On Christina Sharpe:
The concept of the “wake” is an interesting one, and I struggled to understand it at first. However after reading Sharpe’s “The Wake” and “The Ship” it is clear to me now that the wake is a term utilized by Sharpe (in a number of ways) to sort through the events that encompass black life in the aftermath of the institution of slavery. Something that struck me while reading “The Ship” were Sharpe’s comments about the inclusion of Aereile Jackson in the film The Forgotten Space: “How she is written into the film and the film’s inability to comprehend her suffering are part of the orthography of the wake. The forgotten space of blackness…” (29)
While the practice of chattel slavery may have ended over one hundred years ago in the United States (and other Caribbean and South American nations), and while we all live in “the wake” of this institution, “the wake” is something that continues to affect black people and black life on the daily. The pain, trauma, and loss that it has caused is not something that can be quantified. The obvious lack of understanding from the film makers in relation to Jackson’s plight, and the plight of others like her, speaks directly to the power of “the wake”. “The forgotten space of blackness…” speaks to the fact that it feels as though majority of white people have essentially moved on from the events that took place during slavery as well as the consequences that it has brought upon the black community, while black people are forced to confront an unjust reality every day. Additionally, this draws parallels for me to comments that I have seen on social media or in videos that essentially dismiss the black struggle and insist that “slavery ended like 200 years ago” and insist that black people “get over it”, even though it is glaringly obvious that inequality is a constant throughout American history.
On Margaret Atwood:
I thought it was interesting that in The Penelopiad, Penelope is only able to experience an “absolute” sense of freedom after death. I was also surprised by some of the things that Penelope said, as I thought The Penelopiad would be a feminist retelling, through Penelope’s eyes, of the events that she experienced throughout The Odyssey. Instead I was shocked by the way that she would compare herself and Helen, (often in relation to the amount of male attention they each received) as though getting attention from men was some kind of competition or made one better than the other. Although in many of these stories she is reflecting back on the way men treated her and Helen differently, it is obvious that Penelope has constructed her sense of self worth off of how desirable to a man she could be:
“I was a kind girl – kinder than Helen, or so I thought. I knew I would have to have something to offer instead of beauty. I was clever, everyone said so- in fact they said it so much that I found it discouraging – but clevernes is a quality a man likes to have in his wife as long as she is some distance away from him. Up close, he’ll take -kindness any day of the week, if there’s nothing more alluring to be had.” (29)
To me there’s a sense of jealousy being communicated through Penelope’s constant comparisons between herself and her cousin. Furthermore, while she is free of an oppressive male dominated society , it seems as though these ideals and ways of thinking have stuck with her even in death, and have found a way to continue oppressing her as they did when she was alive.
On Derek Walcott:
While Omeros could at times be a bit confusing with a number of characters and the overlap between mythology and British colonialism, one of the most compelling parts of the poem is Philoctete and his wound that would not close. It greatly paralleled some of the ideas in Sharpe’s “The Ship” and “The Wake.” In the same way that “the wake” is something that black people continue to feel in a post slavery society, Philoctete’s wound not being able to heal, parallels the way that slavery (and all of the injustices that have come as a result of it) acts as a festering wound that will never be able to heal in a world that constantly devalues black life. Additionally I was wondering why Walcott chose to write his text in a way that utilized Greek mythology? Is it Walcott’s attempt to construct the “black epic” (seeing as all of the epic poetry we have been exposed to through our schooling, is usually written by and for a white audience) or could it be something else?
- Carleisha Forteau
I really like the perspective that you bring on the Penelopiad with regards to Penelope’s character who we believe is going to bring a positive feminine voice to the epic, but she just turns out to be jealous of Helen and her looks. I was also disappointed in the pettiness, and wonder if that was just her reflections of what she was feeling as a 15 year old girl, or if that was her general outlook on the situation, even after all that she experienced. Without reading more, I don’t know what her thought process would be–if she is just speaking as a product of her time, or if it would be a retrospective commentary. Either way, for me it was a quick read, but I felt that her character didn’t go much beyond what Homer developed for her. I found her somewhat shallow and annoying to read.
I really enjoyed Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake. I loved all her definitions of “wake,” and for the first time, saw each definition relate in some way. I agree with you about the modern idea, especially transmitted through social media is that “slavery ended over 200 years ago, you should get over it,” is still prevalent in white/non-Black thinking and dialogue. I found it interesting when she was writing about some of the courses she taught, and she found that her students could sympathize and feel for the Holocaust survivors, but could not for the enslaved Africans and Black slaves–even after she changed the order in which she taught them. I thought this speaks to the many years of indoctrination that is imposed upon people in a White dominated society, where unfortunately, the majority of curriculum is written by direct beneficiaries of colonial violence.