The writer uses the image of blackness to convey conflicting ideas. Blackness thought out the story is presented as erasure and annihilation, but on the other hand blackness is also presented as an image of rebirth and renewal. “Blackness” probes blackness, or darkness, as a postcolonial racialized identity category and metaphysical definition. The narrative voice exchanges from being to nonbeing, from self to others, from subjects to protests. "Blackness" investigates the alterrains of personality and being, loss of character, loss of identity, or “the small shafts that fall with desperation in between”(48) Thus throughout the story the narrative, blackness is confused with oppositional thinking by breaking down binaries and bring opposites together.
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Throughout our black history, blackness has been placed in direct opposition to whiteness. The first paragraph is talking about slavery, exploitation and bondages. She clarifies how she has been eradicated in the blackness and what this causes: “I can no longer say my own name. I can no longer point to myself and say ‘I’. In the blackness, my voice is silent” (p.362). Her powerlessness to convey herself and to be an "I" is a reference to what imperialism and prejudice result in. Her challenging, however silent voice is the voice of her people and how they
Throughout our black history, blackness has been placed in direct opposition to whiteness. The first paragraph is talking about slavery, exploitation and bondages. She clarifies how she has been eradicated in the blackness and what this causes: “I can no longer say my own name. I can no longer point to myself and say ‘I’. In the blackness, my voice is silent” (p.362). Her powerlessness to convey herself and to be an "I" is a reference to what imperialism and prejudice result in. Her challenging, however silent voice is the voice of her people and how they