Lou Buscio Experiences in literature 2-18-2014 Essay 2 RD-2 Race in Literary Works

While reading literary works is not always easy to figure out what the author is trying to portray with their writing. Sometimes you read a story and believe it is one thing, but turns out to be the exact opposite. You can solve this problem by using critical lenses. A critical lens helps you read a text from a certain point of view and therefor gives the reader a better understanding of what the author is trying to get across. In the two works that we read in class Toni Cade Bambaras The Lesson, and Countee Cullens Incident, the race critical lens was most appropriate. In these readings we see a young girls stubbornness keep her from being taught an important lesson about race and poverty and also an African American boy who is discriminated and it leads to him being devastated in the end. Both show children learning about race in their everyday lives. In Toni Cade Bambaras The Lesson it shows race as a main focus because it is based on a time period in Harlem that was during the Black Renaissance, the feminist movement and a time where African Americans were having a very hard time being equal in society. The story is about a young, poor black girl growing up in Harlem; in the neighborhood that she lives in a trip is organized by a new local woman. The woman is one of the only educated people around and

she takes responsibility for the girls to learn a lesson. This lesson is to expose the children of the neighborhood to the world outside of their oppressed community. The place that Miss Moore takes them is FAO Schwartz in Manhattan; This is the place, Miss Moore says, presenting it to us in the voice she uses at the museum. Lets look in the windows before we go in.(Bambara 1) In FAO Schwartz they sell the most expensive toys to only the richest of the white kids. Most of the prices they sell these toys for are equivalent to children in the neighborhoods yearly house incomes combined. This shows race in its self by explaining the similarities in price between a black familys yearly income and a toy of a privileged white child. Race begins to come into play early in the story when Sylvia explains Miss Moore as black as hell. Miss Moore was her name, the only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky (Bambara 1). This example shows race being used in a different way then we usually see, usually it is one race discriminating on another, but in this case it is within the same ethnicity. In this example from Sylvia it shows the reader that she is not looking at Miss Moore as an educated adult, but instead judges her on strictly her skin color. When looking through a race based literary lens you see more of the author trying to show just how much poverty and race has affected these children when Miss Moore finally arrives at the store with them. In this part of the story after Miss Moore says, Lets look in the window, the first response of one of the girls is, "Can we steal?" Sugar asks very serious like she's getting the ground rules squared away before she plays.(Bambara 2) This example from the author makes you realize the poverty and lack of money that these children have that the first thing this young girl thinks of when she sees these toys are to steal. This directly reflects on her home life, from the explanation of the girls poverty ridden

neighborhood it is obvious to see that her home life is not the best. This puts her in the position that when she notices nice things her reaction id not to work for them, but instead steal. Race basically outlines this entire story, while reading, the main focus that stays in your mind is that these girls are poor and underprivileged African Americans in a troubling time. You this this when Sylvia asks Miss Moore, Watcha bring us here for, Miss Moore?, and she responds by saying, "You sound angry, Sylvia. Are you mad about something?" Givin me one of them grins like she tellin a grown-up joke that never turns out to be funny. And she's lookin very closely at me like maybe she plannin to do my portrait from memory. I'm mad, but I won't give her that satisfaction. (Bambara 2) This shows Sylvia portraying her true identity, She shows her ignorance toward Miss Moores lesson. She does not want to show her any satisfaction, however the lesson may not be obvious, but Sylvia being smarter then she even realizes is seeing the social gap between her, her friends, and the higher upper class. You can also tell she is not very well educated by the way she is talking using words like givin, lookin and bein. This reflects on her neighborhood and the schools and children she hangs out with. Miss Moore Then attempts to see if the children have learned anything while being in the store when she asks, Well, what did you think of FAO Schwarz? followed by Rosie Giraffe mumbling, White folks crazy (Bambara 3). This tells you that the lesson Miss Moore is trying to teach these girls went straight over their heads and instead the only thing they noticed was who could actually afford the toys their and that is only the upper class white population. In the end of this story it shows Sylvia learning a lesson even though she did not want to and tried not to give Miss Moore any satisfaction she still learns. The lesson learned is that there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor and this fact angers Sylvia to the point where she

will strive to work harder because no one can beat her. You see this when she says, We start down the block and she gets ahead which is O.K. by me cause I'm going to the West End and then over to the Drive to think this day through. She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin. (Bambara 3) When looking at the last line of the story from a race perspective you see that times were very hard for African Americans back then and if you didnt want to be in poverty your whole life you were going to need the mentality Sylvia obtained in the end. Her mentality being that no one could beat her at anything and that race was not going to hold her back. In the next work, race is the reason for the authors poem. Countee Cullens Incident is a poem about a young African American boy who goes on a trip to Baltimore. On his trip he is devastated by another boy his same age calling him a Nigger. The racism is obvious right from the start. In the first stanza he explains coming to Baltimore with a Heart-filled, head-filled with glee After reading that you can understand that the boy traveling does not judge by color or appearance, but is just so excited to see the city and people of Baltimore. He then comes across a Baltimorean child that is just stopped and starring right at him from a distance. Before you even read the next stanza you can almost guess what is coming next, and that is some type of judgment being placed on the boy whether its racism or not. It has to be something because this other boy is now frozen staring at the visiting black child. In the next stanza he starts with explaining this boy staring at him by saying, Now I was eight and very small, and he was no whit bigger.(Cullen 2) This proves that color or race is not associated in this childs point of view and actually he is excited to find a boy his own age and size. The visiting boy follows by smiling in a friendly manner at the other boy and his reaction is sticking out his tongue and calling him a nigger. Without explaining anyone can tell this is racism and at such a young age

it shows the deep dark truth about how bad this problem actually was and that at any age racism was being inflicted on people. The boy visiting approached this boy happy and with a smile to show he saw right through race and was just noticing a boy of the same age. Due to the visiting boys color the Baltimorean dismissed him as a friend and immediately labeled him as a nigger. All he noticed was that he was black and that shows racism in its worst way. I believe the author is showing us that racism is terrible and that because youre an adult gives it no justice because obviously the apple doesnt fall to far from the tree when that racist elder says nigger too much around his young boy. What the Baltimorean child has heard now is used on the heart-filled, head-filled with glee boy and that results in the boy saying, I saw the whole Baltimore from May until December; of all the things that happened there thats all that I remember, (Cullen 3)This is sad to see the author showing how devastated the boy was due to the racial profiling and it tells the readers how bad racism can hurt somebody no matter what age you are, size you are, or city you live in. To conclude race has helped explain both stories by showing two different types of authors portraying two different types of how race can affect someones life. In Bambaras The lesson it showed the struggle of a poverty ridden young girl learning the lesson of the great social gap in our economy and it teaches her that if she wants to be something in life she needs to work hard to get there. In Cullens Incident it is obvious in the entire poem that the topic is about racism and being called just a name because of your color can really affect the person being discriminated and that race does not only touch on color, but it also takes away from seeing someones true identity.

Work Cited: http://cai.ucdavis.edu/gender/thelesson.html

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/01/

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