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So for most of this week, I was away from the Internet entirely, and not posting about IBARW (that's International Blog Against Racism Week), and reading instead.
But then I read this blog post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karnythia about white people using International Blog Against Racism Week to be.....racist. WAY TO FAIL, GUYS.
My post is in the spirit forrachelmanija's IBARW Mini-Challenge, which basically was to post about books written by people of color during IBARW.
In my last semester of undergrad, I took a class called "Disability in Literature." In this class, we read a number of books, including Jane Austen's Persuasion and Keri Hulme's Bone People. The book that stuck out for me the most is one that was written in 1859, but remained obscure until 1982, when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. rediscovered it, and republished it. This book, written by Harriet E. Wilson, has a full title of Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There. The title seems to explain it all, but what I love about this book is that it follows the patterns of so many Victorian novels written at the same time, but shatters the formulas, due to the author acknowledging the soul-crushing societal structures of racism and ablism, in addition to sexism.
It also stands as a giant middle finger (one of many) to people who say that there is no "canonical literature" written by people of color.
I wrote a paper about this novel for my class, and I've edited it to make it presentable in blog format. [Also, my paper dealt with Jane Austen's Persuasion, but it seemed inappropriate to focus equally on that book during a post written for IBARW, so I took those parts out.]
For our class, before reading this novel, we read a chapter from a book called "Invalid Women" by Diane Herndl, which was written in 1993. In it, Herndl sets out to describe the figure of the invalid woman that has often been represented in literature written from 1840-1940. She describes a "person who is sick or disabled" and "a person who lacks power" (Herndl 1). The focus on power is important for Herndl, who feels that the power structures surrounding the lives of invalid women can be used to point out other unbalanced power dynamics. She asserts that the invalid woman "can serve as the focus for questioning the history and ideological power of representation" in the character's society (Herndl 9). In fact, Herndl says that an invalid woman's presence insists on a reading of how power plays out in the narrative, the family, and on society (Herndl 4). Harriet Wilson's Our Nig portrays Frado as a female invalid whose presence does fulfill Herndl's definition by living a pitiful life under the oppressive social structure of racism.
In Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig, the protagonist Frado becomes an invalid woman as the novel progresses. Frado's circumstances include racism alongside anti-feminism as a social structure that denies power to certain groups of people, and thus disables their role in a narrative. After being abandoned by her mother to the Bellmont family, Frado spends her life in an inescapable servitude to a white family. ( Spoilers, if people want to read this book! ) In Our Nig, Frado's role as an invalid forces the reader to question the role of racism in society, while also disabling the narrative.
No matter what your favorite book genres are, you can find some POC-authored books to read - even if it's sentimental Victorian-esque novels, such as this book. I highly recommend joining or watching the LiveJournal community![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc to find some new titles/authors to read.
Other IBARW Links:
oyceter points us to the founding letter for the Carl Brandon Society.
coffeeandink suggests that there be fan-made versions of white-washed book covers.
As always, an exhaustive list of posts from IBARW can be found atibarw.
But then I read this blog post by
karnythia about white people using International Blog Against Racism Week to be.....racist. WAY TO FAIL, GUYS.My post is in the spirit for
rachelmanija's IBARW Mini-Challenge, which basically was to post about books written by people of color during IBARW.In my last semester of undergrad, I took a class called "Disability in Literature." In this class, we read a number of books, including Jane Austen's Persuasion and Keri Hulme's Bone People. The book that stuck out for me the most is one that was written in 1859, but remained obscure until 1982, when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. rediscovered it, and republished it. This book, written by Harriet E. Wilson, has a full title of Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There. The title seems to explain it all, but what I love about this book is that it follows the patterns of so many Victorian novels written at the same time, but shatters the formulas, due to the author acknowledging the soul-crushing societal structures of racism and ablism, in addition to sexism.
It also stands as a giant middle finger (one of many) to people who say that there is no "canonical literature" written by people of color.
I wrote a paper about this novel for my class, and I've edited it to make it presentable in blog format. [Also, my paper dealt with Jane Austen's Persuasion, but it seemed inappropriate to focus equally on that book during a post written for IBARW, so I took those parts out.]
For our class, before reading this novel, we read a chapter from a book called "Invalid Women" by Diane Herndl, which was written in 1993. In it, Herndl sets out to describe the figure of the invalid woman that has often been represented in literature written from 1840-1940. She describes a "person who is sick or disabled" and "a person who lacks power" (Herndl 1). The focus on power is important for Herndl, who feels that the power structures surrounding the lives of invalid women can be used to point out other unbalanced power dynamics. She asserts that the invalid woman "can serve as the focus for questioning the history and ideological power of representation" in the character's society (Herndl 9). In fact, Herndl says that an invalid woman's presence insists on a reading of how power plays out in the narrative, the family, and on society (Herndl 4). Harriet Wilson's Our Nig portrays Frado as a female invalid whose presence does fulfill Herndl's definition by living a pitiful life under the oppressive social structure of racism.
In Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig, the protagonist Frado becomes an invalid woman as the novel progresses. Frado's circumstances include racism alongside anti-feminism as a social structure that denies power to certain groups of people, and thus disables their role in a narrative. After being abandoned by her mother to the Bellmont family, Frado spends her life in an inescapable servitude to a white family. ( Spoilers, if people want to read this book! ) In Our Nig, Frado's role as an invalid forces the reader to question the role of racism in society, while also disabling the narrative.
No matter what your favorite book genres are, you can find some POC-authored books to read - even if it's sentimental Victorian-esque novels, such as this book. I highly recommend joining or watching the LiveJournal community
50books_poc to find some new titles/authors to read.Other IBARW Links:
oyceter points us to the founding letter for the Carl Brandon Society.coffeeandink suggests that there be fan-made versions of white-washed book covers.As always, an exhaustive list of posts from IBARW can be found at
ibarw.
