Annotated Bibliography

Bobby Jones

Dr. Khan Thomas

2/26/2020

Bennett, John. 1946. The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston: ‘New York, Toronto: Rinehart and Company, Inc.

In John Bennett’s prologue, All God’s Chillen Had Wings’ from the book The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston. This novel is compilation of folklore tales told to the author by various African Americans.  The prologue ‘All of God’s Chillen’ purports an old piece of Charleston.  Bennett is known for his gothic-like embellishments and writing style. Bennett sought to revive folklore of the Vernacular Era to revive folklores that may have soon become extinct. In ‘All God’s Chillen Had Wings’ Bennet shares folklore that was nearly not fantasy at all. Each slave seemed to be “flying” away from hardship or a seemingly impossible situation. The prologue is a story of enslaved Africans who disappear to an unknown location.  Men, women and children who were driven and worked all day long, would miraculously take flight without restraint.

Abrahams, Roger D, Afro-American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World. New York. Pathenon.  1985, 280-281

Roger Abrahams is a theorist who studies African American culture in an eloquent style. Abrahams studies of African American have influenced the development of folkloristics since the early 1970s.  He uses a trivial barrier of his own culture to substrate a mutual understanding of the trivial African American culture.

In “A Flying Fool” uses the customary view of vernacular everyday life and discusses a perspective of acceptance of religion, sociological topic, heaven, and cultural differences.  Abraham shares a story folktale of a colored man that got to heaven after death. Abraham used a typical and vernacular demarcation with religion. The story narrates a negro who has died, and spirit reached the ‘gates of heaven’. The access to the gates are guarded by a white man, St. Peters. During the man’s time on Earth, Abraham explains that the man was a good man and was told by his preacher that “heaven would be his place”. The oppression continues from Earth to Heaven when he learns that due to the color of his skin, he would not be granted wings or access to enter the heavenly gates. Abraham portrays a story of continued triumph and hardship; The story of the man portrays that despite the belief of something better in hindsight, in regards to racial change and equality that the African American can briefly escape the oppression only in the end to be stripped off the platform and have their “wings” taken.

Hurston, Zora Neale, 1935, Mules and Men.

In this prologue Zora Neale Hurston, ’Why The Sister in Black Works Hardest’,

a folktale to give an inside depiction of the hardship of not only Blacks, but moreover Black Women. Hurston uses imagery to depict the transfer over hard work (the package). A slave owner and his wife notice a large mysterious package. The wife asks the husband to retrieve the package. The husband was reluctant to carry this bundle and instructed a slave to fetch it. The slave husband in return transfers the task to his own wife. The slave wife was intrigued by the unknown contents only to find ‘hard-work’. Hurston uses this prologue to depict the hardship and struggle of black women and patriarchy. Hurston uses her story to give respite for the hardships, of even black women. This also is a limited view of one of few activities that weren’t controlled by only the white slave owners, but the husband of the black woman.

Sojourner, Truth, The Anti-Slavery Bugle, Speech delivered June 21, 1851. Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio

‘Ar’n’t I a Woman’ a speech given by Sojourner Truth in 1851, during a Women’s convention, in Akron, Ohio, was a momentous moment for ‘Women’s Rights’ Truth gives incite to the harshness of slavery for women. Slavery women suffered from the maliciousness that flowed from both racism and sexism. Truths speech shows a considerable amount of effort demonstrating how black men and black women did not experience slavery in the same way.  Sojourner Truth uses literal words to depict her own strength in comparison to men. She shares that she’s as strong as any man, she can eat as much as any man, and work as hard as any man however she’s still seen as less than human-being.  Truth uses a biblical reference ‘Adam and Eve’ to compare the thought that a woman corrupted the world in the beginning of time.  Nonetheless, God depended on Mary to bring Jesus to the world.

Wheatley, Phillis, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. 1773.

In the poetic narrative, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” the author referred to Genesis chapter 4: Verse 1-15.

Phillis Wheatley was known to the first African American poet.  Wheatley uses a Christianity and being saved and, on the contrasts, depicts a strong disregard for Slavery and the problems Africans faced. She praises God for his role and restoration of joy and happiness. During this time there was a strong love for God’s grace but also and appreciation for life despite the injustices that she lived through. To take such ill treatment and disrespectful behavior