African American Literature

I've realized trees are going to be a prominent symbol in this book, it's only been three chapters and I have seen metaphors using trees, parts of trees, and the anthropomorphism of trees in this book. From the very beginning, trees have a strong literal and symbolic presence in the story of Janie’s life. Conceived in the woods to her mother (nicknamed “Leafy” by Janie’s grandmother), Janie grows like a pear tree; blooming “glossy leaves and bursting buds” (Hurston 11) when she turns 16 like the “glistening leaf-buds” (10) of the young pear tree she frequents, she begins to imagine her future. The pear tree represents her memories in its roots, her visions in its branches, and the newly budding blossoms of her dreams. She begins to yearn for love as poetic as the beauty of nature blooming with life in the spring. She watches in awe as “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tr...

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man explores the complexities of race in 20th century America. The horrors and intricacies of being a black man in America are brought to life through the narrator’s education down in the Deep South and then his career and experiences in the North. The South is shown as the outwardly racist society it is, and characters such as the rich men at the Battle Royale are very blatant about their prejudice. However, it gets more complicated up north - in the narrative of American history, the North is portrayed as the more progressive and accepting society compared to the South. However, it isn’t as simple as this - many Northerners are still racist, except their racism is more subtle and they try to hide it through a mask of performative progressivism. One such organization is the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood wants to address the problem of race - I mean, they literally have an initiative addressing the 'Race Question'. So at a first glance, the Brotherhood ...