From Eye to We: Richard Wright's <i>12 Million Black Voices</i>, Documentary, and Pedagogy

Allred, Jeff

doi:10.1215/00029831-2006-025

Cited by 40 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The deep-seated logic in this statement is that, for Boy Willie, his decision on the selling of the piano is based on the premise that tradition should evolve and by evolving, it should be at the material benefits of its adherents. This reveals one side of what Allred (2006) refers to as the "problematic role of inheritance in African American history and culture" for he observes that one of the critical dialectics in African American discourse is the radical economic consciousness of Afro Americans. This idea of proprietary consciousness on the part of Afro Americans is prevalent as well as evident in not only Wilson's play but in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun where Walter Lee Younger would go to any extreme end to invest his dead father's insurance cheque in his own liquor store.…”

Section: "The Piano Is a Piece Of Wood": Boy Willie And His Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Framing the Problematics of Choice and Legacy: A Reading of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson as a Dilemma Tale

Bentum

2021

Journal of Black Studies

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The choice for a particular narrative architecture has been a major concern for the literary writer and to the African American literary writer, the use of African oral literary elements has been a resourceful option. The present study hypothesizes that August Wilson uses the dilemma tale as a narrative architecture in his The Piano Lesson play and argues that this narrative style helps Wilson to frame the dialogic surrounding what legacy is to the African American. The study reveals that tradition is problematic for the African American to conceive. The conclusion is that the dilemma tale type as a narrative style helps to understand that tradition or, legacy is a complex phenomenon for the African American to fathom.

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Section: "The Piano Is a Piece Of Wood": Boy Willie And His Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Framing the Problematics of Choice and Legacy: A Reading of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson as a Dilemma Tale

Bentum

2021

Journal of Black Studies

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“…This stance brings Invisible Man closer to 12 Million Black Voices, in which the latter's image of a "dark mirror," as Jeff Allred has noted, both creates a potential identification between black and white citizens and defers it by maintaining a view of racial power differentials. 41 Like the dark mirror, Ellison's simultaneous view of pattern and chaos offers a perspective from which the narratives structuring power can be viewed and understood as contingent. Invisible Man never really offers a model citizen, or, more precisely, the several models it offers fail.…”

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confidence: 99%