violet history as fiction

 The complexities of Kindred: Dana and the reader’s relationship to Rufus      Kindred by Octavia Butler attempts to add nuance to a commonly understood topic in U.S. history: slavery. Now taught in most if not all U.S. History classes, everyone has their own understanding of slavery, and how brutal its conditions were. However, most of these histories are focussed on a broader view, understanding the “system” more so than the individuals and their emotions. Kindred provides a unique perspective, forcing a woman  with modern values to interact with and react to the world of antebellum slavery.       Many of the nuances in Kindred come from Dana’s relationship with Rufus. She has seen him as an innocent child before he has a chance to be influenced by his father and the system of slavery. Dana’s understanding of Rufus is vague as she watches him grow up through only a few glimpses of moments in history before she has to save him from being kil...

In Mumbo Jumbo, it's no secret that Ishmael Reed goes absolutely ham with the ideas of postmodernism. The whole concept of the novel is an Afrocentric history that explains the jazz age and its popularity. On top of that, everything about Mumbo Jumbo rejects the typically accepted ideas of novels, history, and music: the metanarratives we base our lives around. The unusual formatting with chapter one coming before the title page, extremely varied chapter lengths, first person footnotes, and even two of the same number chapter is certainly jarring at first. At least for me, I thought, “what’s wrong with this Ishmael Reed guy, anyways?! Just write a normal novel!” but that’s kind of his point: There’s no one correct way to write a novel or understand history, and, from a postmodernist’s perspective, his narrative is just as valid as anyone else’s. The first metanarrative flipped on its head by Reed is religion. With approximately 62% of people in the US being some form of christian, ...

                 When I first signed up to take the class History as FIction, I didn’t quite realize how much history would be involved in even the first book we read this semester. I had read some historical fiction novels before, but they largely just used history as a setting for a story that was unrelated, hardly ever involving real historical figures in the narrative. The way Doctorow manipulates historical figures in a way that technically can’t be disproven really grabbed my attention and made me think about how much reality is in actual history.  At the start of Ragtime , we are immediately thrown into a world where the author manipulates historical figures. Houdini’s spontaneous appearance after the little boy’s extreme interest in him is mentioned, is a flaunting of Doctorow’s narrative abilities. The way he is humanized by his description is a good introduction to the casual way Doctorow treats historical figures, “he sur...