In Autobiography, Johnson signifies on DuBois' "Souls" when he says "the veil has been drawn aside" in the preface; he is using the idea of the veil DuBois created
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, chronology, causality, a centralized point-of-view, and verisimilitude)•A fresh examination of the world (e.g., fragmentation, multiple points-of-view, stream-of-consciousness, focus on interiority, juxtaposition, shocking imagery)•Experiments in form and style (e.g., mixing genres and media)•A concern with language and its limits in terms of representationEx.
Cane depicting women as sexual objects
g. self-loathing, depressed, promiscuous, substance abuser, suicidal)Often used to depict the color line as permeable and inconstantOften used to depict race as a social constructExampleThe Narrator in AECM his internal conflict of being mixed race, his gambling addiction, choosing to pass as white.
ExampleShiny in AECM
Event #1: War with the white kids across the street. Here is his first experience of white privilege. When his mom returns and is not sympathetic of his encounter with the white neighbors, he resents her for it.Lesson #2: Richard makes the mistake of not formally addressing his boss as Mr. and almost pays the price for it with his life.
Lesson #3: Richard witnesses a old black women dragged into a shop an brutally beaten. When she staggers out of the shop after her assault the police arrest her for being drunk. Later on he accounts this experience to his friends, and the nonchalantly say that she is lucky that they didn't rape her as well. This demonstrates the lack of masculinity and autonomy that is influenced by the Jim Crow Era.
Lesson #4: Richard is making a delivery when a car full of young men offer him a ride. They offer him a drink and when he refuses they throw the bottle at his head and tell him that he is lucky that it was them he disrespected or else he would have been a "dead n-word." Lesson #5: Richard works as a hall-boy at a hotel where he serves a lot of guests who have white prostitutes stay the night. One day the guest that Richard serves thinks that he is looking at the white women that he is with and threatens his life.
Lesson #6: A black boy who is caught with a white prostitute is castrated and the town remarks that he got off easy.Lesson #7: A white watchman slaps the butt of a black maid that Richard is walking home with. He walks in front of her and she runs to catch up with him. She assures Richard that there was nothing he could have done, but he avoids her gaze for the rest of the walk.
Richard is ashamed, once again this is an example of how institutional racism during the Jim Crow Era severely impacted black masculinity. Lesson #8: Richard is working at a factory at this point. He is on an elevator while holding a lot of packages when a white man removes his hat for them. He does not know how to properly thank the man without offending him, so instead he pretends to drop his packages to get out of the tricky situation.
- The boy trespass onto Old Man Harvey's property and go skinny dipping in his lake. They spot a white women on the shore watching them and jump out to grab their clothes and flee the scene. The woman calls out to her husband and he shoots two out of the four boys. Big Boy and Bobo are able to over power the man and eventually Big Boy is forced to shoot and kill him.- Big Boy and Bobo go back to their relatives and Big Boys parents devise a plan to help him escape to Chicago.-
