Comparing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Our Time Essay

Soul Writing in Incidents in the Life of a break ones back Girl and Our Time Real theme, soul writing is dangerous there is an intrinsic, gut-churning element of risk within the process of telling the the true, a risk that yields an adrenaline rush that parallels skydiving and skinny-dipping. The thrill of ones own truth displayed nakedly in little black letters on a white page is scary and beautiful, both chaining and freeing. The issue for authors, like skydivers, is that after they skitter out of the plane (start writing) the fears dont disappear. The diver-author asks herself, Should I really be doing this... What if my parachute doesnt work... What if Im misunderstood? Harriet Jacobs and backside Edgar Wideman undergo this free-fall, these fears. In the telling of their stories, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs) and Our Time (Wideman), each author is self-conscious. Both authors tell about a minority in their stories Jacobs speaks of the female slave and Widema n speaks of the African-American gangster. Because they tell the horizontal surface of a minority to a majority, they cant afford to be misunderstood. They also cant afford to write solely in metaphors because they not only must prove their competency through reserved analysis but also must appeal to the hearts and minds of their audience. The authors must bring middle class white readers as shut up to the slave plantation or the Ghetto or the prison cell as possible. For this reason, both authors refer to the reader with questions. This rhetorical device forces the reader to place herself in the situation of the main character. For example, when discussing the abuse she took from her master, Dr. flint, Jacobs asks, But where could I turn for protection?(47... ...nd unresolved, not because the authors are incompetent, but because the issues that they write about dont have blockages. The readers are left with the same frustration as the authors. Past cant be erased, roles cant be traded, and sympathy cant be transformed into empathy. But the sheer act of writing and publishing their stories is a resolution. While to jump off the plane is terrifying, and wind stings the face as one falls, once on the ground the writer can find resolution purely in the explanation itself, even if it ends unresolved. Works Cited Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York Mentor, 1987. Wideman, John Edgar. Our Time excerpted in Ways of Reading (4th edition), David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, eds. (Boston Bedford Books, 1996).