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Although Hortense Spillers is not the most understandable writer, I really did get a lot out of her essay. Spillers brought up several things in her essay that I believe are important to know and understand in order to fully understand the culture we now live in as American citizens. As American citizens we enjoy throwing around words like "freedom", "liberty", "justice", "American Dream", etc. But what is America really about? I think that Spillers appropriately addresses (black) American identity through her exploration of the "American Grammar".

It is interesting to think about the idea of African (American) history being interrupted. As Americans, we pride ourselves on the idea that we all, for the most part, immigrated from somewhere and came to America for a fresh start. We kind of like to think of ourselves as a group of people that picked themselves up by their boot straps, came here and sweat, worked, and died to make America what it is.... "land of the free, home of the brave." It is in this self-made identity then, that we for get to include those who did not want to come here, who had no intention of making this apart of their history. What about those who were not considered human, or at least "full human"? Where does their history begin? Does it begin when they were captured in their home lands? Or when they landed on the American shores? Or does it begin when they were finally considered "fully human"? Thus, we, as Americans (white?) continually attempted to define exactly what "they" are. (I am beginning to feel as though I am writing about an episode of LOST, who are the others?) Are they fully human? What are they like? What do they speak like? Are they beasts? Do they have families? Thus, because we stripped meaning from them, identity was lost, we do not know who they are... and "they" have had to re-define themselves, and re-understand their history.

Vertical, horizontal, "unmade", matriarchal.... these are just words. And frankly, I do not know whether they really matter. The bottom-line is, and what Spellers is addressing, is that a history(identity) was stripped from a group of people. And thus, the words that we like to throw around like--freedom, family, justice-- those mean nothing to a part of the population, and so "American Grammar" does need to be redefined.



Octavia Butler