History as Blog

 I finished Kindred with a strange taste in my mouth. While this was one of the more legible books we've read thus far (thank you, Octavia Butler), I had a hard time figuring out the "moral of the story" - the endings of Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo just felt fitting for me, and each helped complete or at least supplement the threads woven throughout each novel. These themes also supplement each other well - the Mu'tafikah complement the main topic of Jes Grew by exposing the fundamentals of western culture, for example. Since finishing Kindred, I have spent some time thinking (and procrastinating) about the major takeaways the novel presents, and how they connect with one another.  1. Slavery was bad… …but not in the way you think. A lot of Butler’s portrayal of slavery is underwhelming (“This place isn’t as bad as I thought it would be”), which makes its worst moments pack an even heavier punch. What stuck out to me most were the familial aspects of slavery, like how ent...

Can you imagine how pissed off a high school English student in the 70s would feel if their teacher assigned them to read a book titled “Nonsense”? Mumbo Jumbo is a book that practically begs the reader to be frustrated with it. It is filled with pictures that have little to no relation to what’s happening in the book, a second chapter 52, and plenty of moments of near-deus-ex-machina in little disguise. It's only a novel in the sense that between side stories and meals of non-poisonous snakes it has words on a page that resemble a plot. I hope it is clear that this book annoys me. But I think that we’re all reading Mumbo Jumbo wrong — it was a TV show this whole time! Let me explain.   Fade in from black.  New Orleans, 1920s. The mayor is staying late for work. The telephone rings. The mayor’s presence is required at the church. Jes Grew has come alive. Oh dear.  [THEME MUSIC PLAYS]  [OPENING CREDITS ROLL] Narrator: With the astonishing rapidity of Booker T. Wa...

What's more quintessentially American than the struggle for and against change? And who would be a more quintessential American than a patriotic, upstanding, self-made bunting and fireworks manufacturer? Father is the perfect encapsulation of the late 19th century businessman; he’s no J.P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie, but he has successfully played the capitalist game. He has a stout manse and a healthy family and a stable life. I think it’s fair to say that father represents the “old guard” of the novel (as opposed to, say, Tateh’s newness as an innovator). Father represents the traditional values of the time, and is struggling to maintain his place in society as a familial provider and role model. Instead, he becomes bitter, disagreeable, and occasionally rude as he begins to see his former status slipping from him.  In one of the first scenes of the novel, Father spots a “rag ship, with a million dark eyes staring at him. Father, a normally resolute person, suddenly foundered in h...