Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Works Cited
Ali, Noaman. "The Pierre Berton Interview." Malcolm X - Documents the Pierre Berton Interview. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
Holtum, Paul. "10 Fascinating Interracial Marriages In History." Listverse. N.p., 25 Jan. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
White, Ruth C. "Love and (Inter)marriage." Psychology Today. N.p., 27 Nov. 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
White, Ruth C. "Love and (Inter)marriage." Psychology Today. N.p., 27 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Barbara, Kingsolver. The Poisonwood Bible. Chicago: Harper Flamingo, 1998. Print.
John , Lennon. "Love quote." brainyquotes.com. god, n. d. Web. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. <http://www.brainyquote.com/
Bill, Maher. US quote. N.d. Photograph. brainyquotes.comWeb. 4 Apr 2013. <http://www.brainyquote.com/
Pilgrim, David. "What Was Jim Crow?" What Was Jim Crow. N.p., Sept. 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Liebelson, Dana. "Why Do so Many States Still Have Anti-sodomy Laws? - The Week."The Week. N.p., 8 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
"Population Undernourished (Percent of Total Population)." - GlobalHealthFacts.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Gay Marriage, Interracial Couples, and Poisonwood Bible OH MY
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| This is Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes.They're hippies |
BY: Corey Keyser
I am a very liberal
person, and not “Tennessee” liberal. I am talking “San Francisco” liberal. And
it is not because I am some hippy or something(although that does sound fun). I
just don’t care how other people live to make themselves happy and I would just
rather see a world with more equality.
Honestly, I would
just rather listen to some Edward Sharpe or Beatles and just be content with
the world around me. But I gotta tell you, people are big freaking fans in
telling others how to live their life. Whether it is the LGBT community,
interracial families,immigrants,minorities, or just plain people who use
contraception, there is always some chauvinistic, insensitive arse that feels
the need to hold up signs and act angry (Ya I am looking at you Westboro Baptist
Church).
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| These horrible people are the members of Westboro Baptist church and then that guy in the middle. |
Anyway...my theory
is that people are just evolutionarily adapted to being selfish and mean. I can
see how Olaf, the caveman, making fun of Umku’s, also Caveman, huge elbow growth
could cause Umku’s girlfriend to “go with” Olaf so he can pass along his
selfish seed for future generations. So evolutionarily it kindaish makes sense,
but come on we live in a world of abundance where 87% of the population has
enough food to eat and a warm place to lie their head at night(global health
facts 1). Do we really need to be selfish and exclude others to get above
everyone else,thus fullfilling our evolutionary destiny? No we don’t, but
people still do.
The most annoying
part about the struggle for civil rights (lgbt,immigrants, interracial couples,
etc.) is that the government actually decides major parts of these issues. In
our country alone we have had laws on sodomy and laws on racial segregation, as
well as laws banning gay marriage(ferris “jim crow”, theweek “sodomy laws”). Is
it really our governments business to set such guidelines on the way we live?
The fact that a lot of the arguments against gay marriage are religiously based
is also kind of hard to comprehend since we are a secular country, but you
know...the struggle.
The Good thing is,
it could be a lot worse. At least there is pretty much no KKK influence, or
race riots in the South all the time, but the fact that homosexual and
multiracial couples are still considered taboo in most places shows us that we
still don’t have real equality. Most people instead believe in, “Your group
doesn’t "you know" with our group, but hey you can still drink from
the same water fountain.”
Coitus, or “you
know”,(apparently can’t use the s-e-x-word in school)still just makes a
lot of people very uncomfortable. Until we give the people equality in the bed
without having to consult congress on the matter; we don’t have real equality!!
Come on, are we really the land of the free and the home of the brave or just a
country of sheep and conformists to the conservative white ideal(Maher 2)?
Anyway in Barabara
Kingsolver’s book The Poisonwood Bible we get to encounter a brave and
pretty cool interracial couple, Leah and Anatole. Except they are married in
the late 50’s Congo and then they get to live in the always “super tolerant”
Georgia. Wherever they go they are met with animosity. And not just the couple
together, but both of them of them apart are seen as unnatural freaks. Leah’s
old family and friends will not accept her, and Anatole’s political power is
undermined by his taboo of marrying into another race(Kingsolver 273). Even
today, where we live in a place with “civil rights” and “equality for all men”,
the idea of people doing something out of the norm of the heterosexual suburban
couple is still not fully accepted; I can’t even imagine how bad it was in the
50s and 60s.
 |
Naturally people
might ask, “Should Leah and Anatole have done what they did?” Anatole could
have become the Nelson Mandela or Che Guevara of the Congo; if only he just
chose a nice african girl who the public could accept. Bright little Leah could
have gone back to America and became a hippy. She could have gone to Woodstock!
Man she was really missing out ...Just kidding, but in all seriousness she
could have become a doctor with Adah. Thankfully for us,the readers, they stood
up against Society and did it their own way. They needed each other and they
were happy together. And as cliche as it sounds “all they needed was love”(
Lennon 3).
Plus it
also really helped the story: everyone loves a challenged Romance that society
says is wrong...Romeo and Juliet.
Love in the Congo
by: "Yo Adrienne" Vantreese
Our English class recently read the book, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. The book details a family's journey to the Congo thanks to their wannabe missionary father, Nathan. In reality the mission is a flop. Nathan actually turns more people to their statues and idols than to Jesus. However, Africa becomes a part of all their lives; for Leah quite literally. Leah, one of their daughters, ends up marrying one of the natives. Imagine that! A good southern girl married to a black, African man. Their marriage has its ups and downs, goods and bads. This raises the question: was it worth it?
Segregation is a thing of the past. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt right? Yet interracial marriages are still looked down upon. Such is the case with Leah and her husband, Anatole. Leah can wear their clothes, speak their language like a pro, but when her skin is revealed, people look away. A couple walking together may never get a second thought, but when the couple is seen to be mixed, people take another look. This can lead Leah to feel utterly helpless.
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| redneck segregationists http://segregation-opportunity-race.tumblr.com/ |
Speaking of helpless, let's talk about that. It felt like Anatole was arrested more times than Snoop Dog in the 90's. Where does this leave Leah? Alone, that’s where. What is a woman, a white woman in Africa at that, to do? She can make friends, hit up her neighbors for help, but in the end she is still a white woman married to a black man. Was it worth it? Questions like this whirl in her mind as she lays in bed, alone; when she gets yet another stare in the market. Would life have been easier back home?
 |
| Malcolm X |
Yet, it doesn’t matter. Leah was ready for a fight when she married Anatole. Their differences only strengthen their declaration that it’s ok for a white woman to fight for freedom, because she is just as much a citizen of that country as any black woman. Malcolm X once said, “…when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration… it’s just one human being marrying another human being…”
So was it worth it? Was the marriage affected at all by their races? The answer is yes, it was affected. Leah and Anatole each suffered. They were looked down upon, they struggled, but didn’t they expect that in the beginning? To answer whether it was worth it, that answer is also yes. In the end, after they had gone through so much, all they could do was smile and show them they’re happy. Doesn’t that make it sweeter in the end anyway?
Hairspray and Poisonwood Bible...
by: Jenna Anthony
Hairspray.http://collider.com/entertainment/article.asp/aid/4803/cid/13/tcid/1
The question: How was
Leah and Antatole’s relationship affected by their different races?
So if you
haven’t read Poisonwood bible, one of the main themes of the book is the
relationship between Leah, a white American, and Anatole, a black African, which
during the 60s,when the book took place, was a big NO-NO. Some other need-to-know background info is
that Leah is one of four sisters brought to the Congo by her missionary father,
and falls in love with a local teacher who speaks English (Anatole). So basically, the book is just a really
terrible rom-com that has no comedy.
Louie Bellson and Pearle Bailey http://www.soulfulplanet.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?
So if you’re still a little confused,
basically mixed couples were a huge problem.
If you’re anything like me, all I could think that had to do with
interracial couples in the 60s was the movie Hairspray with Zac Efron
and that girl from The Amanda Show (Amanda Bynes), so I had to do a
little research. With that, I learned
about Peal Bailey and Louis Bellson. They were pretty similar to Leah and
Anatole- at least situation wise- and they had a long marriage. One huge
problem was that there were a lot of lies to friends etc. Even though there weren’t lies within the
relationship, lying in general around relationships is never a good thing.
While it might take a lot of strength to keep the relationship going through
all the discrimination, it also takes a lot of lies. From personal experience,
when people start lying, bad things start happening.
But don’t
take my word for it; even psychology bloggers say that there is huge divide
between interracial couples. Even today, there is a huge cultural difference
that normally causes couples to not understand each other on the level required
to keep a lasting relationship. And that’s just today- think about in the 60s. Plus the fact that Anatole is from Africa and
Leah is from America- that is a huge cultural difference.
So why did Kingsolver add in this
seemingly useless relationship into the novel? If you’re thinking that she just
put it in there to make a terrible book even worse, so am I, but that wasn’t
really where I was going. She adds this
relationship to show Leah’s change. Leah went from the good girl who never did
anything wrong to a girl who is in a relationship which at the time, was
completely unacceptable. Kingsolver wants to show just how bad Leah is. So does
Leah really love anatole? Nope! She probably is crushing on him, but mostly
because he represents something she’s not supposed to do, so it makes him more
enticing.
Leah and
Anatole have just about everything going against them. There are lies, and a
huge cultural difference that makes their relationship guaranteed to be filled
with drama- not something I want to deal with in a relationship- and probably keeps
the relationship at a deep crush, not real love. Plus, Leah is crushing on
Anatole because the color of his skin makes her a bad girl. If the book were to be set in this time
period, it might be a different story, and she might really like him, but
because of setting in the 60s, the relationship becomes all about how bad she
can be. The only reason Leah and Anatole stayed together the whole book was
probably because Anatole was in jail for half of the relationship. Terrible
right? I told you this was just like a
rom-com.
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