Today, many hip-hop and rap enthusiasts refer to Kendrick Lamar as the new Kanye West. In other words, as the new god, the new genius of rap. The reasons vary far and wide for why so many attest to this but perhaps the most prevalent is his explication of the black experience. Lamar uses his rap […]
In the early pages of Invisible Man, the narrator describes going to a horrifying fight club of sorts, in which young Black boys are forced to beat one another for money and for the amusement of the rich, white men of their town. The narrator thinks he is there to read his valedictorian speech, but he […]
The prologue of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man jarred me. It is written retrospectively, after the main action of the book has already occurred, so the reader is instantly thrown into the mindset of a man who they won’t meet again until near the end of the novel. The narrator is extremely angry at the world, […]
Every time I googled ‘Invisible Man’, option for ‘The Invisible Man‘ popped up. I read a summary of ‘The Invisible Man’, and it sounded interesting, so I thought it would be fun to imagine these two characters meeting. This short story is very short, so I hope it makes sense. The picture I found is […]
Many have seen the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, originally a novel first published in 1985 discussing the value of women and their ability to reproduce in society. Both The Handmaid’s Tale and Invisible Man discuss extremely important political and societal ideas. Hulu is now tackling the novel Invisible Man and turning it into […]
In class on Tuesday, we discussed David’s portrayal of the other characters in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. I believe that we came to a consensus that David isn’t particularly nice or kind to a lot of the characters. He spends a lot of time with Jacques, but he doesn’t really see him as someone important to him. […]
People are often looking for the next best thing to replace what was in the past, or they are trying to figure out a way to drag down the present to promote the past. For example, think of the Michael Jordan and LeBron James debate. While each man is accomplishing greatness in his own right, […]
James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a story of a white male’s navigations through his own feelings and identity in terms of his sexuality. Not ever fully confronting his love for men, or his desire for women as well, we trace the unbecoming of David, our American foreign in Paris, France. Baldwin states that he chose […]
In the very first few pages we, the readers are introduced to Giovanni, but only through the narrator. We are only informed of his presence through the mystical and erotic hold he has over the narrator. Immediately we want to know more and we don’t have to wait long. In the second chapter Jaques and […]
In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room I took particular interest in the portrayal of how the homosexual relationships are presented in the novel. The central character in part one of the novel, has sexual relations with a man at a very young age that have a great effect on his life, even years later. The central […]