Essay Questions for Paper One
Choose one question and answer it in a substantive, cohesive essay.
1. Come up with your own essay idea. Clear it with me.
2. Examine the personal testimonies of characters who remember and tell in Thurston and Baldwin’s narratives. Consider Nanny’s memories of slavery and the power of Janie’s personal testimony. Consider, too, the ability of Sonny’s mother to bear witness to an event that she was not present to see. What makes her testimony so vivid and clear, and what is the effect of her voiced expression on her son? What does the memory of dispossession do? What act does it perform? Think about the utility of storytelling when the active speaker bears witness to the enslavement and murder of African people.
3. Compare the use of male characters in Thurston and Baldwin’s narratives. What happens to emasculated men in patriarchal societies, according to Huston, a women writer of color? What forms of resistance do the male characters take to survive? What is the effect of their resistance on themselves and on the women characters? Compare Thurston depictions of Black men with the depictions of Black manhood in Baldwin’s short prose. Does Baldwin, a male writer of color, examine Black men’s emasculation and resistance in similar or different ways?
3. Consider the classism evident in Thurston and Baldwin’s narratives. Keep in mind details like the hair ribbon, Mrs. Turner’s desire to “class off,” and the clothing Janie wears in Watsonville and down on The Muck. Choose 2 or 3 short stories in Baldwin’s book that most interest you, but you may want to consider the relentless poverty that clings to the male protagonist in “Previous Condition.” Analyze intro-racial sociology-economic stratification, as well as inter-racial sociology-economic stratification. What does classism do to Blacks at the top of the hierarchy within the Black community? What does classism do to Blacks at the bottom of the sociology-economic hierarchy in the American mainstream? What role does skin color play in the containerization of sociology-economic class in each book? Explore the power of color and class on characters’ lives.
4. Write about sound in Thurston novel and in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” How do these African American writers evoke the distinctive sounds created by the Black body, in Black communities? Do these conjured sounds communicate protest, sorrow, joy, or some other emotion(s)? Why is the ownership of Black sound so important to characters in these books?
