Literature that requires societal attention. Writer: gachura10@gmail.com

1. Based on the pieces of literature that we have read about, we have found
that each one presents a societal problem that requires attention. All
the authors and poets of this artistic works have greatly shown their
skill in showing these societal problems and how they affect the people
in the stories. Social problems refer to issues that negatively affect
the state of being of people in a society; these problems inevitably
affect the society as well. We should all be able to look beyond an
individual as the cause of failure and success and be able to see how the
society of a person affects this outcome. According to American
sociologist C. Wright Mills, people should be able to understand that
extraneous factors affect individual situations. They should also
understand how these factors affect individuals. A large scale point of
view will enable us all to understand how people are affected by history
and social structure. As depicted in some of the works, part of the
reason for the success and failure of individuals are biological, for
example good health, the ability to start a project and finish it and
intelligence. Another part is the families we grow up in, the influence
of our parents, friends and teachers and the social and economic
conditions of our lives. Some of the authors use their work to describe
the life they went through or the lives that people go through in their
normal lives and wish for people to understand and learn from them. But
basically, what I have learnt from these works is that the authors shine
a light on particular social problems. The society faces many problems
and it is up to us to understand these problems in order to deal with
them.
There are three pieces of literature which I find very similar and I will
thus compare and contrast them. These are; Not a Genuine Black Man by
Brian Copeland, Swaddling Clothes by Yukio Mushima and Sweat by Zora
Neale Hurston. From a Marxist point of view, we are able to view these
works as reflections of the social institutions they originate from. This
is similar in all three of these literary works. In Not a Genuine Black
Man, the book tells the story of Brian Copeland childhood life as he grew
up in Lilywhite San Leandro. The book explains how he became a
successful comedian TV and radio personality and a family man. It also
shows the depression he underwent leading to his attempted suicide. He
received a letter accusing him of not being a genuine black man and this
led him to search for answers to questions in his life, one particular
question being “what is a genuine black man?― The book is a vivid
picture of Brian Copeland’s life and reflects on the society from where
comes from.
The short story Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston from a Marxist lens reflects
on the characters of the society. During the time of the writer Zora,
female black female authors were much discriminated. It was historically
recognized that writing was masculine. Women were treated badly and
couldn’t stand on equal ground with men. The Sweat is also a story of a
woman named Delia Jones. Delia is married to a man named Sykes and one
Sunday evening after returning from church Delia begins her week’s work
as a laundry woman for white people. Her husband Sykes, treats her like
garbage. He scares her with a bullwhip across her shoulders knowing very
well of her fear of snakes and kicks her clothes around getting them
dirtier. He tries to torment her mentally and all this he does after
spending the day with his mistress Bertha. This short story just shows
how the men treat the women and the kind of works that black women can

2. acquire in a white man’s world. This coincidentally reflected on the
society from which Zora comes from.
Yukio Mushima’s Swaddling Clothes is a close reflection of the society
from which the writer comes from. In Japan, illegitimate children are
treated with much contempt and rarely have the opportunity to progress in
life as they grow up because people in the society do not respect them.
In the story, Toshiko contemplates the details of the incident she just
witnessed. The nurse whom they had hired to take care of their son had
given birth to an illegitimate child. Her husband however is untroubled
with the turn of events. Toshiko’s husband however, freely chatters
about the situation to his friends as if it was nothing big just some
news for entertainment. She feels alienated because she is the only one
who notices the nurse’s loss of moral values in modern society. She
notices the damage done on the landscape of Japan due to modernization.
She also recognizes the rift between a young boy such as her son born in
a material privileged family and one born in shame and poverty such as
the nurse’s child. The doctor disrespectfully wrapped the baby in
newspaper showing how much contempt there is for illegitimate children.
Through the lens of new historicism, we are able to see that another
thing similar with all three works is that they relate to their context.
What is depicted in these works relates a lot to what is happening around
the authors. The social problems explained in the stories are the exact
ones being experienced by the people in the society. For instance, in the
story Sweat Delia is a black woman who is tortured by her husband who
views her as inferior. The kinds of work she does are typical of what
black women could do at that time. The context of that story is around
the early 1900s where black women like the writer Zora Neale Hurston were
treated harshly and men were considered superior to men.
The book Not a Genuine Black Man was written based on the life and
experiences of the main character Brian Copeland. The literary work
directly comments and relates to its context. It shows the life of Brian
Copeland and the social vices such as racial discrimination which he went
through living in an all white neighborhood. This book is much similar to
the short story Sweat because both stories comment on their surrounding
and directly relate to it.
Yukio Mushima’s short story also relates to its context. The unethical
behaviors potrayed by the doctor, the nurse and Toshiko’s husband are
an example of what Japan’s society was going through during the time of
Yukio Mushima and from then on as a result of modernization and western
culture. The description of the clothes Toshiko’s husband wore was in
very close resemblance to that of western culture. The view that the
Japanese people on illegitimate babies as displayed in the book is in
very close relation to the normal context of the book. This book is
similar to Brian Copeland’s Not a Genuine Black Man and Zora Neale
Hurston’s sweat because all three of them relate to their context.
Finally we will look from a gender lens how these three literary works.
In Sweat, we find that females are treated as inferior creatures. Sykes
treats his wife very badly because he has a sense of superiority. He
doesn’t see his behavior towards her as anything wrong and even takes
pride in sleeping around with other women. He cheats on his wife and is
not afraid to move around town with his mistress despite being a married
man. In Brian Copeland’s Not a Genuine Man however, the book is majorly
focused on the life off Brian Copeland and racial discrimination, it
unlike Sweat, has few situations where female chauvinism is displayed.

3. Yukio Mushima’s Swaddling Clothes, is also different in terms of female
chauvinism. It has no scenes where a woman is being treated unjustly, on
the contrary, it shows that a women can be a respectable person in
society such as Toshiko.