Description
In 1992 both had returned to Charleston from lives mostly lived in other places. They made up our minds to work together on a memoir of growing up through the trauma of desegregation. Their aim was once to foster understanding between their distinct cultures for themselves and for their own and future generations. Dolores Johnson, in editing the two texts, observed two very different modes of expression: Bill Drennen’s narrative is threaded with references that connote wealth, status, and personal privilege; Kojo Jones’s memoir is interwoven with African American signification, protest, and moral outrage.
The stories of their Appalachian upbringing in homes not up to a mile apart are anecdotal in nature, but their diverse uses of the English language as they endeavor to keep up a correspondence shared memories and common meanings reveal significant cultural connotations that turn out to be standard American English into two different languages, rendering interracial communication problematic. Dr. Johnson’s analysis is to the point.
Red, White, Black, and Blue is a groundbreaking approach to studying not only cultural linguistics but also the cultural heritage of a historic time and place in The us. It gives witness to the issues of race and class inherent in the best way we write, speak, and think.