Discussion Qs for Monday

I will bring copies of this to class, so no one needs to print their own.

1. What do you think of the assertion that Black literature served more to perpetuate the negative differences between Blacks and Whites than to earn Black writers respect within the literary cannon of the time? Is there a catch-22 happening, between Black attempts at literary respect, and the claim that such attempts only highlighted their “Blackness”? (Mitchell 167)
2. Based on the poems and essays we have read, do you agree that “Negro writing was always ‘after the fact’”? That Black writers were always stuck writing with the tools of their White peers? What is the evidence? And if your answer is yes, is there evidence that this lag was detrimental to progress of Black literature? (169)
3. Based on what we have read, do you agree that Black writers “contented themselves with the imitation of the useless ugly inelegance of the stunted middle class mind”? Evidence one way or another? What are the implications of a statement like this? (171)
4. What do you think the “Black aesthetic” is? Can we determine one from the poems we’re read, which span 200 years? Should we be looking for a common thread aside from the Black experience? Why or why not?
5. Unpack Shange’s “Elegance in the Extreme,” especially with respect to the concept of a Black aesthetic. Does the poem address this concept? Confront it? Endorse it? What about her other poems?
6. Examine Randall’s “Coral Atoll.” With the claim that Black literature is always “after the fact” in mind, what does this poem tell us about the progress of the Black Arts Movement? How does it relate to earlier Black poetry?