Author: Hussna

After having a close look  at “Professor Medford’s lecture on video”, it quite  didn’t effect my views on  Wilentz but it did make me think more deeper about Hannah Jones’ writing in the “The 1619 Project”. In Hannah Jones, she mentions Thomas Jefferson and James Madison accountable for their actions in the wrong treatment of African Americans. Also makes a statement that the proclamation he allowed ex slaves to join the union army and fight against their former owners. Hannah Jones, she mentions, “He believed that free black people were a ‘‘troublesome presence’’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people”. In this part of her writing piece, she also involves  Lincoln’s actions to bring in the former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This wasn’t sufficient enough. A question rises up “Why would President Lincoln insist in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Already knowing about this, it also me was mentioned in Professor Medford’s video where she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She also then says “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. According to me , I believe that  he was very dismayed in what America has become and he knew that even, the time of African Americans was still being treated wrongly within America but he wanted to make sure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.

In the novel “Drown” I’ve start to notice that there are more than one themes present throughout the chapters. One of the theme I noticed is Sexuality and Masculinity –As a young man, Yunior learns by example. He often compares himself to both his father and Beto, highlighting the masculine traits of theirs that he most admires and even fears. The lessons he learns from his everyday interactions with these two men show that Yunior has a somewhat inflexible, performative, and often destructive concept of what it means to be a man. Also the theme Victim vs. Doer, this comes in when discussing about the mother and father relationship. Despite the father leaving to the U.S. and starting a new life, leaving behind the mother who is raising two boys on her own, in her home country. In this case, the mother is the victim,  because Yunior’s father is having an affair with another woman, even tho his sons were aware of it. Besides that, the idea of Dominant vs. submissive is very common between each character throughout the chapters. One example Rafa and Yunior have different personalities, which makes Rafa completely dominant because he lacks emotional compassion for Yunior. Another, theme was presented as oppressed vs. oppressive. This theme is shown when it comes to the complicated relationship between Yunior and his father. Yunior’s father is pretty absent in quite the first few years of his son’s life and even when the family reunites in America, it still seems as if they are strangers. Yunior doesn’t receive any type of affection from his father and often gets threatened for eating but never receives any type of confirmation that his father actually cares for him.