Baker, Houston A., Baker, Houston A, Alexander, Elizabeth, and Redmond, Patricia. Workings of the Spirit : The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1991. Print. Black Literature and Culture.
• This book evaluates black female writing and its relation to Afro American intellectual history. It also deals with the folkloric and spiritual aspect of female black resistance writing. This is relevant to my writing in that it connects the figure of the conjure woman and folklore into the literary tradition of black female resistance writers.
Chesnutt, Charles W. The Conjure Woman. 1st Ed.].. ed. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1969. Print. Ann Arbor Paperbacks.
• This is Charles Chestnuts book of short stories that includes the figure of the conjure woman and serves a text that resists certain tropes about blackness and inscriptive practice. In my Project I hope to use this source material to analyze the conjure figures and explore why chestnut uses this figure and folklore aspects to deliver his message.
Ichile Hanks, Iyelli. “Black Magic Woman: Towards a Theory of Africana Women’s Resistance.” Journal of Pan African Studies 5.1 (2012): 265. Web.
• This article details a history of black female resistance. It looks at how traditional and folkloric aspects contributed to black female resistance throughout history and developed into its own phenomenon. The section about the priestess and conjure woman in society is useful for my project in that it gives historical context to this figure while also connecting it to the tradition of black female resistance.
Marina, Brenda, and Debora Fonteneau. “Servant Leaders Who Picked Up the Broken Glass.” The Journal of Pan African Studies (Online) 5.2 (2012): 67-83. Web.
• This article focuses on how Black woman use spirituality and historical spiritual leaders to break glass ceilings in academia. This connects to my research in that it shows how modern women evoke the folk and the essence of the conjure woman to resist and promote change.
Pryse, Marjorie, and Spillers, Hortense J. Conjuring : Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985. Print. Everywoman.
• This novel directly deals with the literary traditions of black female writers and the history surrounding it. It connects these writers to folkloric aspects and their ability to conjure. This relates to my project in that it explores how the literary tradition extends into the spiritual and makes the black woman writer become a new kind of conjurer
Rucker, Walter. “Conjure, Magic, and Power: The Influence of Afro-Atlantic Religious Practices on Slave Resistance and Rebellion.” Journal of Black Studies 32.1 (2001): 84-103. Web.
• This article also provides background on the conjure figure within history and connects the figure of the conjure woman to resistance. This is significant in that it pays close attention to how the conjure women were able to play their resistant roles and form the essence that powers resistance for black women.
Samuel, Kameelah. “CHARLES CHESNUTT AND THE LEGACY OF THE CONJURE WOMAN.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 43.2 (2010): 15-30,140-141. Web.
• This article analyzes the stories and the figure of the conjure woman in the text. It looks at the figure and folkloric practices and evaluates why chestnut decides to use this figure for his short stories and collection title. This contributes to my project in that it explores why this figure would be evoked by a writer trying to write a resistant text and shows the importance of including black female energy in resistance.

For my final project I want to continue exploring Ideas about agency and resistance within the creative imaginary of Black female subjects, particularly focusing on the ability of these woman to use the creative imaginary to inscribe. I began to think about this topic when I undertook the role of the conjure women in the group game and thought about what the modern conjure woman might look like. Although the conjure women existed within an opressive framework, they were able to create a “goopher” and manipulate the situations around them. I my project I want to connect this act of “goophering” to the present-day author by relating it to the work of Claudia Rankine and the way she uses poetry and lyric as her own sort of goopher against the oppressive forces that she is critical of in her novel. Through my project I hope to explore the creative ways that Rankine inscribes her ideas on the page and argue that it connects to a practice linked to the same essence as the “goopher” in “conjure Woman”. I hope to analyze what exactly this essence is and how it plays into crating social change.
As My first source I hope to use information from Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing by Houston Baker. This book evaluates black female writing and its relation to Afro American intellectual history. It also deals with the folkloric and spiritual aspect of female black resistance writing. I am also interested in reading about the historical figure of the conjure women and witch women that inspired the conjure women that Chestnut includes in his stories, in an effort to tie writers such as Rankine to this tradition of using a creative inscriptive format to resist and inspire change against oppressive forces in society. I also plan to read Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement and analyze of it may relate to Rankines inscpriptive practices.

As I read Part One of Native Son, I was struck by the way Bigger’s character understands himself and his positioning in society and the relation of that positioning to his displays of Masculinity. Bigger is a complex character who has an awareness of the oppressive forces that limit his ability and freedom to be in the society he lives in but is haunted by and runs from awareness. Although he sees the structures, he does not see how to dismantle them and turns to violence and escapism to avoid consciously negotiating with this aspect that controls much of his path in life.

After the scene where the family encounters a rat in their dwelling that bigger must kill, there is a passage that directly centers on this conflict within Bigger.
“He Hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and the misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; He lived with them but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to fully enter into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough” (Wright)
This makes it clear that Bigger is overwhelmed by the rigid way he is forced to navigate the world due to his positioning as the oldest living black male in the family. He sees his family suffering and living in squalor, and is aware that a system has placed them to live in this way. As the oldest living male the responsibility of fix this suffering is thrown upon his shoulders and he is unsure of how to begin to untangle the problem. Bigger feels the powerlessness that comes with being a black male and overcompensates for his inability to “complete his male duties” through shows of toxic hypermasculinity and violence. He displays this when he crushes in the rat’s head in an act that is more gruesome and violent than necessary for the task and ultimately in the strangulation.
Additionally, Wright Complicates the narrative of Bigger further and tells a more deep and complete story by making Bigger more than a victim of the system. Although Bigger is the protagonist that we are made to understand and view the narrative through, he is very flawed and violent. There are moments when the reader does not root for the main character and his actions and situations are not some thing that creates a simple sense of sympathy. With Bigger there is no consolation of tears, but a deeper story being told that asks for more consideration about the experiences of African American lives.

It was an interesting experience reading Faulkners Tthe Unvanquished”. The writing was difficult to read in places but was very dense. From the beginning of the novel the positioning of the characters were intriguing. The effects of the war seem to displace and disrupt common rules of society and add degrees of complexity to the already confusing, complex and highly racialized society of the south. Here, I will focus on Ringo.
With the start of the story we are immediately introduced to Ringo and Bayard. Although Ringo is the heir to the plantation and Ringo is his enslaved companion, they seem to interact as equals and as if Ringos color does not mark him as different. In a moment of tension after Loosh introduces the idea of the confederate losing while the boys fight over which general to pretend to be the text states:
“But now it was that urgent even though Ringo was a nigger too, because Ringo and I had been born in the same month and had both fed at the same breath and had slept together and eaten together for so long that Ringo called Granny Granny Just Like I did, Until maybe he wasn’t a nigger anymore and maybe I wasn’t a white Boy anymore”( Faulkner)
This is a very charged moment where the boys are confronted with the complex issues of race, difference and enslavement and rather than think or deal with this, decides to let Ringo be the general because it is that urgent. He prefers the simpler narrative where the boys are colorless and they are simply playing make believe and playing rather than reenacting a very racially charged battle. Although Ringo does momentarily stop he continues to play and is happy to play as the confederate general, an interesting choice considering Ringo’s position as enslaved. Throughout the novel Ringo does not stray from his loyalty to the family and the confederate south despite its, demolition seeming to be his freedom. Part of this may be due to his socialization and acceptance of the system around him that influences him to side against his own freedom. Ringos peculiar placement in the family where he joins Grannys scam and is a young gang banger outside the norms of color and age expectations adds complexity and made me think more about the way loyalties and systems can project on ideas of the self for black subjects.

Reading and engaging with the text through one point of view made the experience of reading more immersive. Rather than looking at the society surrounding this text as a past to be analyzed, I was forced to understand what existing in this sort of Structure would be like. In this way the exercise was more engaging than traditional forms of text engagement in that I constantly had to think over my character, her relation to the other characters and how to authentically present her point of view. I was forced to examine the other conjure figures and learned more about the role of a conjurer and their unique placement in society where this figure explores a unique kind of agency through the spiritual and mystical. Through inhabiting the conjure woman I was forced to contend with the way the conjure woman and her goopher are both centered through the stories title and by being given the power to move forth the plot by Julius, while also serving as a character within a story that is treated as unreal and as a tool for Julius’s use. In this way dealing with the figure of the conjure woman was a very labyrinth like and meta experience and in taking the role I had to try to understand the significance and connection through the stories
In playing the novel it was pleasurable to have a creative way to engage with the text and connect deeper with the characters. It made me question more topics such as voice which was also a frustration in that I had trouble deciding how to convey the voice of the conjure woman. In the end I decided to do a sort of mixture and was still conflicted about voice. The conjure woman’s status in the society and authentic voice constantly left me conflicted. It was also frustrating trying to find a direction to write in or respond to. Especially as a paratextual character I felt unsure of how much I could move the narrative forward. It was also pleasurable to read what the other members of the game were doing with their characters and allowed me to gain context through the research of my classmates in a more engaging way. However, it was frustrating being tied to my point of view and not being able to respond to certain aspects of their moves because of the limitations of having to speak through characters voice.
If I were to play again, I would have more engagement with the textual characters. While I played my role as a sort of para para textual character, it made it more difficult to engage. I might decide to become an aunt peggy or other conjure woman that Julius talks about specifically rather than another conjure figure and engage with his chis character as the storyteller to look for more meaning. I also might have started more original conversation threads rather than respond for every move.
I think having more of a framing device would make the game run smoother and allow our responses and characters to blend better together. I felt as if my character was not part of the central conversation and had trouble looking at ways to relate my character to what was happening.

As I read the selected passages from Hager’s Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing, I found myself thinking about about the purpose of writing and Audience more deeply. In his own words the narratives that are centered in this text “turn our attention to the manuscript writings of marginally literate African Americans who were enslaved, not because such texts are less mediated or somehow more authentic than published works but because their authors had different, hitherto unaccounted experiences of both emancipation and the act of writing.”(23-24). It lead me to consider what exactly marked these accounts as ignorable, less digestible, and different than the popular narratives in the past .
The two writers that are encountered in chapter 3 are Adam Plummer and John Gordon. Both men are involved in the exploritive process of narrative writing and inscription. They both center romantic love in a way that depicts how the dictates of antebellum society and later the dynamic shift of these rules with emancipation, inscibe themselves in their writing and motivation to write.This is done through processes of writing and rewriting accounts of the past that reveal something about the experience of living through the transition to emancipation.
In the Case of Adam Plummer he revolves his short and crude narratives around the love and separation between him and his wife. Of the 4 events that Hager informs us create the account that is supposed to be an autobiography , 3 events involve Emily.”Four events make up Plummer’s brief life- narrative: his birth in 1819, his marriage to Emily in 1841, his separation from her in 1855, and his receipt of her first letter.”(pg 83) In this way Adam exposes the dictates of antebellum society that are inscribed on his life and uses his own method of inscription and writing as a way to asert his humanity and make sense of the inscription that has been placed upon him. Enslavement has broken his family apart and left written word as his only way of upkeeping his marriage. After the dynamic shift with emancipation the autobiography is discontinued. something that Hager suggests might be due to a possible reunion with his wife. This calls in to question the purpose and motivation for beginning the narrative at all. It is at this point that Hager question whether a slave can even write a narrative while enslaved.(82) In the case of Adam plummer his attempt at narrative is never finished and his authority over his self identity and family does not seem fully realized. Although it is a reconstruction through memory it is still happening and not fully refelective. In this way there is a difference from popular slave narratives. However whats most striking about the unfinished account is how it captures the suffering and mundane experience of enslaved life without the distance that most narratives carry. Plummer is not writing his narrative for an audience woth a white sponsor to filther the crude writing and polish the experiences through and in this way Plummers narrative might be the truer narrative of life, un-polished, honest and crude. Although it cannot be confirmed why he decided to write the narrative it is clear that it was not something he wrote with the thought it would ever be read.
John Gordon’s account provokes simular questions however in his case, Gordon mives beyond his crude diary and begins to recreate a narrative with an audience in mind. The contrast between his crude diary in slavery and the more final version he makes after freedom seems to reflect the change in dynamic from pre- to post emancipation. His crude diary barely mentions Slavery and does not seem to make any statement on his condition. It captured his mundane life and quest for love without highlighting the major factor of his enslavement. It is only in the recreation process that Washington changes parts of his history to better use romance as an allegory for his quest to freedom and speaks about freedom in any way. This signifys a shift in motivation or intended audience. Although the account was not published it is clear that the diarys purpose was different than the narrative version by looking at the way he decided to write and inscribe them. The narrative version is even written with more care to form and better paper.
Wondering about audience and purpose also lead me to considering the way epistolary is used in the acquisition of literacy. aletter writing is a major part of the want to write for both writers It begins with a literal want to communicate to others and then turns into a communication and negotiation with the self.

Something that I found particularly interesting was the way Douglass decided to write his narrative. Through the way he tells his story, his audience and his purpose are very clear. His audience being white America and his purpose being to spread pro-abolition and elicit empathy for the enslaved. He seems to write in a way that is mindful to this audience by choosing strategic angles to tell his story from.

He seems to be condemning the system of slavery without placing blame. Instead, he treats slavery almost like sin, where slavery taints and corrupts the lives of both the enslaved and the masters. It is slavery that has turned good men cruel and caused all the suffering. This is something that is most evident when he tells the story of his master’s wife who attempted to teach him to read. He has many descriptions of her as being untainted, good and pleasant early in their relationship as slave and owner and attributes this to her distance from the system up to this point. This is seen at the introduction of this woman where she is described as “My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living.” Later on he continues this with  “she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness.” Therefore Douglass offers that it is through her lack of contact and the slavery system that has allowed her to remain good. This changes drastically after she becomes more familiar with the system, something that is implied when Douglass says:

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.

In this way Fredrick places the onus on the slave system itself rather than on the people. Slavery is what causes his mistress to become cruel and lose her goodness, rather than the cruelty and loss of goodness being something that she is accountable for. He even uses the image of a transition from an angel to a demon to further suggest slavery working in a similar fashion to sin

I wonder if this was a true belief of Douglass or if he wrote it in this way because it was the only way to successfully spread the abolition message due to the societal factors surrounding him. If he had condemned the slave system and the people who allowed the system to exist explicitly and mercilessly, he may have had a very different response if the book were even allowed to be published. Like Phillis Wheatley, Douglass has a white man in his preface to validate the credibility of the author and vouch that an ex-slave wrote the novel. Considering that he must still go through these filters and have someone vouch for him it might not have been possible for Douglass to write in any other way and might not have been productive or beneficial to his cause.

As I read the texts assigned for class I found myself asking many of the same questions of each reading. I primarily focused on Gates arguments but still found areas where the texts intermingled. What particularly interested me was the way that language and literature can be used to forward ideologies that perpetuate western hegemony. This is my second time reading this piece by Gates and this second reading in conjunction with the other readings furthered my thinking on the topic.

In “Writing Race and the Difference it Makes” Gates traces the role of race in the analysis of literature overtime and discusses why race should be a significant role in these analyses. He tackles the construction of race and how through systemic processes, tropes of race are perpetuated to oppress and dehumanize people. The major argument he gives for this is the way writing and language become tools to justify western hegemony. Through deliberate acts such as the formation of laws to limit literacy in slaves or the creation of a national American literary canon, that omits black experiences as it claims to speak to a universal human condition, the ideology that justifies western domination is perpetuated and sustained.

Drawing off from Gates arguments I offer that most if not all texts are racialized for what they either include or omit and that this ideology is often sustained both consciously and unconsciously. Such as in “Does Writing Have a Future?” where Flusser gives his sweeping love poem to the medium of writing and argues that there is no history without writing. Right after his discussion of the political nature of writing he offers “These contradictory pressures that lend writing the tension that had made it capable of transmitting Western culture and of endowing this culture an explosive form”(Flusser 7) he says “ only one who can write lines can think logically, calculate, criticize, pursue knowledge, philosophize- and conduct himself appropriately. Before that one turned in circles.”(Flusser 7) In these remarks Flusser is participating in sustaining a problematic ideology. It is reminiscent of thinkers mentioned in the Gates who devalue and dehumanize black and marginalized others for their illiteracy. Although race is not explicitly mentioned here that act itself is racial in its absence of other experiences and the implicit idea that civilizations without complex writing systems are inferior and lack history. It completely disregards oral tradition and whether consciously or unconsciously promotes western hegemony. To make it clear, I am not arguing that western culture or the transmission of western ideals is negative within itself, instead I am arguing that the assumption of it as the supreme standard that marks humanity and the only way of showing intellect is an issue.

Following the notion that, what is generally thought of as universal and/or significant is what comes from western thought, there is the question of what education and progress look like. For many, progress for marginalized people means trying to measure up to a western standard. This is something that gates refers to when he speaks about black intellectuals writing to prove their humanity. He offers, “But if blacks accepted this challenge, we also accepted its premises, premises which perhaps concealed a trap. What trap might this be?” (Gates  13). The trap is that in fully endowing yourself in western ideology and writing to prove humanity, there will never be enough proof, and the system will continue to find ways to resist. There is also the possible issue of contributing to the domination of western culture in using its tools and language as a way of resistance.  When Dubois speaks of the education of the negro soul he is speaking of an education in the western mode. Even today when people seek education, myself included, it is generally an education within the western framework. There are American literature classes and all kinds of required English classes that feature prominent western thinkers and then there are classes that showcase the writings and thoughts of “others” that are to a large degree optional.

At the end of Gates piece, he seems to support a recreation of the space for race and pursuits of black and marginal literature that are not written for Western audiences or necessarily adhere to Western standards of how literature should look or be analyzed. There are some theorists and writers who have taken this position and begun this work. However, I wonder what the positive and negatives of this possible solution might be. Although ultimately, I do support Gates primary argument for the inclusion of race and difference in the analysis of literature.