Voices of Reason and Morality in Timeless Classics
I was lucky to grow up in a time and place where Eurasians were fairly ubiquitous. Thus, I was always more fascinated by books and movies featuring strong black women as voices of reason and morality. For example, in Wide Sargasso Sea, a former slave cautions a high-strung woman of privilege by saying, "you can't force people to feel a certain way. You can't make someone love you." In other books, black women reinforce the meaning of class as defined by how one treats others as opposed to indelible characteristics or wealth. Quadroons and Octaroons, people of mixed black heritage, are timeless characters in classical works of literature. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans , and The Conjure Woman by Charles W. Chesnutt are a few examples. A popular theme is a woman passing for white, but then due to circumstances such as a father brought to financial ruin or death, is sold into slavery. This plot-line resonat