African Diaspora - Essay Example

African Diaspora Making Calalloo is a singular collection of stories from the African diaspora that sets out to examine the lives of the non-African blacks in the diaspora in regard to the myriad of social cultural issues resulting from their direct circumstances and their history of slavery and colonialism. Despite the variant backgrounds of the writers in the African diaspora, there are several recurring themes in the short stories examined herein. The major ones are male chauvinism and sexism which force the reader to question the perception the gender roles and why they are so slanted against the women. Additionally, the themes of racism and discrimination keep coming up as the divisions between racial lines are a source of much of the conflict in the stories. Conflict and oppression are a part of both the slavery and colonial legacy and these are embodied by the actions of blacks against each other in the "The Journals of Water Days 1986" where the civil war in Haiti is seen as a continuation of the brutality of the white slavers by the new black lords. This paper examines the common themes; particularly, male chauvinism, racism and xenophobia as well as oppression and the inequalities that result from gender and racial discrimination in selected stories from Callaloo bearing in mind a background of the slavery based on “Reversing the sail” by Michael Gomez. The first short story examined is “My Singular Irene” (Rowell 3); the two dominant themes therein are alienation and male chauvinism. Irene feels the alienation of living in a patriarchal middle class world where she is expected to conform to the social dictates of her status both socially and gender wise. Her husband who is the narrator expects her to be grateful for the life he has afforded her and thinks it qualifies him to lord over her and restrict her freedom of expression and socialization. To him, her needs are childish, whimsical and even idiotic and he pushes her into becoming a walking stereotype of female submissiveness. She uses the trip to the countryside to liberate herself from the confines of chauvinism and unravel the bond of her uninhabited marriage; to the man, she is going insane in her nakedness in the wilderness, however symbolically by flying with the butterflies Irene is in fact taking back her freedom. In the “Breadnut and Breadfruit”, through the life of Etiennise, the author explores the challenges of an illegitimate girl from a mixed racial parentage which is retrospectively part of the inheritance of slavery. In the story, the theme racial discrimination is explored and is most overt when her father tells her “my parents used to say that we are Mulattoes, we do not frequent niggers” (Rowell 43) additionally, his favorite child Jessica was the one closest to being white “almost completely blond”. Through her mother, the strength of the black woman is brought out, she raised her on her own, all the while suffering from cancer but she was unwilling to let her or anyone know. She covered her head in a scarf and her body in a shapeless dress sacrificing her femininity and happiness so she can give the best to her daughter, male chauvinism is evident in the way her father casually treated women like sex objects; from raping her mother to having hordes of illegitimate children notwithstanding that he was married. Furthermore, the fact that his conduct was socially deemed acceptable even when he was using his daughter to prey on high school girls serves to portray the society as tolerant to immorality. In a sense, the perception of women as tools and objects is similar to what was seen in “My singular Irene”, Irene’s husband saw her as source of stability and order. As a symbol of his status before he could recognize her as an independent individual, Etiennise’s father who regarded women as sex objects to be used and discarded at will shares the same perception. Edwidge Danticat’s story; The Journals of Water Days 1986 revolves around the civil war in Haiti, where soldiers and militias are involved in bloody conflict with the citizens, in the opening scene, the writer gives a flashback of the villagers torturing a soldier who had been involved in the raping of one of their daughters. Later the soldiers come to attack in retaliation and fire their guns randomly at the shanties in which the narrator his mother and neighbors live, they are not sure who killed their comrade so they are shooting at everyone. The life of the African is depicted as difficult and dangerous and every day they are harassed assaulted and even killed by the militia, at the market, they encounter soldiers who take food from a stall without paying showing the impunity with which the military behave. Job is a man presumed made by the community although he comes out as the wisest character in the story says that the violence is a legacy of slavery (Rowell 51). In the same way they survived slavery by fighting the slavers, they are now killing each other mercilessly and thus they are probably no better off under black rule than they were under white dominion. The legacy of slavery is also evident in the poverty in which they people in the country live, majority live in shanties and they have to buy water at exorbitant prices, there inequality which was embodied in the master servant relationship between whites and blacks. In this story the inequality is reflected in the way Monse Cristophe, has power over the rest because he has water and the way the militia can eat and drink without paying because they know they are untouchable by the residents who they have subjugated and dehumanized almost to the level of slavery. However, it is in the story from Cambridge that the theme of slavery and discrimination is most overt; the story is set in the Victorian period when slavery in the Caribbean was booming as European and American landowners had taken over huge tracts of land on which they planted cane and other crops (Gomez 62). This increased the demand for labor and much of it was acquired through slave trade resulting in depopulation West Africa and mass forced migration of Africans to the Caribbean. This is the setting in which we see Emily an English land owner’s daughter vising her father’s plantation in the West Indies. It give the reader insight into the beliefs of the whites in regard to blacks and their status in society; which was considered so low that a well-bred white woman could not suffer to eat at the same table as a black woman. She posits questions about the relationships between whites and blacks as in a manner that bellies the contempt she feels about them since to her blacks are not deserving whites and they should be treated like the second class humans they are. When she is faced with Cambridge; a black man who cannot only speak English well but sounds intelligent educated and refined, she refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is just as good as any Englishman albeit without the complexion. However, the theme of gender roles also arises amidst the ethnocentrism and racism in the story, Emily initially shies away from associating with blacks who she considered animalistic and below her station, she is however sensitive to the liberal nature with which men converse with her because she is a woman and finds it offensive. Despite being the landowner’s daughter, she realizes that in the Caribbean, she is not the boss and has no authority over her father’s employees by virtue of her sex. Ultimately when she falls pregnant out of wedlock, she is forced to exile herself in the Americas since she is seen as a disgrace, this however can only happen to a woman as a man does not lose any of his status by impregnating a black woman. Her situation engenders the double standards that encapsulated the duality of slavery as in which we see slaves bound by their color and women, even free and white, limited by their gender and enslaved to their traditional roles and the societal expectations. Despite the considerable time gap between these and the previous stories, it is evident that the role of woman has not changed very radically over the centuries and whether black or white, women in this collection of stories are relegate to second place in societies where masculinity and race considerations are given priority. Works Cited Rowell, Charles. Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature. New York: St Martins Griffins, 2002. Print. Gomez, Michael. Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print. Read More