The Sea is Haunted. The Sea is Home. The Sea is Healing.

Jermircle Gay  Jaleesa Harris  ENGL 2016-44378  17 November 2022  The Traumatic Impact of Slavery  Slavery began simply because many Europeans needed laborers for cheap; it’s as simple as that, from the 16th to 19th century, Europeans traded across the Atlantic Ocean for goods, which became known as the transatlantic slave trade. The transatlantic slave trade was a global slave trade that transported millions of African Americans across the Atlantic Ocean and was the second of the three stages of the triangular trade, which is the trading between three ports across the Atlantic ocean. The transatlantic slave trade played a huge part in the traumatic impact of slavery on generations to come, which brings me to the topic of The Interesting Narrative of Equiano. The Interesting Narrative of Equiano is about the story of Olaudah Equiano, a writer, abolitionist and victim of the transatlantic slave trade. Equiano and his sister were kidnapped from their Igbo village ...

  Vantasia Franklin Ms. Harris  ENGL2016-44378 17 November 2022                                               Generational Curses and Affects  Will generational curses ever end?  Generational curses are a sin or ancestral faults passed down from generation to generation.  African Americans have these curses because they were unable to make a change. They were hanged because of their actions when they tried to make a difference. When will we stop giving them what they want? They like to see us divided because together, we conquer, and  that is  what they fear the most. For years, African Americans have been torn down mentally, emotionally, and physically. African Americans feel less than others. They were physically abused by w...

  Laila Cooper Cameron Dr. Harris African American Lit 2016 17 November 2022 I Am Not Your Slave My final development for this project is to create a visual aspect of enslaved African Americans suffering from generation to generation. I will also show through my project the emotional damage of not having a true identity mentally affected the enslaved. I will use what I read so far throughout the semester to gather pictures and examples of my ideas. I would like to recreate a vision showing how babies are raised in slavery and their life stages as they grow in slavery. I will also include quotes from the text “Homegoing” to show that some African Americans still tried to remain strong even though they were completely broken inside.  Living was one of the many hard task slaves endured. Just being able to wake up the next day was a blessing for many. Most slaves had to remain strong all while having a stable mindset. The novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi provides many examples of th...

  Elaine’ Armstead ENGL 2016 Harris 17 November 2022 The Breaking Down of Solace and Repression of Today’s World        During this course, we have read many short stories to better understand the topics. While being in this course and breaking down every reading, all of them had many similarities. Our class theme was “The Sea is Haunted” this meaning to understand the true definition of Black Gothic, which correlates with home, hauntings, as well as the healing process. To remember these bold topics, two readings stood out the most, and they were “In the Wake” and Homegoing .  These short stories strongly connected with how Black Gothic and repression reflect slavery today.              In reading Homegoing , it talked about going back to the solace. An example of solace when Yaa explains how her family passes through unnecessary deaths and sacrifices that our ancestors made can n...

Eric Beamer Ms. Harris ENGL2016-44378 November 10, 2022 Darker the Berry, Harsher the Society      Throughout the course, many of the works that we read touched on the topic of colorism which is a real issue in this country. Every time one of the works touches on skin tone, especially in  Homegoing, black individuals with lighter skin tones were often time treated better than those with darker skin. Many characters saw this as a sign that the closer their skin color is to their “masters,” the better treatment they would receive. Before the slave trade, many Africans didn’t have this type of ideology which could easily be connected to assimilation. Throughout the history of White American colonization, often these colonizers would erase the culture of Africans and even Native Americans. Assimilation is also one of the main things that happen throughout the works, eventually leading to the colorism that many black people experience within their community. An example o...

  Richard Grant II Ms. Harris Engl 2016-44378 14 November 2022 Playlist Lil Baby: “The Bigger Picture” This song represents black gothic by expressing how black people are in distress from police brutality. Lil Baby made the song shortly after George Floyd's death, bringing attention to the oppression that has been occurring for 100+ years. Lil Baby says, “We aint taking no more, let us go from them chains. I see blue lights, I get scared and start running.” He also says, “They been killing us for no reason, being going on for too long to get even.” That statement gave a sense of fear and death to black people. 50 Cent: “Big Rich Town” This song represents black gothic by alluding to the oppression of black people living in big cities and making financial obligations met. 50 Cent says, “They say this is a big rich town, and I just come from the poorest part, Legal or illegal I gotta make it.” This song also presents a supernatural feeling from inexplicable events. 50 Cent says, “Ho...

  African American women suffered more. Trace Gordon  Ms. Harris ENGL2016-44378 11/16/22 In this course, we learned about black gothic; a major part of our class theme is the house is haunted, and some specific themes that stuck out to me were racial and sexual violence. This made me think about the horrors African American women experienced in slavery and how they get treated today. Black women had to worry about getting raped, while black men did not. Women had the chance to work in the house with the enslaver’s family, which gave white men more opportunities to manipulate them. Today, African American women are discriminated against, are more likely to be single parents, and face more health disparities than white women.  I chose to use Homegoing and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano to pull examples from, seeing as they had many instances to choose from. In Equiano, he sees many atrocities and one of the first that stuck out to me was when h...