“Lifting the Veil” Annotation

Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Important Vocabulary: Mnemonic device. Techniques a person can use to help them improve their ability to remember something. In other words, it’s a memory technique to help your brain better encode and recall important information. Belletristic. Literature regarded as a fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function. Light and elegant literature, especially that which is excessively refined, characterized by aestheticism, and minor in subject, substance, or scope. Amos ‘n’ Andy. During the late 1920’s and early 30’s, the most popular radio program in the United States was “Amos ‘n’ Andy”; many historians contend that it was the most popular show ever broadcast. Perennial. Lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring.

Initial Reaction: The consideration of my racial and cultural identity is something relatively new to me. It was always within my conscious awareness, and I had been the recipient of racist comments and judgments in the past, but it wasn’t until college that I was so freely given the opportunity to question what I had been taught about myself in the context of a broader historical context. It is even more recent still that I would write about my experience as a mutli-racial and multi-cultural female living in California, and carefully parse through the overlapping and intersecting aspects of my personal identity. “Lifting the Veil” has caused me to consider how often I censor myself because of how audiences of a different race might view me after reading my work.