WSS: Race

Question 1

“I saw the jagged stone in her hand…We stared at each other…It was as if I saw myself”

Answer 1

• Tia forges her own identity by joining a collective identity to racially other.
• However, this quote arguably demonstrates how Tia and Antoinette have parts of each other in themselves, with Tia even being a contraction of Antoinette.
• Nevertheless, Tia must reject this part, in order to self actualise into a distinctly and proudly black identity, made important by the horrors of slavery which lasted until emancipation in the 1830s, with the heartbreaking nature of its essentiality only emphasising the broken society it left behind.
• Despite this, the unavoidable truth of Antoinette’s fundamental inability to assimilate with a racial group and form a collective identity (as Tia does) in her Caribbean society demonstrates how utterly outcast she is, from other members of society as well as from forming a sense of her self.

Question 2

Racial Mixing:
“Mr Mason’s lectures had made me shy about my coloured relatives”

Answer 2

a) Ambiguity/Narrative Gaps:
-> Deconstructing sense of objective truth, ALSO through the scope of narrative voices, or, more significantly, the lack of some crucial narrative voices:
* “ ‘Is there another side?’…‘There is always the other
side’ “.
b) Society forcing Ant. to reject and other a part of her self - her relatives:
-> Lack of identity/madness fuelled by historical racial context.
c) Sense of taught racism?