African American Literature Class Reflection Paper 

 
         I am starting this paper a bit differently, with a reflection on something that happened to me. During this class I was on a business trip to Austria/Germany (one of the many reasons I need to work on-line). While there, I visited Freud’s home. I walked in the same rooms he did, sat at the same table he did, walked down the same set of stairs he did—the very last time as he escaped the Nazi’s. It was a heart-wrenching story of him fleeing the home he raised his children in, saw patients in, and lived in for most of his life. At 82 he was fleeing Hitler and would not live to see this monster defeated.

            Also, while on this trip, an article caught my eye in the news. The report, Face Paint, Balloons and ‘White Power’: German Neo-Nazis Put on a Pretty Face was in the NY Times. This bleak and sad article showed the despicable side and rise of racism, yet it was the last sentence that shook me. Michael Regener, a popular neo-Nazi singer who goes by the name Lunikoff pulled back an unbuttoned shirt to show off a T-Shirt with a KKK symbol and the words “White Power.” He then went into his song “The KKK Ballad” – “In the good old South,” he growled, strumming his guitar, “crosses burned in the night and riders in white robes kept watch on the hill.” I had just finished reading the stories of Baraka’s family fleeing the KKK and the reference chilled me.

            A day later, it was time to leave Germany. I had been reading heavily from our textbook about the slaves and atrocities committed. When we came through security, my husband was randomly pulled away. I was held for a while: bags searched, questions thrown at me, patted down. When they released me, I could not find my husband anywhere. Now, I’m a strong, fairly tough woman, but there was something in the last week that unhinged me. My empathy level was off the charts. I was bleeding inside for the Jews (my husband is Jewish), I was nauseated by what we have done to the African American’s, I was beaten down by the fact that this hatred still exists in our country and the world. Somewhere in my subconscious, I could hear the subway screeching on Baraka’s Dutchman. I could hear the screams coming from the mothers and babies of the Slave Ship. I could hear the cries of the animals in the wild being slaughtered for a tusk of ivory. And in all of these cries, I myself just collapsed against a wall and began to sob. For this moment, I knew what it felt like to have someone ripped away, to try to find them, to think they were gone. To be in a strange country strumming the songs of hate. I did not recognize the person leaning against the wall crying, but I knew she was crying not only for me but for all of souls that have felt the sting of racism, injustice, and hatred.

            When my husband found me a few moments later he was visible shaken by my state. He kept pressing me why I was so upset—had someone hurt me? He couldn’t understand. And with all the words of a writer, with all the books I have read, with all the emotion stirring in my soul—I could not explain to him what had happened. When I was finally seated on the plane, I took out my phone and looked at a photo I had copied from an Instagram post earlier in the day. The plane ride home took over seven hours, and during that time I reflected many times on what had happened. I was lost somewhere in Giovanni’s Ego Tripping poem wondering who I was, wondering could my relatives have any hand in these atrocities, asking myself—what could I do to make a difference in this world?

            It is easy in this world to forget and ignore. We turn a page in the paper from an unarmed shooting to an ad for Bloomingdales, from a bombing to Tiffany earrings, from a starving child to multimillion dollar condos for sale. We, as a society, have become hardened. Shootings are no longer the news they once were. Racism is no longer condemned from our leaders. Yet, we must continue to have our voices heard. We must be brave like Baraka, Giovanni, Butler, Morrison, etc. We must write, we must sing, we must speak or the only thing that the world will hear is the strumming of “crosses burned in the night and riders in white robes kept watch on the hill.”
 
 

Works Cited

Eligon, John. “Face Paint, Balloons and ‘White Power’: German Neo-Nazis Put on a Pretty Face.
            The New York Times. September 26, 2018. Print.

Baraka, Amiri. “Dutchman.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Gen. ed.

            Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Valerie Smith. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1997. 674-688 Print

Baraka, Amiri. “Slave Ship.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Gen. ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Valerie Smith. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1997.                   694-703. Print

Giovanni, Nikki. “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Gen. ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Valerie Smith. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New  York: Norton, 1997. 685-686. Print
 
 
 
           

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Why I’m mad at you Philip Seymour
  Hoffman…
     
When I received the text from my daughter Philip Seymour Hoffman had
passed, I couldn’t recall who you were. Once she sent a photo, I realized you
were the chameleon actor who could disappear into a role like a snowflake
landing on a puddle. A master in front of a screen, a champion on stage, a man
with a thousand faces that could make us believe you were any one of them. 
      
The news of the needle, the drugs, the photos of you with your children
and without, kept gnawing at me until I grew mad at you. Yes you, whose closest
six degrees of separation to me was my daughter seeing you in a local Greenwich
  Village deli, have evoked an emotion reserved for those closest to me. But
  that’s what you were so good at, wasn’t it.
        
I keep asking myself, why? Is it because you were so much like all of us?
Is it because you were a Hollywood success that didn’t reach those outer limits
of being removed from every day folks? You weren’t overly handsome, like Brad
Pitt or George Clooney, but somehow even more attractive because of it. Your
  everyday face bought immediate trust, your smile drew us in like a night star
  twinkling above. Your honesty about yourself and your character’s roles were
  brutal. You were tough, why not tough
enough?
 
Maybe I’m mad because I
wanted you to be stronger for your children. So many times I wanted to give up.
But I couldn’t, wouldn’t and I was mad you did. I’m mad no one made you sit down
and watch It’s a Wonderful Life a thousand times so I wouldn’t have to watch
yours unfold on the news a hundred.
      
I’m mad, because of you, stories of heroin have once again snuck its ugly
face in my home. I’m mad because I have to remind my teenage children that even
adults make bad choices. I’m mad because you didn’t make the right
one.

At the end of the day we all struggle with our demons. I’m mad yours won.
I’m mad knowing no matter how long I live, no matter how much I try, I’ll never
be as good as you were.

  And now you’re gone, and that makes me mad.