in his adulthood (ibid. 173).
The experience of the Little Rock Nine in Central High School is not a happy one. These students sacrificed a great deal of their mental and physical well-being, as well as their own education to attend Central. Were their sacrifices worth it? Ernest Green, Melba Patillo Beals, Carlotta Walls LaNier, and Terrence Roberts all agree that while it was a great sacrifice they made, it was necessary for progress and equality in the education system. However, their belief in making a necessary sacrifice for the sake of social advancement and change was not shared with some of the other members Terrence Roberts writes about how a peer of his did not think the abuse his friend endured was worth it because "things are the same now as they were then, it just depends on who you ask" (Roberts 64). While having a generally pessimistic outlook, Roberts' friend brings up a good point. So often, the experiences of Black people who made an active difference and opposed the institutions during the Civil Rights Movement get reduced to simple ideas. These ideas are often oversimplified, discussing only the gist of what happened, which in the case of the Little Rock
Nine would be the desegregation of Southern schools. Yet, it is rarely discussed in detail what those individuals had to endure to achieve the desired outcome. It is the different experiences of the Little Rock Nine that make this an important chapter in the Civil Rights Era, not just the consequences of their actions.
This difference in opinion among Southern Black Americans about whether the trauma that young Black students went through to integrate schools was even worth it or not is reflected in social movements even to this day.
Questions about equality and equity continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and we see a recent resurgence in the summer of2020 with a new wave of Civil Rights activism through Black Lives Matter. This resurgence of the Civil Rights Movement over forty years later is testament to the question of whether it worked or not. It has become clear that while integration may have been achieved through this process, equality was not. The issues back then continue to be a struggle today. However, they are under a different name.
Despite still trying to achieve full equality between all races, the school integration crisis did make it possible for students to achieve access to equally equipped educational institutions by giving them the opportunity to enroll in previously all-White schools. While it was not an easy process because of the blatant and constant racism that Black students faced during the 1950s through the 1960s (and in some ways, today too), they now had a choice, all thanks to the Little Rock Nine and their individual experiences. It was the choice all nine of them made every morning to remain nonviolent despite the horror they faced that opened the doors for Black students across the Southern part of the country. If not for the personal experiences and choices of the Little
Rock Nine, this attempt to integrate Southern have further hindered the societal changes that schools may not have been successful. This known Civil Rights activists and regular people triggered a domino effect, ending the cycle of hoped to achieve. previously failed school integrations that would
Works Cited
Anderson, Karen. Little Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School. Princeton University Press, 2010.
Counts, Will. "Scream Image," photograph, Vanity Fair, September 2007, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/09/littlerock200709.
Margolick, David. Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock. Yale University Press, 2011.
Patillo Beals, Melba. March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine. Clarion Books, 2018.
Pattillo Beals, Melba. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High. Simon Pulse, 1995.
Roberts, Terrence. Lessons from Little Rock. Butler Center Books, 2009.
Telgen, Diane. Defining Moments: Brown v. Board of Education. Ornnigraphics Inc., 2005.
Walls LaNier, Carlotta. A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School. Random House, Inc., 2009.
Wyman, Richard M. "Civil Rights: Ernest Green and the Little Rock Nine." In America's History through Young Voices: Using Primary Sources in the K-12 Social Studies Classroom. Edited by Traci Mueller, 172-180. Pearson Education, 2005.
By Elizabeth Po s t
Newspapers have been used to inform citizens about news around the town, country, and even the globe for centuries. While not as widely used today, this was how many people were aware of important events. Some of the most well-known and respected papers in the United States are often White-dominated papers in major cities. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe, along with many others, have shaped American opinions for years. However, Black newspapers are often overlooked, and they are primarily written and read by the African American community, which has also shaped American society. These papers consistently faced obstacles rooted in racism and the discrimination that comes with it. The Chicago Defender, The Pittsburg Courier, The New York Age, The Call & Post, and The Los Angeles Sentinel are better-known Black newspapers. Both White and Black newspapers wrote stories that were important to the times and have shaped generations.
Then, why are Black newspapers or any newspapers in general essential to study? Newspapers are biased. It is because of these biases that we can learn about what the writers and owners of these papers believed was significant at the time. In addition, the readers of papers also influence them because to sell the papers, the pieces had to have something of interest or value to the readers. So, newspapers
also expressed important ideals society had The question is, could a Black newspaper be used to examine the women's rights debate and the transitions of the community during the early 1900s? Also, would the paper's location affect the values or how they were expressed?
Scholars have long studied and discussed women's suffrage. For the last fifty years, Black women's roles in the movement have started to be studied more. Over time, these scholars have looked at several different legacies left behind by the African American community and women's fight for enfranchiseme n t. For instance, in the book Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, And Insisted on Equality for All, Martha S. Jones examines women in her family and other activists to form a well-rounded history of the enfranchisement of African Americans and the roles women played in it. She examines about 100 years, focusing on women's roles from the time of abolitionists to after the Civil Rights Movement. Susan Ware discusses a specific activist: Ida B. Wells. Ida B. Wells was a well-known anti-lyncher and suffragette; she worked with various organizations and impacted the community. Ware's work highlights the suffragist side of Wells, which is often overshadowed by her other accomplishments.
Additionally, some researchers like Valethia Watkins, through the study of WE.B Dubois's work, look to dispute the claims
that White suffragists made of Black men not supporting women. Dubois, amongst other men, was a strong activist for the equal rights of women, and Watkins' work demonstrates that the lie of Black men not supporting the movement is not true (4). Still, some scholars analyze the racism of the movement. Angela Davis examines the racist side, focusing on the words and actions of White leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott (49). Davis's work illustrates the issues that Black women faced in the movement and why they had differences in how they approached the movement.
However, Tamar Anna Alexanian's work looks at the Black-owned Chicago newspaper, The Defender. Through its pages, she examines how their large readership and coverage could be used as a lens to explore the fight for the 19th amendment. Alexanian explains that The Defender was not only Black-owned, but it also effectively reached outside of Chicago. She explained that the owner saw the need for a paper by and for the community instead of a White-owned one that ignores, vilifies, or patronizes them. She argues that The Defender was the only newspaper to analyze women's rights because they were willing to report on hot and controversial topics, had the most extensive reading base, and used empowering pronouns in its writings. Alexanian's work analyzes key ways The Defender expresses the fight for enfranchisement. She studied The Defender to understand how the community viewed suffragettes. Her findings revolved around how the tone of The Defenders articles changed from 1910-30 from mocking to supportive, how women's clubs and organizational efforts were expressed on The Defenders pages, and the shift from women's enfranchisement to Jim Crow laws that
impacted voters in the South (Alexanian, 67). 49
In Alexanian's discussion on The Defender, she says, "This language 'represented unapologetic [B]lack pride, dignity, and assertiveness. The Defender used the word 'Race' to denote Black people" (76). An example she provides is a headline from The Defender in 1915 titled, "The Race Needs a Real Leader" (76). She also writes that The Defender puts only White in parentheses after someone's name if they are White, but they do not do this with "colored" individuals, unlike other dailies at the time. She argues that these two components made it a strong message for African Americans in America to realize that the paper is for them (Alexanian, 76). In her article, she splits her work on The Defender into sections. These sections are: understanding men's suffrage, understanding women's suffrage through mocking and humor, understanding through the organizing efforts, and the shift to Jim Crow from women's suffrage. These findings led me to question if another sizable Black newspaper could be used to find similar content.
This paper will examine The New York Age in the same light as Alexanian's work to study how these newspapers compare, or do not, to the ideals and efforts of the African American community during the early twentieth century. It will explore The Age to determine if another prominent Black newspaper carries the same weight as The Defender. This paper studies The New York Age from 1910 to 1920 to examine how it showcases the same shift that Alexanian found in her work with The Defender. In doing so, it will expose how well The New York Age did at upholding the values of the time, which it would later become known for, and it determines how strong these ideals were to the writers and readers of The Age.
This work will primarily look at the similar shifts to The Defender, and while intersection of race and sex and how this it did not have the same owners the whole affected the suffrage movement by examining time, as The Defender did, The Age's addition the work of The New York Age from 1910-1920, of a strong editor could be attributed to the utilizing the work that Alexanian has already similarities in the papers. However, as both of done with The Defender. In contribution to the these papers' timelines reflect similar stories work Alexanian has already done, this paper on the changing views of women's rights, it will examine The Age similarly to Alexanian's . h ement was also reveals how rmportant t 1s mov ideas and will focus on three sections. The to the population of the time and a larger shift first is how the newspaper changes how community-wide. it views women's suffrage from a place of condescension to a more outspoken forms of I. An overview of Woman's Suffrage support. Next is how The Age showed women's Women's suffrage was tied to the organizations in the framework of women's abolitionist movement. Fredrick Douglas rights. Finally, the paper will look at The Age's and William Llyod Garrison often worked transformation from focusing on women's together in the fight for freedom until suffrage to focusing on Jim Crow. In analyzing their ideas on how to proceed split (Jones, these concepts, this paper will see whether "Vanguard" 70). Douglas was a strong The New York Age can fit within Alexanian's advocate for women's rights (Watkins, 3). framework built around The Chicago Defender However, after the Civil War, he also pushed being the best to understand the Suffrage more for the African American vote than the Movement. women's vote in general after seeing what While New York is different from was happening in the South (Davis, 47-49). Chicago, and consequently, The Age is different After the Civil War, many abolitionist women from The Defender, it is still essential to look at applied their knowledge to the suffragette these papers in tandem to find and highlight cause. Additionally, when the 14th and 15th these differences. The Age showed transitions Amendments passed, White women suffrage in the portrayal of the suffrage movement and leaders were appalled and enraged that Black women's organizational efforts, and it also took men got the right to vote before they did. In on Jim Crow and shifted the community to some cases, these women believed that at prepare for that fight. However, its word choice the end of the Civil War and emancipation, of Negro and "colored" was still there despite Black men were now at equal status to White, some valiant attempts to keep them out later. If middle-class women, so the amendments judged by word choice alone, The Defender is should not be needed (Davis, 47). However, superior to The Age. this could not be further from the truth. For Still, this movement took place all over these newly freed slaves of the South were the nation, and it is essential to look at other not just suffering from racism, but were also areas of the country. Since Black newspapers economically stunted from hundreds of years are agents of propaganda and voice opinions of unpaid labor. for the community, it is crucial to examine Unlike their White counterparts, the both The Age and The Defender. The Age had Black suffragettes dealt with sexism and racism
in the movement, where they faced racism from their own leadership. Leaders of White suffragist groups were outraged that Black men acquired the right to vote before them. The leaders viewed these men as less educated and implied that they were against the women's vote (Davis, 44). Racism and sexism converged at the women's rights meeting in New York in 1866. Here, Henry Ward Beecher discussed how Saxon women had a better claim to suffrage than Black or Irish individuals. He claimed that Saxon women were the ones that we relied on for comfort, teaching, household duties, and so on (Davis, 45). He then concluded that White Saxon women deserved the right to vote over Black men. His words would go on to influence others like Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Davis, 45). White suffragists utilized Black men in different ways. These women blamed them for keeping the ballot from women. These women would say that Black men were the biggest threat to women's suffrage and that they did not support the cause (Watkins, 7).
This racism was not only in the suffrage movement, but also in the world around them. Jim Crow laws were popping up across the Southern United States, making it difficult at best and impossible at worst for Black men to vote. Literacy tests were added to some Southern states' constitutions, saying that men that wanted to vote had to read and understand the state's constitution (Anderson, 4-5). Moreover, who passed these purposely confusing tests was up to the register, so it was even more unlikely that a Black man would be allowed to pass. Even if they could pass, there would be even more trickery afoot, such as not adding them to the list because they "accidentally forgot" to (Anderson, 6-7) Additionally, in all eleven of the former
Confederate states, there were poll taxes, which were often due at the very beginning of the year (Anderson, 7-8). This meant that anyone who was a farmer or sharecropper, which was a good portion of the community at the time, could not afford to pay this sum in the dead of winter when money was tight (Anderson, 7-9). Further, paying in the winter meant they were paying over half a year early, and if one forgot to pay it, they were not allowed to vote in the election. In addition, there was also the Grandfather Clause. This law limits who can vote by looking at a person's heritage. If the person's ancestors could vote before a specific time, they could, too. These dates were always set before Black men had the right to vote (Jones, "Vanguard" 151). Finally, there were old-fashioned fear and intimidation tactics. Whites had no problem supporting White supremacy and pushing violence against the Black communities in their areas if they broke or ignored "the rules." Several attempts to vote led to the slaughtering of Black communities in the late 1800s and into the 1900s (Anderson, 14). All of these laws and violence affected African Americans in their everyday lives. In some cases, these laws were waiting for women in certain states when the 19th Amendment passed. This is why The Defender, The Age, and other Black newspapers would have switched from helping women get the right to vote to universal suffrage as their communities in the South suffered through Jim Crow times.
In addition, background on The Age and how Black newspapers operate is also a requirement for understanding how these papers impacted and shaped the lives of the readers and the community. The first Black
newspaper was Freedom's Journal in 1827. When the Civil War started, about 30 to 40 Black newspapers were circulating in the US (Gordon, 248). In discussing the history of The New York Age, The Age's site explains the following on the role of Black newspapers: "the Black press has provided a public sphere for an aggrieved community barred from the mainstream channels of discourse" ("History of The New York Age Newspaper"). Additionally, these papers had different roles and agendas at different times in history. The press and community would mirror each other as each influenced the other. So, these transitions are essential to understanding the press and its readers. The pre-Civil War papers essentially promoted the liberation of the slaves in the South. As Eugene Gordon wrote in his article The Negro Press, these papers would barely meet the standards of modern papers (248-249). The post-Civil War era saw many written papers, but they were more like pamphlets than full-fledged papers since they were still short and lacked the characteristics of newspapers that we have grown accustomed to. In addition, this period experienced the Church gaining a significant influence over the news. However, by the 1880s, the press started to become more prominent and influential (Gordon, 250). Pre-World War press continued and improved on what the papers had started in the 1880s. This period saw writers and editors emerge like WE.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Mary Church Terrill (Gordon, 251). After WWI, the press harbored animosity in response to how they were treated both during and after the war. It created a more liberal journalists' front (Gordon, 252). These newspapers started as small operations; it would take time for many of them to gain the followers they
needed. Many would only be influential over a large area in the early 1910s or mid-1900s. However, as these papers changed and evolved, their influence and readership grew, too.
Black newspapers also need to be viewed as agents of propaganda. James W Johnson, a well-known and widely read editor for The New York Age, had a segment in the editorial called Views and Reviews. In one of them in 1914, titled Views and Reviews: Do You Read Negro Papers? Johnson wrote, "Negro weeklies make no pretense at being newspapers in the strict sense of the term. They have a more important mission than the dissemination of mere news" (Johnson). Then not much further down, he continues, "They are race papers. They are organs of propaganda. Their chief business is to stimulate thought among Negroes about the things that vitally concern them" (Johnson). So, while newspapers undoubtedly have bias, propagandist outlooks, and motives, it is also part of what influenced the population of the time and shaped their ideals.
The New York Age operated from 18801960 and was one of the most prominent papers of its time ("History of The New York Age"). The paper itself has had many names. Starting in 1880, it was The New York Globe ("History of The New York Age"). Then in 1884, the paper became The New York Freeman. Later in 1887, the paper changed again to The New York Age, which would run from 1887-1960, and for a brief time towards the end, it was The New York Age Defender.
One of the owners of The Age was Booker T. Washington, though he vehemently refuted this for many years (Thornbrough, 34).
Other owners included T. Thomas Fortune, who founded The Age, and Fred. R. Moore, who bought it from him (Thornbrough, 35,
43). Washington attempted to control what Fortune wrote about, which drove a wedge between them, and both men left the paper before 1910 (Thornbrough, 44, 46). Despite this, the weekly paper was one of the most influential and well-known papers of the time (Oliver and Walker, 2). After it shut down in 1960, there was a fourteen-year break, and it was revived in 1974. It changed names so many times because it was bought out or changed hands but remained an influential paper in the community.
The Age would find an editor that would help it gain popularity. James W Johnson was an influential writer for The Age (Oliver and Walker, 1). Johnson was in charge of the editorial and "Views and Reviews" section from 1914 to 1923. Lawrence J. Oliver and Terri L. Walker would write on his influence in their work "James Weldon Johnson's 'New York Age' Essays on 'The Birth of a Nation' and the 'Southern Oligarchy,"' in which they say, "Johnson did not disappoint Moore, for 'Views and Reviews' immediately won high praise" (Oliver and Walker, 2). In fact, the New York Evening Post claimed he was the best "colored writer" for any newspaper in the country at the time (Oliver and Walker, 2). He wrote on subjects of interest and took on social justice issues. It should not be surprising that many of his pieces addressed the suffrage movement. His work in the editorial is vital because, for many years, it took up the cause of women's enfranchisement. He would also take up issues for the betterment of the whole community, such as politics and Jim Crow laws.
men and Black papers stopped ridiculing women and supported their cause. These works are a product of their times, so it is not uncommon to find that newspapers written mainly by men in the early 1900s were sexist and biased against women. It was also not unusual for it to be reflected in the society of the time. While Alexanian found examples of mockery, The Age has more pieces addressing women's struggle to be taken seriously.
Alexanian looked at early mocking and the language used. She found that from 1910 through 1914, The Defender often addressed woman's suffrage and suffragettes, often in a mocking tone (82). By 1913 the tone of The Defender started to change and was more in favor of women's suffrage (Alexanian, 84).
Alexanian also emphasizes the language used, often changing from mocking to passive and supportive. She claims that in The Defender, the word "suffragette" was often used before 1914 but was rarely used after that (85). However, the lack of use of the word was not because there was no interest in the movement; it was just that as time went on, the words surrounding the movement changed, as well. While The New York Age certainly did have its early lack of support, which switched to being supportive, it would take until 19 I5 to become fully supportive. In addition,
III. Analyzing The New York Age
A. Transitions from mockery to support A significant transition happens in both The Defender and The Age in which Black
The Age's coverage mocked less but actively showed a lack of support or condonement of the movement through news stories. Also, unlike The Chicago Defender, some of The Age's language was not as strong or transformative as the latter. Still, the transition to support is a significant event, as it shows that women's rights had become of important value and worth fighting for.
In the early part of the 191 Os, much of the conversation around women's rights and
suffragettes in The Age appears to be through kids the community s h O uld work on bringing organizational efforts instead of addressing up the kids that they have to the best of . t the feminist the issue head-on. However, in an article their abilities. It also mentions from 1912, Mary Martel addresses men and movement and how it is taking away some women in her piece, A Word to the Wise. Here women from home. However, accordmg to Martel starts her work by calling out Black the article, this is fine because the women d men for not supporting the movement ("A . . . the movement are strong-willed an joining th S Word to the Wise"). Martel has talked with often make the worst wives and mo er . is repeated in a well-known White suffragist who told her This obviously sexist 1language ,, that the greatest threat to the campaign was the following piece, "T rou bles in the Home. Black men, and while Martel says this is not This piece uses biblical references to allude true, she writes that she did know in her heart to women being a problem for a stable home that it was. She notes that with thousands of ever since Eve. This piece also claims that the Black men disenfranchised in the South, they modern Christian household has only recently should be the last ones to deny others these formed. Also, it claims that women are already rights. She says that the community should taxed mentally by their tasks at home, so view women's suffrage differently because of they are not suited for the responsibilities of the amount of discrimination they face. They a voter. It also says that Amazonian · women should support any movement that stands for are masculine, and they take au th ority away "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity;' which comes from men and destroy it. In addition, womens from the French Revolution and was the belief suffrage is taking women away from home and that men and women are equal (Martel, "A destroying the Christian household. Instead, it Word to the Wise"). It is written by a woman urges women to be devoted to their husbands who feels a lack of support from the men in and children because this is their highest the community and actively believes that the mission. White activist is correct. So, while this article In 1915, with ever-increasing support, is not a man mocking or making light of the activists still faced an uphill battle of movement by writing a dismissive piece like convincing men to support them. While The The Defender, its wording is still an essential Age supports the movement, it often tries to window to understanding the sexism of the convince other men in the community and time. the country to be better for all of them. In Come 1914, there were still issues ew York, at the time, an amendment to their with lack of support, but this time, men constitution was on the ballot to give women were writing the papers and often in a the right to vote. The Age spent much time demeaning tone regarding women's rights. advocating for Woman's rights. An example For instance, on March 5, two of these articles comes from "Views and Reviews: Cardinal appear on page four. The first is titled "Race Gibbons and Woman Suffrage" by James W Improvement Needed," which discusses the Johnson, an editor at The Age, written in July. quality of children over quantity. Professor Cardinal Gibbons wrote a letter about women's Conklin from Princeton University's work suffrage that was quite negative and sexist. He is used to argue that instead of having more implied that voting women would forget their
duties and instead should cheerfully work in the home. During The Age's piece, they pick apart his argument and even some other statements that had been widely used against the movement. Johnson says that men should not be hypocrites in their beliefs that women being active in the political sphere would drag them away from their duties when it has not affected men ("Views and Reviews: Cardinal"). Also, many women have jobs to help their families, and their responsibilities at home do not suffer. In addition, the opposition also implies that women voting would not bring about a golden age, and Johnson discredits this by saying that they should not expect women to do what they have been unable to. This article demonstrates that there is still opposition to the movement.
However, a piece that shows more of the everyday citizens' opinions is "Expressions on Woman's Rights" from October 1915. They asked random men on the street their stance on women's rights in as unbiased a way as possible. This poll showed that more men supported women's rights than opposed them. These pieces together show the complexity of the movement at this time. On one hand, respected members of society say that women should not vote; on the other hand, more everyday men are changing their views to support women's rights.
In Johnson's weekly article, "Views and Reviews;• he tackled the Suffrage movement and its opposition several times. In addition to taking on the Cardinal, he addressed the opponents' different arguments several times. One is his piece "Views and Reviews: Woman's Suffrage," on October 21, 1915. He wrote, "If working for a living does not 'drag a woman down from her throne; etc., we should like to know how taking an interest in good
government and casting a vote once or twice a year is going to do it" (Johnson, "Views and Reviews: Woman's Suffrage"). Johnson again called oppositionists, primarily men, out on their hypocritical beliefs. He again addressed opponents in Views and Reviews: The Suffrage Parade a week later. He again stressed that men should not expect women becoming enfranchised to magically aid them and that it is unfair to expect such when men have not been able to fix things in their many years of enfranchisement (Johnson, "Views and Reviews: The Suffrage Parade").
Johnson was still working to convince the public of the benefits of woman's rights and educate them on issues in 1916. In "Views and Reviews: The Women's Votes;• Johnson takes on the myth of women trading their votes for whoever can get them the right to vote. During this, he states that there would be nothing wrong with them supporting the people who helped them, and it would be absurd to believe that this is the selling point to their votes (Johnson, "Views and Reviews: The Women's Votes"). In addition, he takes on a letter written by President Wilson in the next section titled "Views and Reviews: Wilsonian Consistency." Johnson said that the President did not support women's suffrage. For evidence, he points to Wilson's concluding paragraph, where Wilson chose to say that he is bound to his party and its beliefs (Johnson, "Views and Reviews: Wilsonian Consistency"). Therefore, he is saying that because his party does not support women's rights, he is bound by them not to do anything. Johnson also implies that Wilson is indecisive on the subject, which is all to get votes. All of Johnson's articles show a continuous, conscious change in the language used. The blame is no longer on the women, but instead on the society around them.
56 . 1 its elf Women were While the change in wording and did not match the article 1 · acceptance is not precisely similar to The not ready to throw t h eir f ace s and names Defe nder, it does present a similar shift in how behind the cause for great reasons. At the . were involved and th e public viewed the movement. In addition, time, s1gmficantly few men the only ones who like The Defender, the word "suffragette" supportive, and men were seems to dwindle as time progresses. Instead, could give women the right to vote. "women's rights" or "enfranchisement" appear Al so, in 1910 , two other meetings d more in the regular articles. However, it is showed a failure to reach the community an not as significant of a decline of the word as a struggle to organize. The first was in New . b this article claims The Defender. Also, The Age still uses more Jersey m Septem er, and 1 language like "negro" and "colored." Although that the debate on women's rights was canceled this decreases as time progresses, according because of the failure of the opposition toth to Alexanian, The Defender did not have this show up. However, both women argmng e language. affirmative said that while they were sorry, they scared off the men and won this debate
B. Examining women's organizing efforts since the men did not show up ("Y. P. S. C. E.
Women's clubs were another way Organized"). Another "victory" was in New Alexanian examined The Defender for ways York City, where the Literacy League met and it exhibited women's suffrage. Alexanian said had a discussion on suffrage ("Literary League that over time, the wordage around these Meets"). The men and women representing changed. It went from debates to suffrage the positives of women's rights got a chance clubs and educational meetings, and finally to speak, but unfortunately, the crowd did not to knowledgeable suffragettes lecturing on have time for questions because of how long how this movement could positively affect it ran. The Age said that this was a successful the community (Alexanian, 88). The Age also evening for the cause. While both claim contained several women's clubs and women's victories, they are also superficial victories, as organizing attempts that showcased this there was no actual debate or opposition. In change. This transition was significant, as it fact, the second one suggests that it might not exemplifies how women changed tactics as have been as successful if there had been time they gained more support. for questions.
In 1910, an article called "Ask Negro It was not much easier for women to Women to be Suffragists" showed the lack argue their cause by 1911. In Norwich, of support in the community. The article is Connecticut, a meeting was held about about a meeting held by the Political Equality suffrage. The meeting was to take place at Association, where the leaders addressed the the local university's theatre. The debate was crowd while speaking on the suffrage cause. much anticipated. However, it was concluded Around 100 women joined but only wished that women were already handling everything to contribute monetarily to the cause rather their mental facilities would allow (" orwich than with their time ("Ask Negro Women to Notes"). Therefore, they should not get the be Suffragists"). While the piece covered the right to vote because they are unfit for the task suffrage subject positively, society at the time and responsibilities that come with it. Nor
was it easy for women a year later, as Mary B. Talbert wrote a response to a biased article on women's clubs ("Mrs. M. B. Talbert Defends Club Women"). Here, she said that they needed to do their research before publishing a piece because they claimed that women's clubs do not help uplift women enough. She argues that women do more than men believe. However, by 1913, the messages on the pages of The Age started to change, although it would take till the mid-19 l0s for everything to change sides. In January 1913, an article titled "New York Women Hold Emancipation Exercises" talked about the large turnout for the event. The large turnout could be attributed to the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation ("New York Women Hold Emancipation Exercises"). However, organizers took this time to acknowledge the progress women of color had made. Also, one of the male editors at The Age addressed the crowd to instill a sense of pride and community as they worked together to build a better future. In contrast to three years before, many women showed up with pride about the movement. This pride was emphasized in the article in a bolded subheading under the title, which read "Program Full of Interest" ("New York Women Hold Emancipation Exercises"). This new pride can be interpreted in many ways. One could be that women quit caring much about what men and society thought of them, or society's view of the movement had started to change. It may be a combination of the two.
In addition, May Martel wrote a piece in 1913 titled "Colored Women in Demonstration;' where she announced that 52 "colored" women were reported to have been in the demonstration in Washington, D.C. the week before. Martel reminds readers
that just the previous fall, she could not find a single "colored" woman in New York's demonstration. She urges more "colored" women and men to be more involved in the movement because they cannot afford to let White men and women decide the outcome, as they do not sympathize with the "colored" side of the movement and often mock and ridicule it (Martel, "Colored Women in Demonstration"). So, while they were gaining more interest in the movement, The Age shows that there was still much work to be done before 1919 in Black women's organizing efforts.
By 1914, there is evidence of more productive meetings happening in the community. In Poughkeepsie, New York, there was a meeting at a local church. It mentions how the whole community came together to make a fun but educational night ("Poughkeepsie, New York"). The Reverend at the church was said to have made appropriate remarks on the subject. Also, several men and women participated using varying media such as speeches, poems, singing, and other musical talents. There were several other mentions of meetings from all over the eastern United States in the years 1914-16.
However, also in 1916, another organizational shift was happening. This shift was to the final phase of the organization, which was women suffrage leaders leading education and the community. This is shown several times in 1916. In August, there was a meeting of the National Association of Colored Women, where more than 300 women from many states had different skills in their backgrounds ("Meeting of National Association of Women"). They were exchanging views and planning uplifting attempts among broader lines. They also
58 addressed more than just women's suffrage In the South, suffragists were having a itself; they also addressed community needs more challenging time convincing men to such as urban conditions and child welfare. grant them the right to vote, including women Also, in 1916, there were smaller meetings of color, whom the Whites of the South did with suffragette leaders addressing the crowds. not want to see voting at all. In "Southerners One such event was a meeting in New Jersey, War on Womanhood;' published on March where Mrs. B. Lewis of the New York City 6, 1913, The Age explains how Southerners Suffrage club would speak to the crowd view and treat women. According to The ("Jersey City, N. J."). Age, Southerners barely treat their women
These organization efforts show the as human; instead, they are considered more changes occurring in the movement. Just as property or idols (Johnson, "Southerners like The Defender, The Age also showed these War on Womanhood"). Arguments such as critical transitions. These organization efforts the violence of the South against its Black become harder to find as they started targeting communities, and the irony in the fact problems in the Jim Crow South. It also means that White men were the fathers of a good that the wording is changing around the percentage of the Black community despite movement. As it got closer to 1919, the phrase White men not admitting it, were also "suffragettes in clubs" almost disappeared addressed. It also addresses how they did unless it addressed a person's past. not want to see women vote, especially Black women. When a march led by a White woman C. Transition to Jim Crow was headed to Baltimore, they were met by a Alexanian states that The Defender started mob who told them that they should not have looking at how the suffrage movement and anyone Black with them if they knew what Jim Crow were connected (90). In fact, she was good for them. This article demonstrates says, "The Defender's pivot to discussing Black that the community was well aware of the suffrage generally illustrates a community challenges of the South early on, but the wide understanding of the ways the complete switch to fighting Jim Crow would Nineteenth Amendment would-or, more come later in the North. accurately, would not-impact Black women In 1916, Johnson addressed the Southern voters" (Alexanian, 92). She also writes that suffragette question in his segment, "Views The Defender had shifted from fighting for and Reviews: Suffrage in the South." Miss women's enfranchisement to Jim Crow issues Helena Hill Weed offered President Wilson by 1918 (Alexanian, 90). The New York Age information on White supremacy and its effect had this shift, too. The Age covered issues in on Southern women. This was in response the South with Jim Crow Laws during 1910- to President Wilson's meeting with women 20, but its interest grew as the decade closed leaders who talked about women's rights and and the 19th amendment became an inevitable the "Negro problem" (Johnson, "Views, and victory. This transition shows that the papers Reviews: Suffrage in the South"). Miss Weed and the community understood that the says that White women outnumber "colored" Nineteenth Amendment would not solve all of women in the South. Therefore, it is useless their problems. for the South to say that there is no need to
oppose the federal amendment in fear of the "Negro problem:' Johnson explains that Miss Weed wrote this in response to Wilson's meeting with the women leaders. He said that Wilson would change his point of view to fit any cause but would not support Black causes. So, when the Republican, Mr. Hughes Johnson, proposed this amendment, James W. Johnson wrote that President Wilson would shift his views for the better on the cause, but not for the Black women in the South. Also, Johnson argues that the administration of Woodrow Wilson reversed what African Americans had worked for over 50 years ("Views, and Reviews: Suffrage in the South").
By 1919, the women's suffrage effort had shifted in The Age to focusing on how women's enfranchisement would negatively affect the women in the South while simultaneously continuing being supportive, just as Alexanian found with The Defender. For instance, in March 1919, The Age wrote an article about the possible changes in the bill that would become the 19th Amendment (Johnson, "Views and Reviews: Compromises on the Suffrage Amendment"). The two proposed bill changes impacted women in the South by not enfranchising them. One change was that states themselves could decide how to enforce the 19th Amendment. The other would utilize the already-existing system in each state. Both would mean that the Southern states could keep women of color from voting in their individual states.
In the summer of 1919, in a letter to the editor, J.C. Cunningham addressed women's suffrage (Cunningham, "Some Pertinent Questions). He wrote that the Black community sacrificed a lot during the war effort and the fight for democracy. In return, they were met with violence, and
while the community supports women's I 59 rights, it is unrealistic to believe that women in the South will achieve the same rights as those in the North. In order for all women in the community to have rights, they need to convince the federal government to uphold both White and Black citizens' voting rights equally. This article exemplifies the shift happening in the African American community as the 1920s approached. This shift was towards tackling Jim Crow Laws, which would target the community as a whole.
The Age's articles on Jim Crow laws and universal suffrage express the communal recognition that the 19th Amendment would not fix everything. In fact, in the 1913 article, it is evident that there was awareness of what was happening even before the shift of priorities. The change to universal suffrage is crucial because it explains the priorities of the time. As women's rights were less of a question, the more critical question looming in people's minds was how to make the government enforce guaranteed constitutional rights.
The New York Age has much to offer regarding studying the women's rights movement in its final and most productive years. The Age is quite a progressive paper, although it takes time for all of that progressiveness to come together under one consensus. Part of this might be because The Age changed hands several times, unlike The Defender. However, Johnson's additions influenced not only the direction of the paper, but also its readers. His works united the paper and the community on the important causes they were facing at the time.
While Alexanian was right about The Chicago Defender because of its empowering
word choice, The Age also had a wide readership and tackled essential subjects. The Age used "colored" and "Negro," but they were still impactful in large part because of the topics they covered and the number of people they were able to reach. Also, they were able to run for almost 100 years while still writing stories that were important to the community. The Age and The Defender show newspapers' efforts to encourage the community to stand behind their women. One paper should not carry the weight of the movement because the country is vastly different depending
on location. However, both of these papers highlight the importance of the time, as they both supported women's rights after mocking the idea for years, show the shift in women's organizations, and changed concentration to focus on Jim Crow laws, which these papers emphasize as necessary to the community. Both of these papers' timelines reflect similar stories on the changing views of women's rights, which reveals how important this movement was to the population of the time and a larger, community-wide shift.
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Matthew Strohl is Professor of and grind something that was interesting Philosophy at the University of Montana. down into a pulverized dust of His background is in ancient Greek uninteresting stuff. My thought was that philosophy, but he currently works on even before this is good philosophy, it aesthetics and philosophy of art. Strohl is is important that it be fun to read. First an avid movie-watcher, viewing hundreds and foremost, this has to be a book of films every year. He is active on his where you are not trudging through, personal blog, Strohltopia, and serves where you do not want to put it down. as Assistant Editor for the aesthetics There are very few people who even blog, Aesthetics for Birds. In his recent attempt to write philosophy like that. monograph, Why It's OK to Love Bad Typically, as a philosopher, you sacrifice Movies (Routledge, 2022), Strohl makes entertainment and readability for clarity a case against what he calls "bad movie and rigor, but this was different. It was a ridicule" and for "bad movie love." As a very atypical mode of writing for me, and self-described "cinematic bottom-feeder," that made the project fun to work on. Strohl's blend of philosophy of art and Having written this way made it difficult film criticism offers a unique perspective to return to the sort of labored academic about challenging normative aesthetic style. taste by building affective communities around loving bad movies.
S: Why is it that you see we need a defense of loving bad movies?
Seth Sto b art (S): To begin, what audiences did you have in mind as you
MS: Well, I'm a participant in what were writing this book? you could call bad movie culture . In bad movie culture, there is a pervasive thing
Matthew Strohl (MS): I wanted about it that really frustrates me, which to write it so it could be used for is a lot of people act like bullies and call undergraduate teaching, but also in a it loving bad movies. Think about a case way that non-students, non-academics, where some bully at school picks on a would enjoy reading. I took that very weird kid that says, "Oh, it's just good seriously My thinking was that even fun. I'm just playing with them because when philosophy is about a fun and we're friends:' But really, this bullying is interesting topic, it is rarely all that mean, right? And it encourages a broad fun to read. I wanted to do something sense that this kid is weird and there's different. Philosophers typically find something wrong with this kid. I feel like ways to introduce a million distinctions this is analogous to how a lot of people
treat bad movies. They say, "Oh yeah, I love bad movies. I'm a fan of this." But then the way that they act is a mocking cruelty. I call this approach to thinking about bad movies "bad movie ridicule:'
For example, I'm in bad movie groups on Facebook with a bunch of strangers, 20,000 people in some of these groups. I might post something like, "Hey, I just saw this amazing movie, and you should check it out." And then I'll get 10 comments ridiculing and mocking the movie. To me, this mocking is just a big buzzkill because there are people who see these movies differently. There are people who engage with these movies in a way that is loving and affectionate, which to me is exciting. Bad movie culture is so contaminated with the mocking strand that I wanted to write a book, which would make a case against that mocking approach and in favor of a more loving, affectionate, generous approach.
S: Is there anywhere specific you've been able to find this loving approach?
MS: Everywhere. The problem is that it gets intermingled, that everywhere there is bad movie love, there is also bad movie ridicule. The issue is just that it's so easy for these worlds to cross. They're so intermingled that a really fun, positive, supportive kind of social context can easily be polluted by a few bad actors who roll in with a different attitude.
you discuss how these communities may approach watching a movie differently?
MS: So, for example, let's think about Twilight (2009). There are riff tracks of it, and there's a lot of people that approach watching Twilight with the idea "Let's make fun of Twilight." It's the way they watch it; they say, "Let's put it on and make fun of it." I use Letterboxd and see people post new reviews of Twilight saying things like, "I watched this and listened to the podcast commentary from 'I Hate Movies' and it was amazing, the movie was so silly and awful" all the time. The point I make in the book is that I'm not the least bit surprised that this person didn't like the movie if this is how they were watching it. Further than that, though, I take that to be contributing to the cultural coding around Twilight. That this is a way of engaging with the movie, and even enjoying it, but it reinforces the cultural coding which says we should malign or ridicule this film.
S: In your book, you make the argument that affective communities built around love and affection are better than those built around ridicule. Could
On a broader level, these are people who are often progressives who don't really seem to grasp the gendered nature of this particular sort of content. I'm not the first person who made this point, but we can see there aren't a lot of boycentric cultural items that get ridiculed in this mocking way. For example, one common way to make fun of Twilight is by saying something like, "The least interesting girl in the world has every supernatural creature fighting over her. And like the whole world revolves around her." Compare this to, let's say, Spiderman. Well, the nerdiest kids, the most nondescript kid in high school,
66 gets magical spider powers. All of a sudden, the beautiful redhead loves him, he can throw webs and swing from building to building and stop crime. I think Spiderman is every bit as mockable as Twilight, but people don't. Which to me suggests there is like this really unsettling, gendered undercurrent. I think there are all sorts of ways affective communities which are built on ridicule will end up reinforcing these gendered stereotypes through aesthetic taste. Bad movie love is supposed to challenge some of these assumptions about their aesthetic arguments.
S: In what ways does your approach of bad movie love challenge the gendered undercurrents of bad movie ridicule in Twilight?
MS: Bad movie love is a way in for people who are starting from a cultural disadvantage for appreciating Twilight. For somebody like me, who likes horror movies and exploitation movies, Twilight, which has been culturally coded as a very PG movie for younger female audiences, it can be hard to find a way into that for audience members like me. Watching Twilight with a bad movie love approach is a way into it for me. Now, when I say it's bad, I mean something very specific. I mean the ways in which it's sort of unconventional, but at the same time it's unserious. Those features are a way into it for me. But once you're in, once you're interested, there are so many opportunities to find aesthetic enjoyment in the Twilight movies that go beyond just to sort of appreciating them as bad. It
becomes more complex than that. Again, the badness is a way in for me, but it's not the stopping point; it just opens the door to thinking about all sorts of ways Twilight challenges normative aesthetic taste.
S: In your book, you argue that movies that are bad in the conventional sense, bad in the way you mean, are movies that don't align with conventional norms of cinema. Given that distinction, could you explain more about how you view movies which are bad in the conventional sense versus movies that we consider avant garde?
MS: Some readers have gotten the misconception that I think there's no difference between the two. What I think is that both so-called bad movies and the avant garde are characterized by unconventionality, by the ways in which they violate conventional norms and standards. What I was trying to suggest in the book is that these categories are always indefinite and fluid, they are a matter of perception. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a distinction. It just means that the distinction is fluid and a matter of perception. Sometimes, what used to be a bad movie becomes a cult hit or an avant-garde film. The point I make in the book is that the difference here isn't in the fact these types of movies either do or do not challenge normative aesthetic sensibilities, but it's instead in our shifting perceptions of these films' artistic seriousness. When we rehabilitate a movie, the process is often not so much a matter of
thinking about the movie differently, but a matter of thinking about our norms differently. What I try to capture in the book is that these disagreements are not about whether this film or that film matches a set of criteria for good or bad movies. What these disagreements are about are negotiations about the sets of criteria themselves. Now, what that doesn't mean is that it's all just a jumble of relativism, that there's no difference between a bad movie and the avant garde. I don't mean that at all. I just mean that the difference is often a matter of perception. What bad movie love does is that it acts as a Petri dish for these rehabilitation movements. It keeps an audience constantly engaging with these movies. This can lead to all sorts of things: the movie gets released on DVD, a cultural resurgence, playing it in theaters again. Whatever it may be, it's often these bad movie lovers that keep these movies alive.
S: What's your favorite good-bad movie you've seen over the past month?
MS: Yeah. I've seen a few that I would mention. I watched this movie the other day called One More Round (2015). I'm trying to watch every single movie with Don "the Dragon'' Wilson in
it. He's got a lot of roles where he's only in 6 7 the movie two or three minutes, but I m still watching those. Some of those films have been complete disasters, and I didn't enjoy them at all. What makes this worth it is that other times, this is the perfect way to find movies that turn out to be interesting that you would never watch otherwise. This is one of those movies. It's a direct-to-video Christian movie about a boxer who is down and out, lost his job, his wife left him, and he goes back to boxing. With the Lord's help and faith, he defeats a couple of younger and stronger boxers. It's like a really, really, low-budget, Christian Rocky.
Another, an MMA movie called Embattled (2020). It's a mixed martial arts movie. It stars Stephen Dorff playing this MMA fighter who is just a monstrous character. This wealthy top MMA fighter, but he's also incredibly abusive towards his family. But he's also training his son because he wants his son to be an MMA fighter, as well. At the same time, his ex-wife is raising his other son who has special needs. So, half the movie is Stephen Dorff playing this monstrous character and the other half is a heartrending drama and social commentary about a single mom and the contrast between these plots is just really jarring.
Author: Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2020
Reading Caste: The Origins of Our Fundamental to caste is systemic Discontents is a hypnotic experience. Few rigidity. Caste is an invisible system of forces books-moreover, few writers-can craft and barriers; it is the implicit understanding such an enthralling narrative as Isabel of who belongs at the top of society and who Wilkerson. The Pulitzer Prize-winning belongs at the bottom. It is policed through journalist wrote what to a normal writer interpersonal, often unknowing gestures or would have been their magnum opus ways of speaking, as well as more tangible but is surely just a step in Wilkerson's systemic endeavors. This is not to say that constant forward momentum. Caste is caste is divorced from race. In fact, it is race an empathetic history and a dissection of that is the identifying quality operating the American division. It is the truest account American caste system. Wilkerson says of Americans as people, distilling our our system comprises the superior White nature into an epiphanic understanding of and a stratified inferior non-White. That the, well-Origins of Our Discontents. This is, the privileges awarded to the system's book vies to reframe our conversations beneficiaries are based on proximity to surrounding racism and politics through an Whiteness, which Wilkerson lays out in immensely well-researched historical lens, a extraordinary detail. lens that con<:Iusively captures the American Over the course of the book, Wilkerson caste system. elucidates the exact mechanisms that In her debut book, The Warmth of enforce the caste system, which she lays Other Suns, Wilkerson documents the out in eight pillars. These pillars are found history of Black American migration within the caste systems of Nazi Germany patterns in the era ofJim Crow, a time of and India, which are based upon the "naked white supremacy:' Interestingly, the same tenets of the American caste system. word "racism" did not appear anywhere in The qualities of these systems reflect one the narrative. Racism is too narrow a term another in that each has a specific dominant in its broader societal context. Racism is population and a series of subordinate inherent in White supremacist action but people. While these systems mirror one does not wholly account for the enormity of another, they are not the same. White supremacy and learned superiority. America is distinct in that we invented The word that accounts for this magnitude the concept of race as a map for caste. is caste. Race as a concept did not exist before
Europeans landed on the sandy beaches of the New World. Wilkerson documents this invention primarily as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. Enslavement based upon race necessitated the pseudoscience of eugenics, which could then be used to delineate between White and non- White. Furthermore, the concept of non-White is one that is subject to change as Wilkerson documents the exchanges between the White Anglo-Saxon-protestant majority and the Italian and Irish minority. The Italians and Irish, for a time, were considered non-White and treated as such. However, the plight of the Italians and Irish is incomparable to the institutional and social forces that assail Black people. Just as the arbitration ofBlack and White is socially constructed, so too is the hierarchy. On the bottom of the hierarchy, the American untouchables, according to Wilkerson, are Black people.
One of the most fascinating sequences in the book was when Wilkerson compares Nazi Germany to the United States. The Nazis studied America for our ability to commit atrocities so clearly centered on race without an apology. Our laws and history in regulating race laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg Laws and the eventual Holocaust of society's bottom rung of their caste system, for instance, Jews, people of color, Romani, differently abled people, and queer folks. In the aftermath of WWII, the Nazis are an example of a caste system's destruction; they were too precarious. With the precision of a surgeon, Wilkerson dissects these sister systems and lays bare the skeleton of the caste system that wears the racist skin.
This book is partially in response
to our limited understanding of caste
systems. Our proclivity to gesturing at our misconceptions of an "archaic" Indian caste system colors our lens, but Wilkerson brings a needed clarity. The "untouchables" in Indian society can be distinguished through their manner of speaking and surnames. While it was formally dissolved in the 1940s, Indian society cannot exist without the caste system. The legal skeleton for the caste system may be gone, but the conditioned social system remains. Without direct action, this system will continue to undergird their society. Wilkerson reasons that the answer for India's division, the portal through which their nation finds healing, is the same as ours. The needed clarity on the mechanics of the Indian caste system informs the understanding of our own caste, but it does not fully provide the means to cure our discontents.
The destruction of the American caste system will not be found in legislation. It will be found in those moments of empathy, like seeing Wilkerson's personal experience with members of higher castes, which act as microcosms of the unlearning that must happen on a societal level. This book is not a rehash of American history or speaking a language we have heard before. Rather, it is an entirely new vocabulary. This book is for those who cling to obsolete ways of naming and knowing racism in the United States. It is for those who view Wilkerson's learned perspectives as revolutionary. The sickness can only be cured by being understood. It is through speaking this language of caste and approaching it with a deliberate culture of empathy and reparation that the caste system can be dismantled.
Author: Sayaka Murata
Publisher: Grove Press, 2018
There is an old Japanese proverb, (deru kugi wa utareru), roughly translating to "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." This is a sentiment distinctly felt in Sayaka Murata's (in Japanese, tf novel, Convenience Store Woman. Coming from a conservative household in Japan, Murata grew up facing expectations of Japanese tradition, wherein women are expected to marry and have children, and she often feels like an outsider. Having no interest in marriage and having spent a considerable amount of time working in Japanese kombinis (slang term for one of the thousands of convenience stores that populate Japan's city streets and residential neighborhoods alike), Murata is much like her own protagonist, Keiko, who stands out as an oddity among the "cogs of society."
The kombinis of Japan exist as a sacred necessity, an ever-present, everconstant force of good, supporting the Japanese population day and night. From students to workers, seniors and families, the neighborhood convenience store can always be relied upon for a vast array of goods and services. This is all facilitated by crisply uniformed staff who shout their welcome to any valued customer that comes through the door. Unlike convenience stores of the West, Japanese konbinis function
almost as their own little ecosystem, built of bright florescent lights shining upon neatly organized aisles, sounds of cheerful music, and TV advertisements over the smells of frying chicken. It is a world that customers experience only for a short time, but to its workers, it requires a different set of rules. Rules that come to define Keiko as a person. Rules that she takes refuge in, when the rules of the real world don't seem to make sense.
Even at a young age, Keiko had never been "normal," always looking to mimic the behavior of others and constructing her personality almost entirely out of copied traits of those around her. Her only purpose in life revolves around her job at the "Smile Mart," a job she acquired as a teenager, and one that she, much to her family's chagrin, has not grown out of even after eighteen years. Now at the age of 36, unmarried and with no further prospects for the future, Keiko begins to feel more poignantly the pressures of society's expectations. When Keiko meets Shiraha, a lazy, hapless, coworker from the nightshift, she finds an unexpected companion. She shares with him the very same questions about the world around them. Together they seek to outsmart the rules for the sake of fitting in and getting their families off their backs. But pretending to be normal means giving
up the life that Keiko has built for herself, the role of"convenience store worker" with which she so closely identifies. It means becoming the type of person that she had always been averse to. The book ends with her making that decision; what kind oflife does she want?
Questioning what is "normal" is an important theme of this book, and for Keiko, this is most evident in two regards. The first is in how she adheres (or does not adhere) to a "traditional" career path. Keiko does not feel the need to seek a life beyond her menial job and sees no problem in working and living in such a way for the rest of her life. The second refers to the relationships that Keiko is expected to cultivate. As an adult who has never had a romantic partner nor ever felt the need for one, Keiko begins to find herself increasingly distanced from the lives of her friends and sister, who have all entered marriages and started families. Terms like asexuality and aromanticism go unspoken in this book, but to an audience of modern readers, one cannot help but call the words into mind.
Keiko is a character that not all people may be able to relate to. Perhaps in some ways, we have all felt like outsiders at some point. Maybe we see the pressures of Keiko's world present in our own individual realities; maybe we sometimes struggle to find the right thing to say. That really is the strength of this book. Despite how disconnected and strange Keiko is as a character, we still are implored to ask
ourselves questions about how we have come to be the way that we are. Whose characteristics have we picked up on over the years? Whose wants and desires match up with our own? Have any of our thoughts been original, or is our entire existence dictated by expectation? This book brings to mind the absurdism of Camus's The Stranger while referencing the Japanese cultural status quo of social conformity, combined with the Buddhist notion of seeking to observe reality without ego. Reading this book is far from what I would call a settling or reassuring experience. It is quirky and amusing, but not altogether easy to digest. Still, I recommend it as a quick read to anyone looking for something succinct yet thought-provoking, or anyone looking to explore the everyday nuances of Japanese kombini culture.
Included at the end of the book, Murata writes an essay -a love letter, really - to the convenience store in her own life. It seems to be intentionally romantic. It is as if the author saw her time at the kombini as a fulfilling and intimate relationship, one full oflove and passion. It begs the question: how do we observe and cultivate relationships with places around us? These places that exist in a physical space and that allow us within, what is it that we ask of them? And what do they ask in return?
Author: Patti Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press, 2017
There's something about the way a writer can choose words that convey the complexity oflife as a self-aware and conscious being that is like the strained tempo of a sonata. It embeds you in the sails of the cascading hidden hours, rendering one catatonically still on the outside yet fighting the waves of pulsating thoughts inside every thread of the mind. It seeks to act on these impulses but knows not where to express them, becoming God's forgotten shepherd. Seeking refuge in books, Patti Smith tells us, "The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting the tone or even altering the course of a journey" (8). This book is as close as you can get to coming to terms with the existential absurdity that we call the human experience, and the best way to understand it is through the freedom of writing. Finding the words to express the inexpressible is how Smith interprets our experiences through her writing.
Smith tells us a story illustrated through her literature, one of the pains in passion and their necessity to life. She speaks of a young girl on the crest of sixteen who indulges in her devotion to skating. Despite excelling in academics, she chooses her passion over everything. But how far will our passions alone lead us, if not blind us to the sins of humanity, its intentions, and
advantages over us? Eugenia, our young protagonist, follows everything that has promise for her ardor, even if it means putting her own life and value at stake. She grabs every hand that grants her a future towards her devotion, but that is the problem she finds within herself, suffering from her own passion through ambition. Eugenia's story reflects many of our own lives. Her story symbolizes passion and devotion that fail in terms of awareness and discipline. We want what we desire, but without reflection, we lose sight of our own value and the price of that privilege.
Smith writes of the depictions of reality and its never-ending curiosities about the places and the people we see daily without taking the steps to question their existence. Instead, we use all our senses to examine all the words in our knowledge to best curate answers to life's flooding questions. We use these words to create a reality and ask questions about "the self" and our surroundings, thus, reflecting our place in all of it. Smith starts the book by acknowledging the definition of inspiration and its effects, which lead us to tremble with questions and make us seek refuge for expression. Using inspirations from the literary world, she describes her trip to Paris, where she crossed paths with the
graves of known writers and her experience and horrors of the imagination'' (87). Before 73 telling the story of Eugenia, Smith describes entering the house of Albert Camus, a muse of her own. But also, in the same epoch, she being on a train to London, then to Ashford, examines the people of today, the strangers and to Simone Weil's grave. Sitting in the of the streets, and being a foreigner but chair of the train, Smith writes a piece she feeling a sense of home. had started earlier: the story of Eugenia.
When you read the opening of Smith's When you get lost in the act of writing, the endeavors in Paris through the story of subconscious speaks loudly through your Eugenia, subliminal dots are created from words. Smith writes, "Initially I wondered the first line, swiftly connecting the fictional what prompted me to write such an obscure, unhappy tale ... but as I reread, I story of Eugenia. Perhaps the story may be was struck by how many passing reflections fictional, but it is not far from the themes of reality and the internal dialogue we and occurrences had inspired or permeated it" (24). If you cannot speak for yourself in experience daily. The alchemy of how a piece of writing comes about is hidden in the presence of others, you can speak for the story itself, if not in the recessions of yourself on the blank pages of a journal, your own mind. That is the true absurdity. and only then will you have your answers. As you read Eugenia's story, you root for To divest yourself in the act of writing is her journey in following skating. Yet, you to subdue your inner truths. These truths, are more aware than her of how her passion which lie deep within the foliage of your and her hunger are their own warden. The brain, become unfamiliar, such that when only way we can escape our own warden is presented to yourself, they are intrusive, and by writing. Smith writes, "We must write, you deny their existence. We must examine but not without consistent effort and a ourselves. So, when asked, "Why write?" measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, "Quia non possumus simpliciter vivere." to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies
Author: Lauren Oyler
Publisher: Catapult, 2021
Lauren Oyler situates her Trump-era social media novel, Fake Accounts (2021), in a thread of conspiratorial and paranoid texts throughout the American literary canon. The semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of the narrator's discovery of her boyfriend's conspiracy theory social media account in the wake of his death and the narrator's subsequent mental tailspin following this discovery. Oyler takes stylistic beats from across American literature such as Joan Didion's implication of the author in Democracy (1984), Denis Johnson's sense of apocalypse in Jesus' Son {1999), and she thus modernizes these forms to fit the contemporary moment. The paranoid stylings of these authors reflect the difficulty of discerning truth after moments of significant historical trauma. Oyler centers her critique within the novel on the ambivalence of the narrator when faced with the traumatic effects of social media during the Trump era.
Richard Hofstadter's formulation of the paranoid style presented in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" continues to assert itself as a dominant interpretive model in times of perceived apocalyptic political struggle. Timothy Melley's more recent project, Empire
of Conspiracy, updates and furthers Hofstadter's work in paranoia and conspiracy. Melley argues, "the culture of paranoia and conspiracy may be understood as a result of liberal individualism's continuing popularity despite its inability to account for social regulation" (Melley, 14). Melley identifies this phenomenon as agency panic, a way of reassuring liberal individualism in response to postmodern conceptions of identity. Oyler's novel presents a critique of this agency panic by considering the social regulatory effects of social media. For instance, after recounting the back-and-forth of a Twitter feud, the narrator reflects, "it was easier to think of technology as something that was happening to me rather than acknowledging I was doing something with it" (Oyler 218). The narrator locates her panic in conflicting narratives about social media. Social media is simultaneously something that happens to her, determining her subjectivity, and something she simply uses for pleasure and escapism, where the cloak of anonymity brings some level of freedom. Oyler is using the novel here to dramatize the agency panic liberal individualism faces when called upon to confront forms
of social regulation. throughout the novel represent a sort
Fake Accounts is a story of the of patriarchal reductive view of the narrator living within these paradoxes narrator's paradoxical position. As and searching for alternative ways of another aspect of this experimentation, being that can fully account for social the narrator tries writing about her life regulations, while simultaneously events through various astrological signs. She reflects on the use of astrology maintaining the narrative of liberal as a mediatory code for explaining life individualism. The opening novel invokes the apocalyptical view of the world experiences: "what's amazing about this pervasive throughout social media, the structure is that you can just dump any "consensus was the world was ending;' material you have in here and leave it up from which the narrator differentiates to the reader to connect it to the rest of your work" (Oyler, 180). This passage herself: "I didn't believe all this ... A not only serves as an interrogation of the paradoxical comfort can be found in drama" (Oyler, 5). The paradoxical ways we use different mediatory codes comfort of the narrator becomes a way to simplify the narratives of our lives, for Oyler to represent an ambivalence but also invokes the role of the reader in towards the apocalyptic views of and interpreting how these mediatory codes from social media. In her search for connect to the thematics of the novel in truth, the narrator travels to Berlin a sardonic tone. The narrator's dismissal to shake off this American sensibility of the interpretive act as a whole creates but finds her position in Berlin as an a critique of a paranoid readership that American resident equally paradoxical. seeks to pull the narrator out of her Oyler exemplifies this ambivalence paradoxical position. through the narrator's difficulty in Oyler's Trump-era social media finding and making meaningful novel is fertile ground for considering the various ways we think about conspiracy relationships and finding community in the new city. and paranoia in the post-Trump election Oyler's formal experimentation era. It offers a constructive critique of throughout Fake Accounts reflects the the various ways we cling to the myths ambivalent paranoia surrounding social of liberal individualism and paranoia media that her narrator exemplifies. In as modes for experiencing the world. the most prevalent refrains of the novel, More specifically, Oyler offers a way to the narrator considers how her ex think about how social media affects boyfriends would respond to the events and constructs American identity, and of the narrative: "the ex-boyfriends think how we can approach representing the I need to delete my Twitter account paradoxical position of the American and go to therapy" (Oyler, 119). The in the contemporary moment. In Fake refrain serves to situate the narrative Accounts, Oyler offers a sympathetic within a specific interpretive framework: yet critical and cruelly sardonic view of the ex-boyfriends. The ex-boyfriends contemporary American life.
Author: Mallory O'Meara
Publisher: Hanover Square Press, 2021
When you think about drinking that women have throughout history culture, what do you tend to think of? As and connects patriarchal views to this to a college student, you might be thinking provide even more context. This is a perfect about frat parties or going to the club every book for anyone to read if they love history, weekend with your friends. Maybe you alcohol, feminism, or all of the above. just think of having a small get-together
As a history major, I love to explore with your friends where you're sipping and learn all about the past. However, I am wine while watching your favorite show. disappointed by the fact that its narrative You could even be thinking of your is often viewed and presented from a parents having a drink with dinner! Or, predominantly male perspective. There most importantly, do you think drinking are those who forget that history is more culture as a whole is more masculine? If than just the wars that make up the past. you agree with the last question, you are Everything that had a birth, life, and death not alone. It has become ingrained in many is part of history-even alcohol. Most cultures that drinking in general is a more importantly, women have played a large masculine activity than anything. This role in the foundation of many different has gotten to the point that when women ideas, inventions, and more throughout partake, they tend to be made fun of or not history, though they do not receive the taken as seriously-hence the term "girly credit they deserve. Mallory O'Meara gives drinks." Despite the perceived masculinity a voice to the forgotten women behind in drinking culture, the history of alcohol the alcohol industry, dating all the way across the world is overwhelmingly back to the very dawn of time, then to the female-driven. Mallory O'Meara breaks women of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Germany, down this history in her new book Girly and more. O'Meara has a very witty way of Drinks: A World History of Women and writing, which holds the attention of the Alcohol. O'Meara unveils how drinking reader fairly easily. Her wittiness makes the grew to seemingly become a gendered act, reading feel almost conversational, as if a and bars became a "place for men." She friend was relaying information that they does a tremendous job of connecting the had recently learned and was excited to role of alcohol in the freedom and power finally be sharing with somebody. One of
my favorite moments from the text is when technology. It follows women worldwide
O'Meara says, "Nuns-they're not like throughout history who gradually came other girls (65)." I really enjoy the addition to understand the science of brewing of the footnotes throughout the book, as and made the alcohol industry what it it provides me with that extra context on is today. It discusses the way alcohol has been utilized across various religions, whatever it is she is talking about at the moment, but they also tend to be quite cultures, and classes, painting a broader funny. Her playful and witty style of writing picture for all readers. Otterbein students really held my attention as I read this book, may also benefit from this read due and it made the process enjoyable. to its connection to the Temperance
Along with the style of her writing, I Crusades. In 1909, Westerville became the enjoyed the way O'Meara organized the headquarters for the Anti-Saloon League content of her book. The chapters are of America (ASLA), making the story broken down by time period as well as even more relevant to all students. There is region. She makes very smooth transitions, nothing better than getting to know more allowing the information provided to flow about the place where one resides. Most easily. Moving from Point A to Point B importantly, it shifts history from a male is far from confusing. The information is lens to a female lens. The overwhelming easy to follow, nor is it too dense. A fear I focus of the book falls on the women who have sometimes when reading a book on made large contributions to the making history is that the text will be dense and and distribution of alcohol, although the difficult to read. Girly Drinks was incredibly discussion of the patriarchy and the role of men plays a key role in the book, as comprehensible. I strongly recommend this book to both those who are interested in well. O'Meara outlines the daily lives of women in history for readers to get a better the historical relationship between women and alcohol and those who would simply understanding of what life was like during like to take up reading again. I struggle with other time periods. Students across all different kinds of disciplines at Otterbein finding books that I enjoy, so I have a habit of only reading required texts for my classes could find a reason to not only use this and nothing just for myself For anyone like book to better understand their own course me who is looking to get back into reading content, but also to enjoy learning a side of and is interested in history, feminism, and history that is not typically covered. alcohol, this would be a great first book to pickup.
Lastly, this book is perfect for the hwnanities community at Otterbein. The book focuses on history, ethics, comparative religion, feminism (which ties into WGSS), and more. It is a text that studies hwnankind and interprets, assesses, and analyzes its role in science and
JAuthor: Lee Cole
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022
"I've always had the same predicament. When I'm home, in Kentucky, all I want is to leave. When I'm away, I'm homesick for a place that never was." - Lee Cole
Aspiring author Owen Callahan is lost. Laid off and homeless, he returns home to Kentucky to live on his grandfather's couch and get back on his feet. Step one is getting a job on the groundskeeping crew at the local private college, Ashby, where he is allowed to take one free class. He selects a writer's workshop. The class is Jungle Narratives, a passion project of the professor. No student in the class has visited a literal jungle, leaving them to write and discuss the metaphorical kind. Turns out Kentucky counts as a jungle. During the day, Owen works on a tree-trimming team with James, one of the few Black men on the groundskeeping crew, and Rando, an older white man willing to engage with popular political conspiracy theories. At night, he attends class and parties with the wealthier master's students . Among them, he meets Alma Hadzics, winner of the college's prestigious writing fellowship, and she is spending the year finishing her debut novel. Quickly, the
two begin a complicated relationship and must navigate the intersections and differences in their backgrounds. She's an Ivy League Bosnian refugee painted as publishing's next golden girl. He's a former addict who can only dream of writing. Owen fears being stuck in the place of his birth; Alma was born in a country that no longer exists. Yet, for all their differences, they both find themselves in the strange land of Kentucky.
Lee Cole's stunning debut novel guides readers through America's current class issues, what it means to be a writer, and a complex relationship with home. With the Midwest serving as both a protagonist and antagonist, Groundskeeping offers readers an intimate point of view on locals' and transplants' varying attitudes toward the culture. With the 2016 election as the setting, Cole skillfully navigates Owen and Alma's fraught romance. At times, the two millennials do not have a charitable opinion of each other. Owen sees Anna as a beacon of the coastal elite. She's the privileged young woman who got everything she dreamt of. Ultimately, Owen must reconcile that he cannot ask her to accept Kentuckians'
three-dimensionality without accepting details about the lives of others with hers as well. the intention of publishing them. How
While reading, I questioned if the much must he mask his friends and characters bordered on stereotypes. But families when making them characters? as this is an issue discussed in the novel Can he ethically write about true stories itself, the questions coming to my mind that are not his own? One must have felt intended. Cole wants us to recognize little knowledge of Cole to suspect that that stereotypes can be true, just as they these are questions he grapples with can be false. Groundskeeping embraces himself. Cole was born and raised in this dichotomy. Often, Alma is unable Kentucky and got inspiration for this to see through her preconceived ideas project while working as a tree trimmer. about Kentucky and Owen. She comes While it is not autobiographical, there across as infantilizing or condescending. are obvious similarities. But Kentucky changes her. By the end, For readers looking for a few of Cole's characters have the same contemporary American take on class and its effect on our relationships, perspective they had in the beginning. Furthermore, the heart of this novel Groundskeeping is an apt choice . It is Owen's grandfather, a Trump reminds me of what Sally Rooney did supporting republican who lives in rural with her incredibly popular Normal Kentucky. Pop is kind and empathetic, People ( and not just because of the one of the few who helps the family similarities in theme). Not only does members the rest of the family has given Cole write a compelling story with up on. fully realized characters, but he also
I would be remiss not to mention builds a narrative that speaks to the the thoughtful questions Cole poses world we all live in. Groundskeeping about the identity of a writer and what expertly comments on the 2016 election and its aftermath, artfully describing belongs to them. At times, it is hard to decipher if Owen is a true fiction a complicated coming-of-age tale fit for the current state of America. writer. For much of the novel, the only writing the reader observes is the near Groundskeeping has no pyrotechnics . verbatim recording of conversations and But Cole's talent for crafting character personal descriptions of his experiences. and description makes it an exceptional Owen prefers transcribing real life read for Otterbein fiction lovers and over crafting fiction. Cole questions if anyone who considers themselves a it is moral for Owen to write intimate writer.
Author: Maria Ressa
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2022
In How to Stand Up to a Dictator, increase the spirit of community among author and journalist Maria Ressa explains everyone. how a dictator is able to quietly rise to Ressa also comes to this conclusion in power undetected by the greater public the final chapter of the book. She explains by utilizing social media platforms. In how to keep a dictator from gaining her book, Ressa details how Facebook influence, stating, "by embracing values, posed a major problem in the Philippines defined early... You can't do it alone. You through subtle tactics that manipulated have to create a team, strengthen your public opinion and engineered support for area of influence" (261 ). Ressa goes in an authoritarian leader. Ressa argues that depth on this final thought by explaining holding others accountable and following that working with others is one major defined values weakens authoritarianism. component of keeping a dictator out of She wrote the book for a general audience, power. She declares to the reader, "in my and those who read it will understand Nobel lecture, I asked for a person-tohow to keep democracy intact for future person defense of our democracies ... I've generations and to recognize the behavior tried to flesh that out in this book: how of a dictator before they are able to do any fighting back goes from the personal to major damage. the political, from individual values to a
The main themes of the book focus pyramid for collective action" (262). Ressa on personal philosophy, morality, and is building on the foundation of calling community. Ressa even sets up the book to for people to come together and make the reflect these ideals throughout the chapters. leaders work for the good of the society. She She explains the purpose of the book's builds on being comfortable with others, organization. The theme comes through as Ressa explains on various timetables clearly in the epilogue, when Ressa talks on defeating dictators, "in the short term, about giving a speech at her alma mater. now, it's just us: collaborate, collaborate, Reflecting on the event, she says, "so I asked collaborate. And that begins with trust" them to think for themselves, be skeptical (262). of social media, and walk in someone Ressa demonstrates sticking to values else's shoes" (Ressa 265). The overall early on in the book, which includes argument encourages people to form their holding others accountable for their actions. own opinions and to work with others to Reflecting on her undergrad years, on living
by the honor code, she notes, "Only later did strong as people think and requires people I realize that I assumed everyone around to constantly fight for their rights. Ressa was doing the same: taking responsibility explicitly states this when she writes, for the world around us" (Ressa 28). "This is what many Westerners ... need Ressa is arguing that when everyone is to learn from us. This book is for anyone responsible not just for themselves, but who might take democracy for granted, also for surrounding people, others cannot written by someone who never would" exploit the cracks that allow them to get (7). Throughout the entire book, she also away with actions that put them above the makes it clear that fighting for rights also rest. Keeping people responsible for their staves off authoritarian rule, since it means actions and forcing them to live by the that people will refuse to accept unjust same standards as others is often where situations. Furthermore, those who read the book will certainly come to understand we begin to challenge unchecked power.
Ressa notes this in the second chapter, how Facebook played a role in the current writing, "I learned that drawing the line, political situation. Ressa tells the audience calling out unfairness and being honest, about the start, saying, "Well before the though uncomfortable, often means moving 2016 elections, the stage had already life forward, bringing something new to been set ... for click and account farms, fruition" (30). information operations, and the rise of
Ressa also develops the idea of working political influencers" (124). She then traces together and building a community to how they left lasting impacts on politics defend against ruthless, power-driven in the Philippines and connects this to the leaders by writing about her news United States. Secondly, Ressa also details how minor attacks on democracy add up organization, Rappler. Describing the overall sense of the cofounders, Ressa over time and disintegrate the will to fight, explains, "We even had different political while simultaneously stripping rights away views, but that was not something that for everyone.
How to Stand Up to a Dictator shines a concerned us much; we always put our commitment to good journalism, truth, light on how morals, individual philosophy, and justice above politics" (101). Here, she and community strengthen a democracy. is highlighting how working can create Ressa argues that the important aspects are a community for action allows people to staying true to one's values and working come together and prevents one person with others to hold everyone accountable from rising through the ranks to dominate. for their actions. Another noteworthy She describes how their commitment, element is how social media also leads defined by common values, despite politics, to a breakdown of democracy under allowed them to call out government everyone's noses, and insignificant actions officials in an effort to hold them from the government can also contribute accountable to the masses. to authoritarian ruling. Clearly, the book is
The book is for a general audience meant for all people, and I recommended it to warn others how democracy is not as to all.
by
How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
Author: Monica Guzman
Publisher: BenBella Books, 2022
With I Never Thought of It That spent the morning with residents of Oregon's Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Sherman County. In the 2016 presidential Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, election, 74% of King County votes were for author Monica Guzman explores a plethora Hillary Clinton; conversely, 74% of Sherman of questions that plagued her following the County votes were for Donald Trump. She 2016 presidential election. Guzman is the co describes the groups' consensuses following founder of Seattle's The Evergrey newsletter a comment from a wheat farmer: 'Watching and is the liberal daughter of conservative Darren and others talk about what it was Mexican immigrants to the United States. like to welcome us-to welcome anyone at She seeks to discover how communication all from a major American metropolitan in the contemporary world divides the area-I began to understand that the nation along ideological lines. Guzman nervous energy here wasn't just about advocates for expanding our worldviews political differences. It was about the chance through "I never thought of it that way" to be seen" (109). Guzman interjects pivotal moments. With a focus on changing moments with her own commentary, but attitudes when approaching conversations it never takes away from the gravity of the with different perspectives, heavy use of text. Instead, it invites readers to imagine studies and anecdotes, and small illustrations themselves in her shoes. When introducing littering its pages, Guzman's journalistic new concepts, Guzman takes a supportive prowess shines in I Never Thought of It That tone: ''Now it's your turn, dear reader: Our Way as she tells others' stories, describes protagonist is wondering ifhe should kick psychological studies in layperson's terms, off a bridging conversation here or not," and simplifies complicated, deeply personal Guzman writes, introducing an imaginary emotions. "dial" system she uses to judge the usefulness The prime example of Guzman's of conversations, "Where would you put the storytelling mastery comes at a time she needle on each of our dials?" (88). shatters her own misconceptions. Monica The simplification of complex, nuanced recalls an event she organized and co-hosted. events is another area in which Guzman A busload of Seattle's King County residents excels. Guzman explains Muzafer Sherif's
Robbers Cave experiment early in the others' perspectives to fill in your own "blind book. The experiment involved separating spots" is a key lesson from I Never Thought two groups of fifth-grade boys from each ofIt That Way. Because of the political basis other during a stay at summer camp before of the book, however, many encounters from introducing them to each other on the Guzman's personal life follow a predictable seventh day. The study focused on group pattern. First, Monica (or somebody identification rituals and the "othering" from her family, such as her father) power oflanguage. meets someone. Subsequently, a passing My first criticism of the work arises microaggression towards conservatives and here: if the piece is based in politics and the Trump supporters arises. Finally, Guzman's 2016 election, Guzman should lead with a parents' political beliefs come up, shocking more recent example of a similar situation the crowd. Most of the time, Guzman's in Washington? Following the Robbers political beliefs go unsaid, a problem that I Cave experiment, Guzman tells of a research Never Thought of It That Way's characterizes group's experiment with 2,100 Democrats as an all-too-familiar experience for citizens in Seattle. Guzman notes this vast political and Republicans following the 2018 divide: ''one in every eight of my thousand midterms. The aim of this passage was to show that due to media warping our view of closest neighbors in Seattle is Republican, society's ''other," grown adults see the world according to fascinating address-level similarly to "eleven-year-olds at camp" (25). research released in 2021." Columbus, for This example is much more quantitative reference, is much more politically diverse; than Sherif's heavily qualitative Robbers one in every ten local residents identifies as Cave experiment, and slogging through the Republican (6). percentages after reading an easily digestible Ultimately, I Never Thought ofIt That Way stands out due to the daring questions story about campers harmed the flow of the it asks, and Guzman's vast experience chapter. Fortunately, this section is not long; I feel that the Robbers Cave experiment in social media management, editing, would have been a worthwhile reward and writing shows through her shortfor readers following the 2018 midterms. yet-effective lists. If you are interested in Guzman's eloquent descriptions of her love America's political division and the role for Seattle and divisive social media posts media plays in spreading misconceptions, feel jarring after the brief dive into political you will enjoy Guzman's work. She goes drama, even if she soon mentions CNN's beyond the seemingly simple premise to Don Lemon saying "he 'had to get rid of' deliver a product with nuance and plenty of friends who would reelect [Donald Trump]" surprising moments. I have no doubts that (29). the Otterbein community as a whole would Guzman's anecdotes feel too similar. benefit from experiencing this book. It is understandable that an author should fall into this trap. We all have limitations on experiences due to our culture, upbringing, location, education, and so on. Listening to
8 3
Author: Ainslie Hogarth
Publisher:
Vintage, 2022
"I can cure Ralph. Because it's what I was born to do. Remember that Abby, vanquishing this depression is your true calling as a wife. Just like every woman in a television commercial has a true calling - kill the bacteria and save your family; buy the healthy snacks and save your family; use the perfume and save your family" ( 48).
Womanhood is not for the faint of heart in Ainslie Hogarth's horror novel, Motherthing. The absurdly oblivious protagonist, Abby, attempts to shield her husband from grieving his mother's suicide. This death uproots her perfectly average life with Ralph and their unconceived child, Cal. She battles Ralph's mental illness while her mental health deteriorates during a questionable mother-in-law ghost haunting. Abby unintentionally exposes the expectations women have as mothers and wives. Women are taught to find fulfillment in their husbands and children, and these domestic duties serve as tools for maintaining the fantasy. Traditional domestic duties in North American culture like cooking, sex, cleaning, and child-rearing become violent exploits for Abby to transform herself into an extension of Ralph rather than an
individual. Her blind devotion is the horror theme, and her co-dependence on her grieving husband leads to insecurity in herself and reality. She is deeply ingrained in the concept that wives must transform themselves into a subservient object until "his delusions becoming mine [Abby], easily, because I'm nothing. Still just a seed floating in the wind. Landing on Ralph, rooting in Ralph, becoming Ralph instead of becoming me" (159). More disturbing is her desire to be lost inside Ralph's world. She wholly submits herself to losing any remnants of life before him because she truly believes she is nothing without Ralph grounding her to Earth. Without Ralph, Abby does not exist. "I would be a person too" (199), she thought, after only spending a few nights with him.
Hogarth's critique of American marriage reflects how culture emphasizes the role of women as servants to men. The critique is sarcastic, crude, macabre, and honest about internalizing patriarchal gender roles. She does not mask thoughts with imagery or metaphors. Instead, she goes for striking statements: "There's no greater feeling in the world than being loved by a man. By someone who matters. It makes you
feel legitimate in a way. You have to be real for a man to love you, you know" (218). Better yet, Abby's deep need to conform is heightened when she believes her mother-in-law is haunting them. She internalizes the haunting as a failure to live up to the expectations of being a "nurturing" wife who will save her husband. The violent turmoil stirring within her spills into these expectations. In the end, saving her husband comes in the form of dinner-a horrifyingly wholesome meal. The meal is a metaphor for Abby's duty to sustain Ralph as a wife. Simultaneously, it marks her taking the role of caregiver, mother, and wife-a role she has been failing, according to Ralph's mother. Terrifyingly, Abby's plan works, at least in getting her husband out of his depression. It is debatable whether Ralph's mother haunted them. Abby goes unpunished for the murder and for tricking Ralph into eating the remains. The novel concludes in an open-ended way and on an eerily cheerful note; Abby is pregnant.
This is a surprise for the readers to come across a happy ending in a horror novel, yet somehow, it is even more of a twisted fate. Today's audiences would expect Ralph to discover the remains in the freezer or the police finally connecting Abby to the crime. This would teach us thatwe will be punished if we do not do what is right. In a societal scope, Abby had fulfilled her role as a wife by nourishing her husband. He no longer needs to grieve his mother
because his wife came into her role.
The next phase in a wife's life is having the man's children and raising them so they will continue their lineage. Abby is rewarded for her devotion by carrying his child.
Readers who identify with feminist values may laugh at the ludicrous plans Abby forms to "save" Ralph.
Motherthing's charm is in its dark comedic narration about what it means to be a wife and a mother. Hogarth is not shy with vulgar language and morbid imagery, which opposes the idealized version of the narrator's self. Mothers and babies are another obsession constantly used as a metaphor for Abby's relationships. If someone is not interested in feminism, they may not want to sit through an entire novel about how identity and motherhood oppose one another. The ending provides unjust happiness that appeals to general readers who might not be aware of the implications. There is no solution, justice, or redemption present-except that Abby 'is becoming the mother-in-law she deeply despises. Unaware of herself edging towards a self she hates, she will have to let go of her child one day, too. The novel mimics a cautionary fairytale. Similar to the popular fairytale trope of the evil stepmother, Hogarth uses the mother figure to represent deviant behavior.
Author: Lauron J. Kehrer
Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2022
Released in November 2022, Queer an ethnological and sociological resource Voices in Hip Hop by Lauron J. Kehrer is to contextualize the modern-day results of a quick read, but a powerful one. Within that shared relationship. The first chapter, 130 pages, it seeks to shed light on the "Hip- Hop's Queer Roots" focuses heavily oft-ignored common history and musical on the New York ballroom scene and music traditions shared by hip-hop, rap, and queer traditions, such as house and disco music, culture. In the introduction, Kehrer submits and how they interacted with rap and hipto the reader the major contemporaneous hop at the genres' nascence. Beyond a simple discussions on the subject by contrasting the historical outline, Kehrer also traces longpublic coming out of the artist Frank Ocean standing homophobic tendencies in hip-hop with the contents of the song "Same Love" to the phenomenon of "discophobia." by the rapper Macklemore. Ocean, while not While many readers will find the explicitly a rapper or hip-hop artist, shares a evidence and argument compelling and large overlap with the culture and fan base. convincing, one of the book's weaknesses lies Upon his public statement, he received in the second chapter, "Queer Articulations support from fans and established artists in Ballroom Rap." Kehrer seems to make a like Jay-Z. ln regard to "Same Love," Kehrer point to limit the intellectual gatekeeping zeroes in on Macklemore's line, "If I were present in a large swathe of academic gay, I would think hip-hop hates me" (12). writing and opening the discussion to a They use this contradiction to point out that much more generalized audience. Largely, this sentiment erases queer involvement in Kehrer executes this with much thought and rap or hip-hop by citing hip-hop artists and nuance, but with some major exceptions. culture as a heteronormative monolith. For instance, while writing on the history of After the more recent examples New York's ballroom scene, Kehrer struggles provided in the introduction, Kehrer has to provide clear definitions of terms that had elected to spotlight the history of queer multiple meanings. This is particularly true artists from New York and New Orleans of the dual meaning of the word "house'' in the body chapters. The former serves in context. I often found myself rereading as the main source of historical evidence passages to find out if the author was for the osmotic relationship the genres referring to the musical genre, the informal had with queer culture during their early and hierarchical LGBTQ communities development The latter serves mainly as within the context of queer ballroom culture,
or both. Readers who are unfamiliar with either or both of these definitions may have an even harder time arriving at the author's intended meaning.
Difficulties of definition aside, this chapter expertly shifts from the historiographical framework of the first to a more current and ethnographic approach. This combination of techniques becomes a foundational pillar for the remainder of the text. One argument based on an interview with queer rapper Leif had a lasting impression when the author disagreed with their statement that queer rap was not a new genre. Kehrer utilizes this snippet to disagree in the most tactful and logical ways. Many more such instances can be found throughout the book. As the author is an ethnomusicologist, it is no surprise that ethnographic techniques are skillfully applied the moment they become viable tools. Up until this point in the book, there is a clearly unified, if somewhat disjointed, narrative of this history. Moving into the second half of the book feels less organic.
Both chapters 3 and 4, "The Bro Code" and "Nice for What," respectively, have moving and crucial evidence and arguments. Perhaps out of necessity, these chapters must stand somewhat in isolation from the neat and pervading argument of the previous ones to give due space to their subjects. "The Bro Code" is an analysis and deconstruction of the often-required hypermasculinity in hip-hop and rap, which has benefited some possibly surprising groups of artists while harming many others. Kehrer, for reference, employs the story of Queen Latifah's career as a more masculine-presenting, and more recently openly queer, woman in the genre. This serves as their baseline measurement
for the treatment of others. Many could debate this choice, but Queen Latifah's level of visibility lends itself to a much wider audience and I believe was an excellent choice.
"Nice for What" is at the same time a sociological analysis, historical account, and a showcase of the rich queer musical and performance tradition in New Orleans. While again this chapter lacked some of the almost satisfying ties of those at the start, the book's recounting of Hurricane Katrina's impact on "Sissy Rap" and "Bounce" music was entirely unexpected. I scarcely paused to blink while reading this chapter, and the purchase price could nearly be justified on its own merit. Kehrer weaves this cultural context into every page, and as New Orleans is the subject, there is more than enough yarn to knit. Here as well, I had much better clarity of meaning when the author was referring to concepts I was unfamiliar with than in chapter 2.
Like the final pounding piano chords dosing a dramatic orchestral piece, the "Outro'' or "Call Me by Your Name," beautifully ties in the reader's total experience into their analysis of queer hiphop's recent breakthroughs. As the title of the outro may suggest, Lil Nas X features heavily here. At less than six full pages, this book wrapped so satisfactorily, it could be a masterclass in effective and efficient writing. While I found areas of the book that I could critique, those aspects paled in comparison to the sophisticated utilization of evidence and argument within the text. I came away with a new appreciation for the topic and highly recommend it for a weekend read.
88 Book Review by Natalie Hu
Author: Aeham Ahmad
Publisher: Atria Books, 2019
On December 17, 2010, 26-year-old enroll Aeham at the State School of Music
Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Damascus. Financial difficulties did not protesting police harassment in Tunisia. This stop Ahmad's father from doing everything act set off a revolutionary movement known he could to give Aeham the opportunity as the Arab Spring. Protests and uprisings to become a pianist. Finding funds to began to appear throughout the Arab world, buy a proper piano, learning to tune the leading to various civil wars and crises. instrument himself, and years of 90-minute These uprisings called for the end of the bus rides across town were just a few such regime and for better governance-a voice efforts. In his early teens, assisted by his for the people. The regime responded with father, Aeham signed the contract for an old force. This violence continues today. workshop. Half a year later, "Aeham's Music
The Syrian Civil War began in March Shop" opened, teaching lessons and selling 2011, a conflict stemming from the Arab instruments to hundreds. For Aeham, it was Spring. In his memoir, The Pianist from more than a store. It was an escape from Syria, Aeham Ahmad does not shy away uninspiring classes and school bullies, a from recounting the horrors of this war. To place where he could practice non-classical Ahmad, those calling this conflict a "civil music away from his father's scolding words war" or a "crisis" are wrong; it is a revolution. and discover himself as a musician. Ahmad does not discuss politics; he does not
For the next several years, life for take sides. Instead, he writes as a voice for Ahmad consisted of teaching students and his friends and family, for the refugees still taking classes at the University of Homs in Syria. He says, "I'm a pianist I've never in Damascus. Ahmad was entering his waved flags. My revolution is music" ( 193 ). 20s when Bouazizi's death shook the Arab Aeham Ahmad is a Palestinian world and sparked the first uprisings. A year pianist born in Yarmouk, a refugee camp later, as Ahmad and his wife Tahani were in Damascus, Syria. At the age of three, welcoming their first son, the bombings of he became a guide for his father, a blind nearby neighborhoods became visible from violinist and carpenter. Leading him through Yarmouk. Roadblocks and checkpoints the beautiful and bustling neighborhood of appeared, making it difficult for anyone Yarmouk, Aeham walked with his father to to leave town. Soldiers arrived, searching school. Being musically inclined, Ahmad's for anything and anyone that posed an father encouraged Aeham's musical skills by opposition or threat to the regime. Those helping him practice daily and working to found were executed, and bombings
became more frequent. A September family celebration resulted in Ahmad and his family fleeing for their lives as debris and missiles rained around them. Until December 16, 2012, Yarmouk had remained untouched. Soon, smoke engulfed Ahmad's old school and the hospital where his son was born. Among the rubble, people were lying on the street, bloody and unrecognizable. This would be the sight of Yarmouk for the next decade.
Yarmouk had become sealed; no one in or out. Fear and anger filled the lives of Ahmad and his family. The arrest and disappearance of his younger brother Alaa, the near-loss of his right hand, the death of a young girl beside his piano, and the brutal torture of a close friend. Extreme hunger led to unnecessary deaths and extreme measures. There were several instances where playing the piano in the middle of war seemed pointless, but those around Ahmad reassured him that his music was important. Children sang and laughed together amidst the starvation and destruction. In these moments, Ahmad stays true to his statement of music being his revolution and his language. By including the lyrics to the songs "performed" in the middle of the street, Ahmad shows the medium for his revolution. In these lyrics, written by Ahmad and his friends, facts and feelings are expressed Every word is personal. It is a perspective unique to Ahmad and everyone remaining in Yarmouk.
Ahmad closes his memoir with his journey to Germany. In 2015, an unnamed contact helped Ahmad gather the resources needed for his family to escape. With countless checkpoints and armed soldiers, the journey proved to be difficult,
frightening, and nearly impossible. In the end, Ahmad continued alone. Less than a year later, as promised, Ahmad reunited with his wife and two sons. Two years later, his parents joined them in Germany.
Aeham Ahmad's memoir is a heartrending account of life in Syria as a refugee and musician. Despite his struggles, he does not seek pity nor act as a political activist. Instead, he educates readers on aspects of the war that the media fails to report. Syria was not always the site of mass graves or filled with rubble from bombings. People were friendly to each other before politics dissolved relationships. It was home to numerous lively neighborhoods housing millions. Due to the war, Yarmouk is no longer home to refugees; instead, it is one of the most destroyed neighborhoods in Syria Today, Ahmad lives in Germany with his family. There are many days when painful images of Yarmouk appear in his mind, moments where he feels guilty and angry. But he finds solace in his music, playing weekly concerts and fulfilling his and his father's dream of becoming a pianist. To read The Pianist from Syria is to become aware of the refugee crisis in Syria and to realize how momentous Bouazizi's act was. This memoir is for anyone wishing to understand the severity of the Arab Spring and recognize the power of music. Readers will be distraught and devastated by the details of this war. But Ahmad helps readers realize the beauty of these countries and the lives of the people in them. This single perspective opens the door to acknowledging the refugee crises happening worldwide and the measures taken to survive.
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House, 2019
Margaret Atwood's The Testaments mother, Tabitha, dies in the beginning is a sequel to her well-known novel, The of the story, which previews much of the Handmaids Tale, which recently came back character's struggle. After her mother dies, into popularity after the story was made into her father remarries a cruel woman named a television series on the streaming platform Paula She seeks to have thirteen-year-old Hulu. The sequel was released on September Agnes marry Commander Judd, a much 10, 2019, 34 years after the first novel in the older man. This begins Agnes's desire to series. join her friend, Becka, in becoming an
The novel consists of three narrators, aunt, someone who trains and oversees the the first being Aunt Lydia. Aunt Lydia is Handmaids. This decision is the beginning a character carried over from the original of the three narrators' stories intertwining. story. Aunt Lydia has a reputation in
Our final narrator is another young the first book for being a tyrant; she is a girl named Daisy. Unlike the other two, highly unlikable character and appears Daisy lives in Canada and actively dislikes to wholeheartedly believe in the way the the Republic of Gilead. There is a lot of Republic of Gilead treats the Handmaids. secrecy that surrounds Daisy, especially However, in The Testaments, we are given from her parents. She is never allowed in her a look into her personal diary with her father's office, she does not know what he true feelings about Gilead. Early in the keeps in his safe, her parents are constantly novel, we find out that she is not quite the commenting about her avoiding the media, authoritarian we know her to be; in fact, she and they will not allow her to be seen at is simply trying to survive the horror that is protests she wants to go to. Very early in the Gilead. The storyline of Aunt Lydia in this story, a suspected bomb kills Daisy's parents. novel centers around her experience as a After their death, she is quickly taken to a powerful figure in Gilead and her internal safehouse by Ada, her mother's friend. Upon struggle with the way she forces herself to arrival, she is told that Melanie and Neil are behave. not her real parents, and many other secrets
The next narrator we hear from is a begin to reveal themselves. young girl by the name of Agnes Jemima. Eventually, as many could expect, our Agnes has grown up very privileged in the three narrators cross paths. All three being Republic of Gilead because of her father's very strong and intelligent women, they position as a powerful commander. Agnes's immediately bond and realize what they
must do. Working together, the three make plans to instigate the fall of Gilead, enlisting the help of others along the way.
This novel is a brilliant example of strong women in literature. I think that we are always in need of more writers like Margaret Atwood to put inspiring women on the page for young women like myself to read. Not only is Atwood a phenomenal writer, but she is also a feminist, and this novel is a beautiful example of her skills as a linguist and voice for women.
My favorite aspect of this novel was the three separate narrators. I've always loved when authors use multiple characters to tell a story through multiple points of view, as opposed to simply having an omniscient narrator. Additionally, I think that having multiple narrators is simply fun to read. One of my favorite parts of reading any type of novel is making inferences about what will happen next. It is like being a literary detective, and The Testaments let me do that from the very beginning. Any seasoned reader knows that if a book has multiple narrators, they will most likely cross paths at some point. When I began reading this book, I was entirely unsure of how these women connected, but the more I read, the more theories I developed. I could not bear to put the book down and not find out if I was right.
Furthermore, I thoroughly enjoyed Atwood's inclusion of Aunt Lydia. This gives us the chance to view the character as a human being rather than a pawn in the scheme that is Gilead. I was always one who believed that Aunt Lydia was not entirely bad. I thought that she was playing a game where the prize was survival, and she was just trying to win. This character made me rethink the ways I view dystopian societies. Everyone always likes to believe that if they were placed in a society like Gilead, they would be rebelling or part of some type of resistance group because those are the characters we always see highlighted. In The Testaments, however, we get the opportunity to see a character who first chooses her own survival. Who could blame her? While she does end up leading a resistance, she always does it from within, which I think is incredibly smart of her and most definitely saved her life many times.
I would recommend that anyone who has read, or even watched The Handmaids Tale read The Testaments. It is a wonderful continuation of the story that people far and wide have come to love for so many years. This set of novels should be in the library of everyone who cares about the future of humanity, especially the future for women in this world.
Author: Percival Everett
Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2021
Percival Everett's novel The Trees seeks to blend social satire and horror to deliver hard truths about the legacy oflynchings and white supremacy in the United States. The Trees begins in the town of Money, Mississippi, a town that has been rocked by a series of suspicious murders. Just outside of Money exists the "suburb'' of Small Change, an area largely inhabited by white folks. A small family gathering is taking place in the home of Wheat Bryant, his wife Charlene, and their children, who only ever call their dad Wheat and their mom Hot Mama Yeller. They are joined by Wheat's brother Junior Junior Wilam, his wife Daisy, and their children, one of whom is named Junior Junior Junior. The most prominent guest seems to be Granny C, Wheat, and Junior Junior's mother. Granny C is rather eccentric but seems to take up a melancholic demeanor on this day. Charlene notices Granny C's moment of reflection and asks:
What was you thinking on, Granny C?
Granny C stared off again. "About something I wished I hadn't done. About the lie I told all them years back on that ni**r boy.
"Oh Lawd," Charlene said "We on that again."
"I wronged that little pickaninny. Like it say in the good book, what goes around comes around" (Everett 9).
While Everett does not explicitly offer up an explanation until later, "Granny C" is a fictionaliz.ed version of the real-life Carolyn Bryant, the same Carolyn Bryant who accused and set in motion the horrific brutalization and murder of fourteen-yearold Emmett Till by Roy Bryant and J.W Milam in Money, Mississippi, in the year 1955. Emmett Till, an infamous yet grimly familiar name that is, as Everett notes, perhaps the start of an awakening to the horrors oflynching in the United States, at least for all those who are white. The vicious murder ofEmmett Till sparked national outrage and increased political activism that had a powerful effect on the overall civil rights movement.
Everett's approach works to home in on the case ofEmmett Till. The fictionaliz.ed members of the Bryant and Milam family face the repercussions of their ancestors' actions. Wheat and Junior Junior are the first of the mangled, lynched, and castrated white bodies that appear across the nation. In each case, there are unidentified Black or Asian corpses found alongside the white bodies, and in each case, the unidentified bodies disappear.
Everett is unfolding a moral reckoning, and this notion is strengthened by turning towards characters like Mama Z. She is a tall, broad, and tough 105-year-old woman
who has kept highly descriptive records of every lynching that occurred since 1913, the year of her birth and of her father's lynching. Mama Z hopes that by doing this, she can create a monwnent to the dead. Ed Morgan and Jim Davis, Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, are stunned when faced with twenty-three filing cabinets filled to the brim with dossiers of all those who have been victim to lynchings in the United States. Everett is insistent on giving attention to Black deaths and all those who were and are victims oflynching. They simply cannot be ignored.
Everett brings some levity to the highly descriptive murders via the characters he creates. The people of Money are not just racist; they are comically so. They continuously correct themselves in the presence of Black characters. A quick "ni-" turns into "Afro-American individual." There are characters like Sheriff Red Jetty, who casually bring attention to a cross burning to Ed and Jim, even though it is made clear that it was a pathetic attempt. The people of Money are aware of what others think of them but do not seem to give in to any further introspection. The names that Everett gives these characters are amusing. The Doctor Reverend Cad Fondle is Money's resident coroner; he is also president of Money's KKK chapter. His wife's name is Fancel Fondle. Sheriff Jett's assistant, Pick L. Dill, has a car covered in bwnper stickers like "There Would Be No First Amendment if there was No Second Amendment."
These are easy jabs to make, and Everett's use ofhwnor feels cheap at first glance, especially when connected to the horrifically violent scenes and acts of murder present; however, it proves to have a greater
effect. Everett spends ten or so pages of the novel naming real victims oflynchings from Mama Z's fictional dossier. Pages later, some overtly racist cop's murder is described in heavy detail. Everett uses characters like Charlene to highlight Trwnpism. She is quick to delineate the "elites," mostly those of the intellectual variety, which, to her, include the likes of People magazine.
There is a constant tone change, and it can feel unsettling and disconnected. Everett has created space for this story to flourish in a manner that is not expected. This may be due in part to how quickly the novel moves along. The chapters can be as short as half a page. Regardless, Everett has created an undercurrent in this novel. The attention always turns back to the central theme of examining the history oflynching in this country. Everett does not shy away from violence. At times, a reader may feel inundated by it. It is not a novel that I would recommend to everyone, but I still believe that most would benefit from it. The violence that it presents is a necessary reflection on the forgotten horrors oflynching. There is a gap that Everett is bridging between the convoluted history of this country and a manner in which to effectively describe the gravity of that history. It is absurd and funny and uncomfortable and sharp and even grotesque, but every aspect of this novel works to propel the reader to the haunting finale and the constructed reimagining of justice.
Book Review by Mitzi Cuaxico
Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher:
Random House Publishing Group, 2020
The world ofliterature expands the readers' substance abuse, and the panicked fear under the worldview via the exploration of millions of Trump administration. She writes, "I personally other minds. As such, we vividly experience subscribe to Dr. King's definition of an 'unjust the perspective of the problems that plague law' as being 'out of harmony with the moral law. and pleasure the human mind. It is literature, And the higher moral law here is that people have the translator between minds, that illustrates a human right to move, to change location, if humanity in its many colors and shades. Thus, the they experience hunger, poverty, violence, or lack experiences that are not personally lived through of opportunity, especially if that climate in their are exposed and become our own. In a sense, we home countries is created by the United States, as embody, claim, and process the lives of those who is the case with most third world countries from suffer and rejoice. The book The Undocumented which people migrate. Ain't that 'bout a bitch?" Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (138). explores the lives, pleasures, and pains of those This book speaks graphic, raw, and who hunt for the American Dream. Cornejo incredibly shocking truths that are almost to the Villavicencio explores the raw reality surrounding point of being tragedies: yet, it introduces humans the tormented lives caused by the effects of full of dreams, hope, and altruism. Karla Cornejo oppression and alienation within undocumented Villavicencio starts with her introduction, where communities. Villavicencio starts a deeply she comes from a family of undocumented personal exploration of the undocumented immigrants in ew York. As an undocumented communities within different cities of the U.S. gifted student, she focused on her studies with the Through her investigationsin cities like Staten help of her supportive parents and some patrons. Island, Miami, Flint, New Haven, and Cleveland, This support led her to an academically successful she finds networks, systems of support, chosen life, where she graduated from the prestigious families, and even lifelong friendships. Harvard; however, Cornejo Villavicencio Cornejo Villavicencio lets us know admits to media portraying undocumented how oppressive systems have affected the lives immigrants as hardworking students who, in of the average undocumented day laborer. The a sense, fully satisfied and comforted white Undocumented Americans echo the thousands of fragility. The Dreamers, who contribute to the unrecognized heroes, hurt soldiers, and everyday public knowledge about the undocumented fixers who lurk within the shadows. Here, movement, dominate social media through Cornejo Villavicencio tells the story of people trending tweets and Instagram posts. Many of who suffer, fight with resilience, and have lost so them depict extremely successful undocumented much on American soil. Cornejo Villavicencio students graduating from prestigious universities writes about abuse, poisoning, alcoholism, and giving heartfelt speeches. Karla Cornejo
Villavicencio wants readers to know that this community encompasses people of any age, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic status who went through a treacherous journey in the search for happiness. Loneliness and hidden conditions cloud that fantasy of happiness, which strains the human physical and mental body. Cornejo Villavicencio focuses on day laborers, who often go unseen, suffer through unsafe conditions, and live through the physical consequences of the day's labor. The concept of day laborers deals with skilled workers who are hired to get certain work done. For example, a person who needs to a paint job done asks a day laborer for a price on this job. If the rate satisfies the employer, the day laborer would usually get in the car and depart for arduous work. This would leave room for terrible working conditions, abuse, threats, and low pay. Through the author's personal experience, we hear of those heroes who helped in reconstructing after major tragedies like 9/11, never thanked nor supported; yet, they hold with pride expired ID badges. Cornejo Villavicencio speaks up for all the poisoned people in Flint who were warned against drinking the water last, and those whose families are separated based on minor traffic infractions. Thus, fearmongering, discrimination, and neglect infect this community, encompassing more than what media portrays. This book, although not an ethnographic work per se, humanely investigates the lives of real people who can vividly retell the trauma of being an undocumented American, recounting all the acts of symbolic violence. Here, Villavicencio explores, connects, and even helps communities across the U.S., where there is a need for an ear to listen, understand, and communicate with others. She lets us in and makes us intimately listen to her generational secrets, loss, and networks. In her fieldwork, Cornejo Villavicencio fully expresses her struggles within her family
and her status. She opens those deep wounds within every child of immigrants, where there are specific expectations that contradict American culture regarding family dynamics. For instance, Villavicencio expresses that constant anxiety surrounding seeing your parents age and insisting on continuing to work. The U.S. does not provide retirement funds, nor is a 401 (k) achievable for undocumented immigrants, even when they have worked all their life here and have contributed through their taxes. Thus, there is the constant pressure and anxiety of many children of undocumented immigrants surrounding finances because there is the expectation to provide for themselves and their aging parents. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes, "The twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point, your parents become your children, and your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has never wanted them" (148).
The Undocumented Americans is not a book for everyone. It is fantastic, but it is not a book that will leave you feeling happy. This is because the stories of every single person here do not end happily. There is hope for better, but not enough action. Actions create better endings but cannot erase a past full of scars. The trauma remains there, forever aching. To help in the healing process, the reconstruction of systems and outdated laws needs to happen. Due to the neutralization process heavily depending on capital, social connections, literacy, and agency, loneliness and pain will continue to cloud our ending, leaving it always open-ended Although this work is relatively short, one can say that its subjects have lived through a thousand lives, ingraining and embodying them into our minds and souls.
Author: Addie Tsai
Publisher:
Jaded Ibis Press, 2022
Addie Tsai's Unwieldy Creatures is a fantastic modern retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from the perspectives of queer, biracial, and non-binary characters. This is the tragic tale of Z, also known as Dr. Frank, a reproductive scientist whose life goal is to create the perfect baby without a man. However, this is also the hopeful story of Plum and Ash, two creatures, two people, whose lives are marked with pain. Ash is the first child that Z creates in her laboratory, resulting in a giant that does not look human. Therefore, Dr. Frank abandons Ash in the woods right after dia (pronoun) is born. Ash finds Z and threatens her into creating another child like Ash so that dia is not so alone in the world. Plum works in Dr. Frank's lab and is the one she turns to for help in creating the second child for Ash. Tsai shows how cycles of abuse can be perpetuated, but also how they can be broken. There is doom for some characters, but also redemption for others. This novel is about monstrosity, through the literal monster that Dr. Frank creates and the monstrosity that can be found in people themselves, such as in people who abuse, abandon, and betray their loved ones. Unwieldy Creatures is also about survivalhow to survive in a world that despises and is disgusted by one's being, and how to survive abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Both Plum and Z's fathers were abusive,
and both Plum and Ash were abandoned by a parent. While Z grew up to be like her father, lashing out with anger and hurting the people she loves, Plum and Ash escape the cycle of abuse.
This book's audience is young adults and adults in general. This book does have a theme of abuse throughout that could be triggering for some people. Unwieldy Creatures was written for people who have been in the shadows and who are not traditionally the focus ofliterature, especially classic literature. It is for the queer and biracial people who need to know how important it is that they exist and that their stories matter. These people need to know that they are not alone, that there are other people who are like them, who feel like them, and have similar experiences. However, this novel can and should also be read by people who already see themselves in most stories. Learning about different perspectives and different people's stories through reading is important and makes reading so much more interesting.
I would highly recommend this novel. I think that it is a beautiful story that complicates monstrosity and brings forth questions of identity. Unwieldy Creatures works to tell readers that monstrosity does not come from what someone is or looks like. Rather, it comes from their actions and how they treat other people. It emphasizes
the importance oflove and treating others with kindness, and even demonstrating how monstrous creations can change if shown decency. Tsai also brings to the audience's attention how different aspects of identity such as race, class, gender, and sexuality shape how people experience the world. As a result, it illustrates how the world treats them, especially when people are experiencing multiple marginalized identities at once. I loved how Tsai refreshed Frankenstein, a classic work ofliterature, and used it tell the stories of people who are unseen, making it even more compelling to read. Tsai utilizes shifts in perspective to their advantage, revealing more of the story and backstory of the characters piece by piece in a way that creates suspense and traction.
I found Tsai's writing style to be unique and lovely. They had distinct voices for the different characters, making each one deeper and fully developed For Plum, they would switch between English and Mandarin, embracing and diving deeper into her culture. I also enjoyed how Tsai would incorporate quotes from Frankenstein in the text. They did this smoothly and in a
way that elevated the emotional impact of
this book. I found that doing this helped in connecting this piece to the original work, while also highlighting the differences between this novel and the original.
I appreciated that Tsai brought redemption into the story of Frankenstein. Even if the characters made mistakes and had regrets, they still had a chance to change and fix what they did wrong. They still had the chance to have a happy ending.
Unwieldy Creatures is both a warning and a symbol of hope. It is a warning against being too ambitious and self-centered, which is what doomed Z. It is a message to be caring to others, especially the ones you hold dear. This novel also gives the audience hope because there is a happy ending for characters who seem doomed from birth, who have lived a life full of hurt, and who have made mistakes. It shows that some people can change; they do not have to be the monsters that the whole world deems them. Queer people can be happy, and they can create a loving family. Even though the world may be full of monsters, you can still find your bubble of happiness.
Author: John McWhorter
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin, 2021
In a time where race relations are McWhorter begins his book outlining constantly changing and the state of race is what he calls Third Wave Antiracism, being redefined, we find ourselves wrapped writing that it "teaches that because racism in a continued engagement with how best we is baked into the structure of society, Whites' in the Black community can move forward complicity in living within it constitutes without forgetting where we came from. racism itself, while for Black people, Frequently, we are wrapped in discourse grappling with the racism surrounding about the best ways to acknowledge the them is the totality of experience and must existence of racism in all its forms and condition exquisite sensitivity around combat it on every front in the pursuit of them, including a suspension of standards a better, more equitable world Now, while of achievement and conduct" (5). At first many would agree that the new wave of glance, McWhorter's assertion appears purely racial discourse sweeping through our time anecdotal, but this is merely a product of the is beneficial in a number of ways, there are way he presents this assertion in his writing. some who offer critiques of this new wave's It leaves out additional contextualization extremities. John McWhorter, a linguistics and intellectual engagement that would professor at Columbia University, is one such certainly enhance his argument, and instead critic. He explores his critiques of current insists on providing a generalized-and racial discourse in his book Woke Racism: heavily personal-statement of the antiracist How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black movement's mainstreaming in today's America. Such a provocative title, however society. McWhorter says this as if it is the intentional it may be, might cause activists totality of antiracism in the 201 Os, rather old and new to steer clear, but the book-and than an extremity of it. After all, the very therefore McWhorter himself-received fair notion that dystopian views of the world amounts of attention from favorable venues and oppression by the White man is the such as NPR, The New York Times, and The nexus of Blackness is an extreme one, and Washington Post. Evidently, McWhorter one many cultural movements within the contributed something to the ever-growing Black community, such as Afrofuturism discourse on race and racism, even if it is and Sankofa, seek to subvert. To believe simply a rudimentary expression of how the that being Black forever makes one a victim extremities of recent antiracism harm not hinders the ability to move forward It is just the Black community, but society as a certainly implied throughout the book that whole. McWhorter knows this, but he ultimately
falls a little short of displaying his knowledge of what many true antiracists, especially Black ones like himself, hold to be common truths. McWhorter only alludes to it rather than explicitly detailing that that is what his supposed "third wave antiracism" is about, not the pseudo-religious extremities he describes as its nexus.
That being said, McWhorter is not incorrect in saying that people who believe in these quasi-dogmatic extremities about Blackness and racism exist, and that they are harmful to the Black community in the way they let these extremities shape their world view and behavior. He defines these people as the Elect. Aptly, he is also correct in saying that we need more than just superficial and frankly derogatory labels like "social justice warriors" or "the woke mob" to describe people who take activism too far or misunderstand what it truly is. In McWhorter's words, the Elect "do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons ... but they see themselves as having been chosen ... as understanding something most do not" (19). To McWhorter, the Elect perpetuate ideas and beliefs that, when grouped together, do indeed resemble dogma instead of progressive viewpoints. Some of his examples of alleged "Electism'' include radical ideas such as White privilege infecting everything a White person does no matter what it is, the continued infantilization of the Black identity as a perpetual state of victimhood that warrants placation from Whites, and the dedication of one's livelihood to upending social evils instead of dedicating the upending of social evils to one's livelihood. McWhorter notes that, in the eyes of the Elect, any pushback
against these beliefs will label one as racist
or anti- Black, and therefore deserving of ostracization. His statements hold some merit certainly, but they lack the empirical social science needed to solidify them. None of the supposed "Elect" are directly quoted or cited in his book to exemplify the growing toxicity festering our society that masquerades as antiracism to further allow McWhorter to communicate his growing unease around some of today's more extreme antiracist attitudes. Furthermore, there is little to no engagement with the idea that there may exist a diversity of opinions among the Elect; McWhorter instead paints them in a specific way using a collage of theoretical instances. Admittedly, the instances he lists are certainly things people in our society can attest to, but their voices and perspectives are not evident outside of McWhorter's word Ultimately, John McWhorter's thesis in Woke Racism is not wrong; it is simply unrefined. His statements are thought provoking and could elevate our racial discourse, provide space for more productive intellectual conversation rather than an echo chamber of ideas, and end the repeated ostracization of the fantasized villainous Whites. Unfortunately, many of them lack the social science needed to back them up or simply offer general statements that do not investigate the various complexities underlying the racial machinations of our society. What McWhorter seeks to do with his book is offer a critique of how some people who claim to be antiracist are, in fact, no better than the racists they claim to fight. Hopefully one day, he or someone else will be able to improve on his meditations in someway.
