Plays are a form of literature that are much more personal than books. They allow the audience to connect, understand, and acknowledge each character’s vulnerability. The nature of plays is especially vital in Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined because of the sensitive content she writes about. Nottage writes the play based on the stories of multipleContinue reading “The Power of Plays: Acknowledging the Devastations of the Past While Appreciating the Power of the Present”
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How James Baldwin’s Identities Inform Giovanni’s Room: the Separation of Race and Sexuality
As a bisexual black man, James Baldwin had rather unique experiences in 1950s America and Paris. Many of these experiences informed the writing of Giovanni’s Room and his other works. Parallels can be drawn between Baldwin’s life and the plot of Giovanni’s Room. Baldwin moved to Paris when he was 24 and fell in loveContinue reading “How James Baldwin’s Identities Inform Giovanni’s Room: the Separation of Race and Sexuality”
Deception and Denial: David’s Battle for Self-Acceptance
By: Georgia Pettygrove “For I am – or I was – one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can onlyContinue reading “Deception and Denial: David’s Battle for Self-Acceptance”
Invention and Sorrow: the role of literature in times of disconnection.
By Nora Cornell • 8 November 2020 “What I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, … was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected” (90). This line, a near-throwaway about some American tourists,Continue reading “Invention and Sorrow: the role of literature in times of disconnection.”
Forbidden Love: The Shame and Desire in Giovanni’s Room
During a week full of chaos, both at Blake and throughout the country, reading James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room was an intriguing escape. Not only are we transported to Paris in the 1950s, we are transported to a world that is not very accepting of LGBTQ+ people. Told from the perspective of David, a twenty-something AmericanContinue reading “Forbidden Love: The Shame and Desire in Giovanni’s Room”
Constructions of Gender in Literature 