The Narrators Voice and Race Relations: A Synthesis of Three Stories - Literature review Example

?The Narrator’s Voice and Race Relations: A Synthesis of Three Stories The short stories “Sharing”, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” and “Along the Frontage Road” all cover broad themes of race and age and class and seeing things through the eyes of another, but the differences in perspective spell marked differences in the treatment of each of these short stories. All stories, however, are beautifully written, with prose throbbing with energy, but with an underlying subtlety that communicates a deep and enduring message. All of them speak of seemingly ordinary and innocuous occurrences from daily life, but have a universal message on the differences between human beings and both the bridges and the walls that we construct daily in the course of our interactions with each other. The first story, “Sharing” is about the seemingly ordinary incident of two neighbors who have never spoken a word or even smiled to each other in years, but cross paths when one of them needs mayonnaise to make a chicken salad and goes to his neighbour to ask for it. The story is told from the vantage point of the other neighbour, a white suburban woman who has recently been left by her husband. When they got to exchanging stories with each other, they find out that they may have more in common than they actually thought. The man’s wife had also left him because she was unhappy, and now the man is dealing with the emotional fall-out. O the part of the black neighbour, we never get to know what goes on in his mind, but the word that he conveys depict him as a sad and broken man, still dealing with the separation from his wife. The second story, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” is a more overt illustration of the differences in race because it deals with young girls who are at the stage when they are becoming very conscious of the differences between the races. The setting is a summer camp and a group of black girls take it upon themselves to exact revenge on a white girl who called one of their friends a “nigger”. Their own prejudices come to the fore, for example, acts seen as funny or odd would be called “Caucasian” acts, even though it does not make much senseThe black girls were depicted to be typical girls – also having hierarchies typical of many social cliques in school. Arnetta and Octavia are the supposed leaders of the group. They were the ones who led the plot to exact revenge for Daphne, the quiet girl who was the one called “nigger”. The narrator in the story is a black girl that they called “Snot”, who was also quiet and went with the pack, but meekly offered opinions every now and then. The third story is entitled “Along the Frontage Road” which is about a father and son who went to pick pumpkins. The father is the narrator in the story and the story begins by his reminiscing about the pumpkin fields in Maryland and how they are much better than the pumpkin fields in Berkeley, California. He also remembers his father, a doctor, who opened pumpkins and carved them with surgical precision. We then learn that a family tragedy had just happened, with his wife just having miscarried a baby. In the fields they met another father and son duo and the narrator surmises that it must have been a drug deal. In the meantime, he picks up a small pumpkin and declares that he wants to name the pumpkin “Kate”, which should have been the name of his baby sister who died. “It was a girl of seventeen weeks, a theoretical daughter startled in the darkness and the warmth of her mother’s body – by a jet of cool air and a fatal glint of light.” The story ended with the father still surmising why his son got a small pumpkin, as the latter “went back to the world of pumpkins, looking for the one that would best suit his unknown purposes.” What ties these three stories together is the interactions between two different race groups and how the perspectives are seen in the narrator’s own race color. The first story involved an interaction between a white woman and a black man who were both neighbors. The second story involved two racially-different groups of school girls in a simmer camp. The third involved a father and son meeting another father and son. What is truly interesting is seeing how race motivates perspective and voice, in such huge degree. One can see, for example, the self-consciousness of the narrator in the first story – so conscious of the difference in race, so struggling to be proper and politically-correct then catching herself when she behaves inappropriately. An example of this is when she mistakenly gave her neighbour sink water instead of cold water from the fridge. What is interesting in the story is not what is actually said between them, but the thought processes in the mind of the narrator, the white suburban woman. It is clear that she was surprised by the visit, but also quite pleased and eager at what she thinks is a new friendship that she has formed. She is also unsure about her actions and obviously self-conscious because she has never been up close with a black man before. There was even a short sentence on how her playful mind flirted with the idea of the mayonnaise being used as a sexual tool – a reference, perhaps, to the illicitness of interracial sex in suburban America. But in the end, there is some sort of realization about how people are all the same way: carrying the same heartbreaks, being in need of friends or at least company, depending on family as an anchor for one’s life. While the friendship of the woman was in a sense rejected by the man (he said he was moving to another town), the story ended with greater understanding on both sides. In the second story, the racial differences are explored in a more overt way, and one can see how perspective of the narrator matters. In this story, the narrator described the physical qualities of the white girls, describing their hair for example as shampoo-commercial hair. There was envy and jealousy, but disguised as scorn and contempt, and this was visible through the eyes of the young black protagonist. . There was much description in the prose of the writer of this short story; in describing the white young girls, the following colourful description was employed, “they were white girls, their complexions a blend of ice cream: strawberry, vanilla. They turtled out from their bus in pairs, their rolled-up sleeping bags chromatized with Disney characters: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Mickey Mouse; or the generic ones cheap parents bought: washed-out rainbows, unicorns, curly-eyelashed frogs. Some clutched Igloo coolers and still others held on to stuffed toys like pacifiers, looking all around them like tourists determined to be dazzled.” They were perceived with both envy and hatred by the black girls, all of whom were from Atlanta, where “it was easy to forget about whites.” Not much was said about the perspective of the white girls, which would have been rich and fertile for exploration as well. However, there was already many insights to be derived from looking at how black young girls perceived their white counterparts. The visuals used – Disney characters, strawberry ice cream – are also in large part markers of class and a way of life that perhaps the black girls envision but could not have. In the third story, it is evident that the narrator in his mind made the connection between race, crime and inability to raise one’s child. He then imagines briefly the kind of life that the black son of the drug dealer must be living, and how different it was from the life of his own son. This was made clear in the part where the young boy said he had a big pumpkin at home (his own son picked a small pumpkin), and the narrator was sure that he had no such pumpkin. But then he also said, “these may not in fact have been certainties so much as assumptions, and racist ones at that, I will grant you this. But what kind of father would leave his kid alone in a car, with the door open, at the side of a road that skirted the edge of a luckless and desolate place? What kind of man would do that?” While the narrator couched it in terms like “I know this sounds racist.. this is an assumption”, this assumption speaks volumes on the suspicions and wariness that cloud race relations. And another point, there is one line in the story that reads like, I have never felt more white than when I am smiling to a black man. This means that interactions with other races not only define other people, but it helps us define ourselves. The race consciousness, the sense of being different, of believing that there is a code of behaviour when engaging or having a conversation with a person from a different race, these are the underlying themes in these short stories. Even though the narrators could not be more different from each other, the universal message surfaces. But another thing that is important to remember in the story is that the differentiation is not only with regard to class, it is also with respect to gender, class and other differentials. Perhaps this is least relevant in the first story, because both of them were inhibitants of a wealthy neighbourhood.. But in the third story, it was very much evident: the son of a White doctor comparing his and his family’s life to the family of a drug dealer. Also, in the second story, it was clear that the young black girls perceived the white girls to be rich and of a higher class. Ruth Frankenburg once said that “any system of differentiation shapes those upon whom it bestows privilege as well as those it oppresses.” (Frankenberg: 1993: 131). This is a critical insight to begin to understand and reflect on the complex ways that the color of one’s skin determines a person’s life-chances. Whiteness indeed bestows a structural advantage to those who possess that color of skin, and conversely, creates disadvantages for those who are of another skin tone. In the past, race was used as an organizing device to include or exclude. In a way, therefore, it becomes inextricable with class – particularly when race becomes the determinant of conferring economic benefit. At present, while there are discrimination laws in place now that bar racial discrimination, there are still insidious ways that race creep in. For example, white is still considered the standard of beauty in many places – with women opting for rosy creamy white skin Caucasian features. To provide a specific example in the community, a news report came out recently1 that Wal-Mart is selling black Barbies at half the price of white Barbies, causing critics to comment that this can send a wrong message to children. It internalizes racial discrimination and reinforces the message that white is beautiful and other colors are not. In a sense, race and class and gender are similar in that it triggers the process of differentiation, and these differentials are legitimized and ratified in order to support existing power structures or arrangements. Race and gender and class differentials therefore, operate to strengthen one another and create filtering mechanisms that determine what people can get, and how, as well as the relationships between the group that gets and the group that does not. A black woman for example is beset with deeper structural disadvantages than a white woman, or a black man. A poor black worker will not enjoy the same financial advantages as a rich black businessman. Discrimination therefore takes place on multiple levels. To address one and ignore the other is a profound injustice. In the end, these short stories opened out eyes to the realities that take place even in ordinary surroundings. Discrimination is still very much prevalent, it works in the mind, and if solutions are to be crafted to address it, much work has to be done in educating and integrating people together. Word count: 2065 References Chabon, Michael. (2001). Along the Frontage Road. Available at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/11/19/011119fi_fiction Frankenberg, R. (1993) “Growing Up White: Feminism, Racism and the Social Geography of Childhood.” Feminist Review. Vol. 45. 51-84. The New York Times. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”. March 16, 2003. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/books/chapters/0316-1st-packer.html?pagewanted=3 Wideman, John Edgar. (2005). “Stories” in God’s Gym. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Read More