Stranger in the village Flashcards
(19 cards)
1
Q
Author
A
James Baldwin
2
Q
- Intro
A
- first black man to set foot in SWitzerland
- will be a “sight” but anyone from city is
- hes American
- didnt occur to him that some never seen a Negro- not due to inaacesibility to the village
- only four hours from Milan and three hours from Lausanne- unknown
- villagers come and go as please- to town at foot of mountain (movie and bank)
- in their village no library, theater, few radios, one stationw agon, one typewriter, mine an invesntion woman next door has never seen
- 600 people who live, all catholic (church always open), Protestant church on far hill only open summer for tourists
- hotels are closed now, 5 bistros only 2 bussiness in winter
- Ballet Haus used in summer- dont know for what
- one school for only young kids
- mountains, ice and snow
- women children move all day, carrying washing, wood, bockets of milk or water
- ski on sunday afternoons
- boys and young men are to be seen shoveling snow off the rooftops, or dragging
wood down from the forest in sleds - attraction= hot spring water
- first went for 2 weeks in summer (wasnt gonna return) but did in winter to work
- advantage of being cheap
- returned next winter again, everyone knows his name, doesnt us eit and questions that he comes from America
- black men come from Africa and everyone knows he is the friend of the son of a
woman who was born here, and that I am staying in their chalet - still stranger, children shout Negar!
3
Q
- what people say
A
- has to be pleasant
- when he smiles- they only notice his teeth- wonders if he should just snarl
- Some thought my hair was the color of tar, that it had the texture of wire, or the texture of cotton. It was jocularly suggested that I might let it all grow long and make myself a winter coat
- if he sits in sun, someone touches his hair- like thei=yre afraid of an electric shock or astonished that his skin colour doesnt rub off
- not intentional unkindess but wonder
- not human- living wonder
- the sound of Negar! echoes through him- they dont know
- some days he cant smile and is like he was in the sity hearing “your mother is a niger”
- Joyce is right about history being a nightmare - can be nightmare no can awake form
- people trapped in history and history trapped in them
4
Q
- differences
A
- custom in village to buy African natives, convert to Christianity
- people put money in box with black figurine, during carnaval after Lent, 2 village kids have their faces blackened, get money for missionaries in Africa
- village bought 6 or 8 Africans last year with this money
- wife of bistro owner was proud and thought it would make him relieved
- he tried not to think of this and how his father in his own conversion never forgave whites
- not the same feeling when whites arrive in Africa, not inferior,
- will never know the anger theyve caused him here and how their culture controls him
- see him as never being able to have what they have and their culture but they havent seen most of Europe or America
- These people cannot be, from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modern world -but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive
5
Q
- rage and how understood
A
- Herrenvolk doesnt understand rage
- no black man can hope ever to be entirely liberated from this internal warfare-rage, dissembling, and contempt having inevitably accompanied his
first realization of the power of white men - black mans attitude: either to rob the white man of the jewel of his
narvete, or else to make it cost him dear - black men not seen as real humans- easier that way to justify those before them and neighbours
- through what the white man imagines the black man to be, the
black man is enabled to know who the white man is - so not as much stranger as used to be- dont wonder texture of hair anymore and wonder more about him
- some kids befriend, some run and scream
- some woman pass and greet, other look away
- some me drink with him and suggest he learn ski and ask if he married and ask about his métier
- some of the men have accused le sale negre-behind my back-of stealing wood
- dreadful abyss between the streets of this village and the streets of the
city in which I was born, between the children who shout Neger! today and those who
shouted Nigger! yesterday-the abyss is experience, the American experience
The syllable hurled behind me today expresses, above all,
wonder: I am a stranger here. But I am not a
stranger in America and the same, syllable
riding on the American air expresses the war
my presence has occasioned in the American
soul.
6
Q
- America vs Europe
A
- American perspective towards blacks is theyre cattle/slaves
- drama for Americans over 300 years ago Jamestown
1. American Negro slave ccould imagine gaining power
2. his past was taken from him
3. I am told that there are Haitians able to trace their ancestry back to African kings, but any American Negro wishing to go back so far will find his journey through time abruptly .arrested by the signature on the bill of sale which
served as the entrance paper for his ancestor
4. no chance to take power from masters hands
5. no sign that situation has ever been different or will ever change
6. E. Franklin Frazier - motive to live under american culture or die
7. identity of american Negro comes from this extreme situastion
8. question of their identity divided the nation- not Europe cause they stayed in colonies
9. in America you couldnt escape them being a man but in Europe it was abstract
10. America ry to make tthem abstract
7
Q
hope
A
- the history creates hope
- ideas are dangerous cause they lead to actions- unpreditable
- impossible to remain faithful in beliefs and impossible to get rid of
- American beliefs not originated in America, came from Europe
- these beliefs formed white supremecy in america
- americans notorious for idea but didnt invent it
- white supremacy lies on white men created society (current) and all previous was merely contributions
- to accpet black men- would jeporidise their identity and status
- deny his human reality
- Root problem: american white find way to live with Negro man and iving with himself
- now and future: white man wants to protect ientity (motivation)
- black man motivated by need to establish identity
- this battle he has won- not a visitor but a citizen, an American
- He is perhaps the only black man in the world whose relation-
ship to white men is more terrible, more subtle, and more meaningful than the relationship of bitter possessed to uncertain possessor - His survival depended, and his development depends, on his ability to turn his
peculiar status in the Western world to his own advantage and, it may be, -to the very great advantage of that world - when facing the cathdral these villagers dont think of the devil but he does cause he has been identified with him
8
Q
Ending
A
- Americans great error is the isllusion of recovering the european innocense, return to state in which black men do not exist
- the identity they fought so hard for, has undergone a change: americans are unlike any other white people in the world
- paint moral issues in glaring black and white -owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain. between themselves and black men a human separation
- this is dangerous- weaken sense for reality
- interracial drama has created new black man and new white man
- It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of
indispensable value to us in’ the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again
9
Q
stranger in the village and interview
A
‘A stranger in the village’ - James Baldwin
- Silently more political — made overt
- Published later
- Balancing creative fiction and politically commentary
Interview with James Baldwin
- The real danger of death when a black man attempts to become a man
- If you turn your back on society you die
- Social danger
- Segregation
- Black people cannot trust white people
- It does not matter if white people hate black people, because the institution hates them - Lived and was active during the Civil Rights Movement (50s and 60s)
10
Q
Strangers
A
- Stranger vs outsider vs wanderer
- Stranger
- Alien, unfamiliar, naturally distrust
- Definition has to
- Georg Simmel’s sociological explanation
- The stranger is a member of the group in which they live and participate
- Yet the stranger is simultaneously distant from the native members of the group
- There are other forms of social distance we
might experience - or other kinds of social
difference such as class, gender or ethnicity; but
the perceived distance of the stranger has to do
with origins
- Distinction: the outsider has no specific relation
to the group
- Wanderer comes today and leaves tomorrow
- Stranger comes today and stays tomorrow
- The stranger is in the group, but not of the group
11
Q
Village
A
- Village
- Homogenous in culture, norms and conventions
- Small population
- Less industrialised
- Author talks about his experience of living in a quaint village in the Swiss Alps - Baldwin had been living in Paris for four or five years by that point, and it was while living in the village of Leukerbad that he wrote his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain, as well as this essay - Baldwin was invited there by his lover, a
Swiss painter, whose family owned a small chalet in the village
- Villages are clustered communities,
smaller than a town, usually also small
in population
- Early 1950s, and a rural if picturesque
village where Baldwin has gone on
artistic retreat
- Life is dictated by the rhythm of the seasons
- While it is an escape, it also confronts Baldwin with a strange and uncomfortable idea - He is, by virtue of his Blackness, the stranger
12
Q
Beginning
A
- Isolation is a thing of choice or attitude
- Village of 600 people
- Has to confront idea that what makes him a stranger is not that he is an unusual sight - Villagers have never had to contend with race before
- Village is not isolated backwater
- His strangeness cannot be explained by complete isolation
- Even though village is odd
- No movie house, no bank, no theatre
- Does not have the cultural trapping she is used to
- Isolation is actively maintained
- Constructed and reaffirmed (given new
incentive to exist) - A very certain picture of European idyllic
existence is curated and protected by inhabitants
- Happy until he arrives in space as the
stranger
13
Q
Voice and detail
A
- Time spent on describing the village
- Daily life
- Inhabitants
- Used to establish his own relation to the space
- Key to how he constructs his essay
14
Q
The Picture:
A
- 4 or five bistros (seasonal)
- Life shuts down around 9 or 10pm
- A butcher
- A baker
- An épicerie (greengrocer)
- A hardware store.
- A money-changer
- One school
15
Q
A stranger in their midst
A
- “A living wonder”
- “Wherever I passed, the first summer I was here, among the native villagers or among the lame, a wind passed with me - of astonishment, curiosity, amusement and outrage”
- “Everyone in the village knows my name, though they scarcely ever use it, knows that I came from America though, this, apparently, they will never really believe: black men come from Africa — and everyone knows that i am the friend of the son of a woman who was born here, and that I am staying in their chalet. But I remain as much a stranger today as I was the first day I arrived, and the children shout Neger! Neger! as I walk along the streets.”
- How he sees others seeing him
- Not only how he perceives the space and its inhabitants
- Experience of being an oddity
- When he walked the streets, local children would remind him of this fact contained in the opening by surreptitiously touching his skin and hair
- Does not act with anger, but rather to try befriend them — protective technique vital to learn in America
- Return
- His first stay was two weeks, and he left planning never to return, but he comes back because - he says - there are no distractions,
and it is extremely cheap
- Does not allow himself to be
positioned by this experience
16
Q
Baldwin’s style
A
- Relaying visceral experience
- Rhetorical
- Writing gesture
- Asks reader to feel the wave of
emotions he felt when he was
treated this way
- Arising from unfamiliarity not malice
- Poses bigger question
- The story moves very subtly from being about the particular
to being about something bigger than that - “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in
them”
- This essay is him framing a bigger question not just about race
relations in Europe
- About how that seeming innocence curdles into something
more sinister
- What is obliviousness reminds him of his experience of Jim
Crow America
17
Q
Particular to general
A
- Village
- There was a day, and not really a very distant day, when
Americans were scarcely Americans at all but discontented
Europeans, facing a great unconquered continent
- Strolling into a marketplace and seeing black men for the
first time.
- The shock this spectacle afforded is suggested by the promptness with which they decided that these black men were not really men but cattle
- The necessity on the part of the settlers of the New World of reconciling their moral assumptions with the fact — and the necessity — of slavery enhanced immensely the charm of this idea - It is also true that this idea expresses, with a truly American bluntness, the attitude which to varying extents all masters have had toward all slaves
18
Q
Innocence
A
- Blackface tradition of villagers to raise money for ‘Africa’
- Children dress up and paint their faces to walk around collecting money for mission statements - Save the souls the damned in Africa
- White wife of person who owns a restaurant tells him this story
- Why is she telling him this
- This is the only role that black people play in this village
- Seemingly good intentions — raise money and uplift souls of those far away
- Still grotesque
- Skin colour determines how people see you
- Reveals how people regard black people as something monstrous
- Something to be pitied
19
Q
Racism
A
- Profound impact on everyone it touches
- White and black
- Outward manifestations of race relations
- Ignorant way of living
- No longer permissible, desirable, possible
- Turns lens back on the white people who point, stare treat him in that way
- How we write about difficult subjects
- Does not shy away from flatly addressing horrible things have happened to hi
- We can reflect on these 50 years later and how much has actually changed
- Racialised social relations are still important to our lives
- Not preaching
- Advocating a particular position using personal experiences and his reading of the world - Reader is prompted to connect things which may seem distant but is social and thus interconnected
