Worksheet 18
Worksheet 18
SUS up to ch. 8: Tracing Racism in the Novel’s World
Unlike 13th, Sing, Unburied, Sing isn’t centrally about the reinvention of new forms of racial oppression from slavery to the era of “law and order” politics. But it is a novel that will constantly remind us, in both big and small ways, that racism and criminalization shape the world that its characters inhabit, and has done so for generations. Thus the story that was at the center of the documentary 13th forms a kind of background reality in this novel, and the novel will be centrally interested in exploring how that background—the daily fact of living in an environment, including especially a criminal justice system, that is colored by racism—affects this Black family, and how their experiences of racism shapes each of them differently.
For this worksheet, please complete the following steps. Instead of uploading this worksheet to Blackboard, please have it to hand when you attend your TA section, and be prepared to provide your answers to these 4 questions (particularly the last one) during discussion. Your grade for this worksheet will be determined by the quality of your contributions to discussion, including the quality of your thesis statement (Q4 below).
First please look back at Pop’s accounts of going to prison c. 1960. We get his reminiscences on pp. 17-19, 21-25, 68-69, 75-77, 119-122, 126.
1) Please identify 2 quotes/details from these pages that indicate the influence of racism on Pop’s experience.
2) Please identify 2 quotes/details from these pages that point to a similarity between Pop’s experiences at Parchman and the experience of slavery—where/how does the novel’s description of Parchman suggest a continuity between slavery and incarceration?
Now please think about Leonie’s account of being friends with Misty, and of collaborating with Misty on Misty’s plan cover the cost of their road trip to Parchman by picking up meth to resell. Look at Leonie’s internal reaction to Misty’s phrase “you better take advantage” at the start of chapter 4: why does Leonie think Misty’s phrase proves “it’s been easier for her”? Why does the phrase make Leonie want to slap Misty? Now please answer the following question:
3) In about 2 sentences please explain: why does the fact that Misty has it “easier” matter so much to Leonie in this moment—the moment in which Leonie is watching Misty hide a package of Meth in the car? What does Leonie’s apprehension tell us about her sense of how the criminal justice system works?
Finally, thinking across the quotes you’ve gathered about Pop’s experience of the criminal justice system in the 1960s (during Jim Crow) and your reflections on Leonie’s sense of the criminal justice system in the early 2000s (the era of mass incarceration):
4) Please write a thesis claim (1-2 sentences) on the following topic: how does Sing, Unburied, Sing ask us to understand the relation of America’s racial past to its racial present?