As an in-class assignment, we were asked to create a visual structure of James Baldwin’s “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood.” I was paired with Yubin, who came up with the concept of using a comb as our main element for the activity. We picked out major themes/topics Baldwin discusses in his essay, and placed them in between the teeth of the comb. With this, we chose to write the word “society” in a stretched-out, flowy manner to represent the hair the comb with combing through. This idea we came up with represents the ideas of Baldwin being viable solutions to “comb out” the tangles in society.
