Ethnic Literary Analysis

Paper Summary:

This article discusses two works containing either African or African-American themes, Aphra Behn's novel 'Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave' (1633) and Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me" (1928). The writer notes that when compared against one another, they reveal considerable differences in the perspectives of their authors: In the first case, a 17th century white Englishwoman; and in the second, a late 19th and early 20th century African-American woman folklorist descended from slaves. In this essay, using African American and ethnic literary analysis of both works, the writer explores and analyzes similarities and distinctions in the ways that both authors deal with the subjects of American or African-American identity and black-white relationships, within their respective literary works.

From the Paper:

"Other key characters in the novel, again drawn from an obviously white European narrative perspective, include Oroonoko's treacherous grandfather the King of the tribe, who also lusts after his grandson's love interest Imoinda, thereby reinforcing two familiar African stereotypes: overweening lust and inter-tribal rivalry and treachery, even against one's own flesh and blood. Within Aphra Behn's portrait of the African environment inhabited at first by Oroonoko and Imoinda, then, family ties are brittle, and being sold into slavery is, by implication, less heart-rending than it might be for those with stronger family ties."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave. Joanna Lipking, (Ed.). New York: Norton, 1997. 13.
• Holmesland, Oddvar. "Aphra Behn's Oroonoko : Cultural Dialectics and the Novel" ELH 68(1). Spring 2001. 57-79.
• Hurston, Zora Neale. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" [full online text]. 1928. Zora Neale Hurston's Self-Introduction. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from: <http://people.whitman.edu/~hashimiy /zora.htm>.
• "Zora Neale Hurston." Wikipedia. March 29, 2006. Retrieved March 30, 2006, from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale _Hurston.html>.

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