1. In her well-known essay, Eula Biss employs the braided technique–wrapping two narratives around one another to tell a unique story. What are those two narratives? In what ways do those narratives intersect and interact? What did you learn from her essay?
Eula Biss presents two narratives in her braided essay: the invention of the telephone and telephone pole; and racism in America. Biss explores the relationship between the two by recounting how Black Americans were hung in the streets, typically on a telephone pole. Although I knew of the graphic nature of these crimes, I didn’t fully understand how common they were. In her essay Biss states, “Lynchings happened everywhere, in all but four states” (Biss 8). I was shocked to learn that lynching happened everywhere in the country, not just in the south. Furthermore, I didn’t know how often lynching happened, but I would have guessed it only took place when a town was overtaken with extreme anger. However, Biss provides evidence to suggest it happened almost daily. An excerpt from a newspaper in Biss’s essay states, “Negros are lying in the gutter every few feet in some places” (Biss 8). In order to have that many dead people in the streets, I would presume it was a daily occurrence.
2. Consider the children’s game of telephone, as Biss describes it (and maybe from your own experience playing). How does Biss use this popular game as a metaphor for a larger, far more serious issue?
When I played the game of telephone as a kid, I would sit in a large circle and somebody would give a message to be passed around the circle. Finally once the last person heard the message, they would say it aloud to see how misconstrued the message had (or hadn’t) become. Usually the final message was much different than the original. Biss explores this same idea when she says, “The children’s game of telephone depends on the fact that a message passed quietly from one ear to another to another will get distorted at some point along the line” (Biss 6). Biss is exploring something deeper here. She is using the game as a metaphor to explain how rumors about Black people would be translated into egregious stories, many of which would get them killed. Biss sheds light on this issue when she says, “Black men were lynched for crimes real and imagined, for whistles, for rumors, for disputing with a white man, for unpopularity, for asking a white woman in marriage, for peeping in a window” (Biss 6). In other words, rumors (fake or otherwise) would be passed around town until eventually they became so criminal people thought they needed to bring justice into their hands.
3. How does your interpretation of Biss’s essay change, if at all, once you do a brief Google search of her?
After doing a brief Google search of Eula Biss, I was extremely surprised to discover that she is a young white woman from upstate New York. I would have thought that she was perhaps more personally connected to the issue. I expected her to be Black, older, maybe from the south. I think my original interpretation of her came from her passion filled and well informed essay. At times it almost felt as though her parents had lived through it. I think I was also surprised because this is an issue that a lot of white people don’t feel comfortable writing about. These crimes were tragic, and her writing of them is very graphic. Personally, I don’t think I would have the courage to be so detailed about an uncomfortable subject like this one.
