One of the most attention grabbing aspects of Gunnar’s Boston University experience, were the white students and professor that Gunnar interacts with. Gunnar’s first class is a poetry workshop, and the students must stand and introduce themselves to the class. The first few students are obviously accomplished, but have a slightly obnoxious way of speaking and presenting themselves. Their depictions somewhat parallel the arrogance of the students at El Campensino Real High and Gunnar is consistent in not being afraid to challenge things he disagrees with, as he has throughout the novel. When Gunnar eventually introduces himself, the professor and class are instantly stunned. “(...) I never dreamed you'd take my class.” Then Sylvia Plath shows him a collection of his poetry called Ghettotopia: An Anthropological Rending of the Ghetto through the Street Poems of an Unknown Street Poet Named Gunnar Kaufman. Gunnar immediately questions what “street poet” is supposed to mean. To them it can't just be poetry, it was written by a black boy from a lower income, racially segregated area in a larger city; it must be street poetry. It's an outside looking in perspective, and to them it's just cool to observe a culture completely different from their own. The next scene is one of the most absurd instances of cultural appropriation I’ve read. A blond, white woman with cornrows (because they name her feel powerful) named Negritude. As this is the first post Civil Rights Movement novel we've read, this is the first real experience with cultural appropriation we've encountered. Previous books have had minstrel show references and implications, but during the overtly racist segregation era the sole purpose behind it was to belittle black life and black people. The White Boy Shuffle takes place in the 1990s, so hip hop and R&B were gaining more and more popularity and celebrities like Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan were extremely prominent figures of American culture at the time. Now it was cool to enjoy or take part in black culture and white people had the bonus of not being black.
When Negritude demonstrates how to “welcome home an Ashanti warrior returned from the hunt with a fresh kill.”, Gunnar decides he's enough and dashes out of the room, only to be followed home by the class. He gives up his usual bravery and defiance, and for the first time Gunnar just has a sense of hopelessness. Even so called white liberals are completely ignorant and useless to progress. This sense of hopelessness is only fostered by the subsequent events in the story, leading to Gunnar's final mindset and serious contemplation of suicide.
The creative writing class is a great example of this book's over-the-top brand of satire. The students are portrayed as more than just slightly obnoxious because of their way of speaking and mentioning that they honors when simply introducing themselves to the class. In addition to that is how out-of-touch they come across to Gunnar. This scene addresses white people trying to suck up to black people by assuming things about them based on their race. By addressing this form of racism, we get an idea of why Gunnar feels hopeless.
ReplyDeleteI would disagree with the idea that this is the first time Gunnar has a sense of hopelessness, especially since this scene comes after the Rodney King riots. I would agree however that this scene does add to that hopelessness, since even those who attempt to help him are ultimately contributing to his marginalization.
ReplyDeleteGunnar's (or Beatty's) line about "what the hell is street poetry?" always makes me laugh--he has a similar line about what the hell the phrase "hip-hop generation" is supposed to mean in his later novel, _Slumberland._ This has something to do with the novel's general skepticism toward categorization and imposed identity, but at the same time, I kind of want to defend the term: his poems, at this point, are literally spraypainted on city walls, and that's the only way they're "published." We know that residents of Hillside all seem to be reading them and responding strongly (his first poem is already well-known by the next time he's at the park for basketball), so he clearly has "street cred." What else should we call this but "street poetry"?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Emma, the character Negritude is the opitomy of white liberals reaction to Gunnar's poetry. And him being from the "Street" (although his language and sentiments are refined and really academically advanced), the whole class put him in a box. How could this not lead to a sense of hopelessness/depression. There seemed to be this theme throughuot the whole book, but this one was especially "SMH"
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