To access the e-text of Along this Way, go to the UArk library webpage at library.uark.edu. Search for "Along this Way." The second entry you will see is the electronic version. Click on it and you'll be able to access it. If you are using a home computer, you will need to enter your UArk username and password.
I'd like you read sections I-IV (up to page 39). Please print these out and bring them to class. We'll be continuing to theorize and think about autobiography as a genre and I will begin to set up Black Boy for Thursday. You might want to start reading it this weekend.
Remember that the Ozarks Writers Live is on Saturday (info at www.faylib.org) and that Shakespeare Abridged is playing at Theatre Squared (theatresquared.org). Send me a 1-2 paragraph write-up after you attend for extra credit.
It is interesting that Johnson begins his autobiography with extensive details about the early lives of his grandparents and how they came to the Bahamas. Seemingly he differentiates himself from the start by revealing a rich family history where slave narratives begin with an explanation of how little history is known. Instead of changing or leaving out names and locations, JWJ’s story is chock full of them. Does this accomplish a more authentic narrator? His descriptions of Jacksonville when his father first arrived are likely embellished, as his father was alone on this trip and JWJ was not even born. He vacillates between telling us how little he saw his father and describing all the great, fun things he taught him in the hotel off-seasons.
ReplyDeleteThe “true” story has much in common with his fiction: the presence of a piano in the home, the photo album and illustrated family bible, the boy who seems successful at everything he undertakes, and the contrasting recurrent sense of shame. He states that his parents did not teach him about race, but that from his early experiences he developed an “unconscious race-superiority complex.” Descriptions of his neighborhood indicate white and black people living in close proximity, and his comparison of the children sent to “borrow a piece of fire” to his home where matches were plentiful indicates his childhood was privileged by most standards. There may be more similarities than differences between the two stories.
I could really tell the difference in this reading than the previous one. While Author X used an immense amount of dialogue within his narrative, James Weldon Johnson wrote as though he was recounting his memories with a sense of nostalgia. Throughout he says that he says things but he never puts them in quotation marks, indicating that he might not have said exactly that but he did say something similiar.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Trina that it was nice to have Johnson give information about his family history. I felt that it set the mood and pace of the rest of his narrative. Johnson also made me feel sad whenever he said that he could not remember much of his grandparents and that when he did want to know his sources were gone.
All in all I enjoyed this much better because it really felt as though he was just talking out his memories to the reader.
While reading the actual autobiography, two things stuck out in my mind. First was the importance of music, just as in the fictional work. It seems that music was just as significant a part of Johnson's, and his family's, real life as it was the nameless narrator's. This is likely an example of how Johnson used real experiences to shape his fictional work, further blurring the line of the autobiography genre.
ReplyDeleteThe second thing that I thought while reading the autobiography was how differently the race issue was presented. Johnson admits that he experiences little racial conflict in the early stages of his life and even seems to come from a financially comfortable home. Thus, even more attention must be given to the racial content of his fictional work. The fact that the racial content is deliberate insists that Johnson is using it to deliver a strong message.
Johnson really captured the interpretations of a child and how differently their "take on things" can be versus what the adult is trying to convey. From Johnson completely missing the moral in "Peter and His Pony" and fixating only on the pony, to his quick recovery from sadness at the funeral once his eyes beheld the horse and carriages. His recollections of the spankings he received as a child don't seem to be accompanied by any hazy memories, but have stayed with him in a way that he speaks strongly of these "dark moments in my life." They left such a strong memory for Johnson, yet I would assume the parent (mother) would hardly recall those particular events. It is hard to know what moments our children will carry with them into adulthood.
ReplyDeleteI think that in starting his autobiography in a different tradition than that of the slave narrative Johnson is attempting to set himself apart. He doesn't start with the line "I was born..." and he gives the reader extensive details about his family which vehemently gives the author believability. Alike to a slave narrative though, the autobiography does start moving with the birth of our narrator. I found this interesting because most present day autobiographies would begin with the defining moments that lead up to what the author finds worthwhile in their life; the event they want to share through their autobiography.
ReplyDeleteThat being stated, I’m curious if James Wheldon Johnson felt that he needed to start with his ancestors and his birth in order to put to rest the belief that “The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man” was actually his life’s story, or if he just felt like his entire life needed to be explained in order for it to be completely understood.
I think there was alot that set "Along This Way" apart from the slave narratives that we've read and "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man." As mentioned before, Johnson's autobiography doesn't start in the same manner or the same place as slave narrative would and Auto X mimicked. The fact that Johnson knows so much about his family history sets him apart from his predecesors. And, although Johnson said he had modest beginnings in the little cottage his father built, we know that for most African Americans a three bedroom house with a parlor and kitchen is extremely extravagent and far from modest. Johnson's creativity was also cultured from an early age. His mother impressed art through drawing, music trough piano and singing, and education though home schooling. His father we see buys him book so he can say he has a small library of his own. These things are all luxuries that were hardly afforded to most African Americans in the 1800s.
ReplyDeleteI agree that I enjoyed all the family history he gave and I felt it gave him a truer sense of identity to me as a reader. I felt the connections between this and AutoX in the music and education of his childhood. Perhaps the death of his mother came near the time she nearly beat him to death. I see a lot of his class issues coming from his grandmother though. Although AutoX may not be true in all his experiences, I think that one could argue that the emotions of AutoX come from perhaps not just Johnson's feelings, but his family's. I think I can see how he could mold AutoX into existence.
ReplyDeleteI see that JWJ made a lot of effort to strengthen the authenticity of his biography. It is written more objectively and less emotionaly. I see the author's objective attitude in the beginning, not starting with himself but his family history. There, he often emphasizes his lack of details, writing, for example, "I know nothing of my father's early life and of his back ground, aside from the meager facts just stated" (p.4). Overall, he mentions the fuzziness of his childhood memories, and I take it as the author's honesty.
ReplyDeleteThe use of place and travel is very important in both "Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" and "Along This Way." In Johnson's real autobiography, he himself doesn't do most of the traveling, but he recounts all the places his ancestors have been. From the Bahamas to New York to Florida to Virgina, there is so much movement in the work geographically and Johnson paints the differing places by the situations that surround them. The free life of Nassau, the adorement of New York or the racial tensions of the South, we get a much more descriptive picture of surroundings.
ReplyDeleteAutoX on the other hand passes from place to place being irritatingly vague and judgemental. Traveling for him isn't about the place, but about him and how he feels. "Along This Way" takes a broader view. I like how Johnson stepped outside of himself and his own experiences to share with us a more complete family backstory that bounces around the globe.
Though I agree with many of the comments that separate "Along This Way" from "Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," I would suspect that JWJ used his family to create the "stock characters" we see in his fictional novel.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I'm struck by the way Johnson's description of the women in his family differs from that of the men. As he traces his lineage, he follows a primarily matrilineal system, admitting that he knew little about his father's side of the family. He seems to have been closest to his mother and grandmother; at one point in "Along This Way" Johnson states that the complete love of his mother (and grandmother, who spoiled him) led to "a lapse or lack or falling short" and an inability to balance "his own...thoughtlessness, [and ] his petty and great selfishness" (11). This mirrors the narrator's stance in "Autobiography," where his connection to his mother leaves him broken, and perhaps contributes to the narrator's self-admitted vanity.
I wonder if anyone sees similarities and/or differences between the male characters in the two narratives? I have some ideas myself, but I'm interested in everyone else's.
(Aaron Nugent)
ReplyDeleteI like the way this autobiography begins with his great grand parents. We didn't get any sort of lineage in the other narratives, except for a grandmother or aunt figure. And I agree with the comment about nostalgia. We never saw nostalgia or much depth in Auto X. He was very emotionally distant. But there is a lot of nostalgia when he describes the objects in his childhood home.
The emphasis on places outside the US is interesting and may help explain why Auto X travels so much around the world. We saw what Johnson called "the Aladdin's cave" that was in house and he and his brother used to fight over the trinkets from far away places. I like how Johnson described the wonder and curiosity of staring into the images in the stereoscope.
There was a big difference in this autobio and the others that we have read so far. This was the first one that the author remember so much about his past. Even though he does say that he was not able to know as much as he would have liked to, some of the previous authors could not even be sure who their father was. there was one big consistency between this and the other autobiographies, that was the importance of learning to read and write. He mentions how learning to read opened up a whole new world to him, very similar to what the authors of the slave narratives said about themselves learning to read. To me, after hearing how liberating it was for these men to learn to read over and over, it shows how much we take this skill for granted.
ReplyDeleteStephen King's Memoir, _On Writing_ opens with the lines, "I was stunned by Mary Karr's memoir, _The Liar's Club. Not just by its ferocity, its beauty and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular but by its totality--she is a woman who remembers everything about her early years" (3). This same concept of totality sheds an interesting light on JWJ's two narratives--one fictional, the other autobiographical. In "Along This Way," it is not that JWJ remembers everything, but rather, that he remembers an odd assortment of things, details that serve to add a pleasant thickness and warmth to the narrative. For instance, as a way of providing us with a strange bit of childhood memorabilia, JWJ writes of his father, "One of the traditions of the home was that he was never sick" (18). This statement is, of course, JWJ making a kind of joke, but it is a joke wrapped in familiarity, not in the colder irony of _Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. These differences, from the depth of information related to the narrative voice used to relate that information, help establish "Along This Way" as a text designed to welcome us in a way that _Autobiograhpy_ never did.
ReplyDelete(Wyndham Wyeth)
ReplyDeleteSorry this is so late.
I thought it was interesting how dissimilar Johnson's Autobiography was from "Ex-Coloured Man." There were several things about his life that I tell were inspiration for for some of the background in "Ex-Coloured Man," but for some reason I expected the similarities to be greater. I'm not sure why.
I was also somewhat surprised about the family background that was included as compared to that in his novel. I didn't enjoy "Along the Way" as much as I did the novel, but I did particularly enjoy the scene in which he describes hopping from one patch of grass to another to navigate the hot sand roads. It reminded me of playing "The Floor is Lava" with my siblings as a child. I also thought the writing style in Johnson's Autobiography was not as entertaining as his novel.
I'm very disappointed so far in reading Johnson's "Along This Way." I'm just not necessarily seeing where the message is in this autobiography. I'm impressed with the detail. Very impressed with the way Johnson can recall his childhood and his family tree. But, I can't help but say I found myself shaking my head wondering where the point was in everything he was writing. In "Ex-Coloured Man" I saw a man trying to write a story to shake up the nation, or, in the least, shake up the racial tension in America. I saw a poised political message in Johnsons words. He got down to the nitty gritty of what was going on in America at that time. It was obvious that though this was not considered an autobiography, he was speaking for people of all ethnicities and all economic standings.
ReplyDeleteIn "Along This Way," I don't see the same zest for making a point or a message. All this story has been so far is painting a portrait of a relatively happy African-American family. In a sense, I guess it's a good story to show the workings of a tight-knit African-American family but I think I'm still looking for a message. Or, in the least, a more stout and concrete point to writing it in the first place.