Writing about race is tricky, as is writing about any “important subject.” In order to do so in a short story context, you have to especially believe the prose discussing it – and a simple discussion will not do. He doesn’t act on it though – he instead proceeds to get in a fight with the inspired, angry men around him who mistake Spurgeon’s anger at his father for dismissal of the triumph of black rights.
Perhaps the blithe, angry, casually dismissive voice guiding us through this story with much analysis, insight, and sadness, finds something more to take out of this part of the speech. Does Spurgeon recognize this? “At first it sounds like what everyone else has been saying,” Spurgeon says. That speech advising how freedom is attained speaks for the situation of race in America, and also speaks to the freedom Spurgeon needs to find from his father.
#Drinking coffee elsewhere sparknotes full#
is – although, at least his mother would never steal her ex’s car, fill it with smoke, and drive it across the country full of birds. Spurgeon is smart, he debates for his mostly white high school, and has a loving mother who is as baffled by her ex as her son is, but whose obsessive religion makes her nearly as blind to her son’s potential and good nature as Ray Bivens Jr. – who is a drunk, abusive, self-deluded, avoiding a DUI conviction, owing Spurgeon bail money, and certain that selling a group of exotic birds to the Afro-centric attendees of the March will get him rich.
He has taken a road trip with his father – always referred to in the full, ingratiating name of Ray Bivens Jr. We know by this point, about midway through “Ant,” that Spurgeon is completely justified in his anger. “Freedom is attained only when the ant of the self – that small, blind, crumb-seeking part of ourselves – casts off slavery and its legacy, becoming a huge brave ox.” A small, black teenage narrator named Spurgeon hears this bit of wisdom, as if in passing, at the Million Man March in “The Ant of the Self.” He notes with boredom and anger that the preacher speaking is repeating a message heard earlier, and reading from a letter read earlier, about ways to keep slaves down – by pitting dark ones against light ones, big plantations vs.
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