Lack in Leadership

Paul Beatty's book, The White Boy Shuffle, and the PBS documentary "Style Wars" both talked about the gap in leadership among the African American community during the 1980's and 1990's. This is in contrast after the strong periods of leadership during the Civil Rights Movement and when the Black Panthers were extremely active. The documentary and the novel are very interesting when compared together because they show two, in one case possible, responses for this gap in leadership.

In The White Boy Shuffle Gunnar Haufman is more or less forced into a position of leadership and public support. When he was playing basketball many people in his schools know who he is from that and have put him on a pedestal. With his poetry he is also extremely well known, more well known then the reader would realize until he goes to Boston, but he still seems to want to shy away from all of the fame. When finally does come to a position of influence he, through apathy, causes mass suicide of African Americans.

As we see Gunnar growing up there are certain aspects of his life that play off of and contrast with the ways of dancing, music, and art that are portrayed in "Style Wars." In that documentary you see young people in New York City wanting to get their names out into the rest of the city with either their graffiti art, their break dancing, or their music. The graffiti artists at this time referred to themselves as "writers," something Gunnar started identifying himself as once he started playing basketball.

Though Gunnar does follow some of the stereotypical ways that we think of an impoverished inner-city youth could rise out of that situation his distaste for basketball and his gang association conflict with that idea. Another area where Gunnar conflicts is with the ideas set forth in "Style Wars" because where these "writers" are going out and trying to get their name places Gunnar is trying to get his poetry noticed, not necessarily himself. Also, the movie showed dancing as a very important part of inner-city life but Gunnar is completely inept at dancing.Finally and most importantly the fact that Gunnar is writing poetry in the inner-city but does not become a rapper could be surprising to some. Though many do consider rap as a form of poetry that is not the way that Gunnar chooses to express his art.

The fact that Gunnar does differ so much from the stereotypes and what is laid out in "Style Wars" has a large impact on the differences that came between what actually came to fill the leadership role in the African American community in the 1980's and 1990's versus what Gunnar became, and lead, in The White Boy Shuffle.

"song at midnight" by Lucille Clifton

When I recently read "song at midnight" by Lucille Clifton and attempted to look it up online certain things about this poem stuck out and how it was presented bothered me. Though, stylistically, this poem is somewhat different, being completely in lowercase and none of the lines being longer than eight syllables, it is not too outlandish in terms of poetry, but the way that two sections are separate and yet work together to form the whole picture of the poem caught my attention. 

When I began to do research multiple things bothered me including the fact that poem, online at least, is normally broken up into two very distinct sections that are not shown together. Though this poem certainly is easily seen in two distinct sections I saw no reason for this poem to broken up in this fashion and when I looked closer at analyses of this poem I saw that people were analyzing only one part. This seems like an injustice to the poem considering how well the two sections combine and how who is being addressed and the speaker is changes throughout. 

The reasoning for this separation seems to be based on the audience and how in the first section Clifton uses the term brother multiple times, talking to a specifically male audience whereas later in the poem she speaks to you, giving no indication as to who she wants to be reading the poem. This could also relate to the fact that the first section of the poem talks about a maternal figure receiving recognition and love of her body and the second a celebration of the speakers ability to overcome the challenges in her own life. 

Not taking this poem as a whole limits the audience and the message of the poem greatly. Stylistically and message wise this poem is unique, yet fits well into the body of work that Clifton spent much of her life working on. In case you wanted to read the poem in it's entirety it is below, (I hope that's not too illegal),

song at midnight by Lucille Clifton

brothers,
this big woman
carries much sweetness
in the folds of her flesh.
her hair
is white with wonderful.
she is
rounder than the moon
and far more faithful.
brothers,
who will hold her,
who will find her beautifulif you do not?  

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had
no model
born in babylon
both non white and woman
what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight,
my other hand; come
clebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Homosexuality in "The White Boy Shuffle"

In the beginning of Paul Beatty's novel, The White Boy Shuffle, the main character grows up in a extremely male dominated and hetronormative, in many ways, inner city society. In this context the narrator Gunnar Kaufman, must observe how that clashes with some of the obvious contradictions.

In the beginning of the book Gunnar talks about the different colors and what they mean to him and while ending the section about the color black he says that, "Black is the repressed memory of a sandpaper hand rubbing abrasive circles into the small of my back, my back rising and falling in time with the heavy heaving chest." This section talks about the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father, and this section in particular talks about his father raping him and shoving him into a closet. The normally absent father figure taking away the son's sense of safety and power and by both closeting himself, by not being openly gay, and by actually putting the son who he is raping in the closet, is extremely powerful.

When the music video is being shot Gunnar and his mother have an exchange about homoeroticism that this video, as well as the social setting that Gunnar is interacting in. Gunnar starts to question why his more socially accepted peers talk in such a fashion. I think his mother's comment about the homeroticism in the music video is just pointing out something that can trickle down into younger members of the society's ideas about the difference in being seen as a dominant male and that dominance having to be over "lesser" men.

And when Gunnar begins to hang out with Nicholas Scoby and Scoby is giving him a hard time about his love of poetry Scoby says, "you must either be a poet or a homosexual," and Gunnar replies "Why can't I be both?" This back and forth fits the style that is set forth in this novel where Gunnar is being humorous and a smartass but he is also making a social commentary. In a world where it is completely acceptable to be a basketball player, a gangster, and a poet, where would being a homosexual fit in?