The Trope Of The Talking Book Analysis

The resilience in the black community can be seen in their ability to grow, adapt, and evolve despite the brutal beginnings in chattel slavery. The end of slavery seemed to signify a new start for the Black community, but unfortunately the legacy of slavery still permeated the black experience. New forms of slavery and bondage that tired to leave the Black community in a perpetual state of silence continually emerged. From slavery to debt peonage to Jim Crow laws to mass incarceration, the black community has often had to use literature to first find their voice before challenging the sociopolitical structures that oppressed them. Due to social media and the more explicit forms of opposition that is seen through events such as protest, it …show more content…
The trope of the talking book is the idea of a double voice text that talks to other text. In African American literature, especially in slave narrative, the talking book only talked to the literate and remained silent for the illiterate. Many people believed that the desire for slaves to be literate was a way for them to exemplify that they were humane and not savages. Henry Louis Gates refutes this idea by stating, “ It is more accurate to argue that the literature of the slave consisted of texts that represent impolite learning and that these text collectively railed against the arbitrary and inhumane learning which masters foisted upon slaves to reinforce a perverse fiction of the “natural” order of things” (128). The assumption that slaves wanted to be literate in order to gain the approval from white spectators is a notion that still exists in the Black arts. Black writers and musicians have often struggled with creating pieces by Black people for Black people. The white gaze, which sees the world through a white person’s perspective is what Black artist and writers have tried to avoid in their work. Toni Morrison once said, “...life has no meaning without the white gaze.” She was criticizing the notion that blackness cannot exist by itself, but only as a contrast to whiteness. The essence of Black pieces have been …show more content…
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs addresses the struggle for a female slave to attain freedom. She notes in the beginning of her narrative that she desires to capture the attention of the woman in the North. She appealed to their humanity in the beginning of the narrative and tried to rally them up to fight for the woman who were still in bondage. Although she does not explicitly say that she is writing for White woman, it can be inferred. Jacobs wrote her narrative to try to get white woman to empathize with her struggles and look at her as a woman and not a slave. She was held in bondage and objectified as a slave. She recounts the moments she was sexually abused and how as a slave it was impossible for her to gain control of her own body. After detailing the horrors of slavery in order to gain the empathy of white Northern woman, she tells a story of an abolitionist and how she helped her escape. “How few mothers would have consented to have one of their own babes become a fugitive, for the sake of a poor, hunted nurse, on whom the legislators of the country had let loose the bloodhounds 40.12”. Mrs. Bruce gave her baby to Jacobs so she could use it as pass to get back to her alive if they captured her. Jacobs strategically places this passage in her novel so the white woman reading her story will be empowered to