"The McCoy Games" Reflection

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Dr Ellis

EN376

30 Oct 2023

"The McCoy Games" Reflection

    One thing I found really interesting in "The McCoy Games" by B B Alston was the emphasis on oral histories.

    In the start of the story and throughout any exposition, everyone except the two grandkids thinks that pretty much everything Big Mac had ever said and done was all one big prank. Since everyone else in the family underestimates the importance of everything that Big Mac passes down and thinks it's all one big joke (including the grandkids who thought his stories were just fairytales rather than actual reflections of reality), thye do not get the chance to be part of the inheritance of the space ship and the mansion.

    The instance with the breathworm also outlines the importance of oral history. Had Jamal not been paying attention to. the stories Big Mac told him and remembered how to calm a breathworm, he and Dre would have been eaten.

    The sentence that Jamal brings up after reading the letter, that "McCoys don't die" also emphasises this theme (40). Rather than meaning that McCoys literally live forever and can never physically die, Big Mac meant that "as long as you two stick together, my memory will live on through you and I'll never be truly gone," showing the importance of memory and oral history. 

    This links to the afrofuturism article's argument that "In a sense, Black people, whose past has been deliberately erased, are embracing Afrofuturism as a means to reconceptualize their history and a tool for speculating on a more fruitful future" ("What is Afrofuturism"). This can be seen through the oral history and paintings that Big Mac passed down to his grandkids about how humanity started in Africa and caretakers gave Africans all the information they needed and took some into the heavens with them (45). This oral history had been deliberately erased by the dominant group, shown in the fact that Jamal only at seeing those paintings starts to question the narratives he had been told all his life. It is also present in the fact the Big Mac's passing down of his knowledge and love for astronomy and space exploration, as well as his giving his space ship to one of his grandkids, is emulating this history and rejuvenating it to make it live on in the minds of Jamal and Dre, similar to how Big Mac will, so that the history of black people will never die. 

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