LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Fall 2007
LITR 5731:
Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Fall 2007
corey porter!
9.30.07
By any Other Name,
or The Importance of Names and Naming in American Minority Culture
Names are more than a first-line, left-aligned, 12-point, times new roman font. More than placeholders on attendance lists. Names are voices: identities for representation. They are both christenings of new beginnings and undeniable links to history. Some are sacred, others common; all are personal. New, recycled, chosen, taken or bestowed, names are of significant importance in American culture. Names can speak multitudes about their bearers: the frequency of Olaudah Equiano’s name changes, the unique names and nicknames throughout Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and the adopted names of Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent) and Everett Jones (Amiri Baraka)—all have meaning seeded within them, and their importance lies within recognition. Names can be the anchor of a community as well as individual identity.
Olaudah Equiano prefaces the story of his capture and subsequent journeys across the Western hemisphere with a comprehensive description of his native homeland in southern Africa. At length, he describes his familial relationships and social interactions to the best of his memory. What stands apart from this domestic recounting are two brief instances of naming. The first is tangential to Equiano’s relation of trade and markets in his homeland: the men his people trade with are called “Oye-Eboe,” meaning “red men living at a distance (Gates 36).” It is not without reason to believe that these “stout mahogany-coloured men from the south-west” have another name for themselves, though it is “Oye-Eboe” they are called in Equiano’s people’s markets. This renaming is benign, however, for Equiano presents a scene of mutual benefit and understanding between the two groups. The second mention of naming comes later in the chapter in reference to ceremonial rituals preformed by Equiano’s people: “Like [the Jews] also, our children were named from some event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding at the time of their birth (Gates 41).” Equiano explains the significance of his name, “Olaudah,” to mean “vicissitude or fortunate,” and also “one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken (Gates 41).” According to Equiano’s explanation of his people’s naming customs, it is not illogical to assume his name is closely related to the episodes surrounding his birth. What begs the question, then, is whether Equiano was destined to become a fortunate and well-spoken abolitionist, or whether he would have become so regardless of his name. Here it is important to recognize that a name can influence an individual, even if, as in Equiano’s story, how it does, is ambiguous.
It isn’t until chapter three that Equiano’s name is again the subject of his narrative. After his capture and enslavement, Equiano is eventually brought over-water to America onboard the “African Snow,” where, despite not knowing the language and being unable to communicate, he can recognize that his name is changed—where he was once “Michael” on the ship, he is now “Jacob” in Virginia (Gates 65). The names are both Hebraic in origin: “Michael,” which means “Who is like God?” and is connected to the archangel Michael, commander of the armies of Heaven, and “Jacob,” which means “hold the heel” and is most commonly associated with the studious grandson of Abraham. While the Biblical names might imply compassion or thoughtfulness on behalf of the slaveholder, Rosalyn Mack argues otherwise: “As was quite common during the slave era, newly captured slaves were given biblical names more out of expediency than any real sense of religious sentiment.”
Equiano’s name is again the subject of his narrative when after being purchased by Michael Henry Pascal, captain of the merchant ship “Industrious Bee,” it is changed once more: “…my captain and master named me Gustavus Vassa (Gates 66).” Equiano challenges his master’s decision and refuses to answer to his new name, though after taking many beatings at his captain’s hands for such behavior, he finally relents and allows himself to be called “Gustavus,” the Latinized name of King Gustav I of Sweden. Equiano notes “…by it I have ever been known since (Gates 66),” though the previous three paragraphs alone should allay such truthiness: Equiano publishes his narrative under his original name, “Olaudah Equiano.” Perhaps this final name change is Equiano’s gesture of reclaiming his history. His previous name changes signified drastic and complicated transitions in his early life: Equiano was Michael aboard a slave ship, Jacob upon his arrival in America, and Gustavus when he became literate. Penning his first name, “Olaudah,” at the culmination of his life’s story brings a sense of completion to Equiano’s tale.
Toni Morrison expounds this idea of reclamation through the eyes of Milkman Dead in her Song of Solomon. In her novel, names are highly personal yet extremely communicative. Names serve as points of reference for characters throughout Song of Solomon. As Milkman concludes towards the close of the novel, “When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do (Morrison 354).” Milkman (Macon Dead III) sees his father’s (Macon Dead II’s) anger and shame at knowing his father (Macon Dead) lost his name to a drunken Yankee on account of clerical error. Instead, his words were misappropriated and the town of his birth, Macon, became his first name, while the living status of his father, dead, became his last. Because Macon Dead couldn’t read or write, he was unable to claim his original name for his own, fundamentally altering his family’s history to come.
The novel insists on the importance of names from its inception. Morrison opens the book behind a wide lens, focusing on the officially-known-as Mains Avenue, commonly called Not Doctor Street. The street’s name stems from its history—“the only colored doctor in the city had lived and died on that street”—and complications derived from poor typeset (Morrison 9). Doctor Street, and later Not Doctor Street, are never used in any formal capacity, though both names serve as a touchstone for the black families of the Michigan town. As Milkman later realizes, “[The townspeople] were paying their respect...” It was something that a black man could make a doctor of himself when none thought it possible (Morrison 354). Not Doctor Street serves as a constant reminder to the people of this Michigan town that they too can defy social injustices and overcome adversity; they are not subject to the limitations imposed on them by another class.
Places other than Not Doctor Street have just as unique names: No Mercy Hospital, on account of its refusal to let black women give birth inside the building; Blood Bank, “because blood flow[s] so freely there (Morrison 40);” Solomon’s Leap, where Milkman’s great-grandfather took to the air, escaped his filial obligations and left his children for his home in Africa; and Ryna’s Gulch, where Milkman’s great-grandmother subsequently wailed day and night after Solomon’s flight, and to this day can be heard crying if the wind hits the canyon just so. These names are significant not only to individuals, but to entire communities, for their representative, explanatory or allegorical nature. Much like Not Doctor Street, No Mercy Hospital’s name signifies a racial division and the usurpation of the social mores which promote such unjust distinctions. Blood Bank is a collective attempt at levity; in hopes that a little humor will go a long way in terms of social blight. Both Solomon’s Leap and Ryna’s Gulch are particular because they refer to individuals, though their mythologies are so powerful that younger generations sing skipping songs detailing the story of Solomon and Ryna’s separation. Milkman meditates on the importance of these names:
“Pilate had taken a rock from every stat she had lived in—because she had lived there. And having lived there, it was hers—and his, and his father’s, his grandfather’s, his grandmother’s (Morrison 354).”
The tokens Pilate collects are symbolic of names of places in which she has lived—they all have lived. The names any community embraces become as much a part of that community as the people who comprise it. Not Doctor Street, No Mercy Hospital, etc. are part of the local lingo—something outsiders do not understand, as Milkman learns when he listens to the children of a small Virginia town sing about his great-grandparents.
Milkman closes his eyes and considers those he’s met on his journey; their names. “Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness (Morrison 355).” Milkman knows now that these names don’t just belong to people—these names are people. Morrison hints at this simple truth early on in the novel. At Milkman’s birth, when Robert Smith leaps from the roof of the hospital believing he can fly, a nurse points (seemingly at random) to a young child and instructs his mother to send him for the guard at the emergency office: “That boy there can go. That one.” Guitar’s mother corrects the nurse, “Guitar, ma’am (Morrison 13).” Mrs. Bains, Guitar’s mother, is telling the nurse her child has a name. What she means is her child is a person, not a “that one.” He should be treated as a person. Milkman Dead later comes to a similar revelation. As his sister, Magdalene called Lena, reminds him, “You’ve been [peeing on us] your entire life,” Milkman understands (Morrison 234). The people he’s known—the people he’s met—they have names, and they should be treated as though they do.
As names are representative of identity, so should they reflect it. Everett LeRoi Jones takes the African name Imamu Ameer Barakain 1967, at the age of 33, later changing it to Amiri Baraka. As with Equiano’s before him, Baraka’s name change signifies a major change in his life. His poem, “leroy,” captures the sense of Baraka’s shedding his name:
“leroy”
I wanted to know my mother when she sat
looking sad across the campus in the late 20's
into the future of the soul, there were black angels
straining above her head, carrying life from our ancestors,
and knowledge, and the strong nigger feeling. She sat
(in that photo in the yearbook I showed Vashti) getting into
new blues, from the old ones, the trips and passions
showered on her by her own. Hypnotizing me, from so far
ago, from that vantage of knowledge passed on to her passed on
to me and all the other black people of our time.
When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to
black people. May they pick me apart and take the
useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave
the bitter bullshit rotten white parts
alone.
The poem imagines Baraka’s mother communing with black angels and ancestors, listening to modern blues music of the late 1920’s while reflecting on the “blues” of her people’s past (the very same from which the music has risen from). Moreover, Baraka envisions his mother awash in “the strong nigger feeling,” or a sense of “blackness.” What may seem like a crude connotation to some, is to Baraka a reclamation of name. He accepts the term as part of his culture, part of his history, his heritage. Baraka feels this “blackness” passed on to him—to other black people of his time—and wishes when death finds him, the essence is again passed on, leaving only the “bitter, bullshit, rotten white parts” behind. When Baraka changes his name from Everett Jones to Amiri Baraka, he is living this poem, “leroy;” submitting to an ancestral recall whilst leaving his name (arguably his whitest parts) behind. Baraka’s name change is an attempt to distance himself from the white majority and let his black ancestry subsume him. Rather than bitter or hateful, “leroy” chooses to be proud.
Like Baraka, Harriet Jacobs is known by another name; however, she didn’t adopt her name in an attempt to reject the majority culture, rather, she assumed the penname Linda Brent in order to be accepted by that culture. Jacobs writes as Brent in order to move wealthy white women of the North—to make them aware to the horrors of slavery. Jacobs makes this appeal not only as a former slave, but as a woman. Jacobs hopes her suffering will go a long way towards preventing that of others. Her legacy is encapsulated in her name. As Rosalyn Mack states in her 2003 midterm, “A name not only identifies an individual, it provides a mooring to the past, joining them to the history that has gone before them. Names can be shields that guard and protect as well as weapons of change and defiance.” Names and naming provide a shared cultural space for a sense of community to develop. They can link the present with the past, or can give rise to new patterns of thought.
Works Cited
Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: New American Library, 1987. 437-665.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: New American Library, 1987. 16-247.
Mack, Rosalyn. “Names and Naming: A Battle for Identity in African American Literature.” LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature Sample Student Midterm, Spring 2003.http://coursesite.uhcl.edu
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1977.
