Week 09: Dystopian literature, Black Voices and postcolonialism

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Today

Recap Modernism / Postmodernism

Check understanding Dystopian literature

Introduction Literature of Black voices

Let's review:
Modernism is....

Modernism:

Rejection of Realism & reaction to WW1

Focus on the writer

Focus on interiority (what goes on in the person) 

Subjectivity (no all-knowing narrator)

Interested in psychology

Rejection of literary conventions

Refusal of meaning

Unreliable narrator 

Stream of consciousness

Let's review:
Postmodernism is....

Postmodernism

Focus on the reader

Focus on exteriority (outside looking in)

Intertextuality (refering to other texts and itself)

Literature is open 

Parody & pastiche

Acceptance and use of literary conventions

"Everything has been done before"

Search for/denial of meaning

Irony and dark humour

Dystopian literature

What is a dystopia

Dystopian literature

Utopia vs Dystopia

Dystopia: an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. 

Utopia: an imagined place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.

Genre of variety

As you can see, there is a great variety of dystopian worlds
and stories in our popular culture, from books to games. 
A lot of them focus on:

• oppression (religion, government, capitalism)
• (self-)destruction of humanity (nuclear, scientific, alien invasion)
• technology run amok (robot overlords, life is a simulation)
• pandemic catastrophe (incurable diseases, experimentation)
• wasteland post-apocalypse (survivalist, scarcity of resources)

Assignment: The Pedestrian - Ray Bradbury

In your reader you can find the short story The Pedestrian. For next lesson, read the story and answer these 7 questions about it. Use the audiobook on the next slide to support your reading:

1. Describe the setting of the story (year, type of community, etc.).
2. What does Mr. Mead “whisper to every house”? Why do you think he’s whispering these certain phrases to the houses?
3. Do you think Mr. Mead fits into this society? Why or why not? Explain the possible reasons. 
4. Explain why the police car might state “no profession” after Mr. Mead says that he is a writer.
   
5. Mr. Mead is taken to the “Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies.” What do you think this place is for? Why would he be taken there just for walking down the street?
6. What might have happened to this society that there would be no crime, but that walking would be considered criminal behavior?
   
7. What do you think Bradbury’s purpose was in writing this story? How does he achieve this purpose through his writing? Cite details from the story to support your answer. 

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What book are you reading?

Literature of Black Voices

Pages: 20-27

The American whites used education as a tool
to suppress black people. How are
literacy and freedom related?

"Especially the Southern states had tried to control slaves and free people of colour by denying them education. They knew the power of writing and reading and feared literate slaves could use these new means of communication that would make it easier to plan revolts and escapes. Also allowing people of colour to write and read would make it harder to ‘justify’ slavery or treating them as inferior, since one of the arguments to do so was that these people would be unable to write and read, because they were not smart enough. Finally, literacy gives way to expanding knowledge, spreading new ideas, taking part of society in which writing was essential with regard to recording a new-born or marriage, raising literate children with a brighter future, developing critical thinking and so much more. An important example of critical thinking is that black people got to read the bible themselves and found that it even opposes slavery ‘”From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth (…)” (Acts)  "

Make sure you remember this part of the Reader!

What do you know about Jim Crow Laws
& racial segregation in the US?

Jim Crow laws

Used to segregate blacks and keep the white South happy after the civil war.

"Separate but equal" (Plessy vs. Ferguson 1897)

Voter restriction laws:

• Poll taxes
• literacy and comprehension tests
• residency and record-keeping requirements

Birth of a Nation

Have you ever thought about the position of Black soldiers in the American Army? 

Black American Literature

                                    

1. William Du Bois (essay writer)
2. Harlem renaissance (Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen)
3. Civil rights movement 
4. Modern black literature / women's literature

Extra reading:

For some extra background on what life was like for African-American soldiers, read the article: "Are We Not American Soldiers?’ When the U.S. Military Treated German POWs Better Than Black Troops"

https://time.com/5872361/wwii-german-pows-civil-rights/

What does the writer of this poem want to share here?

Heritage

What does the writer of this poem want to share here?

Listen to the poem and read along

Think about the following questions: 

• We have discussed how Hughes attempted to show black lives as they were, flaws and all.
  Where do you see that in this poem? 
• What do you notice about the rythm of the poem?

Two lines with flaws

What do you notice about the rythm of the poem?

Zora Neale Hurston 

(1891-1960)

"At times I have no race, I am just me"

How it feels to be Colored me

"I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me" 

Strange Fruit

You will hear popular blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday sing the song Strange Fruit. It was based on a poem written by Abel Meeropol in the 1920s about a lynching. 

As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, Billie's song became
THE protest song of the movement. 

As you listen, focus on what she is saying and note down which words
or parts of the song have an impact on you.

Which words or parts of the song
had an impact on you?

But there is hope