BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED! TWO PROTEST NOVELS OF VIOLENCE, INEQUALITY, AND OPPRESSION: NATIVE SON AND GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

Year 2021, Issue: 66, 171 - 187, 24.06.2021

Olgahan Bakşi Yalçin

Abstract

Due to the secondary position given to the persons of African descent throughout their history, it could reasonably be argued that violence, inequality, and oppression have been deeply rooted in the United States of America for centuries. Thus, for many literary critics such as Trudier Harris (2019), all writings of Black people in one way or another have been different forms of protest against the racial prejudices of the dominant white community. Accordingly, the intention of protest literature has always been to point out inequalities and oppression among different socio-economic groups and to call for reform. This study seeks to explore how, although written a generation apart, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) are two canonical protest novels which vocalize the racial issues that the black community had to face in the mid-20th century in the United States of America in similar ways.

Keywords

American Protest Literature, Violence, Inequality, Racial Prejudices, Systematic Racism

SİYAH HAYATLAR HER ZAMAN ÖNEMLİ OLMUŞTUR! ŞİDDET, EŞİTSİZLİK VE BASKI İÇERİKLİ İKİ PROTEST ROMAN: NATIVE SON VE GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

Abstract

Afrika kökenli insanlara tarih boyunca verdikleri ikincil konum nedeniyle, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'nde yüzyıllarca şiddet, eşitsizlik ve baskının derinden kök saldığı haklı olarak iddia edilebilir. Bu nedenle, Trudier Harris (2019) gibi birçok edebiyat eleştirmeni için, siyah halkın tüm yazdıkları bir şekilde baskın beyaz toplumun ırksal önyargılarına karşı farklı protesto biçimleridir. Buna uygun olarak da protest edebiyatının amacı her zaman farklı sosyo-ekonomik gruplar arasındaki eşitsizlik ve baskılara işaret etmek ve reform çağrısı yapmak olmuştur. Bu çalışma, Richard Wright'ın Native Son (1940) ve James Baldwin'in Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) isimli eserlerinin, her ne kadar bir nesil zaman farkı ile yazılmış olsalar da iki kanonik protest roman olarak 20. yüzyılın ortalarında siyahi toplumun karşılaştığı ırkçı meseleleri nasıl benzer şekillerde dile getirdiklerini keşfetmeyi amaçlamaktadır.

Keywords

Amerikan Protest Edebiyatı, Şiddet, Eşitsizlik, Irksal Önyargılar, Siste-matik Irkçılık

References

• “African American Protest Poetry.” (2019). Freedom’s Story, Teacher-Serve©.National Humanities Center. Retrieved August, 08 2020. From http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/aaprotestpoetry.htm
• Baker, T. (2018) “John Lewis: ‘The Scars and Stains of Racism Are Still Deeply Embedded in American Society’.” Retrieved August, 06 2020. From https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2018/11/06/john-lewis-the-scars-and-stains-of-racism-are-still-deeply-embedded-in-american-society/
• Baldwin, J. (1953/2001). Go Tell It on the Mountain. With an Introduction by Andrew O’Hagan. London: Penguin Books.
• Bell, W. B. (1989). The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
• Bone, R. A. (1968). The Negro Novel in America. New Haven: Yale Universi-ty Press, pp. 140–52.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. (1926/1994). “Criteria of Negro Art,” Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, (Ed. Angelyn Mitchell), Durham: Duke Uni-versity Press, p. 66.
• Foley, B. (1993). “The Politics of Poetics: Ideology and Narrative Form in an American Tragedy and Native Son.” Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. (Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Ap-piah), NY: Amistad, pp. 188-199.
• Gibson, D. B. (2001). “Richard Wright.” The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. (Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris), Oxford University Press, pp. 447-449.
• Greene, J. L. (1991). “The Pain and the Beauty: The South, the Black Writer, and Conventions of the Picaresque.” The American South: Portrait of a Culture. (Ed. Louis D. Rubin), Southern Literary Studies: Louisiana State UP, pp. 279-302.
• Harris, T. (2001). “James Baldwin.” The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. (Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris), Oxford University Press, pp. 20-22.
• Howe, I. (1963). “Black Boys and Native Sons” Dissent, Autumn, 353-68. Retrieved July 8, 2018. From http://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/archive/HoweDissent.htm JOE BIDEN IN PHILLY CALLS GEORGE FLOYD'S DEATH A 'WAKE-UP CALL FOR OUR NATION'. RETRIEVED SEPTEMBER, 1 2020. FROM HTTPS://ABC7.COM/JOE-BIDEN-PRESIDENTIAL-%20CANDIDATE-2020-ELECTION-PHILADELPHIA-PROTEST/6226769/
• Kim, K. (1974). “Wright, The Protest Novel, and Baldwin’s Faith.” CLA Journal, Vol. 17, No.3, pp. 387-396.
• Lee, B. (1971). “James Baldwin: Caliban to Prospero,” The Black American Writer, Vol. 1: Fiction. (Ed. C.W.E Bigsby), Baltimore: Penguin.
• Lubin, David M. (2018). Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Margolies, E. (1969). “Richard Wright: Native Son and Three Kinds of Revo-lution,” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. New York, Philadelphia, Lippincott, pp. 65–86.
• Nagel, J. (2007). “Blinded as a Metaphor” Richard Wright’s Native Son. With an introduction by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.
• Native Son. (1940/2000). With an Introduction by Carly Phillips. London: Vintage.
• Nobody Knows My Name. (1968). New York: Dell Publishing Company.
• Notes of a Native Son (1955/2012). Boston: Beacon Press.
• Ogbaa, K. (1991, December). “Protest and the Individual Talents of Three Black Novelists” CLA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 159-184.
• Paull, J. (2019) “The use of Lethal Force by Police in the USA: Mortality Metrics of Race and Disintegration (2015-2019),” Journal of Social and Development Sciences. 5(4), pp. 30-35.
• Porter, H. (2007). “The South in Go Tell It on the Mountain: Baldwin’s Personal Confrontation.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: James Baldwin, Updated Edition, New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, pp. 53-69.
• Rubin, L. D. (1991). “The American South: The Continuity of Self-Definition.” The American South: Portrait of a Culture. (Ed. Louis D. Rubin), Southern Literary Studies: Louisiana State UP, Baton Rouge Pagination, pp. 3-22.
• Saul, S. (2009). “Protest Lit. 101.” American Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 404-417.
• Sundquist, E. J. (1991). “Mark Twain and Homer Plessy” The New American Studies: Essays from Representations. (Ed. Philip Fisher), Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 112-138.
• Twagilimana, A., Sublette, C. M. (2011). “Native Son” Icons of African American Literature: The Black Literary World. (Ed. Yolanda Williams), Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, pp. 321- 345.
• Vann, J. J. (2011). “James Arthur Baldwin” Icons of African American Literature: The Black Literary World. (Ed. Yolanda Williams), Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, pp. 27-35.
• Wright, R. (1936/2004). Uncle Tom’s Children. With an Introduction by Richar Yarborough. New York: Harper Perennial.