Martin's Af-Am Lit Blog

One of the central themes of Sorry to Bother You is white voice. The white voice is first introduced to the film when Danny Glover, playing another black telemarketer, Langston, tells him that he won't find success if he doesn't use his white voice. The white voice is voiced by white comedian David Cross who uses his Burberry-Vineyard-Vines-MildisSpicy style voice to create the most stereotypical voice possible. Cassius rises to Regal View fame with is his success as we see through the epic, hell yeah, alright, that's tight high-five montage between Cassius and his semi-crazy manager. With his white-voice, it drives down the point that success is brought through racial status. A customer speaking to a telemarketer has no idea what the other person across the line looks like, but only know what they sound like and therefore that's their only judgment and if they're white then they must be better and more "legitimate". The connection between success and th

After finishing white boy shuffle I passed it on to my grandmother who has been visiting from England. I told her that it was written by an African-American Author because it was from by African-American Literature class as expected she said she hadn't read any novels written by African-American authors. A few days later I asked her what she thought of the book while she was halfway through the book, she said she liked it but felt uncomfortable with some of the parts of the book. I asked what made her uncomfortable and she said that the underlying story was off. It was like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", a movie where a man ages backward. For White Boy Shuffle the life of the narrator should, in a perfect world go like this, Gunnar starts in the "hood", does well in basketball, gets good grades, goes to college, and become successful like a white person, but instead it starts with Gunnar being successful in a white environment and ends with Gunnar not be