There are plenty of stories that bring us, as readers, right back into the brutal years of slavery. Many people refrain from talking about the subject in present day because it is a gruesome topic to talk about and it is quite disturbing. Although, still many resources, such as Beloved by Toni Morrison, bring us back into the immediate post-slavery condition.
It is extremely important for every one of us to read and put ourselves back into this time period in history. If we were to forget that slavery ever happened in our world, we would be more prone to taking the same course of action in the future. For instance, if these intense stories were not told and we did not feel emotionally vulnerable reading them, then we could not make a connection to what the slaves or post-slaves were feeling during and after slavery. We would be much more susceptible to reliving our past mistakes.
For instance, great novels such as Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor and Beloved exhibit the toughness of life after slavery. Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry is set in the time period of the Great Depression and still it is easily seen that the racism against African Americans was still incredibly strong. This was nearly 65 years after slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment. Without these great novels, we would know of slavery but we would not hold the emotional value that most of us do have. We see from reading these pieces of literature that these were human beings that we were enslaving, treating like animals with no rights. If these books were not present in our lives, slavery would just be a story and almost seem like a myth. It would simply be something we learned about, and not something that we cared about.
In education today, I do believe that slavery is taken halfheartedly because children have been learning about it since they became proficient readers. Learning about slavery is crucial to our future and our equality, but it does leave students a little worn out and they do not understand the severity of the slavery situation. Slavery should still be taught the same way it is being taught now in school, but students need to begin to realize that these were real people that were slaves, not just words in a book.
What do you guys think of my comments? Are pieces of literature about slavery and post-slavery crucial to our generation? What would happen if these novels and stories about that time period were not around?
This is exactly what I argued! Today in schools, slavery has seemed to have lost the heaviness of itself. It is simply a lesson that we hear taught year-after-year. I believe that this view of slavery is the reason that we as a country are back-sliding. When our racist past is forgotten about, we tend to fall back into past habits. In this case- slavery. It is truly dangerous to ignore.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree. By reading literature about slavery it becomes easier to empathize with the issues they faced. While learning about the broader concepts is important, it's equally important for students to be able to experience slavery from a more personal, specific viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with this because we as a nation tend to forget our past and the horrible things we once did as a country. We are constantly told to "get over it" or "that was a long time ago, this is 2017." The more this happens the more likely we are to turn back into those days. Therefore, reading about slavery is important, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable.
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