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anifer Johen. (Mar 17, 2014). The Read Around Helen Oyeyemi Video. Youtube.
When the novel opens, it’s hard to tell what the setting is; as in a fairy tale, the particulars of time and place recede behind the powerful generalities of the character types and narrative forces at work in the story. At this point, though, you have a clearer sense of what’s happening in the novel than when you first began. The time is the 1950s, Boy is experiencing some of the frustrations that many woman in America at that time say they felt, and we now know that Arturo and his family have been pretending to be white—what’s commonly called “passing”—so that they could enjoy some of the pre-Civil Rights benefits of whiteness, or, alternately, not be subjected to the violence and discrimination that befell so many African Americans at the time, even in the North.
At this point, make sure to watch the video on gender roles in 1950s America:
Study.com. Gender Roles in 1950s America.
(Links to an external site.)
Then, read the following article and watch the accompanying video:
Sloan, Nate. (Dec 18, 2013). Stanford historian re-examines practice of racial ‘passing’. Stanford Report.
Stanford. (Dec 16, 2013). Stanford Historian Reexamines the Practice of Racial “Passing.” Youtube.
It is worth noting that a number of significant novels, including Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Nella Larsen’s Passing
(Links to an external site.)
(1929), Philip Roth
(Links to an external site.)
’s The Human Stain (2000) are also about African American characters who pass as white. You may also want to look up more about racial passing if the idea is shocking to you.
A few interesting ideas emerge from Boy’s circumstances and this plot revelation about Arturo. One is the way in which ­Oyeyemi—who is of course far too young to have lived through the period, and is of Nigerian-British, not American, origin—imaginatively and provocatively turns what began as a quasi-timeless fable into a culturally specific historical novel.
Discussion Board Prompt:
For today’s topic, then, I want you to analyze the novel’s combination of historical

realism and interpretation with the novel’s use of fairy tales. Can these seemingly different, or even contradictory, forms coexist? How might they work together? What possibilities or problems does the presence of social problems create for the novel or you as a reader? How does Oyeyemi handle them? What does the 1950s American context and setting do to the fairytale elements, or vice versa?
Your post should be between 400-500 words long.
For replies, respond to at least four of your peers’ posts over at least two days. In your responses, consider how your peer applied the different lenses to the novel (think of the videos you watched and articles you read about time period, race, and gender). Did their post remind you of any of the learning materials? Did their post help you see those different lenses more clearly in the text or maybe challenge you in some way? How so?
To view the discussion board rubric, click the gear icon in the upper right corner and select “Show Rubric.”
Guidelines:
As usual, make sure to quote (that is, copy) a particular passage (introducing the quotation in “quotation marks” and ending with its page number in (parentheses) to support or exemplify any points you make about your impression and the novel. More possibilities, again that you’ve seen before: Did you choose your passage because of a particular idea? Is there something about the language or the way the quote is phrased? Did some aspect surprise you—or did if feel surprisingly familiar? How does the passage make you feel? What does it help you to understand about how the story works? Lots of quotations lend themselves to this kind of assignment.
Discuss anything that ­ Oyeyemi states in her interviews/articles and apply them to the novel. Two points from “The Read Around” are, for me, insightful and worth writing about as they play out in the novel: “The fairy tale explicitly [states] that Snow White’s beauty lies in the whiteness of her skin”; and fairy tales “focus on the nature of stories themselves and the curious power they have.
”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21FRORC8Cnohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21FRORC8Cno