1. Professor Jaynes fails to make tenure and loses his job because he refused to teach African American Literature. His defense was that his work was "about finding the answer to why we have failed to become a postracial society." Jaynes believes that the cure to identifying "how the pathology of Whiteness was constructed" is the key to dismantling it. Do you agree or disagree with him? (15)
2. Tsalal is an "undiscovered African Diasporan homeland" that is mentioned in both Peters and Poe's books. Jaynes is excited to find it because it is "uncorrupted by Whiteness." How might the Tsalalians be different from the rest of the African Diaspora who has be in contact with Whiteness?
3. How is it possible that Mrs. Mathis truly believes she doesn't have any African blood? Is she just a character or are there real people like her?
4. Mrs. Mathis was destroyed when she got the results back about her ancestry. Is there an amount of ancestry percentage that would change the way you felt about yourself? Why?
5. Given the time period (1837), why wasn't Dirk Peters harassed more when he was searching for Poe?
No comments:
Post a Comment