“The Dissolution of Mrs. White” by AE Ellis

Domesticity

detecafix — 2015-10-13 14:34:00 UTC

(Subverting/Evolving) Femininity

detecafix — 2015-10-13 14:34:05 UTC

- "The Curse" vs. subway shop

- Tips: Mrs. Savage doesn't fulfill her role giving the usual "womanly advice"

Americanization vs. Preserving "Home"

detecafix — 2015-10-13 14:37:55 UTC

- Italians: planting tomatoes from Progresso cans; hanging washing out

- Bodegas

- Ethnic food shops: Mrs. Savage describes it as suddenly being back home

- centers around food

- the AirWick

Food

detecafix — 2015-10-13 14:40:20 UTC

Voice

detecafix — 2015-10-13 14:41:44 UTC

- Black women talking in White's laundry

- Italian women talking over the laundry, cooking

- Mrs. Savage outed as a new immigrant by her "musical accent"

- Bob Savage doesn't acknowledge/respect her discomfort

- "Voice" only heard through Mrs. White

(Racialized) Hatred

detecafix — 2015-10-13 15:00:33 UTC

Norms

detecafix — 2015-10-13 15:04:29 UTC

Culture and defining insanity

- Mr. B saying American black women have "a screw loose"

Essentializing

detecafix — 2015-10-13 15:06:19 UTC

alms15 — 2015-10-13 17:55:24 UTC

-colored folks

-spics/niggers

Skin tone/color

alms15 — 2015-10-13 17:58:40 UTC

"colored skin-but a manner that was quite white(56)".

Classifications

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:01:41 UTC

-128 categories

-mulatto

-sambo

-quadroon

-mestee

-mestefeena

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:08:47 UTC

"no metion of personnel, but slaves, of course, jumped into the space between the two men,connecting them (57)".

Racial self-respect is not bigotry

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:15:03 UTC

You are in klan country

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:15:34 UTC

"chivalric organization"

"Declaring himself white"

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:40:17 UTC

Faithful servant

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:44:32 UTC

"Islands"

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:47:11 UTC

Americans (whites) lump all the islands together, assuming they have the same history/people.

alms15 — 2015-10-13 18:57:24 UTC

"The women intimate with the heavens and the movement of the heavenly bodies (69)".

The howling of the dogs

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:01:38 UTC

-Kitty's intuition that something bad is going to happen or that someone has died.

-She knows her mother has died before her brother calls her.

Nakedness (mother's body)

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:07:11 UTC

"from somewhere came an imaage of a slave-woman pacing aisles of cane, breats slung over her shoulder to suckle the baby carried on her back (71)".

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:10:55 UTC

"childbearing and old age"

"A good boy"

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:14:59 UTC

"A wifes duty"

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:15:30 UTC

Creole Skin

alms15 — 2015-10-13 19:19:39 UTC

The curse

alms15 — 2015-10-13 20:40:54 UTC

"She mured pardon, and began to carefully stroke the back of Kitty's skirt. Kitty was first embarrassed, then gave into the woman's care (80)".

Passing

nboston1 — 2015-10-17 17:55:24 UTC

Belonging

nboston1 — 2015-10-17 17:56:23 UTC

A Yearning for Home

nboston1 — 2015-10-17 18:02:11 UTC

"Home was different--she would hold on to that as long as she lasted. She who was cut from home" (60).

Find comfort in the familiar foods from home in Bed-Stuy (64-65).

Barriers, Communication

nboston1 — 2015-10-17 18:06:39 UTC

Kitty's accent others her and stunts her ability to access other job opportunities (76).

Sanitary v. Purity

nboston1 — 2015-10-17 18:15:37 UTC

Pure, clean, moral, whole.

Mr. B's obsession with the word, sanitary (73). Hygiene, health, uncontaminated.

How does this connect to ideas of race?

ferry to Brooklyn (Crossing Brooklyn Ferry)

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 17:36:35 UTC

Walt Whitman poem about belonging

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 17:42:59 UTC

"The Black people here not from us, the white people here not from us."

mihi solicitudo futuri

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 17:47:31 UTC

"I worry for the future" ? strange motto for a family crest. represents the shaky foundation boy has built for himself and his family

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 17:56:24 UTC

comparing the eggplant man to the innkeeper because willful ignorance feels the same as well-meaning micro aggressions.

Mrs. White

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:26:30 UTC

"...her philosophy of wifehood, of which laundry was but one office, was the creation of Mr. B." (73)

Essentially saying that women's domesticity was the creation of man.

"her lips indicating a smile that was... a constant in her countenance." (74)

In a way the repressed imaginary figure of Mrs. White represents how Kitty feels tied to her husband and this country that makes her so uncomfortable, but having to bear it and save face all the while. After Mrs. Black, she realizes that she could not free Mrs. White (by killing her) so she had to free herself.

"Feminists Themes"

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:28:03 UTC

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:31:38 UTC

"against their better judgement" (75)

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:32:26 UTC

"And where does that musical voice come from?" (76)

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:33:46 UTC

shopkeeper to fill mother's role (80)

Aunt Jemima (Mrs. Black)

ebb15 — 2015-10-18 19:34:41 UTC

Jim Crowe caricatures.

Mami, and the deeper meanings.

"Furious aunt jemima"

Passing as a form of Survival/way to Thrive

emilyroseb — 2015-10-19 01:20:08 UTC

Boy is easily able to create a new identity, distancing himself from his blackness and black communities/people as a whole in order to gain skin priviledges of passing which ensure more opportunities in America

c

emilyroseb — 2015-10-19 01:24:13 UTC

Boy: "settling in. Branching out" = actively passing [introducing self as being descendant of plantation owners]

Kitty: "lived divided, straining to adjust" (75) = can't compromise her identity as mixed, as Jamaican. Is excluded by white people and viewed as black but by black people is viewed as having light-skinned privilege

audreycapelo — 2015-10-19 06:01:47 UTC

Boy quickly sheds his identity and tells the innkeeper "I am a white man. My ancestors owned sugar plantations" (57). He may hesitate but he does declare himself white.

Kitty never calls herself white. In interviews she says "I am a Jamaican." (76)

Mrs. Black's Advice

audreycapelo — 2015-10-19 06:06:01 UTC

EVER TRY CLEANSING YOUR MIND OF HATRED? THINK OF IT.

WE CAN CLEAN YOUR CLOTHES BUT NOT YOUR HEART.

AMERICA IS CRUEL. CONSIDER KINDNESS FOR A CHANGE.

WHITE PEOPLE CAN BE BLACK-HEARTED.

THE LIFE YOU LIVE WILL BE VISITED ON YOUR CHILDREN.

MARCUS GARVEY WAS RIGHT.

HELLO. MRS. WHITE IS DEAD. MY NAME IS MRS. BLACK. I KILLED HER.

Marcus Garvey

audreycapelo — 2015-10-19 06:10:28 UTC

Garveyism intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to "redeem" the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled "African Fundamentalism", where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey)

Marcus Garvey

audreycapelo — 2015-10-19 06:11:32 UTC

2015-10-19 12:16:40 UTC

To live a life thats not your own entirely for the whims of someone who has not earned your love or respect or trust.

2015-10-19 12:18:51 UTC

another part of home denied

2015-10-19 12:20:06 UTC

confined to the kitchen, chained to the wash board

ebb15 — 2015-10-19 13:08:12 UTC

both Boy and Clare lose their accents

American Welcome

emilyroseb — 2015-10-19 13:10:39 UTC

"No Statue of Liberty for them...their emblem of welcome...was a small sign obscured by the cracked and boarded up glass of an abandoned NAACP office on their way out of Maimi. A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY, it said. 'Hello, America,' Kitty muttered" (54)

ebb15 — 2015-10-19 13:28:24 UTC

"Savage" as a colonial term

Guava

aeellis — 2015-10-19 13:35:38 UTC

Apricot

aeellis — 2015-10-19 13:36:06 UTC

Mango

aeellis — 2015-10-19 13:36:39 UTC

ebb15 — 2015-10-19 13:41:08 UTC

Grace's being a nanny

Self-Preservation

aeellis — 2015-10-19 14:07:59 UTC

Combahee River Collective