Advancing Luna – And Ida B. Wells

By Alice Walker

I met Luna the summer of 1965 in Atlanta where we both attended a political conference and rally. It was designed to give us the courage, as temporary civil rights workers, to penetrate the small hamlets farther south.

Source: Walker, Alice “Advancing Luna – And Ida B. Wells.” In: You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down. Harcourt 1981.

Available at [🔗].

current affairs

The New York Times article “Rape, race, and the jogger” takes on race and rape in connection with the 1989 brutal rape of a white woman who was jogging in Central Park and the wrongful conviction of five African American youths.

links

Leslie Jamison “Rape, race, and the jogger.” New York Times, 25 August 2016. [🔗]

Caitlin Dickerson “1862-1931 — Ida B. Wells — Took on racism in the Deep South with powerful reporting on lynchings.” New York Times, 8 March 2018. [🔗]

questions

  1. Read the Ida B. Wells obituary. How does Ida B. Wells figure in the short story? Why did Alice Walker choose this title for her story?

  2. How did Luna’s informing the narrator that she was raped affect the relationship between them? Why would this be the case?

  3. The narrator writes that “months and years went by with most of the story written but with me incapable, or at least unwilling, to finish or to publish it.” What keeps her from doing so? How do the appended notes and the postscript figure in the story?

  4. In “Rape, Race, and the Jogger” Leslie Jamison reflects on how race and gender affect the reporting of rape and murder. What crimes are underreported? How does this affect public perceptions of vulnerability?