AA Lit Blog

            The White Boy Shuffle has been one of the strangest books I’ve read, but in its strangeness it has forced me to re-evaluate some things I have always accepted. The first big concept it made me reconsider is “collective self-esteem.” Linking one’s one self-esteem with the success of a sports team is something I’d always taken for granted. Everyone around me had done it as long as I can remember. Gunnar’s de-familiarized description, talking about how he has everyone watching hanging by a thread, was pretty mind-blowing as a result.             Gunnar’s experience also forced me to consider how success might not always “feel good.” Gunnar did not have to struggle to succeed, and seemed to be giving minimal effort in basketball, and even in poetry. His talents don’t feel special to him, they’re just naturally what he can do; he would literally have to struggle to do...

One of the most striking features of Toni Morrison’s Beloved is the fact that the story is told out of order. This is also one of the most confusing features of the novel. A reader of the novel might ask why she chose such a feature. What effect does it have? How would the story be different if it were told in order? If Beloved were rewritten in chronological order, the biggest change would be finding out about Sethe’s act of violence much sooner than we do in the original. Learning about it sooner rather than later puts the audience much more in the position of the townspeople who rejected Sethe and were terrified of her. Over the course of the book leading up to the revelation of Sethe’s deed, the reader is in her head and learns of the horrors at sweet home, the work she went through to escape, and the almost frighteningly strong love she has for her children. Even Paul D, who is much more in the reader’s position, is hesitant to stay around Sethe after he learns what she did. C...