History Through the Ages

History Through the Ages

The poetic novel Faster than Light was written by Marilyn Nelson between 1996 – 2011, and was published in 2012. Nelson, who affiliates strongly with her cultural (African-American) roots, focuses much of her writing from a historical standpoint. In this book, she touches on an array of historical events, in the order which they occurred throughout history. She focuses her writings primarily on slavery, but she also writes about wars that led to tragic historical events (Ex: holocaust). She often takes on the personae of direct-characters involved in her stories, and uses both tone and emotion throughout her writings. Themes such as capture, loss, and death can be seen throughout her writings, but themes such as pride, drive, and positivity (in the midst of negative situations) can also be seen.

Nelson wrote the poem “Family” (40) in the mid-1800’s. This poem is written in the style of iambic pentameter as a traditional poetic meter. In this poem, Nelson uses imagery and tone to present a story about African-American slavery, and the challenges that being forced to leave all that you love behind, to come to a completely new world where everything is foreign to you, entails. She presents the poem through the usage of formal diction, and has the speaker present themselves from a first person historical persona. She portrays the speaker of this poem as being evidently melancholy due to the grief/shame she feels from being forced into slavery, as well as the grief she feels from having her mother stolen from her. This grief can be seen in the sentence “My mother’s illiterate silence has been a death.” (3) For this reason, if this poem were to be converted into a song, it would be categorized under the genre Blues. In this poem, the African-American slave (speaker) is forced to leave her homeland (South Carolina), to re-immigrate to Boston MA, to become a slave-worker. She is separated from her mother who is also taken away as a slave....