LITR 4332 American Minority Literature UHCL 2004 sample student research project

Tamrynn Huckabay Fett

30 April 2004

The Evolution of the African American Voice

Introduction:

When I was young my older brother would drag me around in a sleeping bag. Being that I was terrified of tight, enclosed spaces, I failed to get any enjoyment out of the game he always told my father we were playing. I did not have a choice about getting into the sleeping bag, my brother was much larger than I, but I had a voice. Oh, did I use my voice! When I was stuck at the bottom of that dark, hot, tomb, the neighbors could hear me begging, “Daddy, help. I’m scared!” All it took was a few moments for my dad to hear me and come racing to my rescue, but only because he could hear my voice. If I was unable to speak I would have spent many more mentally damaging moments as the “capture” of my brother. When African Peoples were first brought to America they did not have a choice. They were kidnapped from the safety of their homeland, and brought over seas to play a game with the white man, a game he would not enjoy. Above the fact that these new people had no voice with which they could communicate to their new neighbors, was the fact that by the time they learned the English language, they also learned they did not have anything to say that would change the white man’s control of their choice. How did the voiceless, choiceless slave develop a voice, and how has it changed through the generations? I started with Frederick Douglass who was asked to write his memoir after his escape from slavery, when he became a freed man, went on to Toni Morrison, who wrote Beloved a novel about slavery, and oppression having never fully experienced their trauma, moved then to consider Donald Goines in his novel Black Girl Lost, which discusses the struggles faced by many Black Americans in ghettos today, and finally, to a different genre explored by Amiri Baraka in his drama Dutchman, which expresses a strong political statement about equality, to all Americans no matter their shade of melanoma..

The Authors:

Before a reader can accurately critique a work some background information of the author is necessary. It is important to know where each of the authors I am discussing is coming from because it effects their writing immensely. While time period often has a great impact on a person’s point of view, there are many other factors that affect a person contextually, as can be seen from the fact that Toni Morrison, Donald Goines, and Amiri Baraka were born within five years of each other, but take much different approaches to their writing.

In The Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass writes that he does not know his age, because he never saw any papers. Most likely, the year of his birth was 1818, but the month is unknown. He also notes that ambiguity of age is a common issue among slaves whose masters want to keep them ignorant of their own history. Although his father was white, and may possibly have been his master, he was born into slavery because children followed the condition of their mothers (341). His given name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, after his mother Harriet Bailey.

After living twenty-some years as a slave he was able to escape to the North, and live on free land. Frederick Douglass, while he is among the most well known and foremost speakers for the African American people, did not rush into the use of his new voice with vigor. After his first public speech in August 1841 at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, WM. Lloyd Garrison reports, “I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment” (326). It was Mr. Garrison who convinced Fredrick Douglass to actively pursue the anti-slavery movement. After protesting for a time, claiming that his intellectual ability was so inadequate due to slavery conditions limiting his education, he consented to take action and use his voice in protest of slavery, and prejudices (327-8). As a publisher his North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper brought news of the anti-slavery movement to thousands. During the Civil War Douglass helped to recruit many Black Americans for the Union Army, and it was his close relationship to President Lincoln that helped to make emancipation one of the Union’s causes (nps.gov). This was a man of vocal power, even after years of suppression, or maybe even because of years of suppression.

I had some trouble finding information on Fredrick Douglass in an academic journal, or Book other than his memoir. While his memoir gave me a lot of great insights into his life in slavery and his escape he ends his book with his memory of the speech he gave in Nantucket at the anti-slavery convention. In search of more facts and a further reaching biography I turned to internet sources. The most thorough site I found was: www.nps.gov/frdo/chrono.htm, more specifically the page titles “The Life of Frederick Douglass.” The site is supported by National Park Service and gives a great deal of information about the historic site of his home in Washington. The house is much like a museum dedicated to not only the remembrance of slavery in American, but the Frederick Douglass himself and the action he took to defend the human rights of people of color. The page which focuses on the in depth biography of Frederick Douglass also has a link to a detailed chronology of his history beginning with the presumed birth of his great-great grandfather in 1701 and continuing to his death in 1895. While I was unable to find a author for the page, I found the site to be credible because of its connection with the National Historical Sites.

Coming from this heritage of slavery that was abolished through the efforts of men like Fredrick Douglass, emerged one of the greatest women writers of our time: Toni Morrison. She was first known as Chloe Anthony Wofford, born in Lorain, Ohio, 1931. Her parents had moved to the North to escape some of the racial prejudices that existed in the South. Morrison’s father told her folktales of the black community, transferring his African-American heritage to another generation (books and writers). When she was at Howard University in Washington, D.C., she changed her name from "Chloe" to "Toni", explaining that people found "Chloe" too difficult to pronounce (books and writers). Many years later, and after she published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, under her pin name, she would come to regret changing her name as becomes comfortable with herself as Chloe (books and writers). After graduating Howard University she continued her education at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York receiving her M.A. in 1955. She has held many esteemed and respected positions from professor at various colleges and universities to being an editor, and the author of many published novels and essays.

Novels:

The Bluest Eye (1970)

Sula (1973)

Song of Solomon (1977)

Tar Baby (1981)

Beloved (1987)

Jazz (1992)

Paradise (1998)

Love (2003)

Essays:

“Playing in the Dark-Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” (1992)

Racing Justice, Edgendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and Others “on the Constructing of Social Reality” (1992).

“Toni Morrison” Books and Writers http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tmorris.htm (2003).

Donald Goines was another African American Novelist. Goines began writing about the same time Toni Morrison was introducing herself to the entourage of African American writers. Goines was born in 1937 in Detroit under relatively comfortable financial conditions. He attended Catholic school and his parents expected him to pick up in the family laundry business, but instead Goines in listed with the Air Force in 1952, at the age of sixteen. His service ended in 1955, and he returned home from Japan atticted to heroin. Goines immediately fell into a life of professional crime, which landed him in prison. It was during his seven year prison sentence that he began writing books. His inspiration for the fast paced hip-hop style of writing he uses came from an author he read in prison called Iceberg Slim (popsubculture). In 1970 his first novel, which was partial based on his own life, Whoreson was accepted for publication. Fifteen other novels of the same genre would be published between 1970 and 1974 when Goines is shot. Some speculate that he was shot over a drug deal gone bad, but there is no proof of that statement.

“The Biography Project,” Popsucultrue(dot)com

http://www.popsubculture.com/pop/bio_project/sub/donald_goines.html (5/30/02).

Born only two years earlier than Donald Goines, Amiri Baraka adopted MalcomX as his primary inspiration in writing, and political speech. Amiri Baraka is likely one of the most controversial men of his time. He was born Evrette Le Roi Jones in Newark New Jersey (Hudson, 3). The financial condition of his family was “middle class black” which was poverty to white classes, but steady jobs made his parents comfortable as far as the black community was concerned (Hudson 3). After graduating from Barringer High School he attended Howard, and then joined the Army. Two things were impressed upon him in these social institutions: at Howard he learned that they were trying to, “teach you how to pretend to be white,” and in the Army he learned, “the oppressor suffered by virtue of their oppressions-having to oppress, by having to make believe that weird, hopeless fantasy that they had about the world was actually true” (Hudson 9, 11). He married a white woman and had two children before they divorced. Friends say he “remained very loving and devoted to his daughters,” which cast doubt on the accusations by some that he is anti-white (Hudson 13-4). The Marriage fell apart around the time he became involved with the Black Revolution. In returning to his root he became a Kawaida minister and changed his name to Imamu Ameer Baraka. In 1966 he married his present wife and together they have been making a stand for the Black Revolution for many years. His creative and artistic writings of poetry, fiction, essays, and drama are not “art for art sake,” but rather a vehicle for making political statements.

Selected works from his overwhelming bibliography:

Jones, Gayl. “From the Quest for Wholeness: Re-Imagining the African-American Novel:

The author starts off in this Prologue telling the reader how the African American novel is like any other novel. Jones does point out that the novel is like any other literature, but “as an African American novel, more likely to be read as sociopolitics, socioculture, or sociopsychology” (507). After reading any novel for a literature class the discussion always shifts to what was taking place politically, and culturally to make the author write in a certain way, about a certain topic, and decipher what point is trying to be made. Commonly the psychology comes up in the questions of why the situation happened like it did. Gayl Jones protests the idea that an African American novel has to be social. By giving the novel a character of its own in her essay saying, “I am an African American novel,” and carrying that personification throughout her text she is able to impress upon her reader the idea that a novel has personality individual to itself (507). She seems to be trying to hinder the assumption that novels written by Afro-Americans can be classified by the style or generalized topics covered, and prove their variation. Each book is individual. She does give a few similarities such as, “Most African American novels have both personal and collective implications, in that whenever “I” is used it means “we” (507). Similar to using “man” to mean mankind the one individual in the text represents the race of people. Ambivalence is woven throughout the text and satire and irony are used liberally as they are part of the cultural tradition and sometimes the novel will support, or challenge your sense of logic or rationality (508). Ambivalence tends to be part of their cultural identity as much as irony, and satire are according to Jones (508). When stories are told in vernacular, she warns us that it does not discredit their political, economic, sociological, anthropological, or historical value (508). Jones writes with pride that the African American novel is not subordinate to any other literary tradition, but it is a tradition of its own started in story telling, and developed into its own aesthetic work. Because the beauty, form and value, of an Afro-American novel is Afrocentric, it may challenge some and confirm others.

We need now to explore how Donald Goines’, Black Girl Lost, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, function with in the definition of African American novel set up by Gayl Jones. The separation of genre makes it very clear that the African American novel varies, and becomes its own creature. Beloved is magic realism, because while the ghost of Sethe’s baby returning is almost surreal, Beloved holds value as a symbol of slavery, and of past, but this is contrasted with the cruel description of slavery and the life of separation from society because of a mortal stigmatized sin is real and believable. Black Girl Lost on the other hand is entirely realistic, and shows an unattractive unromanticized version of the truth where slavery does not hold African American’s to plantations, but to ghetto life.

While the setting of these two novels is drastically different there are similar struggles in the lives of the characters. Most striking is that the main female character murders a loved one for the sake of safety, and peace. In Beloved, Sethe sees Schoolteacher coming up the path and knows that he is coming to claim his property and she is helpless to stop him. She does the only thing she can do, “She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed dragged, them though the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them” (224). In a moment of fear, knowing there was going to be no safe place for her babies in Sweet Home with Schoolteacher living in slavery she does a terrible, yet loving act against her children in trying to take their lives (205). She had lived through and knew the horrors of slavery, and thought anything would be better for her babies than that life slavery. In a similar manner at the end of Black Girl Lost Sandra rather than have her dying boyfriend taken by the police, “raised up suddenly. The knife she kept concealed in her pants outfit flashed once in the afternoon sunlight as she brought it down quickly. She struck him in the chest” (182). She was willing to go to trial for murder if that is what it took to set her man free: “He was free at last” (184). These examples may deal harshly with the white American’s ideals, but Gayl Jones expresses the possible challenges and confirmations that will be made by African American novels. To interpret the novels both socially, since slavery there has been the ability of social issues to tear blood related family members apart, which may be why a since of community is so important to Afro Americans. There is a message of sympathy in the texts for other women of the African American culture who may never face a decision as harsh as to murder to prove their love, but may have to give up their sons, husbands, and friends to drugs, or crime, or prisons.

Grant, Tracy. “Why Hip-Hop Heads Love Donald Goines,” Black Issues Book Review.

Black community is discussed in Tracy Grants short essay “Why Hip-Hop Heads Love Donald Goines.” He says that, “When the black detective in Inner City Hoodlum talks to the mother of a murdered black kid, she is reluctant to cooperate” (52). This may seem foreign to some one who is not Afro-American or does not live in Inner City Hoodlum, but the reason the mother gives the detective for not cooperating is, “She don’t want the other ones to get in trouble with the law” (52). This woman has adopted her community and will protect them at the cost of what American whites would call justice, because she has too often seen police justice go awry in her Hoodlum town. According to Grant, in the poorer sections of large cities, where the population is mostly African American minority, the employment, and education are in short supply so their economy is driven by drugs and crime because even with the increased option given to minorities today, the social problems still restrict those neighborhoods.

Osborne, Gwendolyn. “The Legacy of Ghetto Pulp Fiction,” Black Issues Book Review.

In 1980’s California recognized a link between reading, writing and rehabilitation of inmates and passed the Prisoner Literacy Act (51). Among the most popular titles read by the men in prison are those by Donald Goines. When choosing a book to read most people, and especially undereducated people will choose a book they identify with. Goinges has seen the same thing these men see, and in Black Girl Lost he includes some scenes in the prison before Chink tries to make an escape. Rather than being the villain, or antagonist of the book, he is dear to the main character. He loves her, and gives her support; therefore, the readers like him. These men in prison are seeing a positive image in a guy who simply makes bad decisions that land him in front of the law, and at the end when the white American girls are sad for Sandra, the men in prison see Chink as being “Free at last.” Lloyd Hart was serving a seven year prison term for man slaughter when he became a fan of Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. He is now running an on-line library with his partner Kevin Fisher: The Black Library.

Having my own curiosity pricked at the thought of an ex-inmate run Black Literature Library I visited this site: http://www.theblacklibrary.com/. The site is very colorful and would probably keep the interest of any young reader at least long enough for them to find a title they would like to read. They seem very proud that they are “A Black Owned Company.” The site was last updated April 29, 2004 and while I would assume it is well kept because of all the active links available I cannot say how long before April 29 it had been untouched-up. They really encourage reading: there is a sign up sheet for the chance of winning a free book, and they also have discounts for buying books on line. They have links such as: Fiction, Non-fiction, Classic Titles, What’s Coming Out?, Art Gallery, and Who are We? that a visitor might have expected, but they have some creative ones as well. There is a guest book, and a visitor can write his or her review of a book title for others to read, and also a link to Self Published/Under-Promoted Titles which helps to raise the sales of some minor African American Writers. The only two author names that have a links are Donald Goines and Ieberg Slim: his first African American novel exposures.

Another group who has a strong draw toward the novels of Donald Goines is both white and black middle class youth. Tracy Osbourne explains this by saying that it “presents a side of life that others have tried to hide from them…street culture has always appealed to kids” (51). Young people are learning about their world and to the middle-class they may be fifteen-years-old and still have not seen some of the crime and dangers that go on everyday in neighborhoods just down the road a bit from their own. Reading about it lets them know what is there and gives them a sense of the thrill without putting them in any danger of being exposed. Like the African American Literature is suppose to do contradict one way of life, and confirms another.

Callaghan, Cedric. “Black Theater in South Africa (Links with the United States of

Black Theater is another voice that African Americans are expressing themselves with. Because Black Theater has its roots in the original storytelling of the South African peoples it is a way for African Americans can communicate with their people and also cherish their history. South African people communicate through acting out the poetry they are reciting, and dramatizing stories, and using interpretive dance with their songs. It is not what the European’s called theater, but it was their own way of expression (82). Cedric Callaghan expresses the desire of the Black theater goers to have more Black written dramas, which are intended for an audience of Blacks (82). Weddings and drinking bars were two notable places, other than a kings palace, where someone could be sure to see some of the early theatre. It is an important communication and because other Black people will approach the problems and situations faced by the African American community with out coming down with stereotypes, or implying a lesser civilization on them. For this reason there has been an out cry for more Black Theater. Callaghan points out that just like in the African American Novel there will be truths that sound unfair to the White theater-goer, but he poignantly states that truth does not need to please, or apologize if it offends someone (83). Callaghan discusses the play write Athol Fugard as he deals with the situations taking place today in South Africa, because it is his home front, but that his whiteness can get in the way of a truthful message (82). While authors like Amiri Baraka can use this heritage of theater from South Africa to express to his people here in America the political, cultural, social, issues facing Blacks here.

Amiri Baraka uses theater to express to his people the need to hold on to and cherish their history. Dutchman was originally accused harshly by the African Americans as being anti-white, and Baraka lost money while it was showing in Harlem (Hudson 18). Ironically it went over wonderfully at the Down Town Cherry Lane Theater where the audience was mostly white. This strange because in the play Lula, a representation of white America, seduces, manipulates, and then destroys Clay, a young, educated, black man, who seem to, like the “I” in the American Novel that means “we,” symbolize all blacks who are trying to assimilate.

In 1964, when this play was being produced, there were great measures being taken to desegregate society. Young black men were trying to assimilate into the culture they had been held down by for many years. Clay has become so assimilated, he does not think himself as being a Black man. Amiri Baraka discusses in the play Dutchman the need for African Americans to cling to their heritage while assimilating.

Lula begins very early to pick the young man apart starting with his wardrobe. He wore a suit on the subway, and she asks him what right he has to, “wear a three buttoned suit and stripped tie? Your father was a slave, he didn’t go to Harvard” (1089). This is the firs time she brings up slavery, but she already had him on her line when she came into the train looking sultry and seductive, being flirty and sweet with him. Baraka’s warning is that America looks good, and may be tempting, but that they will never let a black man get past the shame of his oppression. Lula is used at the end of act one to express a warning when she says, “May the people accept you as a ghost of the future. And love you that you may not kill them when you can.” One line later: You’re a murderer, Clay” (1089). These lines serve two purposes: one is to foreshadow the end of the play when Lula stabs and kills Clay because he comes back at her insults with pride of his heritage, and the other is a warning to the Black audience that men living like Clay who are assimilated to the point that they have forgotten their history, have murdered their true identity, and being a ghost of the future symbolizes the fading of their heritage.

Theodore Hudson preaches about the black aesthetics of literature, that was discussed by Gayl Jones in the subject of African American novels, saying, “There remains a primary principle of the black aesthetic, that the literature be written by blacks about blacks for blacks” (181). For him the message was core and the artistic quality, which is certainly present in his writing, is secondary. In talking specifically about the play Dutchman, Baraka shares his intentions for the play:

I showed one white girl and one Negro boy in that play, and the play is about one white girl and one Negro boy, just them, singularly, in what I hope was a revelation of private and shared anguish, which because I dealt with is specifically would somehow convey an emotional force from where I got it-the discovery of America (149).

small to make it personal to his audience, who is the Black community. Everyone watching this play acted out will have to sympathize in some way with Clay, and desire revenge upon Lula for what she does at the end of the play. The revenge is desired even by white movie goers who realize she represents the oppressing white political wall that is blocking black citizens from being truly free.

Without being anti-white, Amiri Baraka is anti-the white society that does not leave room for a black man to be black. He is not speaking against assimilation, but rather that history stay in tact for their children, and their children’s children. It has the qualities of a Black Revolutionary play before, but it was written before Amiri Baraka is identifying himself with that group.

It was fascinating to read some of the research that is available on Black Theater, and Black Novels. I grew up thinking that African Americans were just like me with dark skin. While biologically that may be true, they are spiritually, emotionally, and mentally a different race, a race that has gained power from adversity, and strength from opposition. They have such a strong identity that their culture needs additional literary works to feed on.

It makes sense to read Frederick Douglass in a History class because he wrote a story of being an American Slave at a time when slavery was a living breathing dragon in the mist of what was settled to be a more civilized nation, but I can also see the need for it in a literature classroom. Sometimes the fact that the story is true is more fascinating because young adults feel that they are reading truth. Like I learned in Creative Writing, “fact is sometimes better than fiction.” In the case of Douglass it would have been a kinder fate had his story been fiction, but as it is, he wrote down himself the sad story of his life as a slave, and his brave escape.

The first time I read Beloved it was recommended to me by a friend, and while I enjoyed the page turning constant suspense that Toni Morrison can pull her readers in with, I did not quite understand why she would write about slavery. She herself was not a slave, but she heard stories from her father. Maybe not about slavery, but about her past, and she was therefore tied to her history. Having read some of the true accounts of slavery, the kind of accounts high school American History books do not teach I understand why that past needs to be recorded and remembered even if it is in fact-based-fiction. I admire her diligence to bring into light the situations that happen to slaves and by adding some creative touches, like magic realism, make the memory part of Americas Best Selling Novels.

Donald Goines may write some racy, and possible even trashy literature, with little academic value, but I want to teach remedial reading to high school students and from what I learned he would be a perfect choice of authors. I would likely need permission slips since the books are PG-13 rating on a lenient scale. For every struggling student who I can get to read for pleasure through one of his novels, I will place a flower on his grave in gratitude of his bold, uncouth ways.

Despite the bad press given to Amiri Baraka I like his work. He writes in-your-face truths that are often attempts striving for political reformation. While I do not agree with every extreme Amiri Baraka went to, I admire his desire to keep himself grounded in his identity as a African, and to stand up firmly for his beliefs and for his people.

Growing up in a town with only about an eight percent African American population I never really knew them. I, sadly, never considered them within their own history and culture that is the primary blessing I received from this research. Because my family has engrossed themselves in assimilation for many generations we went from being Irish/English American to being, now, just American. I often neglect the fact that there are still cultures surviving outside the American nostalgia. From the 1800’s when Fredrick Douglass was writing and speaking out for his cause America has made leaps and bounds toward improving acceptance, equality, and assimilation. Even from the 1960’s and 1970’s when Toni Morrison, Donald Goines, and Amiri Baraka started writing our nation and culture has come closer to achieving the African American Dream. Fearfully, it may come down to a choice between assimilation completely, or living comfortably with another culture while maintaining their own cultural identity. Speaking as someone who has lost all heritage beyond my grandmothers, I would agree with Amiri Baraka in his protest against complete assimilation. Especially now that I have learned more about the culture, and the literature I would plead selfishly, because without true African American contributions to our literary collection my children would be missing out on a wealth of knowledge and enjoyment.

I will certainly continue to read literary works by African Americans, and I will keep my research, but I am putting further research on this topic aside because it has unearthed in me a desire to know more about my own history. This summer I am planning to attempt to find out more not just about Irish and English History, but my family, and our immigration to America.

The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Penguin Books: Middlesex,

-----Douglass, Frederick. The Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave. 325-436.

Stages of Drama. Ed. Klaus, Carl H., Gilbert, Miriam, Field, Bradford S. Jr. 5^th ed.