LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2004
Sample Student Midterm

Susan Cummings

[families in African American literature]

            Family life, support system, community – call it what you will – but the presence of a network of relationships that nurture the affective as well as the physical and cognitive aspects of an individual’s life is critical to the development of a whole, sound human. In the United States, we have long believed such support should come first from one’s first degree relatives, or what has been called the nuclear family, That belief – that familial support is an exclusive product and domain of the nuclear family – is similar to the “bootstrap” corollary to the American Dream: individuality and hard work will result in success. Belief and reality, though, are not the same. The “realities” depicted in “Incidence in the Life of A Slave Girl,” “Song of Solomon,” and “PUSH” powerfully deny the supremacy of the “nuclear family” in African American literature. These works redefine the supportive African American family unit as one dependent upon strong women, access to education, and the ability to draw on non-lineage based relationships. This literary definition of family is ample support of course objective 6A:  “Generally speaking, minority groups place more emphasis on ‘traditional’ or ‘community’ aspects of human society, such as extended families or alternative families, and they mistrust “institutions.”

            The lack of nuclear family support has roots in slavery. Because slaveholders consider African Americans as individual pieces of property, they placed no value on the familial and personal relationship of slaves. In fact, weakening those relationships benefited the slaveholder because slaves without personal support were less likely to attempt escape or develop opinions that might lead to discontent. Linda Brent recognized the luxury of having lived with her biological family until she was six.

I was born a slave; but I never knew it until six years of happy childhood had passed away … I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them [her biological parents] for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment.

Her master’s refusal to allow her to prepare her father’s funeral led her to voice her understanding of why biological families seldom were allowed to remain intact.

I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? He was merely a piece of property. Moreover, the thought he had spoiled his children by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach, presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.

Student Craig Sprowl, in Spring 2003, ably described the slave family’s destruction:

Damage was inflicted on the slave by destroying their family structure.  Already devalued, many slaves had to face their condition without any nourishing support from their immediate family.  The sense of self and identity suffer blows under the system of slavery.

The legacy of that damage reveals itself in subsequent literary generations.

            So, what happens to the human need for comfort, support, guidance, and safety when the “nuclear” family disintegrates?  Because nature abhors a vacuum, the practices of slaves and their descendents serve their emotional and physical needs as well as possible under their circumstance and, in doing so, redefine the concept of “family.” Those practices surface as the background against which the characters live in African American literature.

            The practices of this new tradition that redefines family include reliance upon second degree and beyond family members, inclusion of non-related individuals in the “family” network, and heavy dependence upon women to provide nourishment, safety, and counsel. In this paper, I shall examine how the following characters embody the female matriarch in African American literature: Linda Brent’s grandmother, Miss Marthy; Milkman’s aunt, Pilate; and Precious’ teacher, Blue Rain. These characters fortified the members of their families by providing sustenance that enable the main characters to develop physically, spiritually, and cognitively.

            For Linda Brent, Miss Marthy provides a haven against the injustices of her grandchild’s master and a bright home for her great grandchildren. Brent’s telling of her grandmother’s life reveals Aunt Marty to be a woman of learning, compassion, faith, courage, and industriousness. “I had also a great treasure in my maternal grandmother, who was a remarkable woman in many respects” (Brent, 445).  “I was indebted to her for all my comforts, spiritual or temporal” (Brent, 451). When Aunt Marthy was final set free at 50, her mission in life was to purchase the freedom of her children and grandchildren. While saving money and waiting for opportunity, Aunt Marthy became a safe harbor for those she loved.

My grandmother had, as much as possible, been a mother to her orphan grandchildren. By perseverance and unwearied industry, she was now mistress of a snug little home…we longed for home like hers. There we always found sweet balsam for our troubles.

Such was Miss Marthy’s dedication to the protection of her family that she risked her own safety and freedom by sheltering Linda in her attic for seven years. She continued to provide her granddaughter with emotional sustenance even after Linda had escaped and settled in the North. Linda received Aunt Marthy’s gifts of knowledge and affection from hundreds of miles away. “From time to time, I received news from my good old grandmother. She could not write; but she employed others to write for her. (Brent, 657).

            Aunt Marthy lived to see Linda’s freedom purchased, but died soon thereafter. A white, literate friend purchased Linda’s freedom. Freedom had given Aunt Marthy the agency to improve the life of her family, but one wonders what other miracles she might have performed had she been able to read and write. The writing of her life story was a much needed, though frequently painful endeavor for Linda. “The retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea” (Brent, 665). Painful as it might have been, Linda’s writing enabled her pay tribute to a matriarchal figure whose legacy lives in other works of African American literature.

            While Aunt Marthy embodied the soul of motherly tenderness and self-sacrifice expected of a respected matriarch, Pilate shows the reader a different woman of power. Like Aunt Marthy, she is free. Unlike Marthy, Pilate is literate. That literacy, though, is not the source of her agency. What’s more, her dress, behavior, and occupation – at least superficially – suggest that she is a person without power because she does not conform to norms associated with the roles of women. That non-conformity, though, allows her a certain amount of freedom, and with freedom came power.

Pilate makes her first, though anonymous, appearance in Song of Solomon as a woman who bursts into song as a man prepares to jump to his death, who “wore a knitted navy cap pulled far down over her forehead. She had wrapped herself up in an old quilt instead of a winter coat” (Morrison, 5).  Her brother Macon criticizes her for “having no interest in or knowledge of decent housekeeping” and demands that she not come to his house “until she could show some respect for herself. Could get a real job instead of running a wine house.” Although Macon had not seen her since she was 16 when “she had been the dearest thing in the world to him,” he was embarrassed by her because “Now she was odd, murky, and worst of all, unkempt.”

The unmarried mother of a daughter who also is an unmarried mother, Pilate runs her household like no other woman her nephew Milkman has ever seen.

Pilate lived in a narrow single-story house whose basement seemed to be rising from rather than settling into the ground. She had no electricity because she would not pay for the service. Nor for gas. At night she and her daughter lit the house with candles and kerosene lamps; they warmed themselves and cooked with wood and coal, pumped kitchen water into a dry sink through a pipeline from a well and lived pretty much as though progress was a word that meant walking a little farther on down the road.

Even meals were irregular. “She and her daughters ate like children. Whatever they had a taste for. No meal was ever planned or balanced or served. Nor was there any gathering at the table. Pilate might bake hot bread and each one of them would eat it with butter whenever she felt like it” (Morrison, 29).

            Pilate was unlike anyone. Neighbors and acquaintances knew her to be tolerant and helpful, but they also were convinced she had “the power to step out of her skin, set a bush afire from fifty yards, and turn a man into a ripe rutabaga – all on account of the fact that she had no navel” (Morrison, 94). While it can be debated powers did not come from the lack of a navel, it cannot be argued that she was powerful. Pilate was the person who was responsible for Milkman’s conception and for his safe birth. She stood up to her brother without fear. She comes within a hair’s breadth of cutting out the heart of a man stupid enough to heart her daughter. She manages to get Milkman and Guitar out of jail. She ran her winemaking business and brooked no nonsense from customers.

            The lack of a navel, though, did play a part in the development of her powers. As she grew herself up after the death of her father and the separation from Macon, Pilate discovered that she was an outsider within her own people. No matter where she traveled, once it was discovered that she had no navel, her snug fit within familial groups was loosened if not ruined. The first discovery proved to be as shocking to Pilate as it was to her migrant “family.”  Having never seen another woman naked, she thought that only men had them, that navels were just another physical difference between men and women. In other words, until the root woman showed Pilate her own navel, Pilate believed she was a “normal” woman.  The root woman made it clear that Pilate had not been “born natural,” (Morrison, 143). Despite their regard for her, the migrants forced Pilate to leave. Terrified of “having been in the company of something God had never made” and hoping to prevent her anger, the migrants sent Pilate on her way with more than her share of earnings.

            Eventually, Pilate stopped trying to hide her belly, even though its smooth surface isolated her just as surely as a barbed wire cage. An outcast, “ever other resource was denied her: partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion (Morrison, pg. 148). Pilate’s acceptance of her place as an outcast eventually empowered her. As she shed the trappings of femininity dictated by society, Pilate embraced the pursuit of unfiltered knowledge of herself and the world. “She gave up, apparently, all interest in table manners or hygiene, but acquired a deep concern for and about human relationships” (Morrison, 149). Even her choice of livelihood as a bootlegger was irregular. Yet, her ability to make a living “allowed her more freedom hour by hour and day by day than any other work a woman of no means whatsoever and no inclination to make love for money could choose” (Morrison, 150).

            So how does Pilate use her freedom and power? Simply put, she uses her power to live life without compromise and in the service of the human spirit. It is not an easy life, but it is a rich life, much richer than that of her well-read, but poorly traveled sister-in-law Ruth. In the end, her life provides freedom to Milkman. Ironically, she purchases his freedom at the price of her own life.

Despite living a life redolent of feminist choices, Pilate’s own daughter and granddaughter caught little of her personal power. Without intense personal power, how can an African American woman ever live wholly in a society dominated by men, class, and color?  She seemed to place no responsibility for the future on their shoulders, despite her rich sense of pride. As Jana Stafford noted in 2003, Pilate demonstrates pride by holding on to “many traditions, including her use of natural things for both medicinal and nutritional purposes [and] her lack of interest in the desires of the dominant white culture…”

Perhaps the lack of a father’s protection, a brother’s support, and the constancy of a lover left Pilate with a sense of dissonance that could only be dispelled by the harmony of a man and a woman in companionship and equality. Perhaps she understood that Reba and Hagar were not strong enough to return harmony and balance to her family. Perhaps she sought to return balance to her family by ensuring the survival of her brother’s third child, hoping that it would be a boy. She felt Macon “ought to have a son. Otherwise this be the end of us” (Morrison 125).  Another child, this one a male to carry on the family name, might restore a sense of stability to a family teetering on the brink of extinction. What better way for a powerful woman to honor her sense of pride in family and heritage?

            Aunt Marthy and Pilate were figures of familial safety and power for the main characters of their stories, true matriarchs. One was literate and the other not. Both were free. Their roles as matriarch, though, were limited in that their sphere of influence was confined for the most part to blood-kin. For their relatives, they provided a rich cushion of love, devotion, and protection. Blue Rain of PUSH was not a matriarch cast in the familial mold.

            Like Marthy and Pilate, she was free. Like Marthy and Pilate, her character was critical to the survival and enrichment of a group of people. That group, though, was unlike the groups tended by Marthy and Pilate. Rain’s group did not share lineage. Instead, they shared experiences, of which the most common was abuse at the hands of someone they trusted. The walls of a school, not a home, framed Blue Rain’s position as matriarch. In education of the mind and cultivation of the spirit, she acted as the matriarch of an unrelated group of young women. Without the influence, protection and sustenance of Rain, this group would have been only a collection of individuals whose miserable lot in life would go unnoticed and without redress. Rain serves as an excellent representative for Objective 3a in which The Dream is “factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.”

            Rain represents a new kind of woman, much like the “new American” referenced in Objective 4A. She is gay, does not aspire to dominant culture standards of beauty, and has no children of her own. Rain hardly fits prior descriptions of matriarchal “mammies.” The dictionary defines matriarch as woman who rules a family, clan, or tribe; a woman who dominates a group or an activity; a highly respected woman who is a mother. Rain represents the new American, minority twist on those definitions.

            For Precious, Rain becomes a lifeline to a world where girls and women grow and share, learn and love. Precious cannot even imagine the world Rain represents or that she belongs there. Even the sight of Rain brings up feelings of ambivalence in Precious.

I look Mis Teacher’s long dreadlocky hair, look kinda nice but look kinda nasty too…Teacher sit at desk marking roll sheet, got on purple dress and running shoes. She dark, got nice face, big eyes, and hair lie I already said. My muver do not like niggers wear they hair like that …I don’t know how I feel about people with hair like that.

The fears of Precious rest within her sense of ability and belonging, but Rain puts them to rest with her soft voice that manages to convey both compassion and competence.

Within minutes of coming into the classroom, Precious has assessed “Miz Rain calm. Rain nice name for her.” Rain manages to elicit from an a terrified and insecure Precious that she can do one thing well: cook. As students discuss their qualifications to be in the adult basic education class, Precious remains silent until prodded by Rain. Precious cannot assess her own ability.

I look Mis Rain in the face, tears is coming down my eyes, but I’m not sad or embarrass. “Is I Miz Rain, I axes, “is I in the right place?” She hand me a tissues, say, “Yes, Precious, yes.

Later, in a private conference, Precious confesses that all written pages look alike and discovers that the revelation elicits only sympathy and encouragement from Rain. By then end of the conference, Precious has read the title of a book.

“Can you read the whole thing?” I say, “A Day at the Beach.” She says very good and closes the book. I want to cry I want to laugh. I want to hug kiss Mis Rain. She make me feel good. I never readed nuffin’ before.

Even the other girls in Each One Teach One overwhelm Precious with little courtesies and politeness. “I’m not used to this. But this what I always want some friendly niceness.”

 In one single encounter with Blue Rain, Precious has identified an ability, learns that she belongs somewhere, and has experienced delight in her ability to learn. Heady stuff for a child whose own parents see her as an object.

            As Precious begins to articulate the conditions of her life in her journal, she finds she is on a journey of self-discovery. Part of that discovery is voice, and with it, she expresses rage at the lack of protection provided by her mother:

She ain come in here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones – thas wrong! Git off Precious like that! Can’t you see Precious is a beautiful child like white chile in magazines or on toilet paper wrappers…Get off my chile nigger!

She finds that protection in the person of Blue Rain. When her mother drives Precious from the house, she turns to the only person who has indicated that she cares what happens to her, Rain. Nevertheless, how can she help, Precious wonders. “She just ABC teacher, not no social worker or shit. But where else can I go?” Upon learning of the girl’s predicament, Rain rises up with the righteous indignation attributed to the most traditional of matriarchs and demands shelter for her student. “Before this day up, Ms Rain say, you gonna be living somewhere, as god is my witness. As GOD is my witness!”

In the classroom, Rain creates an atmosphere of mutual respect and support. She encourages the girls to reach out to each other in much the same way of family members. When troubles arise, families pull together. When Precious announces she is HIV positive, support comes in abundance from all sides. After an support group meeting, Precious finds herself tucked into a booth, drinking hot chocolate with Rita and other new acquaintances. Her reaction is joyful and triumphant.

I’m alive in side. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I’m winning. I’m drinking hot chocolate in the Village wif girls – all kind who love me. How that is so I don’t know. How Mama and Daddy know me sixteen years and hate me, how a stranger meet me and love me. Must be what they already had in they pocket.

Nothing can explain the transformation of Precious from an angry, fearful silent girl into a curious, persistent, and happy survivor can only be attributed to her newly found “extended family” headed by the matriarch Blue Rain. Families are identifiable by what they do. Precious’ new family welcomes her, supports her, guides her, teaches her, values her, and encourages her. Matriarchs are identifiable by the groups they rule and serve, not by bloodlines. For Precious, Each One Teach One has provided her with a “real” family led by a “real” matriarch who leads her “children” to a more hopeful future through education. Moreover, Precious recognizes her transformation as the product of the nurturing gifts from Blue Rain: “Ms Rain the one who put the chalk in my hand, make me queen of the ABCs.”

Linda, the Dead family, and Precious owe their survival, well-being, and sense of identity to unconventional families and strong matriarchs. The characters Aunty Marthy, Pilate, and Blue Rain are matriarchs who have been given different sets of circumstances, yet come out with the same achievement – security of family and group identity.