Publish 2nd Blogging Entry and Comment —a close reading of a poem or short story from The New Negro that illuminates something from one of the stories in The Warmth of Other Suns
The Things They Left Behind, on page 239 reminded me of the poem by Claude McKay The Tropics in New York.
I thought it was interesting that southern people made clubs of the state or city that they left behind because it was more a regional association rather than just a general area. I think however that this is rings true for all immigrants that come form another country that can often times be overlooked by others.
Along comparison lines though I found allot of similarities between this story that highlighted how a longing for home is often triggered by the slightest thing, like a flower or smell. Similarly the poem by McKay evokes a longing and memory that is triggered by fruit in a store window. In both cases the person seems to pause their daily routine and returns to a blissful aspect of their past life that causes them to savor the part of them that they cannot recreate in their new location and new life in the North.
I also found it interesting that in longing to live where they lived before or to be "home" they readily imply or explicitly state that they would not be in the North if they had half the better treatment in the South that they did in the North. There seems to be this eternal loyalty to a place regardless of the ugliness that it may have inflicted on their life. I found it so interesting that the longing for a lifestyle was so strong that one rather give up half the humane civility with which they are treated with in the North.
As a 1st generation Mexican-American I used to wonder what about Mexico would anyone miss, much like the people in the north must have wondered about southerners. What draws these immigrants to long for a lifestyle that seems so remote and slow. However now that I am older I cannot help but empathize with my elders and wonder how they can have lived so long without returning to their motherland, to their hometown. I wonder how they could stand those strong yearnings and tiniest reminders of what they hold so dear. I cannot help but think that Claude Mckay's words ring true for anyone who has ever left their motherland only by will to survive and nothing more, "And, hungry for the old familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept"
Melissa you bring up a lot of excellent points here. I think you illustrate well the very deep connection that African American people had with the south no matter their experience. From our own point of view it may be hard to understand why these African American people could still miss the north after all the turmoil they had been through. You do an excellent job of explaining how this can happen. You talked about how this same yearning exists in the Mexican American culture, this same yearning to go back to one's origins. This is such an important point because so often African American people during this time were painted as docile and slow, but in this post you show just how complex the feelings of African Americans were about their experience in the south. It was hard, extremely hard but their did not take it for granted. This is excellent Melissa!
ReplyDelete