3/5 Stars (%53/100)
It was okay-ish to good. I've read for one of my classes. Here's more or less what I wrote in a paper:
James Baldwin’s 1955 collection of essays Notes of a Native Son is similar to the works of Sartre and de Beauvoir in the sense that he also compares Europe and America. However, Baldwin mostly focuses on the issues of race that he observed during his stay in Paris. In “Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown”, Baldwin explains that it is more difficult for black people to become successful in Paris in the 1950s compared to the roaring 1920s. He says that only black people are able to maintain a good relationship with black artists. Because the white Americans distrust black Americans, racial differentiation becomes more prominent in Paris.
Baldwin also talks about the relationship between Africans living in Paris and African American people. He explains this conflict by saying “They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of three hundred years—an alienation too vast to be conquered in an evening’s good-will, too heavy and too double-edged ever to be trapped in speech” (Baldwin 112). Both sides need to work hard to understand each other, according to Baldwin, and because America is constantly changing, the American identity also changes. However, he believes that “What time will bring Americans is at last their own identity” (113). Even though this essay focuses on black people and their experience, it still has some similarities to the previously-mentioned texts because Baldwin also talks about Americanism and the difficulty of establishing an American identity. Also, just as Europeans, like de Beauvoir or Sartre, find Americans strange, Americans, especially black Americans like Baldwin himself, seem to find Europeans strange as well. This can be traced back to Offe’s explanation about how Europe views America in different ways.
In another essay “Equal in Paris”, Baldwin recounts his experience of his arrest and ironically, this happens due to an American, not a French person. Even though Baldwin does not seem to like the American tourist, he has sort of a sympathy towards him as they are both foreigners in Paris. However, this backfires as the tourist steals some sheets and eventually gets Baldwin spend eight days in prison. During this distasteful process, Baldwin compares the American and French system and says that “everything is very slow” (128) in Paris. Here, Baldwin also emphasizes the importance of language. Because he does not even understand what is going on, he cannot fight against it. This is why when he is sent to a prison, he misses the tourist as he is the only one who knows he is innocent. He spends some time in prison and even cries because he is unable to do anything until he finally gets someone to call an American attorney. In the courtroom, he feels ashamed and angry because the French people laugh at him, or rather at the pettiness of the case. Baldwin explains this with these words:
This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of the living is not real. I had heard it so often in my native land that I had resolved to find a place where I would never hear it any more. In some deep, black, stony, and liberating way, my life, in my own eyes, began during that first year in Paris, when it was borne in on me that this laughter is universal and never can be stilled. (141)
In short, what Baldwin means that wherever he goes, there will be privileged people who laughs at him, or African American people in general.
·
140 Gösterim
Yorumlar
Lütfen giriş yapınız.