History as Fiction - Tracy Li

Unfortunately but not unsurprisingly, Rufus Weylin ends up following in his father's footsteps. In more ways than one, he becomes the same terrifying, brutal and cruel slaveowner Tom Weylin was, breaking apart families and easily treating slaves as something below human. Despite Dana's best efforts, he's become another product of the system. However, Dana did have an effect on him, although I do not believe it was a positive one. Rufus's initial sensitivity was always doomed to have been throttled by the detached heartlessness that inheriting a slave plantation demanded, but somehow persisted through Dana's influence. Yet the child's emotion, his empathy that Dana had tried to nurture, only became twisted and dark. Seeing Dana's marriage to Kevin had inspired a hope in Rufus that perhaps he could have something like that with Alice. Rufus's mommy and daddy issues just compounded with impossible desires for a love with Alice, which was a desire that coul...

Jes Grew is never defined by Reed in Mumbo Jumbo, but its meaning is conveyed through the descriptions of symptoms -- the fervor and frenzy it possesses people with, the irresistible music and rhythms.  In Mumbo Jumbo's era, Jes Grew manifests physically in many cultural arts, and notably, jazz. Jazz was a boundary-pushing new era of music and defied all the expectations set by the classics with its wild cadences and colorful improvisation. It also represented a controversial new culture for the younger generation, of swinging in jazz clubs and wild, positively scandalous dancing. Its roots in the unique blend of African-American culture in Harlem, where a wave of young and carefreely creative migrants concentrated from all over the country in an intense explosion of culture, gave jazz a history and a meaning. Jazz was cemented as a formation of cultural identity against the forces of disapproving Atonists, much like Harlem was an oasis for POC inside an unfriendly white city. Jazz...

In "False Documents," E. L. Doctorow says history is like a narrative. At first glance, I probably would have raised my eyebrows at this interesting take and wondered if Doctorow had ever sat through one of those year-long history lectures that most definitely did not sound like a narrative. First of all, history is fact. It's not the story of one person like you'd expect from a narrative, but an objective bird's-eye view of countless many interconnected lives and events. There's fact in history that doesn't come from a bias-influenced individual point of view like narratives and stories do. History is truth.... right? Okay, maybe not. Most definitely not. After Ragtime and many semesters of amazing Uni history teachers, it's a recurring theme that history is an ever-changing story -- multiple stories, in fact -- that is alive because the sources from which we know it are alive. The history we learn and know is not some indisputable chronology from an...

Ragtime has a very diverse cast of female characters, something I was surprised to encounter in an older book written by a male author, about even older times. Here, I want to focus on Evelyn Nesbit, Mother, and Emma Goldman. At first glance, each woman falls into some category of gender roles -- Evelyn as the provocative 'sex goddess,' Mother as the hardworking domestic housewife, and Emma as the radical, almost crazy feminist (I feel like plenty back then would have written her off as a 'feminazi,' in today's words). However, these ladies' stories are developed into multi-dimensional impressions of some very human, and very interesting women. They play into gender stereotypes, but their characters also fight against those stereotypes with their self-awareness that, somehow, is always tied to Emma Goldman.  Evelyn Nesbit is certainly a character. She's at the center of countless scandals -- assault, adultery, murder, even practically prostitution (Thaw give...

Beloved is a story about trauma. It's a story brimming excruciatingly full with trauma, yet we cannot forget the love. Love is both a hand in the exacerbation of every painful experience, and the center of the healing process. Each character is different -- Beloved's possessive, toxic love, Denver's dependent love, and of course, Sethe's unconditional motherly love.  We find Sethe initially to be the perfect picture of a heroine; for her children, she overcomes seemingly impossible odds with the superhuman strength of mothers, reminiscent of the stories where buses are lifted to save an infant. And of course the one, unforgettable need that pulls her forward: I have to get my milk to my children . I remember the graphic, heart-wrenching description of Sethe's journey to 124 with Denver; I feel like I would simply have dropped dead and given up if I were Sethe -- milk, baby, and all. Her journey calls for readers' admiration and love.  However, when we finally l...

Tea Cake, as Mr. Mitchell fittingly put it, is hard not to fall in love with. When we and Janie first meet him, he is a whirlwind of youth and spontaneous romance and charisma. He is everything that Logan Killicks and Joe Starks never were and never could be. Most importantly, he was in love with Janie, and Janie was in love with him. Logan Killicks had worked Janie and given her a deadbeat farm life to live, while Joe Starks hit and humiliated her; neither ever giving Janie the love she'd known she needed to find herself from the moment she had seen the pear tree. Tea Cake, as sweet as his name imagines, quite literally sweeps Janie off her feet with his witty jokes and honey-smooth tongue; not to mention the 'tapered waist' and 'broad shoulders' Janie's eyes snag on during their first encounter. He teaches her to play chess, asks about her as a person, takes her out. When he teaches her to shoot, she even becomes a better shot than him. Tea Cake is the first m...