“Why you steal all the darkness?” Understanding “The Other” and “The Self” in Hell of a Book
Bildiriler > Özet Bildiri · 2023
Yazarlar: Firuze GÜZEL
Darkness in The American Imagination, İspanya, Madrid, Uluslararası, Sözlü Sunum, Özet Bildiri, 2023-2023, ss 15-16
Özet
<p><strong> “Why you steal <em>all</em> the darkness?” Understanding “The Other” and “The Self” in <em>Hell of a Book</em></strong></p><p>Jason Mott’s <em>Hell of a Book</em> (2021), which became the 2021 National Book Award Winner, narrates the stories of two characters, a black author on a book tour and a black kid called “Soot” who tries to be Unseen. The book touches upon several compelling issues about racism, police violence, and the hardships of being black in America. However, when the daydreamer narrator with overactive imagination begins interacting with a hallucinatory ten-year-old boy, The Kid, the narrative gains another layer of meaning and interpretation. The “Black condition” that the novel refers to lays out the otherization and discrimination of African-American people not only with the stories of the two main characters but also with the desire of The Kid to be seen, particularly by the narrator. The “face-to-face” encounter between the author and the Kid forces him to confront with the Kid’s alterity; his “impossibly dark-skin” nature creates a feeling of empathy within the narrator, particularly trying to imagine how it would be like him as a child. As a reference and example to this question, Soot, on the other hand, experiences his own “face-to-face” encounter with a white boy of his age on the school bus, yet his “impossibly dark-skin” does not create the same kind of empathy. On the contrary, the white boy gives him the nickname “Soot” and asks him why he stole all the darkness. Such encounters with “the other,” whether it is within the same or different racial descents, create reference points for the characters in terms of defining their own identity and responsibility towards “the other” while at the same time questioning why some people choose to refuse this responsibility. In this respect, this study aims to interpret Mott’s powerful novel <em>Hell of a Book</em> by examining the interaction of “the other” and “the self,” particularly referring to the philosophy of Levinas, and to argue how the multiplicity of otherness creates a net of responsibilities both on the individual and social levels in the US. </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>Hell of a Book</em>, “The Black Condition”, “the other” and “the self”, alterity, responsibility</p>