Throughout White Boy Shuffle, we see references to several other types of people that are not solely on the Anglo-Saxon American white and the African-American black. I'm going to talk a bit about the two most prominent ones that I have noticed in the book: Jewish and Japanese. Those two have come up several times in the book, and Beatty has a surprising amount of references to aspects of culture and history involving those two groups.
I'll start with the Jewish references. Most of these references are in conjunction with WWII era events, with Gunnar talking about WWII Germany with one of his Jewish friends. Although this part of the theory is not super concrete because I don't know a vast amount about Judism and the events surrounding the Jewish people, I think I can say some things generally from what I know about history. Since the Jewish people were often seen as scapegoats for bad times, they were often blamed and persecuted throughout history. Beatty could be trying to make an association about oppression here with African Americans and Jewish people, but ever since Gunnar left his first school I haven't seen any other allusions to this theme.
The next part I want to talk about is Beatty's use of a lot of Japanese things. When I say a lot here I mean that he uses way more than I have seen in any book that isn't directly about Japan. The Gun Totin' Hooligan's meeting is described as "not as formal as a Japanese Tea ceremony". The coach Motome Shimimoto practices ukiyo-e art derived from Hokusai, which was a reference I was really surprised to see (Hokusai is the guy who made the Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji which includes that one really famous wave painting that I'm pretty sure everyone has seen:)
Gunnar even marries Yoshiko Katsu from Japan in chapter nine (spoilers for those of you not doing the reading). The Japanese that Beatty puts in there is mostly correct (there are a few misspellings I've seen but they're all from Gunnar so it would make some sense). Setting wise having so much Japanese culture would make sense. They are in Los Angeles, California, where a lot of Japanese settled after immigrating to America. This amount of association is weird for a African-American novel though, as I don't think there's a lot of similarities between the two in America. There was the internment camps during WWII for the Japanese, so that could be a line of similar oppression there, but African-American oppression has carried on for way longer. It could just be that Beatty is using the references as a setting piece or that Beatty just want to have nods to another culture.
I'll start with the Jewish references. Most of these references are in conjunction with WWII era events, with Gunnar talking about WWII Germany with one of his Jewish friends. Although this part of the theory is not super concrete because I don't know a vast amount about Judism and the events surrounding the Jewish people, I think I can say some things generally from what I know about history. Since the Jewish people were often seen as scapegoats for bad times, they were often blamed and persecuted throughout history. Beatty could be trying to make an association about oppression here with African Americans and Jewish people, but ever since Gunnar left his first school I haven't seen any other allusions to this theme.
The next part I want to talk about is Beatty's use of a lot of Japanese things. When I say a lot here I mean that he uses way more than I have seen in any book that isn't directly about Japan. The Gun Totin' Hooligan's meeting is described as "not as formal as a Japanese Tea ceremony". The coach Motome Shimimoto practices ukiyo-e art derived from Hokusai, which was a reference I was really surprised to see (Hokusai is the guy who made the Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji which includes that one really famous wave painting that I'm pretty sure everyone has seen:)
Gunnar even marries Yoshiko Katsu from Japan in chapter nine (spoilers for those of you not doing the reading). The Japanese that Beatty puts in there is mostly correct (there are a few misspellings I've seen but they're all from Gunnar so it would make some sense). Setting wise having so much Japanese culture would make sense. They are in Los Angeles, California, where a lot of Japanese settled after immigrating to America. This amount of association is weird for a African-American novel though, as I don't think there's a lot of similarities between the two in America. There was the internment camps during WWII for the Japanese, so that could be a line of similar oppression there, but African-American oppression has carried on for way longer. It could just be that Beatty is using the references as a setting piece or that Beatty just want to have nods to another culture.
Nice Post. I have spent a lot of time thinking about Beatty's references to other cultures and I came to a similar conclusion. I also thought the female characters in the book were pretty interesting. They don't seem to play super huge roles, but they also don't all necessarily fit stereotypes and some of the situations in the book (like the coed sports teams and the description of the whole mailed bride situation) seem to indicate some kind of recognition of feminist issues. In the end I think Beatty definitely wanted to address more issues than just racism against African Americans, but he also wanted to focus on racism against African Americans (and probably wanted to finish the book) so maybe that explains the mix of social issues.
ReplyDeleteNice post. After ~5 minutes of Googling (not extensive), I don't think Paul Beatty had any heavy connections with either Jewish or Japanese communities in his life while writing The White Boy Shuffle, so I think it's safe to say those references are intentional. As to why he included those references, I think he just wanted to tip his hat to other marginalized groups in America. This is just one of another serious undertone to The White Boy Shuffle, and I think should be appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to point out how incredibly funny that David the Jewish guy gets really excited about WWII airplanes and stuff like that, considering that Jews were probably among the most heavily persecuted group in that war.