Negroland
What is Negroland? Do not fear, the author will clarify and delineate the definition. But first, a handful of metaphors. Negroland is:
“the colored aristocracy
the colored elite
the colored 400
the 400
the blue vein society”
Death Aphorisms
The author shares notebook entries made during bleak moments when death was not just an obsession but a real possibility through the act of suicide. Aphorisms and death are two great sources for learning how metaphor works:
“Freud got so much credit for saying `civilizations have death wishes.’ I say individuals have life sentences, and I refuse to be a model prisoner. I shall consider my death an evolutionary advance for the species.”
Strange, Strange Things
Charlotte Hawkins Brown published a guide to proper decorum and behavior geared to black society in 1941 titled The Correct Thing: To Do—to Say—to Wear. Today, the title definitely feels like it should be strange things as it is a strange amalgam of curiously meaningless and dangerously inappropriate advice on conformity that belongs in every home in Stepford. The author concurs, metaphorically:
“This was her route to freedom. She simply could not see the ethical dangers. The social absurdities. The spiritual confines.”
From the Mind of The Great Mr. Baldwin
The author is not afraid to hand the literary spotlight within her own memoir to the talents of other writers. Quotes and paraphrases from other populate the narrative as a sort of scholarly citation minus the warning signs that writing containing scholarly citations usually offer. One such example stands out as one of the most brilliant uses of metaphorical language and it was composed by James Baldwin:
“The Negro in America, gloomily referred to as that shadow which lies athwart our national life, is far more than that. He is a series of shadows, self-created, intertwining, which now we helplessly battle.”
No Guts, No Glory
One of the highlights of the text that exists mostly outside the thematic framework of race relations is a roughly 3,000-word mini-essay examining the fundamental character attribute of the four March sisters from Little Women. The goal is for the author to explore which of these literary heroines she identifies with most strongly. It takes more confidence than most non-writers probably conceive to devote such a significant chunk of your own memoir to another writer’s work. And it takes even more guts to extensively quote from a writer as talented as Alcott within that genre purposely designed to allow you to show off your own literary flair. But there is probably something very deeply personal about the metaphorical imagery Alcott constructs in her book for Jo to express:
“An old maid—that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps.”
