Benito Cereno Questions:
Discuss Captain Delano’s attitudes towards the Black crew.
Compare and contrast Phillips vs. Melville in terms of how
African Americans are depicted.
Focus on the ways that women are depicted in Cambridge
vs. Benito Cereno.
Characters, Atufal, Babo, Cereno. How does Melville
build their characters throughout the novel?
Themes to think through in Benito Cereno:
Slavery and freedom
whiteness
the possibility of rebellion (suicidal or a real possibility?)
Performance versus reality. (In a slave society, is authentic
living possible?)
Morality of slavery?
Racism in 1856
Civil War would start only five years after the novel was written!
Is Benito Cereno an anti-slavery book? If so, how does it compare
with contemporary anti-slavery novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?
Would it be possible to take these novels and create a new
history of the African Diaspora and or a new way to write
studies of slavery?
BIG THEMES
What do books like Cambridge and Benito Cereno have to
teach us about the human condition?
About the connections between slavery, freedom, and emancipation?
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Author of Cambridge
Author of Salt
So when you count the number of dark-skinned people in the Western Hemisphere you can see that there are probably over 100 million...And this 100 million on the inside of the power structure today is what is causing a great deal of concern for the power structure itself. --Malcolm X’s Final Speech, February 14, 1965
Black Liberation in the African Diaspora Seminar Blog
C.L.R. James
Aime Cesaire
Frantz Fanon
Wilson Harris
George Lamming
Caryl Phillips
Author of Cambridge
Earl Lovelace
Author of Salt
Herman Melville
Wole Soyinka
Reading List
*_2008 African Diaspora Independent Study Reading, Spring Quarter (In order) _*
1) Caryl Phillips, “Cambridge” (Tumult and Silence on a Caribbean Sugar Island)
2) Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” (The Middle Passage and “whiteness”)
3) Aimé Césaire, “Discourse on Colonialism” (Slavery, Colonialism, the Holocaust)
4) Wole Soyinka, “The Lion and the Jewel” (Nigeria, 20^th century)
5) C.L.R. James, “Minty Alley” (Trinidad, 1930s)
6) Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth” (Algerian War of Independence)
7) Earl Lovelace, “Salt: A Novel” (Trinidad, from slavery to the 1970s)
8) Wilson Harris, “The Secret Ladder” (Magical Realism) “The Guyana Quartet”)
9) George Lamming, “In the Castle of My Skin” (post-colonial Barbados)
And, read the CMMU 1136 course reader essays on African and African American women throughout the quarter.
1) Caryl Phillips, “Cambridge” (Tumult and Silence on a Caribbean Sugar Island)
2) Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” (The Middle Passage and “whiteness”)
3) Aimé Césaire, “Discourse on Colonialism” (Slavery, Colonialism, the Holocaust)
4) Wole Soyinka, “The Lion and the Jewel” (Nigeria, 20^th century)
5) C.L.R. James, “Minty Alley” (Trinidad, 1930s)
6) Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth” (Algerian War of Independence)
7) Earl Lovelace, “Salt: A Novel” (Trinidad, from slavery to the 1970s)
8) Wilson Harris, “The Secret Ladder” (Magical Realism) “The Guyana Quartet”)
9) George Lamming, “In the Castle of My Skin” (post-colonial Barbados)
And, read the CMMU 1136 course reader essays on African and African American women throughout the quarter.
No comments:
Post a Comment