Mojo: Conjure Stories - Heartspace

Heartspace Questions

1.     The short story was about a son, Cal, who was called by his sister, Bebe, to see his dying father. The son has not seen his father for 14 years since his father said some bad things to him when finding out that Cal was gay. Arriving at the airport, Cal’s sister picks him up and takes him to see his father. He meets his father’s newest bride, Monique, who is from Saint Simons, one of the islands off the Georgia coast. Bebe believes that Monique is only with her father for his money since he is very well off. Cal speaks with his father and his father is very kind to him and apologizes for the way he reacted to him being gay. Cal leaves feeling better and says he will be back in six weeks.  On the way out Monique will not allow the siblings to touch their father? When they take a picture with their father, his eyes do not even react to the camera flash. This raises a few signals in Cal’s head and right before boarding his flight he decided in a bit of rage to go and see what Monique is up to with his father. When arriving back at his father’s mansion, Cal burst in and throws Monique out of the way. He goes in to see his father and hug him. Cal realizes his father is cold, has no pulse, and has stitching around his chest and heart area. Cal realizes his father is dead and Monique is keeping him alive with some type of African hoodoo ritual. Somehow she has trapped his last breath and his heart in her sacred vases and found a way to keep him alive. Finally Cal tells Monique to give his sister half the inheritance she was promised and that she would not bother her anymore. Cal wants nothing and leaves to catch a flight home to Portland. He realizes as he boards the flight that his father is dead to him.

2.      

3.     A. Setting Place- Los Angeles, CA.   

B.     Setting Time - Post Sept. 11 (9/11 attacks) L.A. County

C.     POV – 1^st Person (single narrator)

D.    Protagonist – Calvin

E.     Antagonist – His fathers acceptance and love (also can be Monique)

F.     Calvin – Main Character, gay, middle aged, a son going to see dying father

Bebe – Cal’s Sister, married a few times, mother, does not trust Monique      with her father.

Monique – Father’s wife, from Saint Simons, practices African hoodoo or some sort of witchcraft, the conjure woman

Father – Dying (dead), businessman, bad father, regretful

4.     The conjure woman – Monique – Conjuring was a form of magic rooted in African hoodoo, a witch craft of some sort, or voodoo practice.

AA Motifs the conjure woman fits in

-       Elements of Black Culture #9

-       Archetypal Characters #6

5.     Conflict – between people. Main conflict is between Cal & Monique

Monique is standing in the way of the relationship between father and son.

6.     Protagonist (Cal) is struggling for his fathers acceptance and love that his father showed him as a child. The Driving Need is to be at peace with his father.

7.     Flashbacks

-Calvin flashbacks to a child hood memory of a happy time with his father in front of his old home that is now trashed. Bottom Pg.52 – Top Pg.53

8.     The type of plot order would be a Linear Chronology. The story is presented in an order of their occurrence in time. The type of plot structure I think would be a traditional 5 part plot structure

9.      

 #7 Archetypal Characters – The conjure woman (Monique)

#9 Elements of Black Culture – African Hoodoo beliefs

#8 Oral Tradition - Pg.57 Slave Narrative, Monique tells story of the Ibo  people on her island that were different than American Slaves.

#16 Remembered Events – Pg.57 Slave Narrative, Monique tells story of the Ibo people on her island that were different than American Slaves.

#10 Family, Home – Seeing his childhood home, remembering the events in front of his childhood home. The house that was a shell of it’s previous self.

10. Theme – love is love

You should not interfere or judge love for what it is.

Mojo is a Must Read!

Mojo; Conjure Stories is a collection of nineteen original stories that explore the perils of magic. Nalo Hopkinson gathered these stories, which combine urban literary awareness with rich lore of African-Caribbean cultures. These stories explore the myths of zombies, voodoo curses, ancient rites of the Ibo, slave ships, Jim Crow’s 20s, and many other entrancing tales.

When I first began to read these stories I could not put the book down. All of the short stories are very easy reads that keep you at the edge of your seat with every written word. Two of my favorite stories would have to be “Heartspace” written by Steven Barnes and “The Prowl” which was written by Gregory Frost. These stories have to do with the dark arts but tend to keep you entranced, they have a sense of reality embedded in a their stories. They make the reader want to believe what is being read and this is why this collections of stories is a must read. I highly recommend Mojo; Conjure Stories.

A Rebel's Yell!

Frankie Lennon’s book, The Mee Street Chronicles, ends Part 1: Mee Street is Memory with a chapter entitled Breaking the Rules. In this Chapter the narrator tells a story of displaying rebelling by wearing inappropriate clothes in high school. The rebellious act does not come without consequence, and is punished following the act. Throughout the chatper the audience is shown the opposing values being displayed as the main conflict.

On one side of the conflict is the Narrator that symbolizes change of the normal tradition and on the other side you have Ms. Clay that symbolizes the normal tradition. The change the Narrator displays in her clothing is an oversized sweater, a short skirt, long black socks, a rap around scarf, and dark sunglasses. This clothing style was mimiced from the Beatniks, who she idiolized. On the other side Mrs. Clay dressed appropriate and represented normalty, the folowing of rules, and the respectable way to present your self in the 1950’s.

Era and geographic location definitly played a part in the socially acceptable normalcy that is expressed in this chapter. The south I believe was always more conservative than places like New York or Los Angeles, where this style of attire may have been more accepted.  Also in the 1950’s clothing was also more conservative than in the 1960’s, when hippies began to change what was considered normal attire.

The school’s values and society as a whole also represent a conflict against change. Schools have rules which are set in place to make sure all students look presentable and society as a whole have specific social standards that they expect everyone to abide by. These rules are set in place because it is what society finds acceptable. Change is never accepted but sometimes if enough people change, it will in turn change what is accepted.

The Beatniks in the story represent change, they were idols to many young teenagers who wanted to dress and act as there idols did.  Youth is another force that drives changes to be made. Young teenagers are constantly fighting for popularity, and in Breaking the Rules, dressing bad was seen as popular. This demonstrates why growing up is always about values in conflict. A person can make many turns in life, some may not be as accepted as others, and values will end up clashing in the end. Who am I though to tell another person that my values are superior to theres?

Adversaries & The Code

Adversaries

Motif 10 # Family, Home, Community, Traditions

1.     The Square – represents a community tradition where the children play.

2.     Austin Home Projects – represent Home

3.     Auntie – represents family

4.      Grandma memory – represents family

Setting: Austin Home Projects, Aunties house

Antagonist: Frankie’s Auntie

Protagonist: Little Frankie Lennon

Main Conflict: Between People (Frankie vs Auntie) She has conflicting feeling about who her Auntie is. If she is mean or good.

Narrator’s Values: Values her Mothers and Fathers feeling. Also values her playtime.

Antagonists Values: Values a strong person. Values family.

The Code

Motif 10 # Family, Home, Community, Traditions

1.     The Code – Traditions & Community

2.     Her Aunts - Family

Setting: Austin Home Projects

Antagonist: Aunt Helen

Protagonist: Little Frankie Lennon

Main Conflict: Between people (Frankie vs Aunt Helen)

Between a person and a force (Frankie vs The Code)

Narrator’s Values: Family & The Code. She does not want to go against the code and embarrass her mother.

Antagonists Values: Cooking. Self-interest.

The Help

The Help by Tate Taylor was a great movie that took its audience into the real lives of the black maids who worked for white middle class families in 1960’s Mississippi. The Help was an eye opening film and portrayed how black maids in the south were not even considered equal enough to use the same bathrooms as the whites in the community. A black maid could bring up white children from birth and cook food for everyone in the house but still could not eat in the same kitchen, with the same utensils, or use the same bathrooms.

I also found it interesting that The Help, the book that Skeeter is writing in the movie was actually illegal at the time due to the Jim Crow laws. The scene with the women running home, when forced off the bus, captures the fear that these women endured from whites. The film is full of scenes that will put you on edge. It is filled with serious issues and followed by great laughs. It will teach the viewer a bit of history that is not taught in schools. The Help was truly a great film and I recommend that everyone watch the film at least once.

The Shopkeeper

In the 1997 film Rosewood written by John Singleton we follow the horrifying story of the small city Rosewood and its residence, a predominantly black community, which was extremely rare for its time. The movie portrays the historical events in which whites lynched dozens of blacks and burned down the city of Rosewood, Florida in 1923 due to a white woman who had claimed to be beaten by a black man. The story takes place during the Jim Crow Era, which was a set of rigid anti-black laws set in place to keep the segregation and oppression of blacks.

            It is important to see that Rosewood was set during this era because it demonstrates the relationship of the Jim Crow laws and the characters in the film. The character I will be discussing from the film is John Wright. His character is stricken with many identity conflicts throughout the movie. He is torn between helping his neighbors, the black citizens of Rosewood, and helping the white lynch mob carry out there own justice. John wright also helps manifest a few African American motifs throughout the film.

            First, what is a motif? A literary motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other literary aspects such as theme or mood.  An African American Motif is a motif that helps the reader understand the literary aspects contributed by African American history. In the film, we see John Wright using the Systems of Oppression motif, primarily Economic Exploitation.

            The Economic Exploitation Motif displays the oppression of blacks by using economic methods. Blacks were kept from becoming wealthy or advancing themselves by means of racial ideologies.  These ideologies were rampant in the early to mid twentieth century and were reinforced by such things as the Jim Crow Laws. Whites resented any economic gains by blacks and lynching became common against blacks that tried to compete economically with whites.

In this film John Wright is a wealthy shop owner in a predominately black town. Wright, his wife and two children are the only white residents of Rosewood. In the film it is apparent that being the only white man in Rosewood, he holds the upmost power.

In the opening scene we discover him abusing his power by having sexual relations with Jewel, who is the black help at the store. This scene demonstrates economic exploitation to the fullest. It shows how a young black woman who is relying on the low wages she may be paid cannot afford to lose her job by refusing to sleep with her boss. It was likely she would be threatened with violence or death if she ever implied that a white man was pursuing her sexually. This is the first of three examples of systems of oppression that John Wright displays in the film.

Another example is seen when John Wright is shown telling a black customer that an item was $3 instead of the usual $1. The extra $2 was due only because the black customer was already in debt with the store. This demonstrates how whites took advantage of blacks that had no other means of purchasing household necessities. It reinforces the oppression of the black citizens because it was nearly impossible for blacks to better advance themselves when their debt was rising higher and higher.  

When the lynch mob begins to start killing the citizens of Rosewood, John Wright displays another example of economic exploitation. In this scene he is torn between hiding a black man in his house that is threatened with death or turning him away. John Wright refuses to let the black man hide in his house until he is offered money. As he takes the man in the house, Wright states that when the violence is done he wants to talk about that deed of land, referring to the land that he was being outbid on by a black man named Mr. Mann earlier that day. I believe this was the largest display of oppression by John Wright. Even when a black man was threatened with death, John Wright still thought about how he could become wealthier at their expense.

In conclusion, throughout the earlier twentieth century in the U.S. there were many examples of Oppression by way of economic exploitation, from share cropping to the everyday purchases blacks made. John Wright was a symbol in the film Rosewood to better illustrate the oppression that blacks endured.