Toni Morrison – Beloved

Discussion Question 1:

What does the Author want to express by depicting slaves as having intercourse with farm animals? Was this a common reality on remote farms? (p. 11)

Discussion Question 2:

What is meant by Paul D when he says he was “licking iron with his hands crossed behind him”? (p. 72)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVUB4g2IUI

Fact:

Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her book Beloved, and is therefore considered one of the most influential African American writers of our times.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-bio.html#

The Book of the Month Club was founded in 1926 and is a book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers, who receive this book via mail. The club was initially founded, because the founders found it difficult to build interest in a new book. It was to be a brand of its own, as one of the founders explained: "It establishes itself as a sound selector of good books and sells by means of its own prestige. Thus, the prestige of each new title need not be built up before becoming acceptable." With 550,000 subscribers, the size of the club did, in fact, create the Book of the Month Club as a brand. Being a "Book of the Month Club" selection was used to promote books to the general public, which helped Richard Wright, the first African-American author to be selected by the club, as well as Toni Morrison, whose novel Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention as a main selection of the club. The club is still active today, and if the dedicated reader wants to join this elaborate club, he can visit http://www.bomcclub.com/

Source: http://www.bomcclub.com

Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man II

Source: http://chipkidd.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Ralph-Ellison.jpg

Discussion Question 1:

What purpose serves the machine the narrator is hooked up to in chapter eleven?

Discussion Question 2:

What urges the narrator to deliver his speech in the streets of Harlem in chapter thirteen?

Fact:

Ralph Ellison lived great parts of his live in Harlem, New York, and after his death in 1994, a monument showing an "invisible man" was put up in his honor.

 

 Source: http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/manhattan/uppermanhattan/hamiltonheights/ellisonmemorial/03memorial.jpg

Ralph and Fanny Ellison; Source:http://www.read.gov/fiction/images/Ellison_3_large.gif

Ralph Ellison died on April 16, 1994, of pancreatic cancer, and was buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. He was survived by his wife, Fanny Ellison, who died on November 19, 2005. After his death, more manuscripts were discovered in his home, resulting in the publication of Flying Home and Other Stories in 1996. In 1999, five years after his death, Ellison's second novel, Juneteenth, was published under the editorship of John F. Callahan. It was a 368-page condensation of more than 2000 pages written by Ellison over a period of forty years. All the manuscripts of this incomplete novel were published collectively on January 26, 2010, by Modern Library, under the title Three Days Before the Shooting.

Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man I

In the first chapters of his book, Ellison describes the way Booker T. Washington wanted African Americans to act according to his philosophy, and criticizes this philosophy as too narrow-minded and not effective in creating better living conditions for colored people. In chapter four one can see the description of how the lives of colored people look like, when they are following Washington's theory, which says that colored people should not strive for social equality, but for financial success, arguing that the latter would eventually lead to the implementation of the former. In this chapter Ellison describes how the president of the college lives, with two cars, a big house, a beautiful wife, and being financially well off. The president is also depicted as carrying importance in his field as a leader of the black people, and as receiving positive publicity for his conduct towards this matter. Notwithstanding his autocratic behavior towards his students or other black people he believes lesser than himself, he always behaves humble and servile towards white people. Ellison criticizes this when he depicts the veteran as saying to Mr. Norton, one of the rich trustees of the school, about the narrator: “He believes in the great false wisdom […] that white is right. […] He'll do your bidding, and for that his blindness is his chief assert” (95). Ellison thus directly refers to the main point of critique about Washington's theory, which does not include equality of treatment, but rather reproduction of the existing situation of inequality. On the same page the author also describes the attitude both of the addressed have towards each other, with which he wants to show the state of mind white benefactors of the colored race have towards the individuals they are helping. They are described as being rather indifferent to individuals, seeing them merely as things to be filled with wisdom to enable them to earn their own money, which calms the conscience of the benefactors. Ellison wants the reader to think about the different choices he has, whether as a white person having the means or as a black person planning his life, however he strongly indicates his position towards this matter. 

Booker T. Washington was an important leader of the African-American society, seen by many as the dominant force between 1890 and 1915. He was born as a slave, and was and was active throughout the period of post-reconstruction, when the newly freed African-Americans had been oppressed by discriminatory laws, which were enacted in the South at that time. One of his biggest achievements was the founding and sustaining of Tuskegee Institute, a institution of higher education for colored people, where he was enacting the his theory, which was stated above. 
 

Source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/washstory/ill45.html