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Solomon Northup, a Black American writer, used his own experiences as the basis for his autobiographical novel Twelve Years a Slave in the 19th century (Stevenson, 2014). The novel tells the story of Northup who was sold into slavery. Northup was originally a free black man living in New York. Two white men kidnapped Northup and sold him to slave traders. Northup lived as a slave for 12 years. With the help of Henry Northup and Samuel Bass, Northup was freed (Stevenson, 2014). Twelve Years a Slave reflects the values that differences between nations, races and genders must be respected.

Figure 1. Cover of 12 Years a Slave

Slavery is rooted in racist ideology. Slave owners often regarded slaves as irrational, merely animals with limited skills. Thus, they had no qualm about mistreating and exploiting black slaves (Li, 2014). In fact, when Northup talked to the black people about the unfair slavery, almost everyone expressed their desire for freedom. The film’s ending proves that the intelligence of blacks and their desire for a free life are enough to overturn the colonial discourse of blacks as “the Other”.

In addition to depicting the conditions of slavery, Twelve Years a Slave depicts black women under the oppression of both gender and race (Li, 2014). In this book, almost all women are images representing “the Other”. The novel focuses on Patsey and Mrs. Epps. They are “the Other” in a patriarchal society. Mrs. Epps was well educated, but she could not escape her husband’s oppression. Patsey, a female slave, is an outstanding girl, but slavery disguises her talent and light, leaving her in eternal darkness.

Twelve Years a Slave is set on the eve of the Civil War. This book reflects the slavery and sufferings of black people under the oppression of racism. Northup criticized the racist ideology and showed the living condition of black women oppressed by both racism and male centralism.

References

Li, S. (2014). 12 Years a Slave as a Neo-Slave Narrative. American Literary History, 26(2), 326-331.

Stevenson, B. E. (2014). 12 Years a Slave: Narrative, History, and Film. Journal of African American History, 99(1-2), 106-118.

Crazy Rich Asians is a movie released in 2018, and it is a romantic comedy. In this movie, a native American girl, Rachel, first encounters her boyfriend’s family which is an extremely rich Asian family in Singapore. During her trip, other than the cultural shock and the unbelievable fact that her boyfriend is extremely rich and popular in his home country, Rachel has to deal with the jealous people around her, her boyfriends’ picky relatives, as well as the disapproval of her boyfriends’ mother.

This movie is a classic example that showcases the encounter between people with different cultures, nationalities, and socio-economic backgrounds. In the movie, Rachel is a normal working middle-class, but her boyfriend’s family is one of the richest families in Asia. This huge difference in their socio-economic statuses is vividly depicted in the movie by the shock experienced by Rachel as well as the view from other people that Rachel does not deserve to be together with her boyfriend.

Moreover, Rachel is a native New Yorker that grows up with Western culture; however, her boyfriend’s family and mother are of Asian root and live in Singapore. Therefore, her boyfriend’s family is a lot more traditional and disapproves of Rachel in many ways. The differences and clashes in their identities and cultural backgrounds are most remarkably depicted by how the mother of Rachel’s boyfriend disapproves of her and is not willing to accept her. This is because the mother thinks that Rachel and her boyfriend are different in too many ways and therefore are not suitable to be together. The separation in their cultures, national backgrounds, and socio-economic statuses make her not willing to accept people different from her family.

(A scene from the movie that depicts the richness of the family of Rachel’s boyfriend)

The huge disparity in their cultures, national backgrounds, and socio-economic statuses poses many challenges for Rachel; due to these differences, she is also unfairly treated and judged by other people during her visit. However, Rachel is able to overcome these differences and challenges in the end by her own effort. Therefore, this movie highlights the huge disparity between Rachel and her boyfriend’s family; it also brings the issue of cultural and socioeconomic disparity to the spotlight. At the same time, this movie is trying to convey the idea that gaps in cultures, nationalities, and socio-economic statuses are possible to be overcome as long as there are enough efforts.

Works cited

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Firm), Chu, J. M. 1., Awkwafina, Chan, G., Lu, L., & Wu, C. (2018). Crazy Rich Asians.

The film Green Book directed by Peter Farrelly tells the story of Dr. Shirley, an excellent African American pianist, who has to go on a national tour due to the company’s arrangement and experiences many injustices along the way. His driver is Tony, a white man, more specifically an Italian, who has just lost his job. At first, Tony also discriminates against black people. When two black workers use his family’s water glasses, he throws them into the trash can. He does this job just due to making a living and high salary. However, Shirley helps Tony write to his wife every day, and Tony is gradually attracted and admired by Shirley’s unique and elegant temperament when he plays the piano. The context of the film is set in 1960s America when the United States has a policy of segregation. The South, where they tour, has the worst discrimination and segregation. The name of the film Green Book, meanwhile, is actually a guide book which points out the restaurant or hotel where black people are allowed in. As a person who has a high social status, education level, and cultural attainment, Dr. Shirley still suffers from discrimination and segregation. Just like the intersecting identity that we have learned, although Shirley is a highly respected pianist of high social status in the north, he endures great sufferings and injuries by severe segregation in the south, even hard to get the treatment of ordinary people. For example, he was invited to play the piano at a party, but he was not allowed to eat in the banquet hall. These discriminations and inhuman treatments have become commonplace in the south. Even this, Shirley never used any violence to resist injustices and stopped Tony’s violence that helped him out. Does the non-violence principle remind you of anything? Yeah! The non-violence principle comes from the Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King. Dr. King and Shirley are both know that violence is not the solution. Many people’s prejudice stems from the stereotypes of the black community. If they embrace the violence, the black community will be marked as mobs. Violence may cause bigger violence and much more prejudice to the black community.

The creator is clever that highlights the suffering and injuries of the black community under the segregation and injustice from the perspective of black people with high social status, which implies the comprehensiveness of discrimination. Meanwhile, the creator wants us to listen to or understand the black community’s voice instead of following the stereotype of the black people and resist them, by observing the attitude change process of Tony to Shirley.

The book I chose to review is The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. What really stood out to me about this book, compared to other young adult fantasy books, was the protagonist, Elloren Gardner, and her character arc. This book has your basic young adult plot where the main character sparks some sort of revolution or fights back against the established government. Elloren is the granddaughter of the last prophesied Black Witch who held immense power and helped protect the Gardnerian people. This book contains several fantasy races, the Garderian people essentially having the most power and also being the most bigoted against other races. They were the One and everyone else were the Other.

This book has your basic young adult plot where the main character sparks some sort of revolution or fights back against the established government, but she had the most astounding and very realistic transition and transformation. Elloren Gardner had only ever been around Gardnerians and she had lived her life in a position of power and advantage. Therefore, she had the privilege of being ignorant to her society’s ever growing problems, despite her overall good intentions. However, once she begins to attend a prestigious university in the capital where people from all types of different fantasy races learned, she experiences racial tension and witnesses real discrimination. She then goes through this very realistic amount of growth where she learns to educate herself and break outside of her own echo chamber. By the end, she becomes this self aware activist who uses her privilege and power to help those who don’t. After reading it, I felt it was extremely relevant and fitting to today’s political climate. Even if this was a work of fantasy and fiction with fake peoples and races, the racist and discriminatory ideologies and workings were the same and I feel that the readers, including myself, could learn a thing or two from her transformation. This book is a little controversial and the author received a bit of backlash from it because people thought she condoned these racist ideologies. However, it doesn’t make any sense to me because she wrote about very real problems that our own society has. The world she created isn’t a utopia, just like how our own world is far from one too, and she purposefully had it reflect our own society, and quite accurately I would say. I think the author wanted us to rethink our own journeys of learning and changing the way we think about the world around us and the people and cultures we encounter. I certainly did since I resonated deeply with Elloren and her journey to discover her own power and privilege and what she could constructively do with it. It was a reminder for myself to check my own privilege and I’m sure was a reminder for other readers as well.

“People see what they expect to see […] through a filter of their own hatred and prejudice.”
                                                                                 – The Black Witch 

The Good Place is a television series that aired for a total of four seasons from 2016 to 2020. In this review, I want to focus on season number one of the series as it is the best season for the relationships between characters being formed. The plot of the show is focused around a group of six characters, four of which ended up passing away on earth, and have moved on to “The Good Place”. After passing away, each character is awakened in “The Good Place”, and is given a life which uses their favorite things, and creates a dream world for the character. Although this is what the creators of the place said, the place was actually created to torture the characters and drive them insane. Each character is put into this so-called “Good Place” and must work together to be sent to the actual good place, rather than being in the bad place. During season one, the characters consisted of a white woman, black man, Indian woman, and hispanic man. This created an intriguing aspect of diversity for the show. The producers were able create a great representation of how people from different backgrounds can work well together towards a common goal. Although they each came from different backgrounds, they were committed to learning about each other during season one, that way they would have a bond. This bond was crucial in order to achieve the goal of getting to the actual good place, and it wouldn’t have been possible without accepting each other for who they are, and having an open mind. I believe that the goal of the producers was to show the audience how working together is the answer to achieving your goals, because if it wasn’t for their commitment to work together during season one, they would have never achieved what they did. Overall, The Good Place is a fantastic television series if you’re looking for entertainment with team building, diversity, and comedy. I strongly recommend it to all of you, as the deeper meaning in the episodes make it a must watch.

Yumu Huo

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie directed by Frank Darabont in 1994. It is one of my favorite movies. In the film, Shawshank was accused of murdering his wife and her lover and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Others in prison bullied him, but he got to know Redding, his one and an only friend there. His financial talent was discovered by the warden and was forced to help him evading tax. When he finally found someone who could witness his case to prove his innocence, the person was murdered by the warden to keep him in prison. After years of planning, he finally escaped by using a little hammer digging through the wall with a poster covering the hole in case of getting caught.
Injustice scenes can be found anywhere in this film: the bad was not punished. They get right when they do bad. But the good had to suffer. When the warden killed the possible witness to prevent Shawshank from getting out, he used his power in a paltry way to maintain what he had.
I think the term subaltern can be used on Shawshank. No one listened or believed him. Furthermore, he was abused and used by the bad. Although people always feel sorry for putting an innocent man in jail, people are unwilling to spend time helping them overthrow a case. One and Other can also be used in courts. The judges consider themselves as One, and the suspects are the Other. They have hostility against each other, especially when the suspects are innocent but sentenced.
I think what the film was trying to tell us can be summarized in a film line. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” When you encounter injustice, do fight back.

Black-ish is a television series about an upper middle class black family living in an all white neighborhood while trying to keep their black culture alive. The show follows Dre Johnson, father of four and husband, who has a high paying job as an advertising executive in a predominantly white workplace. However the show examines how Dre’s successes cause him to wonder if he and his family have adjusted to be less proud about their black culture in order to have the same opportunities as the white community.

In an episode from the series titled “Sink or Swim” Dre notices that his neighbor across the street has been hosting pool parties every weekend for the neighborhood but, the Johnson are never invited. Being the only black family in the neighborhood, Dre believes that his family is not invited because their neighbor thinks they cannot swim, following the stereotype that black people cannot swim. The neighbor shares that the real reason was that she thought Dre hated her. During their conversation, she seemed hesitant and uncomfortable to talk with him, asking who he was and telling her husband to “stand down” with his gun after Dre reminds her they are neighbors. After this conversation she then calls Dre her “homie” and begins to change her tone toward Dre and begins changing her personality to be like a “typical” black person’s.

All the while Dre’s two twin children, Jack and Diane are signed up to join Boy Scout and Girl Scouts by Dre’s mother, their grandmother. She believes that the children must learn their place and gain necessary life skills as a young woman and man. In both programs Jack is taught survival skills while Diane learns how to cook. As their grandmother is enforcing such stereotypes onto the children, Jack discovers his passion for cooking and Diane quickly understands how to tie different types of knots. This portion of the episode shows the main ideas de Beauvoir critiques in her “The Second Sex” as she defines men as the One and women as the Other. Their grandmother represents the stereotypes the audience can assume she was taught when growing up.

This episode of Black-ish displays two different forms of injustice in a modern day setting. Though, the Johnsons were not excluded because of the stereotype that they cannot swim, the neighbor still held some form of a stereotype by changing her attitude to align with how she imagined a black person’s personality would be when speaking with a friend. Also, the grandmother attempts to enforce gender stereotypes on her grandchildren because she believes this will better prepare them for life’s expectations. Though, Jack and Diane separate themselves from the One and Other as they each enjoy activities that gender traditions would not allow them to do. Such relevant situations such as these truly demonstrate that racial and gender inequality still occur in today’s setting.