Dominance of Themes of Race

It’s awesome that two of the books we have read this semester in a class about The Hero’s Journey have been centered around race conflicts. The intersection between racism and what it means to be a hero is one filled with ideas that merit meaningful discussion. Often books written about race are overlooked unless one is in a class that is designed specifically to discuss them. The applicability of those books we read to more than just conflicts regarding race is important to discuss: Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying and Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy both involve idea that definitely go beyond the scope a class just about, for instance, African-American Literature. Unfortunately, seeing books about race in classes that do not have race as a focus is even rarer outside Uni. If you were to look up ‘best writers’ on google, the proportion of black writers is miniscule next to the proportion of white writers. Mr. Mitchell is vastly enriching our perception of the world of literature by introducing us to black writers, and allows us to have conversations that change our understanding of the world.

Last semester I took African-American Literature. It was an amazing class that opened my eyes to a diverse range of books that I likely would not have picked up on my own, and I think I am a better and more informed person for it. However, looking at books like Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying and Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy from the perspective of analysis regarding a hero’s journey, I have realized something that I missed before. My African-American Literature blog post way back in November argued that although Hurston may have been conveying an accurate depiction of life of African-Americans in the south, her book may serve to promote racial stereotypes rather than to change them. However, I now realize that what I found so strange then was that her book was the only book by a black author I had read that didn’t focus on race. Race played a subtler role in the book, and it wasn’t huge and in your face like the other books by black writers. I now think maybe that was her point: to create a book that broke the norm of black writers writing about race.

Then the question is, why don’t we see more black writers following the path of writing books that do not focus on race? Well, that isn’t that hard to answer: not only are the problems regarding race interesting to talk about, they affect almost everyone, even white people. Also, inspiration for writing often comes from a personal connection to an idea, which is defiantly true for any person who experiences the effects of entrenched oppression daily. Because topics about race are so interesting and important to discuss, they end up becoming the core of novels written by black writers.

And this is where I see a problem. Themes about race outcompete others for discussion. In our classes while we were reading Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying or Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy were completely dominated by discussion about race rather than discussion about the hero’s journey. Yes, we did talk about the hero’s journey regarding Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy, but we spent a much greater proportion of the time on talking about race. Most of the days spent on Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy were more reminiscent of my African-American Literature class than one about the Hero’s Journey. That is not to say that those books are only about race: Angry Black White Boy is an amazing satire of the hero’s journey that merits weeks rather than days of discussion. But though we did talk more about the hero’s journey when discussing Angry Black White Boy than A Lesson Before Dying, through no fault of our own, we ended up mainly talking about race. Isn’t ironic that other than the book that purposely breaks the mold, Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy is the only one on race that is written by a white person? I think this dynamic can be generalized to in part explain the lack of black writers in classrooms or on ‘best writer’ lists. Books by black authors are almost solely talked about in terms of race, so they are sort of set aside in their own category.

What do you think (if you made it this far)? Are most books by black writers only discussed in terms of their comments about race? Is there an invisible veil that blinds us to topics other than racism? Are there invisible chains that bind black writers to the topics of racism?