ipl-logo

Essay Comparing Citizen And Baldwin's Notes Of A Native Son

801 Words4 Pages

In Rankins book Citizen and Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son we learn that the books are about the racial differences of the past and present. We learn that in Notes of a Native Son it captures a view on the black life of a father and son at the peak of the civil rights movement. These harsh times allow Baldwin to wonder and doubling back to a state of grace. While in Citizen we learn that our experiences of race are often beginning in the unconsciousness and in the imagination and tangled in words. Rankine shows how dynamic of racial selves are not isolated but also shared. Rankine exploits and deconstructs what has been called "post-race" society. Her prose asks us to rethink our obligations by probing the definitions of word "citizen." She writes, "to know what you'll sound like is worth noting"(69). She uses second person because it forces the reader to question what it means to be an American, to belong to this country. The reader will find out that Citizen is artful, open to many interpretations and Rankine lets us view multiple …show more content…

Rankine writes "You can’t put the past behind you, it’s buried in you; it turned your flesh into its own cupboard" (63). This is explaining how Whites have to live with the past of the pain and suffering that they caused to Blacks. There are still plenty of oppresion and nonaggression that happen today than there was during the time of this lynching photo. In Notes of a Native son, it tells us about the poor relationship between the father and son but as the story continues one learns that it becomes much more than that. Within the first page Baldwin writes, "It had something to do with his blackness, I think he was very black, with his blackness and his beauty, and with the fact that he knew that he was black but did not know that he was beautiful"(588). He understands what his father doesn't, he knows that despite being black there is still a beauty within

Show More
Related
1095 Words | 5 Pages

I will be taking a postmodern approach to the text and supplementing it with modernism and psychoanalytic theories before stating my final stance that postmodernism may be the most appropriate approach. This approach ensures that different perspectives are present in my analysis and ensures that it is not one-sided. The question that I hope to focus my argument on is “Does the postmodernist approach better emerge the idea of self from racism?” Rottenberg, Catherine. " Passing : Race, Identification, and Desire. " Criticism, vol. 45, no. 4, 2004, pp. 435-452.

Read More
283 Words | 2 Pages

If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? By James Baldwin explains to the reader what black English is and where black English comes from. Baldwin writes about how humans use language as a means of controlling the world around them. Baldwin explains that people may speak the same language in one area of the world, but then people who speak the same language elsewhere are no longer speaking the same language. Baldwin using French as an exampling, Baldwin compares french-speaking people from Quebec to people who live in Paris.

Read More
1817 Words | 8 Pages

Instead, he implores them to be more political. His goal in writing is to make people aware of the social injustices occurring. The Negro writer who seeks to function within his race as a purposeful aren has a serious responsibility. In order to do justice to his subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in all of its manifold and intricate relationships, a deep, informed, and complex consciousness is necessary; a consciousness which draws for its strength upon the fluid lore of a great people, and more this lore with concepts that move and direct the forces of history today (Wright,

Read More
619 Words | 3 Pages

In Baldwin’s essay he shows a complex perspective. In the beginning he is optimistic but as it continues he turns more and more pessimistic. He realizes everything isn’t as good as he thought it was and becomes angry and bitter. While the tone remains straightforward and calm, the mood is slightly angry. Baldwin doesn’t want pity either, but he does want the reader to understand the trials and tribulations he had to go through because of racism.

Read More
1099 Words | 5 Pages

In the essay “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin, he expresses feelings of hate and despair towards his father. His father died when James was 19 years old from tuberculosis; it just so happens that his funeral was on the day of the Harlem Riot of 1943. Baldwin explains that his father isn’t fond of white people due to the racist past. He recalls a time when a white teacher brought him to a theater and that caused nothing but upset with his father, even though it was a kind act. Many events happened to Baldwin as a result of segregation, including a time where a waitress refused to serve him due to his skin color and Baldwin threw a pitcher of water at her.

Read More
408 Words | 2 Pages

Famed Author Honored in Greenwich Village James Baldwin died in 1987, but another plaque in his honor was just placed in New York 's Greenwich Village. He already had two other notable plaques in the city. This one was placed at 81 Horatio Street where much of his work "Another Country" was penned. According to The Network Journal, the bronze plaque, about 14 x14 inches, was placed by Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation with generous support by the Two Boots Foundation. The ceremony was attended by many notables including photographer and writer Fran Leibowitz and Trevor Baldwin,

Read More
958 Words | 4 Pages

Baldwin’s solution for black people is for them to create their own identity and take a stab at achievement regardless of the social requirements or constraints set before them. For, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger". I was fascinated by the comparison of “Letter to My Son” by Ta-Nahisi Coates to that of Baldwin’s. Although they both bring forward the same topics and issues faced by the black community, however they both do not view the problem in the same way, as far as proposing a solution is concerned. For example, Baldwin proposed a solution in which he urges the black community through his nephew to recognize the shameful acts of injustice in America, and express acceptance with love towards the whites even though they may not do the same in

Read More
970 Words | 4 Pages

The book begins with anecdotes about the defamation of black bodies by white people and by Christianity itself. When speaking about his adolescence, Baldwin writes that “Owing to the way I had been raised, the abrupt discomfort that all this aroused in me and the fact that I had no idea what my voice or my mind or my body was likely to do next caused me to consider myself one of the most depraved people on earth” (Baldwin 17). The platonized Christian tradition that Baldwin was a part of saw the body, and especially the black body, as a symbol of sin, and so the onset of puberty became a source of guilt because of its association with sexuality (Brown Douglas

Read More
1333 Words | 6 Pages

Claudia Rankine a renown poet, uses her novel “Citizen: An American Lyric” to discuss issues of race and imagination. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of poetry and uses her gripping accounts of racism, through poetry to share a deep message. Claudia Rankine uses poetry to correlate directly to accounts of racism making Citizen a profound experience to read. Not only is this poetic novel a vision of her world through her eyes, Rankine uses the experiences of Americans whose color has rendered them invisible to the many who are privileged enough to be blind and not note racism as a large issue in America. Claudia Rankine articulates the use of you and further emphasizes the larger meaning of the title Citizen and recognizing that word through societal issues.

Read More
1455 Words | 6 Pages

This also gives the audience an understanding of his past with the relationship of father between the time he was alive and past. The novel then continues to start off with part one. In part one, James Baldwin touches on his first essay with title “Everybody’s Protest Novel”. Baldwin examines Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s as he describes it as “cornerstone of American social protest fiction”. Baldwin describes this novel (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) as it describes the life of the slaves and the daily life on a plantation.

Read More
912 Words | 4 Pages

The John Griffin Experience In the 1950’s, racism was at its peak in the US. In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, he puts himself into a black man’s shoes to experience an everyday life of what it is like being of darker color. He takes it upon himself to seek medical treatment to change the pigmentation of his skin from white to black. After undergoing this treatment, he sets out to New Orleans to begin his life in darker skin.

Read More
909 Words | 4 Pages

One will constantly face temporary conflict throughout life, but ultimately they can overcome through a will to on and pursue what makes oneself happy. Baldwin was able to create a picture in the reader's mind due to his personal relation to his characters, he was able to understand the harsh times for an African-American male. It also reflects on the care that siblings have for one another and how even though they have good intentions, they can't always help their loved one follow a positive

Read More
1396 Words | 6 Pages

The narrator is visited by a friend from Sonny’s past and then after reaches out to his brother. Sonny invites him to come hear him play and that is when the narrator understands his brother and in turn understands he himself. James Baldwin was raised by a single mother and later stepfather who was a Baptist minister. He attended school in the Bronx and developed a passion for

Read More
622 Words | 3 Pages

"His blackness had fixed bleak boundaries to his life" (Baldwin, 63). He generally tried to do all the nice things for his children in an attempt to be a good father, but he somehow always looked like an angry, hateful person. Even playing with his children often ended badly. His children would cry out of fear because of their father's angry looks. When Baldwin's father tried helping one of the children with their homework, they became

Read More
839 Words | 4 Pages

In A Letter to My Nephew, James Baldwin, the now deceased critically acclaimed writer, pens a message to his nephew, also named James. This letter is meant to serve as a caution to him of the harsh realities of being black in the United States. With Baldwin 's rare usage of his nephew 's name in the writing, the letter does not only serve as a letter to his relative, but as a message to black youth that is still needed today. Baldwin wrote this letter at a time where his nephew was going through adolescence, a period where one leaves childhood and inches closer and closer to becoming an adult.

Read More

More about Essay Comparing Citizen And Baldwin's Notes Of A Native Son

Related Topics

Open Document