American Ethnic Writers (Magill's Choice)

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American Ethnic Writers

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MAGILL’S C H O I C E

American Ethnic Writers Volume 1 Ai — Adrienne Kennedy Edited by

David Peck University of California, Long Beach Project Editor

Tracy Irons-Georges

SALEM PRESS, INC. Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey

Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.

Copyright © 2000, by Salem Press, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115. Most of these essays originally appeared in Identities and Issues in Literature, 1997, edited by David Peck. The remainder were adapted from Magill’s Literary Annual, from Masterplots, Revised Second Edition, 1996, and from the following Masterplots II series: Drama, 1990; Poetry, 1992; African American Literature, 1994; Women’s Literature, 1994; and American Fiction, Revised Edition, 2000. All bibliographies and lists of published works have been updated. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data American ethnic writers / David Peck; project editor Tracy Irons-Georges. p. cm. — (Magill’s choice) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-89356-157-6 (set : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-89356-172-X (v. 1 : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-89356-184-3 (v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. American literature—Minority authors—Bio-bibliography—Dictionaries. 2. Minority authors—United States—Biography—Dictionaries. 3. Authors, American—Biography— Dictionaries. 4. Ethnic groups in literature—Dictionaries. 5. Minorities in literature—Dictionaries. 6. Ethnicity in literature—Dictionaries. I. Peck, David R. II. Irons-Georges, Tracy. III. Series. PS153.M56 A414 2000 810.9’920693—dc21 00-059529 First Printing

printed in the united states of america

Table of Contents Publisher’s Note Contributor List

ix xi

Ai

1 Cruelty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Meena Alexander House of a Thousand Doors . . . . . .

Sherman Alexie

Reinaldo Arenas

Jimmy Santiago Baca

2 3

5 6

8

James Baldwin

Toni Cade Bambara

13

Amiri Baraka

18

Blues People . . . . . . . . . Daggers and Javelins . . . . . Dutchman . . . . . . . . . . Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/ LeRoi Jones . . . . . . . .

22

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Rudolfo A. Anaya

. . . . 61

63

The Adventures of Augie March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Arna Wendell Bontemps

66

Black Thunder . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Great Slave Narratives . . . . . . . . 68

31

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Mary Antin

57 . . . . 58 . . . . 59 . . . . 60

Saul Bellow

26

Bless Me, Ultima . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Heart of Aztlán . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Tortuga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Maya Angelou

52

Gorilla, My Love . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The Salt Eaters . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

The House of the Spirits . . . . . . . . 19 The Infinite Plan . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Julia Alvarez

48

Giovanni’s Room . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Notes of a Native Son . . . . . . . . . 50

The Sacred Hoop . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters . . . 15

Isabel Allende

43

Black Mesa Poems . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Working in the Dark . . . . . . . . . 46

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven . . . . . . . . 10 Reservation Blues . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Paula Gunn Allen

39

Arturo, the Most Brilliant Star . . . . 40 The Pentagonía . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

71

Woman with Horns and Other Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Gwendolyn Brooks

74

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 A Street in Bronzeville . . . . . . . . . 76

36

The Promised Land . . . . . . . . . . 37 v


Claude Brown

Frederick Douglass

78

Manchild in the Promised Land . . . 79

William Wells Brown

81

Rita Dove

The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave . . . . . 83

Carlos Bulosan

W. E. B. Du Bois

85 88

Paul Laurence Dunbar

91

Andrea Dworkin

94

Stanley Elkin

98

Ralph Ellison Louise Erdrich

103 106

Jessie Redmon Fauset Harvey Fierstein

110

Rudolph Fisher

113

Charles Fuller

116

Ernest J. Gaines

119

175

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

123

Allen Ginsberg

The Motion of Light in Water . . . . 124 Triton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Michael Dorris

172

A Soldier’s Play . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Angela Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Samuel R. Delany

169

The Conjure-Man Dies . . . . . . . . 170

On These I Stand . . . . . . . . . . 117

Angela Y. Davis

166

Torch Song Trilogy . . . . . . . . . . 167

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Countée Cullen

163

The Chinaberry Tree . . . . . . . . . 164

Soul on Ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Lucille Clifton

158

The Beet Queen . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Love Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Where I Ought to Be . . . . . . . . . 161

The House on Mango Street . . . . . 107 Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Eldridge Cleaver

154

Invisible Man . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Eat a Bowl of Tea . . . . . . . . . . 104

Sandra Cisneros

149

The Franchiser . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 The MacGuffin . . . . . . . . . . . 151

The Chickencoop Chinaman . . . . . 99 Donald Duk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 The Year of the Dragon . . . . . . . 101

Louis H. Chu

146

Intercourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Face of an Angel . . . . . . . . . . . 95 The Last of the Menu Girls . . . . . 96

Frank Chin

143

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine . . . . . 92

Denise Elia Chávez

138

The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 The Souls of Black Folk . . . . . . . 141

The Rise of David Levinsky . . . . . 89

Bebe Moore Campbell

134

Grace Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

America Is in the Heart . . . . . . . 86

Abraham Cahan

130

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

179

Howl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Kaddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

127

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water . . . . . 128 vi

Table of Contents

Nikki Giovanni

Langston Hughes

183

Black Feeling, Black Talk . . . . . . 184 Gemini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn

187

Dangerous Music . . . . . . . . . . 188

Lorraine Hansberry

Zora Neale Hurston

190

David Henry Hwang

195

Bondage . . . . . . . . . The Dance and the Railroad Family Devotions . . . . . M. Butterfly . . . . . . .

In Mad Love and War . . . . . . . 196 The Woman Who Fell from the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Michael S. Harper

199

Charles Johnson

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Wilson Harris

202

James Weldon Johnson

206

Gayl Jones

209

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Oscar Hijuelos

Cynthia Lynn Kadohata

212

Adrienne Kennedy

216

Volcano

. . . .

237 238 239 240

242 245

250 253

257

Funnyhouse of a Negro . . . . . . . 258 A Rat’s Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

219

Author Index Title Index Ethnic Identity List

Klail City . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Garrett Kaoru Hongo

. . . .

The Floating World . . . . . . . . . 254 In the Heart of the Valley of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Autobiographies . . . . . . . . . 217

Rolando Hinojosa

. . . .

Eva’s Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Mr. Ives’ Christmas . . . . . . . . . 214

Chester Himes

. . . .

Along This Way . . . . . . . . . . . 246 The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man . . . . . . . . 247 Saint Peter Relates an Incident . . . 248

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Le Ly Hayslip

236 . . . .

Middle Passage . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Fossil and Psyche . . . . . . . . . . 203 The Womb of Space . . . . . . . . . 204

Robert Hayden

232

Dust Tracks on a Road . . . . . . . 233 Their Eyes Were Watching God . . . 234

A Raisin in the Sun . . . . . . . . 191 To Be Young, Gifted, and Black . . . 192

Joy Harjo

225

Autobiographies . . . . . . . . . 227 Selected Poems of Langston Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 The Ways of White Folks . . . . . . 229

222

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

vii

265 267 271


Publisher’s Note There was a time not long ago in American literature when virtually the only experience explored in the literary canon was that of white Europeans from the mainstream of society. Rarely was the voice of a writer from another ethnic background heard. Then in the twentieth century came the Harlem Renaissance, and African American writers were suddenly in demand. By mid-century, Jewish American writers reexamined their ethnic heritage in the light of the Holocaust. By century’s end, American Indian writers redefined their place in the nation’s cultural history, and Asian American and Latino writers depicted the immigrant experience in the United States. Ethnic writers had joined the ranks of critically celebrated authors. American Ethnic Writers explores the rich tradition of these writers and the ways in which they have expressed their sense of identity through literature, both fiction and nonfiction. This set profiles 136 writers and one or more of their works. Thus, 217 essays provide an analysis of literary works—novels, plays, short stories and collections, poems and collections, autobiographies, and essays. Most of these 353 articles were first published in Identities and Issues in Literature (1997); others were adapted from the Masterplots and Magill’s Literary Annual series. All essays address the theme of personal and cultural identity. Articles on writers emphasize how the theme of race and ethnicity relates to the writer’s life and how this theme is expressed through their writings. Articles on literary works discuss the work in terms of issues of identity. Most essays are accompanied by photographs. Each author essay begins with birth and death information, including dates and places. Then, in one sentence, the author’s central achievement in literature is stated. One or more ethnic traditions with which the writer is associated is given. Next is a list of the author’s principal works in all genres, with publication dates. The text that follows concentrates on the theme of ethnic or racial identity, especially as it is explicitly, concretely treated in that individual’s literature. After the author profile comes one or more essays analyzing the writer’s literary works that are especially pertinent to a discussion of race, ethnicity, and identity. Each of these essays is defined by type of work. Then the year in which the title was first published is provided. Additional information— such as when a drama was first performed, original language title if other than English, or dates of republication with a different title—are included when applicable. ix


For every writer, a list of “Suggested readings” appears after the last literature essay. These sources, publications useful for further study of the author’s life and works, have been updated to include the most recent scholarship. Every writer profile concludes with a byline, with names separated by slashes when the authors contributed different parts of the essay. At the back of both volumes are three useful features. An Author Index lists all 136 profiled writers, and a Title Index includes all 217 covered works. The Ethnic Identity List categorizes the authors by one or more groups: African American writers, American Indian writers, Asian American writers, Jewish writers, and Latino writers. We wish to thank all the scholars who wrote these essays. Their names and affiliations are listed at the beginning of volume 1.

x

Contributor List Amy Allison Independent Scholar

Wesley Britton Grayson County College

Gerald S. Argetsinger Rochester Institute of Technology

Susan Butterworth Independent Scholar

Angela Athy Bowling Green State University

Emmett H. Carroll Seattle University

Lisa R. Aunkst Independent Scholar

Leonard Casper Boston College

JoAnn Balingit University of Delaware

Russ Castronovo University of Miami

Jack Vincent Barbera University of Mississippi

Christine R. Catron St. Mary’s University

Paula C. Barnes Hampton University

Nancy L. Chick University of Georgia

Henry J. Baron Calvin College

C. L. Chua California State University, Fresno

Margaret W. Batschelet University of Texas

J. Robin Coffelt University of North Texas

Carol F. Bender Alma College

David Conde Metropolitan State College of Denver

Jacquelyn Benton Edgewood College

Holly Dworken Cooley Independent Scholar

Milton Berman University of Rochester

Virginia M. Crane California State University, Los Angeles

Cynthia A. Bily Adrian College

Shira Daemon Independent Scholar

Margaret Boe Birns New York University and The New School for Social Research

Joyce Chandler Davis Gadsden State Community College Barbara Day City University of New York

Sandra F. Bone Arkansas State University

Frank Day Clemson University

Muriel W. Brailey Wilberforce University

Mary Jo Deegan University of Nebraska—Lincoln xi

American Ethnic Writers Frenzella Elaine De Lancey Drexel University

David M. Heaton Ohio University

Bill Delaney Independent Scholar

Terry Heller Coe College

Francine Dempsey The College of Saint Rose

Diane Andrews Henningfeld Adrian College

Don Evans Trenton State College

Kay Hively Independent Scholar

Grace Farrell Butler University

Arthur D. Hlavaty Independent Scholar

Edward A. Fiorelli St. John’s University

Pierre L. Horn Wright State University

T. A. Fishman Clemson University

E. D. Huntley Appalachian State University

Anne Fleischmann University of California, Davis

Andrea J. Ivanov Azusa Pacific University

Robert Frail Centenary College

Martin Japtok University of California, Davis

Tom Frazier Cumberland College

Helen Jaskoski Independent Scholar

Chris Freeman St. John’s University

Andrew O. Jones University of California, Davis

Janet Fujimoto California State University, Fresno

Jane Anderson Jones Manatee Community College, South

Constance M. Fulmer Pepperdine University

Theresa M. Kanoza Eastern Illinois University

Jill B. Gidmark University of Minnesota

Leela Kapai University of the District of Columbia

Craig Gilbert Portland State University

Jacquelyn Kilpatrick Governors State University

Joyce J. Glover Independent Scholar

Christine H. King University of California, Davis

Charles A. Gramlich Xavier University of Louisiana

Judith Kitchen State University of New York, College at Brockport

James Green Arizona State University

Laura L. Klure Independent Scholar

Robert Haight Kalamazoo Valley Community College

Lynne Klyse Independent Scholar

Betty L. Hart University of Southern Indiana

Gregory W. Lanier The University of West Florida xii

Contributor List Douglas Edward LaPrade University of Texas—Pan American

Andrew B. Preslar Lamar University, Orange

Richard M. Leeson Fort Hays State University

R. C. S. Independent Scholar

Leon Lewis Appalachian State University

Josephine Raburn Cameron University

Janet E. Lorenz Independent Scholar

Brian Abel Ragen Southern Illinois University—Edwardsville

Bernadette Flynn Low Dundale Community College

Ralph Reckley, Sr. Independent Scholar

R. C. Lutz University of the Pacific

Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Independent Scholar

Joanne McCarthy Tacoma Community College

Barbara Cecelia Rhodes Central Missouri State University

Grace McEntee Appalachian State University

Janine Rider Mesa State College

Ron McFarland University of Idaho

Christy Rishoi Michigan State University

A. L. McLeod Rider University

Larry Rochelle Johnson County Community College

Anne B. Mangum Bennett Collge

Mark Sanders College of the Mainland

Lois A. Marchino University of Texas at El Paso

Richard Sax Madonna University

Julia M. Meyers North Carolina State University

Daniel M. Scott III Rhode Island College

Michael R. Meyers Shaw University

Chenliang Sheng Northern Kentucky University

Laura Mitchell California State University, Fresno

Amy Beth Shollenberger Independent Scholar

Robert A. Morace Daemon College

Debra Shostak The College of Wooster

Rafael Ocasio Agnes Scott College

R. Baird Shuman University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Patrick O’Donnell West Virginia University

Thomas J. Sienkewicz Monmouth College, Illinois

Cynthia Packard University of Massachusetts—Amherst

Charles L. P. Silet Iowa State University

David Peck University of California, Long Beach

Carl Singleton Fort Hays State University

xiii

American Ethnic Writers Joseleyne Ashford Slade Michigan State University

Lorenzo Thomas University of Houston—Downtown

Marjorie Smelstor University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire

Tony Trigilio Northeastern University

Pamela J. Olubunmi Smith University of Nebraska—Omaha

Richard Tuerk East Texas State University

Virginia Whatley Smith University of Alabama—Birmingham

William Vaughn Independent Scholar

Brian Stableford Independent Scholar

Martha Modena Vertreace Kennedy-King College

Trey Strecker Ball State University

Kelly C. Walter Southern California College

Philip A. Tapley Louisiana College

Qun Wang California State University, Monterey Bay

Australia Tarver Texas Christian University

Patricia L. Watson University of Georgia

Judith K. Taylor Northern Kentucky University

Gary Westfahl University of California, Irvine

Julie Tharp University of Wisconsin Center—Marshfield Wood College

Kathryn Ervin Williams Michigan State University Pat M Wong Binghamton University

xiv



Ai

Ai (Florence Anthony) Born: Albany, Texas; October 21, 1947

Ai has renewed the poetic dramatic monologue in poems that record moments of public and private history. Traditions: African American, American Indian, Japanese American Principal works: Cruelty, 1973; Killing Floor, 1979; Sin, 1986; Fate, 1991; Greed, 1993; Vice: New and Selected Poems, 1999 Ai is a multiracial American woman. Her mother’s immediate ancestors were African American, Native American (Choctaw), and European American (Irish and Dutch). Her father’s ancestors were Japanese. Ai has said that the history of her family is the history of America. She does not find her identity in any racial group. She insists on the uniqueness of personal identity. One of the aims of her work is to destroy stereotypes. She has said that she is “irrevocably tied to the lives of all people, both in and out of time.” Consequently, whoever “wants to speak” in her poems “is allowed to speak regardless of sex, race, creed, or color.” Ai grew up in Tucson, Arizona. When she was seven, her family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a year, then spent two years in San Francisco, California, before returning to Tucson. They moved again when Ai was twelve, this time to Los Angeles, California, returning again to Tucson three years later, when Ai was fifteen. Ai attended Catholic schools until the seventh grade. Her first poem, written when she was twelve, was a response to an assignment by the nuns to write a letter from the point of view of a Christian martyr who was going to die the next day. When she was fourteen, intending to enter a contest for poems about a historical figure, Ai began writing poems regularly. History was Ai’s best subject in high school, which she attended in Tucson. At the University of Arizona, also in Tucson, Ai found her identity in the “aesthetic atmosphere” of intellectual life. She was graduated from the university in 1969 with a degree in Oriental studies. She earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of California at Irvine in 1971. When Ai published her first book of poetry, Cruelty, in 1973, she became a nationally known figure, so striking were her grimly realistic and violent poems. Ai married the poet Lawrence Kearney in 1976. In 1979, her second book, Killing Floor, won the Lamont Poetry Prize. She separated from Kearney in 1981, and 1

2 / Ai

the couple divorced in 1984. In 1986, her third book, Sin, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She has since published Fate in 1991 and Greed in 1993.

Cruelty Type of work: Poetry First published: 1973 Ai is more concerned with social class than with racial identity or gender in Cruelty. The book is a series of poetic dramatic monologues spoken by members of the underclass in America. It is a searing indictment of societies that permit the existence of poverty. Life, itself, is cruel for the speakers in Cruelty. The speaker in “Tenant Farmer” has no crops. The couple in “Starvation” have no food. In “Abortion,” a man finds the fetus of his son wrapped in wax paper and thinks: “the poor have no children, just small people/ and there is room for only one man in this house.” Men and women become alienated from each other in these conditions. The speaker in “Young Farm Woman Alone” no longer wants a man. In “Recapture,” a man finds and beats a woman who has run off from him. In “Prostitute,” a woman kills her husband, then goes out to get revenge on the men who use her. Out of the agony of their lives, some of Ai’s characters achieve transcendence through love. The couple in “Anniversary” has managed to stay together, providing a home for their son for many years, in spite of never having “anything but hard times.” In “The Country Midwife: A Day,” the midwife delivers a woman’s child for “the third time between abortions.” Beneath the mother “a stain . . . spreads over the sheet.” Crying out to the Lord, the midwife lets her bleed. Ending the cycles of pregnancy for the woman, in an act of mercy, the midwife takes upon herself the cross of guilt and suffering. Ai extends her study of the causes and consequences of poverty to other times and places in the second half of Cruelty. The figure in “The Hangman” smells “the whole Lebanese coast/ in the upraised arms of Kansas.” In “Cuba, 1962” a farmer cuts off his dead wife’s feet, allowing her blood to mix with the sugar cane he will sell in the village, so everyone can taste his grief. Medieval peasants are evoked by “The Corpse Hauler’s Elegy,” although the plague victims he carries could also be contemporary. Violence increases in the final poems of the book, a sign of the violence in societies that perpetuate social injustice. In “The Deserter,” a soldier kills the woman who gave him shelter in order to leave everything of himself behind. In “The Hitchhiker,” a woman is raped and killed by a psychopath in Arizona. In “The Child Beater,” a mother beats her seven-year-old daughter with a belt, then gets out her “dog’s chain leash.” Ai has compassion for all

Ai / 3

of these people—including the killers—and she demands compassion for them from her readers.

Greed Type of work: Poetry First published: 1993 Greed is a collection of poems about the identity of America in the late twentieth century. In dramatic monologues spoken by famous or obscure Americans, Ai exposes amorality in the institutions of society, business, and private life. For most of the speakers, America has not kept its promises. Truth and justice are illusions in a society made more vicious, because of greed, than the Darwinian struggle for survival among animals. Money, power, drugs, sex—these are the gods of late twentieth century America. To the African American speakers, slavery is still alive in the “big house” of white America. Violence is the result. In “Riot Act, April 29, 1992,” a black man, going to get something on the day the wealth “finally trickled down,” threatens to “set your world on fire.” In “Self Defense,” Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C., trapped using crack cocaine by the FBI, warns: “The good ole days of slaves out pickin’ cotton/ ain’t coming back no more.” In “Endangered Species,” a black university professor, perceived as “a race instead of a man,” is stopped by police while driving through his own neighborhood. In “Hoover, Edgar J.,” Ai indicts the director of the FBI for abuse of power. Hoover admits he has “files on everybody who counts” and “the will to use them.” Deceptions by government are implicated in poems concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In “Jack Ruby on Ice,” Ruby is refused sanctuary, in exchange for his testimony, by the Chief Justice of the United States. In “Oswald Incognito and Astral Travels,” Oswald finds himself “trapped/ in the palace of lies,/ where I’m clothed in illusion/ and fed confusion with a spoon.” Other poems explore domestic violence and sexual abuse of children. In “Finished,” a woman kills her husband after repeated episodes of physical abuse. In “Respect, 1967,” such a man expresses rage “against the paycheck that must be saved for diapers/ and milk.” The speaker in “Life Story” is a priest who sexually abuses young boys. As a child, he was abused by his uncle, also a priest. In “The Ice Cream Man,” the speaker lures a little girl inside his truck to sexually molest her. He tells of his own abuse by his stepfather and his mother. Ai offers little hope for the promise of America in Greed. She closes the book with the title poem, about the savings and loan scandal of the 1980’s. The responsible working man in “Family Portrait, 1960” has little chance to succeed. Even so, he takes care of his sick wife, cooks dinner, oversees the

4 / Ai

baths of his young daughters, then dozes—“chaos kept at bay” for one more day.

Suggested readings Ai. “An Interview with Ai.” Interview by Catherine French, Rebecca Ross, and Gary Short. Hayden’s Ferry Review 5 (Fall, 1989): 11-31. _______. “On Being One-Half Japanese, One-Eighth Choctaw, One Quarter Black, and One-Sixteenth Irish.” Ms. 6 (May, 1978): 58. Cuddihy, Michael, and Lawrence Kearney. “Ai: An Interview.” Ironwood 12 (Winter, 1978): 27-34. Leavitt, Michele. “Ai’s ‘Go.’” The Explicator 54 (Winter, 1996): 126-127. Wilson, Rob. “The Will to Transcendence in Contemporary American Poet Ai.” Canadian Review of American Studies 17, no. 4 (Winter, 1986): 437-448. —James Green

MeenaA lexander

Meena Alexander Born: Allahabad, India; February 17, 1951

Alexander’s work examines women in society from the perspective of an expatriate feminist. Traditions: South Asian Principal works: Stone Roots, 1980; House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces, 1988; Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley, 1989; Fault Lines: A Memoir, 1993; Manhattan Music, 1997 Meena Alexander spent her early life in Kerala, a state at the southwestern tip of India. She received her English education in the Sudan, traveling between her parents’ home in Africa and her grandparents’ home in India. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1969 from the University of Khartoum and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in 1973. After teaching at universities in Delhi and Hyderabad, she moved to New York City in 1979. By the age of forty-four, she had published six volumes of poetry, a novel, a play, two volumes of literary criticism, and an autobiography. Alexander describes herself as a “woman cracked by multiple migrations,” acted on by the disparate and powerful influences of the languages and customs of the four continents on which she has lived. Although her works are written in English, she grew up speaking Malayalam, a Dravidian language of southwest India, and Arabic, the language of her Syrian Christian heritage, spoken in North Africa. Her writing reflects the tension created by the interplay of these influences and serves as a way to derive meaning from her wide range of experience. The most prominent theme of Alexander’s work is the difficulty inherent in being a woman, of having a woman’s body and coping with the societal, physiological, and personal pressures on and responses to that body as it develops through childhood into maturity and middle age. Her grandmothers serve as mythical figures with whom Alexander closely identifies. Her perspective is further complicated by her alienation from the language and culture of her childhood, and by her need to recover something of that past. The images of fecundity and beauty with which Alexander’s work is suffused derive from her youth in Kerala; these images may be juxtaposed with images of infirmity, sterility, or brutality, underscoring the writer’s need to integrate the fragmented components of her life as an expatriate woman. The imagination provides a synthesis of the elements of history and personality in Alexander’s work. Her poems “begin as a disturbance, a 5

6 / Meena Alexander

jostling in the soul” which prompts her to write, seeking “that fortuitous, fleeting meaning, so precious, so scanty.”

House of a Thousand Doors Type of work: Poetry First published: 1988 House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces is a collection of fifty-nine poems and prose pieces. Alexander’s poetry reflects her multicultural heritage and the tension it creates. The book is organized into three sections, the first and third sections serving as a synthesis for the wide variety of subjects and themes treated in the body of the work. Many of the poems reflect the writer’s subjective response to her experience; many also project or create new experiences that underscore the importance of imagination as a lens through which to focus the inner life into poetry. The title poem of House of a Thousand Doors uses the title metaphor to describe the variety of forces that operate on the persona: gender, heritage, language, experience, ideology, and the search for meaning. A complex array of images embodies these forces in the book, reflecting the author’s sensitivity to their influence. Alexander uses her writing to integrate the diversity of her experience. Dominating the persona’s early life is the figure of her grandmother, a powerful member of the family who learned to exercise some control over the many lines of force that affected her life. The mature awareness of the persona is imposed on the re-created memory of herself as a girl watching the figure of the grandmother kneel in turn before each of the thousand doors on a never-ending pilgrimage, “a poor forked thing” praying for the favor of her ancestors. The grandmother becomes a figure of myth and a symbol of tradition serving as the focus of many of the poems in the collection. Conciliation and unity with the culture and solidity of the past are central to House of a Thousand Doors. The three major sources of imagery in the book are family, culture, and nature. Family images, though literal, have a universal quality—she describes finding her grandmother’s letters “in an old biscuit box” and wonders if her grandmother was, like herself, “inventing a great deal.” Other images reflect the diminution of women at the behest of a patriarchal society; a cell door closing on a woman raped by the police clangs “like an old bell left over by the British,” while a portrait of the pacifist leader Mohandas Gandhi looks down from the wall. A third class of imagery, the imagery of nature, reflects the persona’s romantic theory of art; she laments, “My body/ part water/ part rock/ is searching for heaven.” This searching brings her back to her past, real and mythical, and ultimately back to herself and her need for meaning.

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Suggested readings Dave, Shilpa. “The Doors to Home and History: Post-Colonial Identities in Meena Alexander and Bharati Mukherjee.” Amerasia Journal 19 (Fall, 1993): 103. Duncan, Erika. “A Portrait of Meena Alexander.” World Literature Today 73, no. 1 (Winter, 1999): 23-28. Perry, John Oliver. Review of House of a Thousand Doors, by Meena Alexander. World Literature Today 63 (Winter, 1989): 163. _______. Review of Nampally Road, by Meena Alexander. World Literature Today 65 (Spring, 1991): 364. Rao, Susheela N. Review of Fault Lines, by Meena Alexander. World Literature Today 68 (Autumn, 1994): 883. —Andrew B. Preslar

Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie Born: Spokane Indian Reservation, Wellpinit, Washington; October 7, 1966

Alexie, an accomplished writer of poetry and fiction, is a spokesperson for the realities of reservation life. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, 1992; First Indian on the Moon, 1993; The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, 1993; Old Shirts and New Skins, 1993; Reservation Blues, 1995; Indian Killer, 1996; The Toughest Indian in the World, 2000 Sherman Alexie is a Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Indian who grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on a reservation. He acknowledges that his origin and upbringing affect everything that he does in his writing and otherwise. Alexie’s father retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and his mother worked as a youth drug and alcohol counselor. The first of their five children to leave the reservation, Alexie attended Gonzaga University in Spokane for two years before entering Washington State University, where he studied creative writing with Alex Kuo. He was graduated in 1991. Among the five books Alexie produced between 1992 and 1995, the seventy-seven-line free verse poem “Horses,” from Old Shirts and New Skins, typifies the passion, anger, and pain in some of his most effective poems. Focused on the slaughter of a thousand Spokane horses by General George Wright in 1858, the long lines echo obsessively: “1,000 ponies, the United States Cavalry stole 1,000 ponies/ from the Spokane Indians, shot 1,000 ponies & only 1 survived.” The poem is one of Alexie’s favorites at readings, where it acquires the incantatory power of the best oral poetry. Although Alexie’s poems often have narrative and dramatic qualities, he is also adept at the short lyric, and his published work includes examples of the sestina and the villanelle. “Reservation Love Song,” from The Business of Fancydancing, reflecting on the poverty of reservation life, with its government-built housing and low-quality food, begins: I can meet you in Springdale buy you beer & take you home in my one-eyed Ford. 8

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Sherman Alexie (Marion Ettlinger)

First Indian on the Moon is largely composed of prose poems. “Collect Calls” opens with an allusion to Crazy Horse, who appears often as a mythic figure in Alexie’s writing: “My name is Crazy Horse, maybe it’s Neil Armstrong or Lee Harvey Oswald. I am guilty of every crime; I was the first man on the moon.” As in his fiction, Alexie tempers the anger and pain of his poems with satiric wit, as in “The Marlon Brando Memorial Swimming Pool,” from Old Shirts and New Skins, in which activist Dennis Banks is imagined as “the first/ Native American real estate agent, selling a 5,000 gallon capacity dream/ in the middle of a desert.” Not surprisingly, there is no water in the pool.

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The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1993 Alexie’s initial foray into fiction (except for a few stories sprinkled among his poems), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven appeared before his twenty-seventh birthday and was awarded a citation from the PEN/Hemingway Award committee for best first book of fiction in 1993. Praising his “live and unremitting lyric energy,” one reviewer suggested that three of the twenty-two stories in the book “could stand in any collection of excellence.” Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation; he is Spokane-Coeur d’Alene. Critics have noted that the pain and anger of the stories are balanced by his keen sense of humor and satiric wit. Alexie’s readers will notice certain recurring characters, including Victor Joseph, who often appears as the narrator, Lester FallsApart, the pompous tribal police chief, David WalksAlong, Junior Polatkin, and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the storyteller to whom no one listens. These characters also appear in Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues (1995), so the effect is of a community; in this respect, Alexie’s writings are similar to the fiction of William Faulkner. One reviewer has suggested that The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is almost a novel, despite the fact that Alexie rarely relies on plot development in the stories and does not flesh out his characters. It might more aptly be said that the stories come close to poetry, just as Alexie’s poems verge on fiction. The stories range in length from less than three to about twenty pages, and some of the best, like “The First Annual All-Indian Horseshoe Pitch and Barbecue,” leap from moment to moment, from one-liner to quickly narrated episode, much like a poem. That story begins, “Someone forgot the charcoal; blame the BIA.” The next sentence concerns Victor playing the piano just before the barbecue: “after the beautiful dissonance and implied survival, the Spokane Indians wept, stunned by this strange and familiar music.” Survival is a repeated theme in Alexie’s work. The story then jumps to a series of four short paragraphs, each beginning “There is something beautiful about. . . .” Then we are told that Simon won at horseshoes, and he “won the coyote contest when he told us that basketball should be our new religion.” A paragraph near the end is composed of a series of questions, each beginning “Can you hear the dreams?” The last paragraph features a child born of a white mother and an Indian father, with the mother proclaiming: “Both sides of this baby are beautiful.” Beneath the anger, pain, and satiric edge of his stories, often haunted by the mythic figure of Crazy Horse and tinged with fantasy, Alexie offers hope for survival and reconciliation.

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Reservation Blues Type of work: Novel First published: 1995 Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues, was published before his thirtieth birthday and after the striking success of The Business of Fancydancing (1992), a collection of poems and stories published by a small press when he was twenty-six. By the time his novel was being reviewed, nearly eight thousand copies of The Business of Fancydancing were in print, along with two additional collections of poetry, Old Shirts and New Skins and First Indian on the Moon, and a heralded book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, all published in 1993. In his novel Alexie reasserts an equation that he formed in “Imagining the Reservation,” from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: “Survival = Anger ’ Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation.” Reservation Blues is arguably the most imaginative of his works to date, blending, among other things, the Faust myth with life on the “rez” and the dream of making it big in the music world. Alexie has performed in his own blues band. The novel is haunted by the bad memories (the essence of the blues) and by several characters’ nightmares, including Junior Polatkin, Victor, and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, all of whom are familiar from other stories and poems by Alexie. The role of the deity in the novel is played by Big Mom, who lives atop a mountain on the reservation and has powerful magic. The story gets underway when a black blues guitarist from Mississippi, Robert Johnson (a historical personage) who has sold his soul to the devil (a white man known as “The Gentleman”) for a magic guitar wanders onto the reservation and passes his literally hot guitar to Victor. On their way to success and fame the group acquires a pair of vocalists in Chess and Checkers, two Flathead women, and two groupies, Indian “wannabe’s,” Betty and Veronica, named after characters in the Archie comic series. When Betty observes that white people want to be like Indians so they can live at peace with the earth and be wise, Chess says, “You’ve never spent a few hours in the Powwow Tavern. I’ll show you wise and peaceful.” The destruction of the dream comes when the group goes to New York, where they find that their exploitative agents are none other than Phil Sheridan (source of the words “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”) and George Wright (who commanded the soldiers that slaughtered the Spokane ponies in 1858, a recurring motif in Alexie’s work). They work for Calvary Records. This novel encompasses broad humor, but the laughter is almost always painful. The satiric thrust, the travel, and the ironies attendant on innocents abroad suggest that Reservation Blues belongs to the tradition of Voltaire’s Candide (1759).

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Suggested readings Bellante, John, and Carl Bellante. “Sherman Alexie, Literary Rebel.” Bloomsbury Review 14 (May-June, 1994): 14-15, 26. Busch, Frederick. “Longing for Magic.” The New York Times Book Review, July 16, 1995, 9-10. Kincaid, James R. “Who Gets to Tell Their Stories?” The New York Times Book Review 97 (May 3, 1992): 1, 24-29. Price, Reynolds. “One Indian Doesn’t Tell Another.” The New York Times Book Review 98 (October 17, 1993): 15-16. Silko, Leslie Marmon. “Big Bingo.” Nation 260 ( June 12, 1995): 856-858, 860. Teters, Charlene. “Poet, Novelist, Filmmaker Sherman Alexie: Spokane, Coeur d’Alene.” Indian Artist 4, no. 2 (Spring, 1998): 30-35. —Ron McFarland

Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen Born: Cubero, New Mexico; October 24, 1939

As a novelist, poet, literary critic, and scholar, Allen preserves and creates Native American literature. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: The Blind Lion, 1974; Coyote’s Daylight Trip, 1978; A Cannon Between My Knees, 1981; Star Child, 1981; Shadow Country, 1982; The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, 1983; Studies in American Indian Literature, 1983; The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, 1986; Wyrds, 1987; Skins and Bones: Poems 1979-87, 1988; Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, 1989 (editor); Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, BorderCrossing Loose Canons, 1998 Paula Gunn Allen, as an American Indian woman, sees her identity in relation to a larger community. She is proud to be part of an old and honored tradition that appreciates the beautiful, the harmonious, and the spiritual. She also recognizes that since in the United States there are more than a million non-Indians to every Indian, she must work to stay connected to her Native American heritage. Allen frequently refers to herself as “a multicultural event”; people of many ethnicities are related to her. Her mother was a Laguna Indian whose grandfather was Scottish American. Allen says that she was raised Roman Catholic, but living next door were her grandmother, who was Presbyterian and Indian and her grandfather, who was a German Jew. Her father’s family came from Lebanon; he was born in a Mexican land-grant village north of Laguna Pueblo. She grew up with relatives who spoke Arabic, English, LaPaula Gunn Allen (Tama Rothschild) guna, German, and Spanish. Her 13

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relatives shared legends from around the world. Even with such cultural diversity in her family, as a teenager Allen could find no Native American models for her writing. Consequently, she read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) about twenty times; her other literary favorites were Louisa May Alcott, Gertrude Stein, and the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. When she went to the University of New Mexico and wanted to focus on Native American literature in her Ph.D. program in English, it was impossible. The scholarship was not there to study. She came to write the books that she wanted to read and teach the courses that she wanted to take. Allen has taught at San Francisco State University, at the University of New Mexico, in the Native American Studies Program at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. In enumerating the influences that have made her who she is, Allen first honors her mother, who taught her to think like a strong Indian woman and that animals, insects, and plants are to be treated with the deep respect one customarily reserves for high-status humans. She honors her father for teaching her how to weave magic, memory, and observation into the tales she tells. Finally, the Indian collective unconscious remains the source of her vision of spiritual reality.

The Sacred Hoop Type of work: Essays First published: 1986 The collection of essays The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions. The title comes from a lesson Allen learned from her mother: that all of life is a circle—a sacred hoop—in which everything has its place. These essays, like tribal art of all kinds, support the principle of kinship and render the beautiful in terms of the harmony, relationship, balance, and dignity that are the informing principles of Indian aesthetics. Indians understand that woman is the sun and the earth: She is grandmother, mother, thought, wisdom, dream, reason, tradition, memory, deity, and life itself. The essays are all characterized by seven major themes that pertain to American Indian identity. The first is that Indians and spirits are always found together. Second, Indians endure. Third, the traditional tribal lifestyles are never patriarchal and are more often woman-centered than not. Tribal social systems are nurturing, pacifist, and based on ritual and spirit-centered, woman-focused worldviews. The welfare of the young is paramount, the complementary nature of all life forms is stressed, and the centrality of powerful, self-defining, assertive, decisive women to social well-being is unquestioned. Fourth, the physical and cultural destruction of American

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Indian tribes is and was about patriarchal fear and the inability to tolerate women’s having decision-making capacity at every level of society. Fifth, there is such a thing as American Indian literature, and it informs all American writing. Sixth, all Western studies of American Indian tribal systems are erroneous because they view tribalism from the cultural bias of patriarchy. Seventh, the sacred ways of the American Indian people are part of a worldwide culture that predates Western systems. These powerful essays are divided into three sections: “The Ways of Our Grandmothers,” “The Word Warriors,” and “Pushing Up the Sky.” All of them testify to the value of American Indian traditions and the strength of the voices of Indian women. Allen identifies the Indian roots of white feminism as well as the role of lesbians in American culture, and she projects future visions for American Indian women, tribes, and literature.

Spider Woman’s Granddaughters Type of work: Biography and short fiction First published: 1989 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, edited by Allen, is a collection of two dozen traditional tales, biographical writings, and short stories by seventeen accomplished American Indian women writers. All the women follow the tradition of Grandmother Spider, who, according to the Cherokee, brought the light of thought to her people, who were living as hostages in their own land. These stories are war stories, since all American Indian women are at war and have been for five hundred years. Some of the selections are old-style stories; others deal with contemporary issues. All are by women intimately acquainted with defeat, with being conquered, and with losing the right and the authority to control their personal and communal lives. They have experienced the devastating destruction of their national and personal identities. They powerfully demonstrate the Indian slogan: We shall endure. The first selection, “The Warriors,” contains eleven stories of strong women who are self-defining, fearless, respectful, prayerful, and self-assertive. Their warpath is an odyssey through a brutal and hostile world. Each recognizes that the Indian family must continue to cling to tradition. A warrior must remember where she comes from; beauty is what gives human beings dignity; and the young must be taught how to keep their sense of value intact. These women warriors do not give up hope, even when they are dying, their children are stolen, and they are undergoing emotional and physical battering. They continue to resist when all the forces of a wealthy, powerful, arrogant, ignorant, and uncaring nation are mustered against them in order to coerce their capitulation.

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The second section, “The Casualties,” contains five selections about Indian women who have been wounded in the continuing war that seeks to destroy rather than enhance their individual and collective spiritual power. For example, Linda Hogan’s “Making Do” is about a mother’s powerlessness in the face of loss and grief. She clings to her tribal traditions and carves wooden birds, hoping to regain the power, healing, and grace that were traditionally put into carvings. The third section, “The Resistance,” contains eight selections that are more hopeful. Since the 1960’s, Native Americans have become more involved in the administration of the economic and legal affairs of their tribes. “Deep Purple,” by Allen, a Native American urban lesbian who loves a white woman, addresses the issue of colonization in the women’s movement and tries to reclaim her connection to the spiritual powers of the past. Like all the granddaughters of Spider Woman, she is aware of her responsibilities, gifts, and identity.

Suggested readings Albers, Patricia, and Beatrice Medicine. The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983. Allen, Paula Gunn, ed. Studies in American Indian Literature. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983. Bataille, Gretchen M., Kathleen Mullen Sands, and Charles L. P. Silet, eds. The Pretend Indians: Images of Native Americans in the Movies. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1980. Brandon, William. The Last American: The Indian in American Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Bruchac, Joseph, ed. Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Chapman, Abraham. Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations. New York: New American Library, 1975. Coltelli, Laura. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Deloria, Vine, Jr. God Is Red. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973. Reprint. New York: Dell Books, 1983. Etienne, Mona, and Eleanor Leacock, eds. Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers of the United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. Hanson, Elizabeth I. Paula Gunn Allen. Boise State University Western Writers Series 96. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1990. Keating, AnaLouise. Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

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Swann, Brian, and Arnold Krupat, eds. I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. —Constance M. Fulmer

IsabelA llende

Isabel Allende Born: Lima, Peru; August 2, 1942

Allende brings a feminist perspective to the traditions of Latin American literature. Traditions: Latino Principal works: La casa de los espíritus, 1982 (The House of the Spirits, 1985); De amor y de sombra, 1984 (Of Love and Shadows, 1987); Eva Luna, 1987 (English translation, 1988); El plan infinito, 1991 (The Infinite Plan, 1993); Paula, 1994 (English translation, 1995); Hija de la fortuna, 1999 (Daughter of Fortune, 1999) The daughter of a Chilean diplomat, Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru. Following her parents’ divorce, she lived first with her grandparents in Santiago and later with her mother and stepfather in Europe and the Middle East. She returned to Chile as a young woman and began her career as a television and newsreel journalist and as a writer for a feminist journal. In 1973, Allende found herself at the center of Chile’s turbulent political life when her uncle and godfather, the country’s Marxist president Salvador Allende, was assassinated during a military coup. In the months that followed, Allende worked to oppose the new dictatorship headed by General Pinochet until fears for her safety led Allende to move to Venezuela with her husband and two children. Allende’s first novel, The House of the Spirits, was published to international acclaim. It is a family saga set against a backdrop of political upheaval in an unnamed South American country. Her second book, Of Love and Shadows, followed two years later and also drew on her country’s troubled history. Both works placed Allende firmly within the Latin American tradition of novels that take a strong stand in their fictionalized portrayals of political events. Allende’s third novel, Eva Luna, traces the extraordinary life of its title character and the Austrian journalist who becomes her lover. All three novels are examples of the literary style known as Magical Realism, in which strange, supernatural occurrences are intermingled with everyday events. Allende’s work, however, brings a distinctly feminist perspective to a literary style that is predominantly male. Following her divorce from her husband of twenty years, Allende moved to the United States in the 1980’s, where she remarried and settled in California. Her next novel, The Infinite Plan, draws on her American experience in its story of a man’s life from his childhood in the barrios of Los 18

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Angeles to his adult search for meaning and happiness. In 1995, Allende published one of her most personal works, Paula, a chronicle of her daughter’s death following a long illness. Allende examines her experience as a woman and a mother in her portrayal of love, pain, and loss. Allende’s position as a woman working within the traditions of Latin American literature has led her to create strikingly original stories and characters, and she remains a consistently intriguing and rewarding writer.

The House of the Spirits Type of work: Novel First published: La casa de los espíritus, 1982 (English translation, 1985) The House of the Spirits, Allende’s first novel, established her international reputation and remains her best-known work. Drawing on the Latin American literary style known as Magical Realism, the book tells the story of the Trueba family over several generations. Set in an unidentified South American country that resembles Allende’s homeland, the novel chronicles the social and political forces that affect the family’s fate. The story begins with Esteban Trueba and his marriage to Clara del Valle, a young woman who possesses clairvoyant gifts and communicates easily with the spirit world. Their marriage produces a daughter, Blanca, and twin sons. Esteban also fathers a son by one of the peasant women on his family estate; years later his illegitimate grandson, a member of the secret police, will torture his legitimate granddaughter, Alba, a political prisoner. Esteban’s political ambitions take him to the country’s senate, where he opposes leftwing reform efforts, while Blanca’s affair with an idealistic peasant boy results in Alba’s birth. The boy becomes a populist songwriter and a leading figure in the Socialist movement. A subsequent leftist victory is short-lived, however, and the elected government is deposed in a military coup. Alba, who has married one of the leftist leaders, is arrested and tortured before her grandfather can secure her release. In an effort to come to terms with all that has happened to her and to her family, she sets about writing the book that will become The House of the Spirits. Allende’s novel has been compared to Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970) in style and structure and in the use of Magical Realism, a technique that combines ordinary events with the fantastic and miraculous, giving rise to startling and vivid imagery. Allende herself maintains that much that seems incredible in the book is drawn from memories of her childhood. The characters of Esteban and Clara Trueba are based on her own maternal grandparents, and she began the book not as a novel but as a letter to her aging grandfather meant to reassure him that the family stories would live on through her. The book’s political themes are also taken in part from Allende’s family history;

20 / Isabel Allende

her uncle was Salvador Allende, the Socialist president slain in Chile’s 1973 military coup. The House of the Spirits brings a strong female voice to the forefront of Latin American literature and offers a collection of vital female characters who embody the book’s spirit of endurance, resilience, and courage.

The Infinite Plan Type of work: Novel First published: El plan infinito, 1991 (English translation, 1993) The Infinite Plan was Allende’s first novel following her move to the United States. Although it was written in Spanish, the book is set in California and chronicles the life of a European American man. Allende uses her character’s experiences to examine the factors that shaped the United States’ social history in the decades following World War II. Her focus is the Latino culture in California, in which the main character comes of age. As the book opens, young Gregory Reeves and his family are living a nomadic life as his father preaches a spiritual doctrine he calls the Infinite Plan. When the elder Reeves falls ill in Los Angeles, the family settles in the barrio (although they are not Latino). Gregory grows up experiencing life as a member of a minority group within the community. His closest friend is Carmen Morales, whose family comes to regard him as an honorary son. Following high school, Gregory leaves home for Berkeley and college while Carmen remains in the barrio until an unwanted pregnancy and near-fatal abortion make her an outcast. Gregory leaves an unhappy marriage to serve a harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam, while Carmen lives abroad and begins designing jewelry. Both meet again in Berkeley, where Gregory embarks on an ambitious quest for success that leads him away from his youthful idealism and into a second failed marriage and problems with alcoholism. Carmen adopts her dead brother’s half-Vietnamese son and discovers a strong sense of herself, marrying an old friend and settling in Italy. Gregory begins at last to take stock of his life and to see the pattern—the infinite plan—that has shaped it. Allende’s first novel set in her adopted country reflects her perspective on the United States as an immigrant. Her delight in tolerance and openness—matters of great importance to a writer whose life was marred by the repressive military coup in Chile in 1973—is apparent in her affectionate portrait of the freewheeling Berkeley of the 1960’s. Her cultural identity as a Latina also comes into play in her portrayal of life in the barrio and the effect that religion and a patriarchal society have on Carmen. Allende makes use in the novel of some aspects of the Latin American literary style known as Magical Realism, bringing a kind of heightened realism to the story, which blends realistic events with exaggerated or im-

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probable ones. The result is a book filled with memorable characters that brings a fresh perspective to the post-World War II history and culture of the United States.

Suggested readings Allende, Isabel. “Writing as an Act of Hope.” In The Art and Craft of the Political Novel, edited by William Zinsser. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Bly, Robert. Review of The Infinite Plan, by Isabel Allende. The New York Times Book Review, May 16, 1993, 13. Foster, David William, ed. Handbook of Latin American Literature. New York: Garland, 1987. Meyer, Doris, and Margarite Fernandez Olmos, eds. Contemporary Women Authors of Latin America. New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1983. Rodden, John, ed. Conversations with Isabel Allende. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Zinsser, William, ed. Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. —Janet E. Lorenz

Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez Born: New York, New York; March 27, 1950

Alvarez expresses the complexities of being cross cultural and an immigrant to the United States. Traditions: Caribbean, Dominican American Principal works: Homecoming: Poems, 1984; How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, 1991; In the Time of the Butterflies, 1994; The Other Side-El Otro Lado, 1995; Something to Declare, 1998 Although she was born in New York City, Julia Alvarez spent much of her childhood in the Dominican Republic. Her parents were from the island. Her mother came from a well-positioned and wealthy family, but her father was rather poor. The family’s divided economic position was tied to political problems within the Dominican Republic. Her father’s family, which once was wealthy, supported the losing side during the revolution, while her mother’s family benefited from supporting those who gained power. Julia’s family, although poorer than most of their relatives, enjoyed a privileged position in the Dominican Republic. Although she was raised in the Dominican Republic, Alvarez describes her childhood as “an American childhood.” Her extended family’s power, influence, American connections, and wealth led to Alvarez’s enjoying many of the luxuries of America, including American food, clothes, and friends. When Alvarez’s father became involved with the forces attempting to oust the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafaél Leonidas Trujillo Molina, the secret police began monitoring his activity. Immediately before he was to be arrested in 1960, the family escaped to the United States with the help of an American agent. In an article appearing in American Scholar (“Growing Up American in the Dominican Republic”) published in 1987, Alvarez notes that all her life she had wanted to be a true American girl. She thought, in 1960, that she was going to live in her homeland, America. Living in America was not quite what Alvarez expected. As her fictional but partly autobiographical novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents hints, Alvarez was faced with many adjustments in America. She experienced homesickness, alienation, and prejudice. Going from living on a large family compound to living in a small New York apartment was, in itself, quite an adjustment. Alvarez’s feeling of loss when moving to America caused a change in her. She became introverted, began to read avidly, and eventually began writing. 22

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Alvarez attended college, earning degrees in literature and writing. She took a position as an English professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. She has published several collections of poetry, but her best-known work is her semiautobiographical novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. Alvarez can be praised for her portrayal of bicultural experiences, particularly for her focusing on the women’s issues that arise out of such an experience.

Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books)

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How the García Girls Lost Their Accents Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 Set in New York City and the Dominican Republic, Alvarez’s novel traces the lives of the four García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia—as they struggle to understand themselves and their cross-cultural identities. The novel is structured in three parts, focusing on the time spans of 1989-1972, 1970-1960, and 1960-1956. Throughout these years the García girls mature and face various cultural, familial, and individual crises. The sisters’ mother, Laura, comes from the well-known, wealthy de la Torres family, who live in the Dominican Republic. The third part of the novel narrates the Garcías’ flight from their homeland due to political problems within the country. The Garcías emigrate to the United States, planning to stay only until the situation in their homeland improves. Once arriving in America, the sisters struggle to acclimate themselves to their new environment. The second part of the novel traces the sisters’ formative years in the United States. Included among the numerous stories told are Yolanda’s struggle to write an acceptable speech for a school event, Carla’s trial of attending a new public school where she is bombarded by racial slurs, and Sandra’s hatred of an American woman who flirts with her father during a family night out. In addition, part 2 narrates the García girls’ summer trips to the Dominican Republic—their parents’ way to keep them from becoming too Americanized. During these trips the García sisters realize that although they face great struggles as immigrants in the United States, they have much more freedom as young women in the United States than they do in the Dominican Republic. Part 1 of the novel begins with Yolanda, who is known as the family poet, returning to the Dominican Republic as an adult. She discovers that the situation in her country has not changed. When she wants to travel to the coast alone, her relatives warn her against it. This early chapter sets Yolanda up as the primary narrator and introduces the tension between the traditions of the island and the new and different culture of the United States. In this first part readers learn about the girls’ young adult lives, primarily about their sexual awareness, relationships, and marriages. Virginity is a primary issue, for the sisters’ traditions and customs haunt them as they negotiate their sexual awakenings throughout their college years in the United States. In short, it is in this first part in which readers learn precisely how Americanized the García girls have become, and throughout the rest of the novel readers learn how the girls have lost their “accents” gradually, throughout the years.

Suggested readings Alvarez, Julia. “An American Childhood in the Dominican Republic.” The American Scholar 56 (Winter, 1987): 71-85.

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Garcia-Johnson, Ronie-Richele. “Julía Alvarez.” In Notable Hispanic American Women, edited by Diane Telgen and Jim Kamp. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Prescott, Stephanie. “Julia Alvarez: Dominican American Storyteller.” Faces 15, no. 6 (February, 1999): 30-32. —Angela Athy

RudolfoA . Anaya

Rudolfo A. Anaya Born: Pastura, New Mexico; October 30, 1937

Anaya became one of the foremost Chicano novelists of the twentieth century. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: Bless Me, Ultima, 1972; Heart of Aztlán, 1976; Tortuga, 1979; The Silence of the Llano, 1982; Alburquerque, 1992; Zia Summer, 1995; Jalamanta, 1996; Rio Grande Fall, 1996 Rudolfo Anaya began writing during his days as a student at the University of New Mexico. His poetry and early novels dealt with major questions about his existence, beliefs, and identity. Anaya ended that phase of his life by burning all of the manuscripts of his work. After college he took a teaching job and got married. He found his wife to be a great source of encouragement and an excellent editor and companion. Anaya began writing Bless Me, Ultima in the 1960’s. He struggled with the work until in one of his creative moments Ultima appeared to him. She became the strongest character of the novel as well as the spiritual mentor for the novelist and the protagonist. Ultima led the way to a successful work. Anaya’s next task was to get his novel published. After dozens of rejection letters from Rudolfo A. Anaya (Michael Mouchette) major publishers, Anaya 26

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turned to Quinto Sol Publications, a Chicano small press in Berkeley, California. The publishers not only accepted the work for publication but also recognized Anaya with the Quinto Sol Award for writing the best Chicano novel of 1972. Bless Me, Ultima represents the first novel of a trilogy. The other two are Heart of Aztlán and Tortuga. Heart of Aztlán came as a result of Anaya’s travels in Mexico during the 1960’s, which raised the question of the relationship between the pre-Columbian Aztec world, called Aztlán, and Chicano destiny. Tortuga was inspired by a diving accident at an irrigation ditch during Anaya’s high school days. The accident left Anaya disabled; the protagonist in the novel also experiences such events. The quality of the first three works enshrined Anaya as the foremost Chicano novelist of his time. His numerous other excellent works have confirmed this high regard. The essence of his literary production reflects the search for the meaning of existence as it is expressed in Chicano community life. Anaya’s works blend realistic description of daily life with the hidden magic of humanity; his work may be categorized as having the qualities of Magical Realism, which mingles, in a straightforward narrative tone, the mystical and magical with the everyday. Most of his developed characters reflect this duality.

Bless Me, Ultima Type of work: Novel First published: 1972 Bless Me, Ultima is Anaya’s first novel of a trilogy that also includes Heart of Aztlán (1976) and Tortuga (1979). It is a psychological and magical portrait of a quest for identity by a child. In this classic work, Antonio, the protagonist, is subjected to contradicting influences that he must master in order to mature. These influences include symbolic characters and places, the most powerful of which are Ultima, a curandera who evokes the timeless past of a pre-Columbian world, and a golden carp, which swims the river waters of the supernatural and offers a redeeming future. Antonio is born in Pasturas, a very small village on the Eastern New Mexican plain. Later, the family moves across the river to the small town of Guadalupe, where Antonio spends his childhood. His father belongs to the Márez family and is a cattleman; Antonio’s mother is of the Luna family, whose background is farming. They represent the initial manifestation of the divided world into which Antonio is born. Division is a challenge he must resolve in order to find himself. Antonio’s father wants him to become a horseman of the plain. Antonio’s mother wants him to become a priest to a farming community, which is in the highest tradition of the Luna family. The parents’ wishes are symptoms of a deeper spiritual challenge facing

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Antonio involving his Catholic beliefs and those associated with the magical world of a pre-Columbian past. Ultima, the curandera and a creature of both worlds, helps guide Antonio through the ordeal of understanding and dealing with these challenges. Ultima is a magical character who touches the core of Antonio’s being. She supervised his birth. Later she comes to stay with the family in Guadalupe when Antonio is seven. On several occasions, Antonio is a witness to her power. Antonio’s adventure takes him beyond the divided world of the farmer and the horseman and beyond the Catholic ritual and its depictions of good and evil. With Ultima’s help, he is able to bridge these opposites and channel them into a new cosmic vision of nature, represented by the river, which stands in the middle of his two worlds, and by the golden carp, which points to a new spiritual covenant. The novel ends with the killing of Ultima’s owl by one of her enemies. He discovered that the owl carried her spiritual presence. This killing also causes Ultima’s death, but her work is done. Antonio can choose his destiny.

Heart of Aztlán Type of work: Novel First published: 1976 Heart of Aztlán is Anaya’s second novel of a trilogy that includes Bless Me, Ultima (1972) and Tortuga (1979). It is a psychological portrait of a quest for Chicano identity and empowerment. It is the story of the Chávez family, who leave the country to search for a better life in the city only to discover that their destiny lies in a past thought abandoned and lost. The story is carried by two major characters, Clemente Chávez, the father, and Jason, one of the sons. Jason depicts the adjustments the family has to make to everyday life in the city. Clemente undergoes a magical rebirth that brings a new awareness of destiny to the community and a new will to fight for their birthright. The novel begins with the Chávez family selling the last of their land and leaving the small town of Guadalupe for a new life in Albuquerque. They go to live in Barelas, a barrio on the west side of the city that is full of other immigrants from the country. The Chávezes soon learn, as the other people of the barrio already know, that their lives do not belong to them. They are controlled by industrial interests represented by the railroad and a union that has sold out the workers. They are controlled by politicians through Mannie García, “el super,” who delivers the community vote. In Barelas, Clemente also begins to lose the battle of maintaining control of the family, especially his daughters, who no longer believe in his insistence

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on the tradition of respect and obedience to the head of the family. The situation gets worse when Clemente loses his job in the railroad yard during a futile strike. Clemente becomes a drunk and in his despair attempts to commit suicide. Crespín, a magical character who represents eternal wisdom, comes to his assistance and points the way to a new life. With Crespín’s help, Clemente solves the riddle of a magical power stone in the possession of “la India,” a sorceress who symbolically guards the entryway to the heart of Aztlán, the source of empowerment for the Chicano. Clemente’s rebirth takes the form of a journey to the magical mountain lake that is at the center of Aztlán and Chicano being. Reborn, Clemente returns to his community to lead the movement for social and economic justice. It is a redeeming and unifying struggle for life and the destiny of a people. The novel ends with Clemente physically taking a hammer to the Santa Fe water tower in the railroad yard, a symbol of industrial might, before coming home to lead a powerful march on his former employers.

Tortuga Type of work: Novel First published: 1979 Tortuga is Anaya’s third novel of a trilogy that also includes Bless Me, Ultima (1972) and Heart of Aztlán. It is a tale of a journey to self-realization and supernatural awareness. In the story, Benjie Chávez, the protagonist, undergoes the ordeal of symbolic rebirth in order to take the place of Crespín, the keeper of Chicano wisdom who, upon his death, leaves that task to the protagonist. At the end of Heart of Aztlán, Benjie is wounded by his brother Jason’s rival. Benjie falls from a rail yard water tower and is paralyzed. He is transported to a hospital in the South for rehabilitation. His entry into the hospital is also symbolically an entry into a world of supernatural transformation. The hospital sits at the foot of Tortuga Mountain, from which flow mineral springs with healing waters. Benjie is also given the name Tortuga (which means “turtle”) after he is fitted with a body cast that makes him look like a turtle. What follows is a painful ordeal. The protagonist is subjected to demanding therapy and is exposed to every kind of suffering and deformity that can possibly afflict children. Not even this, however, prepares him for the visit to the “vegetable” ward, where rotting children—who cannot move or even breathe without the help of an iron lung—are kept alive. It is in the vegetable ward that Tortuga meets Salomón, a vegetable, but one with supernatural insight into the human condition. Salomón enters Tortuga’s psyche and guides him on the path to spiritual renewal. Salomón

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compares Tortuga’s challenge with the terrible ordeal newly born turtles undergo as they dash to the sea. Most of them do not make it, as other creatures lie in wait to devour them. Tortuga must survive the path of the turtles’ dash in order to arrive at his destiny, which is called “the path of the sun.” Another part of Tortuga’s ordeal includes a moment when Danny, another important character, pushes him into a swimming pool, where he nearly drowns, surviving only because other people rush to his aid. Tortuga symbolically survives the turtle dash to the sea. The vegetables are not so lucky. One night Danny succeeds in turning off the power to their ward. With the iron lungs turned off, they all die. The end of the novel and Tortuga’s rehabilitation also bring the news that Crespín, the magical helper of Tortuga’s home neighborhood, has died. The news of Crespín’s death arrives along with his blue guitar, a symbol of universal knowledge, which is now in Benjie’s care.

Suggested readings Dick, Bruce, and Silvio Sirias, eds. Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998. González-T., César A., ed. Rudolfo A. Anaya: Focus on Criticism. La Jolla, Calif.: Lalo Press, 1990. Miguélez, Armando. “Anaya’s Tortuga.” Denver Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1981): 120-121. Restivo, Angelo. Review of Tortuga, by Rudolfo A. Anaya. Fiction International 12 (1980): 283-284. Tatum, Charles M. Chicano Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1982. Trejo, Arnulfo D. “Bless Me, Ultima: A Novel.” Arizona Quarterly 29 (1973): 95-96. Vasallo, Paul, ed. The Magic of Words: Rudolfo Anaya and His Writings. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. —David Conde

MayaA ngelou

Maya Angelou (Marguerite Johnson) Born: St. Louis, Missouri; April 4, 1928

Through poems and autobiographical narratives, Angelou describes her life as an African American, single mother, professional, and feminist. Traditions: African American Principal works: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970; Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie, 1971; Gather Together in My Name, 1974; Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, 1975; Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, 1976; And Still I Rise, 1978; The Heart of a Woman, 1981; Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?, 1983; All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, 1986; Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, 1993; Even the Stars Look Lonesome, 1997 Before her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published, Maya Angelou had a richly varied, difficult life. Her work has made her one of the most important African American female voices in the twentieth century. All of her writing is steeped in recollection of African American slavery and oppression. It also includes frank discussion of the physical and psychological pain of child abuse, the sexual anxieties of adolescence, unmarried motherhood, drug abuse, unhappy marriage, and divorce. In Gather Together in My Name, Angelou struggles as a single mother to raise her son, while earning a living as Creole cook, army enlistee, madam, and prostitute. In Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, she becomes a singer and an exotic dancer in San Francisco before joining the traveling cast of a George Gershwin musical on a twenty-two-nation tour. In The Heart of a Woman, she describes her later work as northern coordinator of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, her frustrations with American racism and yearnings for her African roots lead her to a four-year stay in Ghana. In her writings Angelou describes racism, prejudice, oppression, and other social ills. She comes to know males as pimps, drug pushers, occasional lovers, traditional and untraditional husbands, and Muslim polygamists. Angelou responds to these experiences with an increasing sense of what it means to be an African American woman in the twentieth century. In Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Angelou offers her philosophy of life based upon tolerance and respect for diversity. 31

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All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1986 All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes belongs to a series of autobiographical narratives tracing Angelou’s personal search for identity as an African American woman. In this powerful tale, Angelou describes her emotional journey to find identity and ancestral roots in West Africa. Angelou reveals her excitement as she emigrates to Ghana in 1962 and attempts to redefine herself as African, not American. Her loyalty to Ghana’s founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, reflects hope in Africa’s and her own independence. She learns the Fanti language, toys with thoughts of marrying a prosperous Malian Muslim, communes with Ghanaians in small towns and rural areas, and identifies with her enslaved forebears. Monuments such as Cape Coast Castle, where captured slaves were imprisoned before sailing to America, stand on African soil as vivid reminders of an African American slave past. In Ghana Angelou hopes to escape the lingering pains of American slavery and racism. Gradually, however, she feels displaced and uncomfortable in her African environment. Cultural differences and competition for employment result in unpleasant encounters between Ghanians and African Americans. Despite such frustrations, Angelou’s network of fellow African American emigrants offers mutual support and continuing hope in the African experience. A visit by Malcolm X provides much-needed encouragement, but his presence is also a reminder of ties with the United States. Angelou and her African American friends express their solidarity with the American Civil Rights movement by demonstrating at the United States embassy in Ghana. As she sorts through her ambivalent feelings about Africa, Angelou also rethinks her role as mother. At the beginning of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, Angelou’s son Guy almost dies in an automobile accident. Later in the narrative he develops a relationship with an older woman and struggles to gain admittance to the University of Ghana. In dealing with all these events, Angelou learns to balance her maternal feelings with her son’s need for independence and self-expression. Finally recognizing the powerful ties binding her to American soil, Angelou concludes her narrative with a joyful journey home from Ghana and a renewed sense of identity as an African American.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1970 Angelou begins her autobiographical I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings with reflections about growing up black and female during the Great Depression in the small, segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas.

Maya Angelou / 33

(Photo not available)

Following their parents’ divorce, Angelou, then three years old, moved to Stamps with her brother Bailey to live with their paternal grandmother and uncle Willie. Their home was the general store, which served as the secular center of the African American community in Stamps. Angelou’s memories of this store include weary farmworkers, the euphoria of Joe Louis’s successful prizefight, and a terrifying nocturnal Ku Klux Klan hunt. Angelou also recollects lively African American church services, unpleasant interracial encounters, and childhood sexual experimentation. An avid love of reading led the young Angelou to African American writers, including

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the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, from whose verse Angelou borrows the title for her narrative. Singing is heard in Angelou’s memories of her segregated Arkansas school. At their grade-school graduation ceremony, Angelou and her classmates counter the racism of a condescending white politician with a defiant singing of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” For Angelou this song becomes a celebration of the resistance of African Americans to the white establishment and a key to her identity as an African American poet. Angelou spends portions of the narrative with her mother in St. Louis and in California. She has a wild visit to Mexico with her father and is even a homeless runaway for a time. As a girl in St. Louis, Angelou is sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Following his trial and mysterious death, Angelou suffers a period of trauma and muteness. Later, an adolescent Angelou struggles with her sexual identity, fears that she is a lesbian, and eventually initiates an unsatisfactory heterosexual encounter, from which she becomes pregnant. Angelou matures into a self-assured and proud young woman. During World War II, she overcomes racial barriers to become one of the first African American female streetcar conductors in San Francisco. Surviving the uncertainties of an unwanted pregnancy, Angelou optimistically faces her future as an unwed mother and as an African American woman.

Poetry First published: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie, 1971; Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, 1975; And Still I Rise, 1978; Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?, 1983; The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, 1994 Maya Angelou’s poetry complements the search for self-identity as an African American woman described in her series of autobiographical narratives beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The caged bird image, which she borrows from a poem by African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, recurs in her work and expresses the collective yearning of African Americans for freedom as well as Angelou’s search for individuality and independence. In her poetry Angelou often focuses on the oppression of African Americans, including some that the media love to demonize: welfare mothers, prostitutes, and drug pushers. She describes the female African American experience with particular power in “Our Grandmothers,” which begins with a slave mother dreading the approaching sale of her children. Angelou also proudly celebrates the accomplishments of African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Angelou’s childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, merges with the Southern slave experience of her African American ancestors in poems about Arkansas,

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Georgia, Virginia, and the Southern slave plantation. Frequently, Angelou uses the vocabulary and slang of African American English. She also broadens her focus and speaks of urban African Americans and comfortable working white liberals. Some of these themes are found in “On the Pulse of Morning,” written for the inauguration of Bill Clinton as president of the United States in 1993. Using geographic references to Arkansas, to the Mississippi and Potomac Rivers, and to the many peoples of the United States, Angelou affirms the diversity and brotherhood of humanity and a dawn of equality in American history. Another important theme for Angelou is Africa. Angelou lived in Ghana for the four years described in All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. For Angelou, Africa’s pyramids and history are a source of pride; its black inhabitants are a criterion of beauty. Finally, in her poems Angelou reflects on love and her own erotic feelings. Her search for physical and emotional satisfaction in her relationships is sometimes satisfying and sometimes frustrating. Always, however, the poet Angelou defines herself as a woman and an African American.

Suggested readings Courtney-Clarke, Margaret. Maya Angelou: The Poetry of Living. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1999. Elliot, Jeffrey M., ed. Conversations with Maya Angelou. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Kallen, Stuart A. Maya Angelou: Woman of Words, Deeds, and Dreams. Edina, Minn.: Abdo and Daughters, 1993. King, Sarah E. Maya Angelou: Greeting the Morning. Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook, 1994. Lisandrelli, Elaine Slivinski. Maya Angelou: More Than a Poet. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1996. McPherson, Dolly A. Order out of Chaos. London: Virago, 1990. Pettit, Jayne. Maya Angelou: Journey of the Heart. New York: Lodestar Books, 1996. Shapiro, Miles. Maya Angelou. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Shuker, Nancy. Maya Angelou. Morristown, N.J.: Silver Burdett, 1990. Spain, Valerie. Meet Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, 1994. Walker, Pierre A. “Racial Protest, Identity, Words and Form in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” College Literature 22 (1995): 91-108. —Thomas J. Sienkewicz

Mary Antin

Mary Antin Born: Polotzk, Russia; June 13, 1881 Died: Suffern, New York; May 17, 1949 Antin’s The Promised Land is the classic Jewish American immigrant autobiography. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: From Plotzk to Boston, 1899; The Promised Land, 1912; They Who Knock at the Gates: A Complete Gospel of Immigration, 1914; Selected Letters of Mary Antin, 1999 Mary Antin was born in Polotzk in what was then czarist Russia. Antin’s place of birth and her Jewishness determined what her identity would have been had her family stayed in Polotzk. Had they stayed, she would have been an Orthodox Jewish wife of a Jewish man, the mother of Jewish children, and a woman with only enough education to enable her to read the Psalms in Hebrew. As a Jew, she could not live beyond the pale of settlement in Russia and could never become assimilated into Russian society. As a young child, she felt stifled by this identity. In The Promised Land she compares her moving at age thirteen to America, where she felt she had freedom to choose her own identity, to the Hebrews’ escape from bondage in Egypt. In America, she received a free education in Boston public schools. She had access to public libraries. She had access to settlement houses, like Hale House (in which she later worked), where she experienced American culture. She had a freedom of which she could hardly dream in Europe. The woman who in Polotzk would never have become more than barely literate chose for herself in the New World the identity of a writer and social worker. At fifteen, she published her first poem in the Boston Herald. At eighteen, she published her first autobiographical volume, From Plotzk to Boston, which resulted in her being hailed as a child prodigy. Eventually, she reworked the material from this book into her masterpiece, The Promised Land. After being graduated from Girl’s Latin School in Boston, Antin went to the Teachers’ College of Columbia University in New York City and then to Barnard College, where she met and married Amadeus W. Grabau, a geologist, Columbia professor, and Gentile. She felt that her marriage cemented her chosen identity as a fully assimilated American. Although her husband eventually left her and settled in China, she never lost her faith in the possibilities of total assimilation into American society. She felt that since she had become fully assimilated, so could all other Jewish immigrants to the country she spoke of without irony as the promised land. 36

Mary Antin / 37

The Promised Land Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1912 The Promised Land is Antin’s mature autobiography. In it, she tells the story of what she considers her escape from bondage in Eastern Europe and her finding of freedom in America. Early in the book, she compares herself to a treadmill horse who can only go round and round in the same circle. She sees herself in Polotzk in what was then Russia as imprisoned by her religion ( Jews were allowed to live only in certain places in Czarist Russia and to work only at certain trades) and her sex (among Orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe, women were not permitted education beyond learning to read the Psalms in Hebrew). After her father suffered a long illness and as a result failed in business, he went to America. His family followed him to Boston, where Mary grew up. In America, she felt that she had all the freedom she lacked in the Old World. She could get free secular education. The public schools of Boston, she felt, opened new intellectual vistas for her. She also had access to public libraries and settlement houses that provided her with cultural activities. Thus, she felt she had “a kingdom in the slums.” She responded to America’s possibilities by doing extremely well in school and by publishing her first poem when she was fifteen. Her father proudly bought copies of the newspaper in which it appeared and distributed it to friends and neighbors, bragging about his daughter the writer. She became a member of the Natural History Club of Boston, and through it, learned about the lives of its members who, she felt, represented what was best about America, a country in which she felt she was a welcomed participant. Visiting many of the members in their homes, she became convinced that she had true equality in America. In her book, Antin says that if she could accomplish so much, so can all immigrants. She admits that her father, because of an inability to master the English language and because of bad luck, did not prosper in the New World, but she still remains optimistic about America and about the possibilities of total assimilation for America’s immigrant population. Whereas the Old World represents, for her, lack of freedom and a predetermined identity, she sees the New World as representing freedom and the ability to choose her own identity.

Suggested readings Antin, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Antin. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Guttmann, Allen. The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

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Liptzin, Sol. The Jew in American Literature. New York: Bloch, 1966. Tuerk, Richard. “At Home in the Land of Columbus: Americanization in European-American Immigrant Autobiography.” In Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives, edited by James Robert Payne. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. _______. “Jewish-American Literature.” In Ethnic Perspectives in American Literature: Selected Essays on the European Contribution, edited by Robert J. DiPietro and Edward Ifkovic. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983. —Richard Tuerk

Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas Born: Holguín, Oriente, Cuba; July 16, 1943 Died: New York, New York; December 7, 1990 Arenas’s novels reflect his rural upbringing and his fight against Cuban revolutionary institutions that condemned him because of his homosexuality. Traditions: Caribbean, Cuban American Principal works: Celestino antes del alba, 1967 (revised as Cantando en el pozo, 1982; Singing from the Well, 1987); El mundo alucinante, 1969 (Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Life and Adventures of Friar Servando Teresa de Mier, 1971); El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, 1975 (The Palace of the White Skunks, 1990); El portero, 1989 (The Doorman, 1991); El color del verano, 1991 (The Color of Summer, 2000) Reinaldo Arenas overcame a poor rural upbringing to become a renowned novelist and short-story writer. He belongs to a generation of young writers who received literary training in official programs to promote literacy among the Cuban poor. Such training, however, also involved heavy indoctrination by political organizations that promoted only revolutionary readings. Although his career depended upon his incorporation into such a political agenda, Arenas refused to take an ideological stand. His decision caused him prosecution by legal authorities, imprisonment, and exile. A superb storyteller, Arenas, in his first novel, Singing from the Well, presents young peasant characters who find themselves in an existentialist quest. Surrounded by a bleak rural environment, these protagonists fight the absolute poverty that keeps them from achieving their dreams. They also must confront their homosexual feelings, which force them to become outcasts. Although the subject of homosexuality is not an essential theme of the novel—the subject is merely hinted—Arenas’s novel received a cold reception from Cuban critics. Hallucinations brought Arenas’s first confrontations with revolutionary critics and political authorities. Dissatisfied with the Castro regime, Arenas in the novel equates the Cuban Revolution to the oppressive forces of the Spanish Inquisition by drawing parallels between the persecutory practices of the two institutions. He also published the novel abroad without governmental consent, a crime punishable by law. That violation caused him to lose job opportunities and made him the target of multiple attempts at indoctrination, which included his imprisonment in a forced labor camp in 1970. In spite of constant threats, Arenas continued writing antirevolutionary works that were smuggled out of the country by friends and published abroad 39

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in French translations. The theme of these works is constant: denunciation of Castro’s oppressive political practices, most significantly the forced labor camps. The novels also decry the systematic persecution of homosexuals by military police and the relocation of homosexuals in labor camps. After an incarceration of almost three years (1973-1976), Arenas made several attempts to escape from Cuba illegally. He finally succeeded in 1980, when he entered the United States by means of the Mariel boat lift. In the United States he continued his strong opposition to the Castro regime and re-edited the literary work he had written in Cuba. In addition, he intensified his interest in homosexual characters who, like his early young characters, find themselves in confrontation with the oppressive societies that punish them because of their sexual orientation. His open treatment of homosexuality makes him a forerunner of writers on that subject in Latin American literature.

Arturo, the Most Brilliant Star Type of work: Novel First published: Arturo, la estrella más brillante, 1984 (English translation, 1989) Arenas’s commitment to resisting and denouncing Cuba’s indoctrination practices is evident in his short novel Arturo, the Most Brilliant Star. This work is also significant in that Arenas links his political views on the Cuban Revolution with his increasing interest in gay characters. The plot was inspired by a series of police raids against homosexuals in Havana in the early 1960’s. The process was simple: The police picked up thousands of men, usually young men, and denounced them as homosexuals on the grounds of their wearing certain pieces of clothing commonly considered to be the garb of gay men. Those arrested had to work and undergo ideological training in labor camps. Arturo is one of the thousands of gay men forced into a work camp. He becomes a fictional eyewitness of the rampant use of violence as a form of punishment. The novel’s descriptions of the violence coincide with eyewitness accounts by gay men who have made similar declarations after their exile from Cuba. Arturo faces the fact that a labor camp foments homosexual activity between the prisoners and the guards. A dreary and claustrophobic existence prompts some men to do female impersonations. If caught, those impersonators become a target of police brutality. Arturo, a social outcast, suffers rejection by his fellow prisoners because initially he does not take part in the female impersonations. Partly as the result of verbal and physical abuse, he joins the group at last and becomes the camp’s best female impersonator. His transformation, especially his fast control of the female impersonator’s jar-

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gon, reminds the reader of the revolutionary jargon forced upon the prisoners, which at first they resist learning and later mimic to ironic perfection. Arturo’s imagination forces him to understand his loneliness in the camp. In order to escape from the camp, he strives to create his own world, one that is truly fantastic and one of which he is king. The mental process is draining, and he has to work under sordid conditions that threaten his concentration, but he is successful in his attempt, and his world grows and extends outside the camp. The final touch is the construction of his own castle, in which he discovers a handsome man waiting for him on the other side of the walls. In his pursuit of his admirer Arturo does not recognize that his imaginary walls are the off-limits fences of the camp. When he is ordered to stop, he continues to walk out of the camp, and he is shot dead by a military officer. Arenas’s novel represents the beginning of a literary trend in Latin America that presents homosexuals as significant characters. It also focuses on the sexual practices of homosexual men, something that was a literary taboo.

The Pentagonía Type of work: Novels First published: Celestino antes del alba, 1967 (Singing from the Well, 1987); El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, 1975 (The Palace of the White Skunks, 1990); Otra vez el mar, 1982 (Farewell to the Sea, 1986); El asalto, 1990 (The Assault, 1994); El color del verano, 1991 (The Color of Summer, 2000) The Pentagonía documents life in Cuba from the early 1950’s onward. Although the novels deal with a variety of themes and with diverse characters, one subject stands out as a common denominator: homosexuality. Many characters face sexual oppression by Cuban society and must fight for their incorporation into productive social roles. Arenas’s novels document the lives of various male characters from their childhood to adulthood, including their handling of their homosexuality. Singing from the Well opens the set by presenting children oppressed by poverty; these children also face the sexual dynamics of a highly chauvinistic society. The nameless characters are representative of Cuban homosexual youth and return as more mature characters in subsequent novels, which can be read as sequels. The Palace of the White Skunks takes Arenas’s coming-of-age themes one step further by removing an unhappy young man from his restrictive society. Inspired by claims of social equality, Fortunato joins Castro’s guerrilla forces in the fight against the Cuban dictator. His dreams are shattered, however, by the strong antihomosexual attitude of men in the military forces. As a result of his being homosexual, Fortunato is labeled weak and imperfect, certainly not the model of the revolutionary man. Farewell to the Sea abandons young characters to explore the life of a

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married man, who appears to be living a full life. Héctor is married and a proud father. He expresses total commitment to revolutionary ideology, for which the state has awarded him a free trip to a beach resort. There he meets a young man, with whom he has romantic encounters. When his friend is found dead in a remote area of the beach, Héctor decides to abandon his vacation. The reader comes to understand that Héctor is a homosexual man who despises the revolution, who has experienced homosexual life, but who is forced to live as a prorevolutionary heterosexual in order to survive. Arenas wrote the last two novels while fighting AIDS-related illnesses. With The Color of Summer he makes his most direct attacks against revolutionary persecution of homosexuals. Characters have to lead lives of pretense in order to avoid the economic disaster that follows revelation of homosexuality. The Assault focuses on revolutionary censorship, showing how homosexuals are forced to turn against their own relatives. Physical violence abounds in Arenas’s novels, reflecting on a violent revolutionary society.

Suggested readings Schwartz, Kessel. “Homosexuality and the Fiction of Reinaldo Arenas.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 5, nos. 1-2 (1984): 12-20. Soto, Francisco. Reinaldo Arenas. New York: Twayne, 1998. _______. Reinaldo Arenas: “The Pentagonía.” Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. —Rafael Ocasio

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Jimmy Santiago Baca Born: Sante Fe, New Mexico; January 2, 1952

Baca’s poetry expresses the experience of a “detribalized Apache,” reared in a Chicano barrio, who finds his values in family, the land, and a complex cultural heritage. Traditions: American Indian, Mexican American Principal works: Immigrants in Our Own Land, 1979; Swords of Darkness, 1981; What’s Happening, 1982; Poems Taken from My Yard, 1986; Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley, 1986; Black Mesa Poems, 1989; Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio, 1992; Set This Book on Fire, 1999 Jimmy Santiago Baca began to write poetry as an almost illiterate vato loco (crazy guy, gangster) serving a five-year term in a federal prison. He was twenty years old, the son of Damacio Baca, of Apache and Yaqui lineage, and Cecilia Padilla, a Latino woman, who left him with his grandparents when he was two. Baca stayed with them for three years, then went into a boys’ home, then into detention centers and the streets of Albuquerque’s barrio at thirteen. Although he “confirmed” his identity as a Chicano by leafing through a stolen picture book of Chicano history at seventeen, he felt himself “disintegrating” in prison. Speaking of his father, but alluding to his own situation when he was incarcerated, Baca observed: “He was everything that was bad in America. He was brown, he spoke Spanish, was from a Native American background, had no education.” As a gesture of rebellion, Baca took a guard’s textbook and found that “sounds created music in me and happiness” as he slowly enunciated the lines of a poem by William Wordsworth. This led to a zealous effort at self-education, encouraged by the recollection of older men in detention centers who “made barrio life come alive . . . with their own Chicano language.” Progressing to the point where he was writing letters for fellow prisoners, he placed a few poems in a local magazine, New Kauri, and achieved his first major publication with Immigrants in Our Own Land, a book whose title refers to the condition of inmates in a dehumanizing system and to his own feelings of estrangement in American society. This was a turning point for Baca, who realized that he could reclaim the community he was separated from and sing “the freedom song of our Chicano dream” now that poetry “had lifted me to my feet.” With this foundation to build on, Baca started a family in the early 1980’s, restored an adobe dwelling in Albuquerque’s South Valley, and wrote Martín; 43

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&, Meditations on the South Valley because “the entire Southwest needed a long poem that could describe what has happened here in the last twenty years.” Continuing to combine personal history and communal life, Baca followed this book with Black Mesa Poems, which links the landscape of the South Valley to people he knows and admires. Writing with confidence and an easy facility in Spanish and English, Baca uses vernacular speech, poetic form, ancient Mexican lore, and contemporary popular culture.

Black Mesa Poems Type of work: Poetry First published: 1989 Set in the desert of New Mexico, Baca’s Black Mesa Poems explores the poet’s continuing search for connections with his family, home, and cultural heritage. In vivid detail and striking imagery, the loosely connected poems catalog the poet’s complex relationships with his past and the home he makes of Black Mesa. Baca’s intricate relationship to the land includes his knowledge of its history. He is keenly aware of the changes the land has gone through and the changes the people of that land have experienced. He writes of his personal sense of connection with arroyos and cottonwoods and of the conflicts between the earlier inhabitants of Black Mesa and the changes brought by progress. Dispossessed migrant workers are portrayed as the price of Anglo progress, and the arid land that once nourished strong cattle now offers only “sluggish pampered globs” from feedlots. Even the once sacred places have been unceremoniously “crusted with housing tracts.” His people have been separated from their ancestral land, yet Baca Jimmy Santiago Baca (Lawrence Benton) celebrates his identification

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with the old adobe buildings and Aztec warriors in the face of modern Anglo society. Despite nostalgia, Baca eludes naïve sentimentality by attaching himself to the land. His sense of self and identity with his race is rooted in the physical landscape of Black Mesa. He evokes a strong connection with the history of his people through rituals, including drum ceremonies that “mate heart with earth.” Sketches evoke a rich sense of community life in the barrio. The poet presents himself in terms of his own troubled history, but he knows that the conflict between the “peaceful” man and the “destructive” one of his past is linked to the modern smothering of noisy jet fighters and invading pampered artists looking to his land for a “primitive place.” Memories and images of snapshotlike detail combine in these poems to create a portrait of a man defining himself in relation to his personal and cultural history. The poet knows he is “the end result of Conquistadores, Black Moors, American Indians, and Europeans,” and he also notes the continuing invasion of land developers. Poems about his children combine memories of his troubled past with Olmec kings and tribal ancestors. The history of his ancestors’ relationship with the land informs his complex and evolving sense of identity. Throughout the Black Mesa Poems, Baca’s personal history becomes rooted in Black Mesa.

Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley Type of work: Poetry First published: 1986 Told in the semiautobiographical voice of Martín, the two long poems “Martín” and “Meditations on the South Valley” offer the moving account of a young Chicano’s difficult quest for self-definition amid the realities of the barrio and his dysfunctional family. Abandoned by his parents at a young age, Martín spends time with his Indio grandparents and in an orphanage before striking out on his own at the age of six. His early knowledge of his grandparents’ heritage gives him the first indication that his quest for identity will involve the recovery of a sense of family and a strong connection with the earth. As Martín grows older and is shuttled from the orphanage to his bourgeois uncle’s home, he realizes that his life is of the barrio and the land and not the sterile world of the rich suburbs. Martín’s quest eventually leads him on a journey throughout the United States in which he searches for himself amid the horrors of addiction and the troubled memories of his childhood. Realizing that he must restore his connection with his family and home, he returns to the South Valley by way of Aztec ruins, where he ritualistically establishes his connection with his Mother Earth and his Native American ancestry. “Martín” ends with the birth of his son and Martín’s promise to never leave

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him. The cycle of abandonment and abuse seems to have ended, and Martín is on his way to becoming the good man he so strongly desires to be. “Meditations on the South Valley” continues the story of Martín, reinforcing his newfound sense of identity. The poem begins with the burning of his house and the loss of ten years of writing. In the process of rebuilding his life, Martín and his family must live in the Heights, an antiseptic tract housing development that serves to reinforce his identification with the land of the South Valley. Told in brief sketches, the insights in “Meditations on the South Valley” encourage Martín to nurture the growing connections with his new family and his promise to his young son. The poem ends with the construction of his new home from the ruins of an abandoned flophouse in the South Valley. Martín’s friends come together to construct the house, and, metaphorically, Martín and his life as a good Chicano man are reborn from the garbage piles and ashes of the house they reconstruct.

Working in the Dark Type of work: Essays and poetry First published: 1992 Baca’s collection Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio is a blunt and honest gathering of essays, journal entries, and poetry that describe some of the more poignant incidents in a long journey that Baca has made from a “troubled and impoverished Chicano family” to a position of prominence as a widely admired poet. Baca’s subject as a writer is the life and history of Albuquerque’s South Valley. Baca passionately explores the crucial episodes in a process of self-growth and self-discovery beginning with his most desperate moments as an empty, powerless, inarticulate young man, through an expanding series of revelations about life and language in prison, and ending with his eventual construction of a self based on his relationships to the land, his family, and his identity as a “detribalized Apache” and Chicano artist. The heart of the book is the fourth section, “Chicanismo: Destiny and Destinations.” After covering his discovery in prison of the redemptive powers of language, and his sense of a loss of Chicano culture in an Anglo world, Baca recalls the one positive feature of his youth: the three years he spent in the home of his grandparents before he was five. This memory kept a dim vision alive through the years when Baca began to realize that “none of what I did was who I was.” In the first part of the “Chicanismo” section, Baca delivers a systematic critique of the methods used by a dominant Anglo culture to stereotype, demean, and distort Chicano life. Drawing on his prison experience and on his troubles in school and in various temporary jobs, Baca describes how he felt doubly imprisoned as an immigrant in his own land and as one under the control of unknowing authorities. As part of a plan to reclaim his cultural heritage, Baca reaches back into

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history to show how valuable and vital Chicano culture has been. In a satirical commentary on the Columbus quincentennial, which Baca debunks with a punning title “De Quiencentennial?” (whose quincentennial is it, anyway?), Baca introduces some of the positive, admirable facets of the life of the South Valley near Albuquerque. One of the strongest features of the life of la raza (the race) has been an oral tradition that, as Baca points out, has defied attempts to suppress or extinguish its vitality, “Our language, which I have inherited, is a symphony of rebellion against invaders.” In the last section of the book, “Gleanings from a Poet’s Journal,” Baca demonstrates this linguistic power as he explains how he wrote in the dark when Chicanos could not find access to print, how the barrio is like an “uncut diamond” for the artist to shape, and how Baca responds to queries about his “Indian-ness.”

Suggested readings Baca, Jimmy Santiago. “‘Poetry Is What We Speak to Each Other’: An Interview with Jimmy Santiago Baca.” Interview by John Keene. Callaloo 17, no. 1 (Winter, 1994): 33. Coppola, Vincent. “The Moon in Jimmy Baca.” Esquire ( June, 1993): 48-56. Levertov, Denise. Introduction to Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley, by Jimmy Santiago Baca. New York: New Directions, 1987. Olivares, Julian. “Two Contemporary Chicano Verse Chronicles.” The Americas Review 16 (Fall-Winter, 1988): 214-231. Rector, Liam. “The Documentary of What Is.” Hudson Review 41 (Summer, 1989): 393-400. —Leon Lewis/William Vaughn

James Baldwin

James Baldwin Born: New York, New York; August 2, 1924 Died: St. Paul de Vence, France; November 30, 1987 Baldwin’s experiences as an African American gay man became the source for essays and fiction that were often angry but always honest. Traditions: African American Principal works: Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953; Notes of a Native Son, 1955; Giovanni’s Room, 1956; The Fire Next Time, 1963; Going to Meet the Man, 1965 At nineteen, James Baldwin left Harlem, the black section of New York City. He traveled across Europe and the United States, living for years in France, where he died at age sixty-three. More than any other place, Harlem shaped Baldwin’s identity. He never completely left the ghetto behind. Baldwin returned often to Harlem to visit family. Much of his writing features the stores and streets of Harlem, in such essays as “The Harlem Ghetto” and “Notes of a Native Son,” in stories such as “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Rockpile,” and in such novels as Go Tell It on the Mountain. Baldwin claimed to love and hate Harlem, a place of old buildings, empty lots, fire escapes, and tired grass. Harlem was also rich with churches and corner stores, with railroad tracks and the Harlem River. Such scenes molded Baldwin’s worldview. Baldwin’s identity was also shaped by his sexuality. He was admittedly gay, though he never embraced that term or what he called the gay world. He considered it limiting to separate gay and straight worlds. People were people, according to him. Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni’s Room, deals with gay themes; writing and publishing such a work in the 1950’s was a considerable act of courage. Baldwin explores similar themes in Another Country (1962). Baldwin said that he wrote Giovanni’s Room to understand his own sexuality, that the book was something he had to finish before he could write anything else. Baldwin’s thoughts and writings were shaped most powerfully, however, by his identity as an African American. He experienced racism early, yet still excelled in school and at writing for school newspapers. As a young adult he endured segregation. Only by moving to France in his twenties did Baldwin gain the emotional distance to understand what being black in the United States meant. He participated in the Civil Rights movement, taking part in demonstrations and writing about that struggle. Baldwin uses his gay and African American identities to explore universal themes of loneliness, alienation, and affection. 48

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James Baldwin (Library of Congress)

Giovanni’s Room Type of work: Novel First published: 1956 Giovanni’s Room was Baldwin’s second novel, after Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). It was a risky book for Baldwin because it openly explored male homosexuality at a time when few writers discussed gay themes. It almost went unpublished. Knopf had taken Baldwin’s first novel, but rejected Giovanni’s Room and may even have suggested that Baldwin burn the manuscript to protect his reputation. Other rejections followed before Dial Press accepted the book for publication. Baldwin, who was gay, had touched on homosexual love in “The Outing” (1951) and toward the end of Go Tell It on the Mountain, but Giovanni’s Room was a frank portrayal of a gay man’s feelings and torments. The book involves white rather than black characters, which added to the book’s commercial and critical risk. Giovanni’s Room focuses on David, an American expatriate living in Paris, France. Other characters include Hella, an American woman and David’s lover, and Giovanni, an Italian who becomes David’s gay partner. The story is narrated in first person by David. Part 1 begins with Hella having left for America and Giovanni about to be executed. The rest is told primarily in flashbacks. In the flashbacks, David comes to Paris after a homosexual affair and attaches himself to Hella. He asks her to marry him, and she goes to Spain to think about it. During Hella’s absence, David meets Giovanni, who works in a bar owned by a gay man. David and Giovanni are immediately drawn together and become lovers. David moves into Giovanni’s room and the two are happy for a time. David

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cannot fully accept his gay identity, however, and reminds himself that Hella will return. In part 2, Giovanni and David’s relationship sours, mainly because David begins to despise his own feelings and to resent Giovanni’s affection. The tension increases when Giovanni loses his job. Hella comes back and David returns to her without even telling Giovanni. He pretends to be purely heterosexual, and finally breaks off his relationship with Giovanni, who is devastated emotionally. David and Hella plan to get married, but then hear that Giovanni has murdered the owner of the bar where he once worked. Giovanni is sentenced to death. David stays with Hella during Giovanni’s trial, but finally gives in to his feelings and goes to the gay quarter. Hella sees him with a man and realizes David will never love her fully. She leaves for America, and David is left to think of Giovanni and to feel empty. David can neither accept his nature nor escape it.

Notes of a Native Son Type of work: Essays First published: 1955 Baldwin is a fine novelist, as such works as Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and Giovanni’s Room (1956) prove. Many readers consider his nonfiction to be even finer than his fiction. His essays, which may be found in collections such as Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1972), are passionate and often scathing. His personal feelings and experiences are freely expressed in his essays. His anger at black-white relations in America, his ambivalence toward his father, and his thoughts on such writers as Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and William Faulkner are displayed openly. He is honest, and made enemies for it. On the other hand, he has many readers’ respect for saying what he thinks. Notes of a Native Son was Baldwin’s first nonfiction collection, and it contains his “Autobiographical Notes” and three sections totaling ten essays. In “Autobiographical Notes,” Baldwin sketches his early career—his Harlem birth, his childhood interest in writing, his journey to France. “Autobiographical Notes” and various essays describe the difficult process of Baldwin’s establishment of his identity. Part 1 of Notes of a Native Son includes three essays. “Everybody’s Protest Novel” examines Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly (1852), which Baldwin considers self-righteous and so sentimental as to be dishonest. “Many Thousands Gone” examines Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), which Baldwin describes as badly flawed. “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough” is another biting review, of the Hollywood motion picture musical Carmen Jones (1955). Baldwin says that the film lacks imagination and is condescending to blacks. Part 2 contains three essays. “The Harlem Ghetto” is one of the most powerful, digging into the physical

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and emotional turmoil of Harlem, including problems between blacks and Jews. “Journey to Atlanta” looks at an African American singing group’s first trip to the South. It is a humorous, cynical, look at the treatment that the group, which included two of Baldwin’s brothers, received. “Notes of a Native Son” examines Baldwin’s anger and despair after his father’s death. Part 3 contains four essays. “Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown” and “A Question of Identity” are about the feelings and attitudes of Americans in Paris in the 1940’s and 1950’s. “Equal in Paris” is Baldwin’s account of being arrested and jailed, temporarily, in a case involving some stolen sheets that he did not steal. Baldwin describes the insight he had while in the hands of the French police: that they, in dealing with him, were not engaging in the racist cat-and-mouse game used by police in the United States. Finally, “Stranger in the Village” discusses Baldwin’s time in a Swiss village and the astonished curiosity of people who had never seen a black person before. In all these essays, Baldwin explores his world and himself.

Suggested readings Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. New York: Viking Press, 1991. Goldstein, Richard. “Go the Way Your Blood Beats.” In James Baldwin: The Legacy, edited by Quincy Troupe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Kenan, Randall. James Baldwin. New York: Chelsea House, 1994. Leeming, David. James Baldwin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. McBride, Dwight A., ed. James Baldwin Now. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Miller, D. Quentin. Re-viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. Rosset, Lisa. James Baldwin. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Weatherby, W. J. James Baldwin: Artist on Fire. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1989. —Charles A. Gramlich

Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara Born: New York, New York; March 25, 1939 Died: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; December 9, 1995 Bambara saw herself as a literary combatant who wrote to affirm the selfhood of blacks.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Gorilla, My Love, 1972; The Sea Birds Are Still Alive: Collected Stories, 1977; The Salt Eaters, 1980; Those Bones Are Not My Child, 1999 Given the name Miltona Mirkin Cade at birth, Toni Cade acquired the name Bambara in 1970 after she discovered it as part of a signature on a sketchbook she found in her great-grandmother’s trunk. Bambara spent her formative years in New York and Jersey City, New Jersey, attending public and private schools in the areas. Although she maintained that her early short stories are not autobiographical, the protagonists in many of these pieces are young women who recall Bambara’s inquisitiveness as a youngster. Bambara attended Queens College, New York, and received a bachelor of arts degree in 1959. Earlier that year she had published her first short story, and she also received the John Golden award for fiction from Queens College. Bambara then entered the City College of New York, where she studied modern American fiction, but before completing her studies for the master’s degree, she traveled to Italy and studied in Milan, eventually returning to her studies and earning the master’s in 1963. From 1959 to 1973, Bambara saw herself as an activist. She held positions as social worker, teacher, and counselor. In her various roles, Bambara saw herself as working for the betterment of the community. During the 1960’s, Rutgers State University developed a strong fine arts undergraduate program. Many talented black artists joined the faculty to practice their crafts and to teach. Bambara was one of those talented faculty members. She taught, wrote, and participated in a program for raising the consciousness of minority women. Like many artists during the 1960’s, Bambara became involved in the black liberation struggle. She realized that all blacks needed to be liberated, but she felt that black women were forgotten in the struggle. She was of the opinion that neither the white nor the black male was capable of understanding what it means to be a black female. White and black males created images of women, she argued, that “are still derived from their needs.” Bambara saw a kinship with white women, but admitted: “I don’t know that our priorities are the same.” Believing that only the black woman is capable 52

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Toni Cade Bambara (Joyce Middler)

of explaining herself, Bambara edited The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970). In 1973, Bambara visited Cuba, and in 1975 she traveled to Vietnam. Her travels led her to believe that globally, women were oppressed. Her experiences found expression in The Sea Birds Are Still Alive. In the late 1970’s,

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Bambara moved to the South to teach at Spellman College. During this period she wrote The Salt Eaters, which focuses on mental and physical well-being. With her daughter, Bambara moved to Pennsylvania in the 1980’s, where she continued her activism and her writing until her death.

Gorilla, My Love Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1972 Published in 1972, Gorilla, My Love is a collection of short stories written between 1959 and 1971. The book is an upbeat, positive work that redefines the black experience in America. It affirms the fact that inner-city children can grow into strong, healthy adults. It indicates clearly that black men are not always the weak, predatory element in the family but can be a strong, protective force. It intimates that African Americans are not the socially alienated, dysfunctional people that the mainstream society sometimes suggests. Instead, the stories project an image of a people who love themselves, who understand themselves, and who need no validation. The fifteen short stories that compose the text are set in urban areas, and the narrative voices are usually streetwise, preadolescent girls who are extremely aware of their environment. The titular story, “Gorilla, My Love” is centered in the misunderstanding between a child and an adult. Jefferson Vale announces that he is getting married, but he has promised his preadolescent niece, Hazel, to marry her. Hazel sees her “Hunca” Bubba as a “lyin dawg.” Although her uncle and her grandfather attempt to console her, Hazel believes adults “mess over kids, just cause they little and can’t take em to court.” All of the stories are informative and entertaining. A story that typifies the anthology is “Playin with Ponjob,” which details how a white social worker, Miss Violet, underestimates the influence of a local thug and is forced to leave the community. “Talkin Bout Sunny” explores the effects of the mainstream on the black male by pointing out how pressures from the larger community cause Sunny to kill his wife. “The Lesson” points out the disparity between the rich and the poor by telling of children window-shopping on Fifth Avenue. “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” details how one man protects his family from prying photographers employed by the welfare system. What is significant in “Playin with Ponjob” is that Bambara does not depict Ponjob as being predatory. He is male, “jammed-up by the white man’s nightmare.” To the community, he is “the only kind of leader we can think of.” In “Talkin Bout Sunny” Bambara indicates that the larger community is partly responsible for Sunny’s actions, but she also indicates that the community of Sunny’s friends is also responsible because they know of his distemper, but do nothing. “The Lesson” teaches children that what one wealthy person

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spends on one toy can feed eight of them for a year. “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” indicates that the patriarch of an extended family can protect his own. The collection depicts African Americans as a strong, progressive people.

The Salt Eaters Type of work: Novel First published: 1980 The Salt Eaters opens with Velma Henry sitting on a stool in the South West Community Infirmary of Claybourne, Georgia, being healed by Minnie Ransom. Claybourne is a beehive of progressive activity. The Academy of the Seven Arts, run by James “Obie” Henry, Velma’s husband, is the center of intellectual and social activities. Velma, performing the duties of seven employees, keeps the institution running. Overwhelmed by the infighting at the academy, her domestic problems with Obie, and her refusal to accept her spiritual powers, Velma has attempted suicide, and Minnie is laboring to “center” Velma, to make Velma whole. The novel includes a spiritual plane where mortals interact with other life forms. Minnie Ransom operates on both planes. She is sitting opposite Velma while surrounded by her twelve disciples, the Master’s Mind. Sometimes she reaches out and touches Velma physically. Other times she does “not touch [Velma] flesh on flesh, but touch[es] mind on mind from across the room or from across town.” While Minnie is having these telepathic tête-à-têtes with Velma, she also confers at times with a spirit guide who helps her with the healing. When “centering” Velma becomes difficult, Minnie makes telepathic trips to the Chapel of the Mind to recharge her psychic energies. The healing, which should take minutes, takes two hours—the time span of the novel. Velma, like Minnie, takes telepathic trips, during which she bumps into other characters, human and spiritual. These characters, filtered through Velma’s subconscious, are for the most part what people the novel. Bambara skillfully combines the European American traditional mode of storytelling with African and African American concepts and traditions. The Academy of the Seven Arts is concerned with empirical knowledge, but the institution is also concerned with teaching folk art and folk traditions. The medical center accommodates physicians who practice modern medicine, but the center also makes use of the skills of Minnie Ransom. The spring celebration is a ritual celebrated by human beings, but in Claybourne the quick and the dead celebrate this rite. Bambara’s concepts of the new age, guiding spirits, out-of-body experiences, and telepathic visions were not, at first, taken seriously. Reality is not, however, measured only by empirical evidence. Near-death experiences, guardian angels, and intergalactic travel are part of popular understanding. As the concept of reality expands, the significance of The Salt Eaters deepens.

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Suggested readings Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Bell, Roseann, et al. Sturdy Black Brides: Vision of Black Women in Literature. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1979. Collins, Janelle. “Generating Power: Fission, Fusion, and Post-Modern Politics in Bambara’s The Salt Eaters.” MELUS 21, no. 2 (Summer, 1996): 35-47. Evans, Marre, ed. Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1984. Hargrave, Nancy D. “Youth in Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love.” In Women Writers of the Contemporary South, edited by Peggy Whitman Prenshow. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984. Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983. Wilentz, Gay. Healing Narratives: Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. —Ralph Reckley, Sr.

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) Born: Newark, New Jersey; October 7, 1934

Baraka’s poetry, drama, and music criticism make him one of the most influential African American writers of his generation. Traditions: African American Principal works: Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963; Dutchman, pr., pb. 1964; The Slave, pr., pb. 1964; The System of Dante’s Hell, 1965; Home: Social Essays, 1966; Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, 1979; Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974-1979, 1984; The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 1984; The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, 1991 (edited by William J. Harris); Transbluesency: Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (19611995), 1995; New Poems (1984-1995), 1997 Introspective yet concerned with public, political issues, Amiri Baraka’s works frequently focus on his personal attempt to define an African American identity. Born into a close-knit family that had migrated from the South, Baraka was a bright student. In adolescence Baraka became aware of differences between African American middle-class and working-class lives and viewpoints. He recalls the identity crisis that grew out of his developing class awareness in such works as “Letter to E. Franklin Frazier,” his novel The System of Dante’s Hell, and short stories collected in Tales (1967). His interest in jazz and blues also began in adolescence and was reinforced by the mentorship of poet Sterling A. Brown, one of Baraka’s professors at Howard University. After an enlistment in the Air Force, Baraka settled in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1957 and began publishing Yugen, a poetry magazine that became one of the important journals of the Beat generation. After the success of his play Dutchman and his recognition as an important critic for his study Blues People: Negro Music in White America, the assassination of Malcolm X was a shocking event that caused Baraka to reject his previous faith in the possibilities of a racially integrated society. In 1965, he embraced a Black Nationalist political viewpoint and helped establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem, which became the center of a nationwide Black Arts movement. This movement attempted to produce literature, music, and visual art addressed to the masses of African Americans. The Black Arts movement aimed at expressing a unique ethnic worldview and what Baraka 57

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called “a Black value system.” His works of this period often depict a hostile white society and question whether middleclass aspirations and individualism endangered the progress of African Americans as a group. He saw the collective improvisation of jazz as a (Photo not available) model for the arts and for political activism. Turning to Marxism in 1974, Baraka extended these ideas. Dedicating his work to revolutionary action, Baraka suggested that the situation of African Americans paralleled that of colonized Third World peoples in Africa and Asia. Teaching at the State University of New York and other colleges, Baraka produced highly original poems, plays, and essays that continued to address controversial issues and to reach a wide international readership. His experiments with literary form—particularly the use of African American vernacular speech—also have influenced many younger American writers.

Blues People Type of work: Essay First published: 1963 The first full-length analytical and historical study of jazz and blues written by an African American, Blues People: Negro Music in White America presents a highly original thesis suggesting that music can be used as a gauge to measure the cultural assimilation of Africans in North America from the early eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Broad in scope and insightfully opinionated, Blues People caused controversy among musicologists and other critics. Intending his remarks as negative criticism, Ralph Ellison was accurate in noting that Baraka is “attracted to the blues for what he believes they tell us of the sociology of Negro American identity and attitude.” Baraka contends that although slavery destroyed many formal artistic traditions, African American music represents certain African survivals. Most important, African American music represents an African approach to cul-

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ture. As such, the music sustains the African worldview and records the historical experience of an oppressed people. Baraka also argues that while Africans adapted their culture to the English language and to European musical instruments and song forms, they also maintained an ethnic viewpoint that is preserved and transmitted by their music. Stylistic changes in the music mirror historical changes in the attitudes and social conditions of African Americans. The chapter “Swing—From Verb to Noun” compares the contributions of African American and white jazz musicians in the 1920’s and 1930’s, demonstrating how some artists developed and extended an ethnic folk music tradition while others added what they learned from that tradition to the vocabulary of a more commercialized American popular music. Baraka’s view that music is capable of expressing and maintaining a group identity leads to his assertion that even in later decades, increasingly dominated by the recording and broadcasting industry, African American artists continued to be the primary contributors and innovators. A classic work of its kind, Blues People offers an interesting view of how cultural products reflect and perhaps determine other social developments.

Daggers and Javelins Type of work: Essays and lectures First published: 1984 The essays and lectures collected in Daggers and Javelins: Essays, 1974-1979 represent Baraka’s vigorous attempt to identify an African American revolutionary tradition that could parallel anticolonial struggles in Third World countries of Africa, Asia, and South America. Baraka applies a Marxist analysis to African American literature in these essays. Having become disappointed with the progress of the Black Power movement and its emphasis on grassroots electoral politics, Baraka came to Marxism with the zeal of a new convert. “The essays of the earliest part of this period,” he writes, “are overwhelmingly political in the most overt sense.” While some of the essays in Daggers and Javelins address jazz, film, and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, all of them do so with the purpose of assessing what Baraka calls their potential to contribute to a revolutionary struggle. In “The Revolutionary Tradition in Afro-American Literature,” Baraka distinguishes between the authentic folk and vernacular expression of African American masses and the poetry and prose produced by middle-class writers in imitation of prevailing literary standards. Considering the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and others as the beginnings of a genuine African American literature, he criticizes works that promote individualism or are merely “a distraction, an ornament.” Similarly, “Afro-American Literature and Class Struggle” and other essays consider how the economic structure of society affects the production and the appreciation of art. “Notes on the

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History of African/Afro-American Culture” interprets the theoretical writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and draws parallels between colonized African societies and the suppression of African American artistic expression by the American cultural mainstream. Broadening his scope in essays on African and Caribbean authors, Baraka suggests that figures such as the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the poet Aimé Césaire from Martinique can provide models for how African American artists can escape being co-opted into an elite that supports the status quo and, instead, produce art that offers a “cathartic revelation of reality” useful in promoting social change.

Dutchman Type of work: Drama First produced: 1964; first published, 1964 A powerful one-act drama, Dutchman brought immediate and lasting attention to Baraka. The play is a searing two-character confrontation that begins playfully but builds rapidly in suspense and symbolic resonance. Set on a New York subway train, Dutchman opens with a well-dressed, intellectual, young African American man named Clay absorbed in reading a magazine. He is interrupted by Lula—a flirtatious, beautiful white woman a bit older than he. As Lula suggestively slices and eats an apple, she and Clay tease each other with bantering talk that becomes more and more personal. She reveals little about herself, but Lula is clearly in control of the conversation and the situation as she perceptively and provokingly challenges Clay’s middle-class self image. Lula is, in fact, a bit cruel. “What right do you have to be wearing a three-button suit and striped tie?” she asks. “Your grandfather was a slave, he didn’t go to Harvard.” Aware of his insecurities, Lula dares Clay to pretend “that you are free of your own history.” Clay’s insecurities about his race, social status, and masculine prowess—slowly revealed as his answers shift from machismo to defensiveness—become the targets for Lula’s increasingly direct taunts. Eventually, Lula’s attempt to force Clay to see in himself the negative stereotypes of the black male—as either oversexed stud or cringing Uncle Tom—goad him into an eloquently bitter tirade. Black music and African American culture, he tells her, are actually repressions of a justified rage that has kept African American people sane in the face of centuries of oppression. Clay seems as desperate to prove this to himself as he is to convince Lula. He does not seem to know whether the rage or the repression has taken the greater toll on African American sanity. The scene escalates in dramatic force until Lula unexpectedly stabs Clay to death. Baraka has said that Dutchman “is about how difficult it is to become a man in the United States.” Nevertheless, the ancient symbolism of apple and

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temptation, and the myth of the ghostly pirate ship, The Flying Dutchman, used in Richard Wagner’s opera and other literary works, are carefully suggested in Baraka’s play and amplify the dimensions of racial conflict.

Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/ LeRoi Jones Type of work: Poetry First published: 1979 Perhaps the most influential African American poet of the last half of the twentieth century, Baraka helped define the Beat generation and served as a guide for the Black Arts movement of the 1960’s. Baraka’s work is simultaneously introspective and public; his combination of unrhymed open forms, African American vernacular speech, and allusions to American popular culture produces poems that express Baraka’s personal background while addressing political issues. Baraka’s poetry draws upon the poetic techniques of William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson, and upon traditional oratory, ranging from the African American church to streetcorner rapping. Baraka has divided his work into three periods: his association with the Beats (1957-1963), a militant Black Nationalist period (1965-1974), and, after 1975, an adherence to Marxism and Third World anticolonial politics. These periods are marked by changes in the poet’s ideology but not in his poetic style. Early poems such as “Hymn to Lanie Poo”—focusing on tension between middle-class and poor black people—and “Notes for a Speech” consider whether or not African Americans have a genuine ethnic identity and culture of their own as opposed to a segregated existence that only mirrors white America. This theme receives more attention in poems of the 1960’s such as “Poem for Willie Best” and “Poem for HalfWhite College Students” which indict Hollywood stereotypes. Another collection, Transbluesency: Selected Poems (1961-1995), represents much of Baraka’s work after 1979. Poems of the Black Nationalist period address questions of the poet’s personal and racial identity. The poems of this period suggest that poetry itself is a means of creating individual and communal identity. In “Numbers, Letters” Baraka writes: “I can’t be anything I’m not/ Except these words pretend/ to life not yet explained.” Explicitly political poems, such as “The Nation Is Like Ourselves,” propose that each person’s efforts or failings collectively amount to a community’s character. After 1975, poems such as “In the Tradition” argue—with some consistency with Baraka’s earlier views— that although Marxism is the means to political progress, only an art of the people that insists on showing that “the universal/ is the entire collection/ of particulars” will prepare people to work toward a better future. “In the Tradition” and a later series titled “Why’s” present musicians and political

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leaders as equally powerful cultural activists, reinforcing Baraka’s idea that poetry is a force for change.

Suggested readings Anadolu-Okur, Nigun. Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller. New York: Garland, 1997. Brown, Lloyd W. Amiri Baraka. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Ellison, Ralph. The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985. _______. Shadow and Act. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Fox, Robert Eliot. Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. Neal, Larry. Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989. Nielsen, Aldon L. Writing Between the Lines: Race and Intertextuality. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. Reilly, Charlie, ed. Conversations with Amiri Baraka. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Sollors, Werner. Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a “Populist Modernism.” New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Tate, Greg. “Growing Up in Public: Amiri Baraka Changes His Mind.” Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Woodard, K. Komozi. A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. —Lorenzo Thomas

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Born: Lachine, Quebec, Canada; June 10, 1915

Bellow was perhaps the first Jewish writer in America to reject the categorization of his work as being Jewish American literature; he became a major American novelist. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Dangling Man, 1944; The Victim, 1947; The Adventures of Augie March, 1953; Seize the Day, 1956; Henderson the Rain King, 1959; Herzog, 1964; Mr. Sammler’s Planet, 1970; Humboldt’s Gift, 1975; The Dean’s December, 1982; More Die of Heartbreak, 1987; Ravelstein, 2000 Saul Bellow grew up in the polyglot slums of Montreal and Chicago. He was saved from a bleak existence by his love of learning. He acquired a knowledge of Yiddish, Hebrew, and French, in addition to Russian and English. His Russian immigrant parents were orthodox Jews; Bellow’s exposure to other cultures led him to reject a purely Jewish identity. He discovered the work of Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Dreiser, and Sherwood Anderson, all leaders in shaping Americans’ consciousness of their national identity. After being graduated from Northwestern University, Bellow obtained a scholarship to pursue graduate study in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin but found his real interest lay in creative writing. He considered his first two novels, Dangling Man and The Victim, “apprentice work.” Not until the publication of The Adventures of Augie March did he achieve recognition as a major new voice in American fiction. He had forged a spontaneous, exuberant personal style which was a poetic synthesis of lower-class vernacular, Yiddishisms, profuse neologisms, the language of polite society, and the jargon of academia. Bellow thought too much had been made of persecution and exclusion. He pointed to the exciting opportunities for growth available to all Americans. He insisted on being not a Jew addressing other Jews, but an American addressing other Americans. Creative writing for him was an adventure in self-discovery. He called his breakthrough novel The Adventures of Augie March because he considered life an adventure in spite of hardships, disappointments, and failure. Among his numerous honors, Bellow received National Book Awards for The Adventures of Augie March in 1954, Herzog in 1964, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet in 1970. His crowning achievement was the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. Most of his fiction concerns a search for self-realization in a confusing, often 63

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hostile world. Bellow’s heroes rarely know what they want but know what they do not want: they are chronically dissatisfied with the complacency, inertia, and materialism around them. Bellow was also inspirational as a teacher. He is most closely identified with the University of Chicago. The fact that Bellow was married and divorced four times reflects the quixotic spirit seen in Augie March, Eugene Henderson, and other autobiographical creations. Bellow will be best remembered for his example to writers attempting to discover and declare their identities, often as members of disadvantaged minorities. Bellow expressed—and was shaped by—the adventurous, iconoclastic, and fiercely democratic spirit of twentieth century America.

The Adventures of Augie March Type of work: Novel First published: 1953 The Adventures of Augie March is an autobiographical Bildungsroman covering a Jewish American’s struggle to find himself, through trial and error, from the 1920’s through the 1940’s. Bellow’s hero-narrator Augie March is bewildered by the freedom and opportunities available to Jews in America after centuries of persecution and segregation in other lands. Augie is a resilient but not a strongly motivated character. Not knowing what he wants, he allows himself to be misguided by a succession of domineering personalities, beginning with the family’s tyrannical boarder, Mrs. Lausch, a refugee from Czarist Russia, who tries to make him an Old World gentleman. Augie and his older brother Simon have to go to work while still children to supplement the meager family income. Both quickly become hardened by the streets of Chicago. Criminal acquaintances involve Augie in felonies that nearly get him sent to prison. Augie, however, has a love for education and self-improvement because they offer hope of finding self-realization and escape from the ghetto. The combination of slang and erudite diction Augie uses in telling his story is an outstanding feature of the novel. Simon is another domineering personality who tries to run Augie’s life. Ruthless, money-hungry Simon cannot understand his younger brother’s indifference to materialism and despises his bookworm mentality. They have a dynamic love-hate relationship throughout the novel. Simon marries into a wealthy family and becomes a millionaire, but Augie sees that his unhappy brother is suicidal. Augie wants more from life than money and a loveless marriage. He tries shoplifting, union organizing, smuggling illegal immigrants, managing a punch-drunk boxer, and other fiascos. He experiences many changes of fortune. He plunges into love affairs with women who try to redirect his life. The most formidable is a huntress who

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collects poisonous snakes and trains an eagle to catch giant iguanas in Mexico. When World War II comes, Augie joins the Merchant Marine and barely survives after his ship is torpedoed. After the war, he and his wife move to Europe, where he grows rich trading in black-market merchandise. At novel’s end he has still not found himself. Augie finds that he has settled for a comfortable but shallow existence, but he realizes that other people have no better understanding of who they are or what they want than he does himself. During the 1950’s and 1960’s The Adventures of Augie March was popular with young readers because they identified with a protagonist who rejected traditional values and sought self-realization in a world seemingly doomed to atomic annihilation.

Suggested readings Bigler, Walter. Figures of Madness in Saul Bellow’s Longer Fiction. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1998. Dutton, Robert R. Saul Bellow. New York: Twayne, 1982. Gerson, Steven M. “The New American Adam in The Adventures of Augie March.” Modern Fiction Studies 25 (Spring, 1979): 117-128. Harper, George Lloyd. “Saul Bellow.” In Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, edited by George Plimpton. New York: Penguin, 1977. Hyland, Peter. Saul Bellow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Kiernan, Robert F. Saul Bellow. New York: Continuum, 1989. Miller, Ruth. Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. —Bill Delaney

Arna Wendell Bontemps

Arna Wendell Bontemps Born: Alexandria, Louisiana; October 13, 1902 Died: Nashville, Tennessee; June 4, 1973 Bontemps, recognized as a scholar and historian of the Harlem Renaissance, is considered one of the most significant African American writers.

Traditions: African American Principal works: God Send Sundays, 1931; Black Thunder, 1936; Great Slave Narratives, 1969 (editor) Arna Bontemps, at age twenty-one, accepted a teaching position in New York City at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Through his poetry, novels, short stories, and essays, he became one of that movement’s defining writers. Bontemps, whose father was a bricklayer and whose mother, a schoolteacher, instilled in him a love of books, was born in Louisiana, but, because of white threats against his family, was reared and educated in California, where he was graduated from Pacific Union College in 1923. The Bontemps family settled in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1905. At the time they were the only African American family in the neighborhood. When Bontemps was twelve years old, his mother died, and he was sent to live with relatives in the California countryside. There, by becoming his Uncle Buddy’s “companion and confidant in the corn rows,” Bontemps gained access to a living embodiment of Southern black folk culture. According to Bontemps, Uncle Buddy was an “old derelict” who drank alcohol and loved “dialect stories, preacher stories, ghost stories, slave and master stories. He half-believed in signs and charms and mumbo-jumbo, and he believed whole-heartedly in ghosts.” Concerned at Uncle Buddy’s influence, Bontemps’s father sent his son to a white boarding school, admonishing him, “Now don’t go up there acting colored.” Fifty years later, the rebuke still rankled: Recalling his father’s advice in 1965, Bontemps exclaimed, “How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored?” Pride in color and heritage stamps all Bontemps’s works. The African American experience is at the heart of all Bontemps’s work. His novel God Send Sundays, which he and Countée Cullen adapted for Broadway in 1946, is based loosely on the life of Uncle Buddy. The work offers a glimpse of the Southern racing circuit through the eyes of a black jockey in the late 1800’s. Another novel, Black Thunder, is based on Gabriel Prosser’s slave rebellion. Bontemps edited an anthology, Great Slave Narratives, and The Book of Negro Folklore in 1958. With Langston Hughes, Bontemps 66

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edited The Poetry of the Negro 1746-1949 (1963). Bontemps was a central figure in the rediscovery and dissemination of African American literature. Bontemps was a librarian at Fisk University from 1943 to 1965. Although he left to teach at the University of Illinois and then at Yale during the late 1960’s, he returned to Fisk in 1971 and remained there until his death in 1973.

Black Thunder Type of work: Novel First published: 1936 Black Thunder, Bontemps’s defining novel, is a fictionalized account of the early nineteenth century Gabriel Insurrection, in Virginia. The novel, which chronicles the Gabriel Prosser-led rebellion against the slave owners of Henrico County, was generally lauded by critics as one of the most significant black American works of fiction. Richard Wright praised the work for dealing forthrightly with the historical and revolutionary traditions of African Americans. Gabriel Prosser, a slave convinced that anything “equal to a grey squirrel wants to be free,” urges the other slaves to revolt against their owners. The rebellion is hastened when a brutal slaveowner whips a slave, Bundy, to death. Even though the rebellion ultimately fails, Gabriel Prosser nonetheless emerges as a potent hero. The “power of black folk” credo is central to Black Thunder. Bontemps’s treatment of Arna Wendell Bontemps (Library of Congress) Bundy’s funeral is

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faithful in detail to the customs of the time. Bontemps’s use of signs and portents pushes the story to its heroic ending. Stunning characterizations of Pharaoh, Drucilla, Ben, and Gabriel become multileveled, believably universal personalities through Bontemps’s skillful use of folk material. Elements of magic appear in Black Thunder just as they appear in folktales and beliefs as recorded by collectors. Bundy’s spirit returns to haunt Pharaoh, the slave who betrays the rebellion and whose death is foreshadowed. Use of charms and countercharms is rampant, conjure-poisoning looms at all times, and rebellious slaves debate omens in the stars. The tapestry that Bontemps weaves shows the intricate beliefs of slaves to be colorful and compelling. Bontemps’s narrative techniques have origins in black folklore about death, ghosts, and spirits. Black Thunder’s strength, largely, is in its depiction of an alternate worldview, which, while retaining the power to sanctify or punish, is painfully adapting to a new land and people. Critics note that Bontemps situates his story in the politics of the times: Readers see blame for slave unrest placed at the feet of Thomas Jefferson during John Quincy Adams’s bitter reelection campaign. Bontemps depicts the Virginia legislature debate considering sectional segregation of blacks, slaves and free, and chronicles the press. Black Thunder was written during the 1930’s; some critics believe it reflects the mood of the Depression.

Great Slave Narratives Type of work: Autobiographies First published: 1969 Great Slave Narratives, Bontemps’s 1960’s revival of a once-popular American literary genre, is a compilation of three book-length narratives written by former slaves. During much of the nineteenth century, slave narratives were best-sellers for American publishers. The reintroduction of this literary form was inspired by the Black Power movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s and the resurgent interest in black culture and the African American experience. Readers were again curious about how it felt to be black and a slave; they wanted to know how the world looked through the eyes of one who had achieved a measure of freedom by effort and suffering. Who, readers wanted to know, were the people who had passed through the ordeal, and how had they expressed their thoughts and feelings? Bontemps chose for this book three outstanding examples of the genre. The first, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), by Olaudah Equiano, who was given the name Gustavus Vassa, gained wide attention, and is particularly interesting for the author’s vivid recall of his African background. In 1794, it went into its eighth edition, with many more to follow in America and Europe.

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The second book, The Fugitive Blacksmith; Or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (1850), is the colorful tale of a full-blooded African who was honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Yale University denied him admission as a regular student but did not interfere when he stood outside the doors of classrooms in order to hear professors lecture. Pennington also was the first black to write a history of his people in America: A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841). The final narrative in the trilogy, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860), an exciting story of a courageous slave couple’s escape, is perhaps the high point in the development of the slave narrative genre. Apparently no two slaves in their flight from subjugation to freedom ever thrilled the world so much as did this handsome young couple. Not everyone was pleased, however. President James Polk was so infuriated by their success that he threatened to use the Fugitive Slave Law and the military in their recapture. By then the Crafts were in England. Bontemps, in his introduction to Great Slave Narratives, explained the importance of this “half-forgotten history,” placing it in the context of American literature: “Hindsight,” he wrote, “may yet disclose the extent to which this writing, this impulse, has been influential on subsequent American writing, if not indeed on America’s view of itself. . . . The standard literary sources and the classics of modern fiction pale in comparison as a source of strength.”

Suggested readings Aptheker, Herbert. A Documentary History of the Negro People. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1973. Bader, Barbara. “History Changes Color: A Story in Three Parts.” The Horn Book Magazine 73 ( January/February, 1997): 91-98. Baker, Houston A., Jr. Black Literature in America. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Blackett, R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Blockson, Charles L. The Underground Railroad: First Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987. Bontemps, Arna. Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters, 1925-1967. Selected and edited by Charles H. Nichols. New York: Paragon House, 1990. _______. Introduction to Black Thunder. Beacon Press: Boston, 1968. Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers, 1900-1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974. Jones, Kirkland C. Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992.

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Sundquist, Eric J. The Hammers of Creation: Folk Culture in Modern AfricanAmerican Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Weil, Dorothy. “Folklore Motifs in Arna Bontemps’ Black Thunder.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 35 (March, 1971): 1-14. —Barbara Day

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard Born: Cebu, Philippines; November 21, 1947

Brainard has reminded American readers of how Filipinos earned their independence. Traditions: Filipino American Principal works: Woman with Horns and Other Stories, 1987; Philippine Woman in America, 1991; Song of Yvonne, 1991 (published in the United States as When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, 1994); Fiction by Filipinos in America, 1993; Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories, 1995; Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, 1997 (editor) Born one year after the Philippines gained its independence, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard was surrounded from the start with a sense of her country’s having been born at almost the same time as herself. After centuries of Spanish colonialism, more than four decades of American control, and four years of Japanese occupation, finally, in 1946, Filipinos were free to determine their own future. The Americans had helped prepare for this moment through elective models and had fought side by side with Filipinos during the war, and the Americans were vital to the difficult postwar reconstruction, but Brainard grew up well aware of her fellow Filipinos’ own proud contributions toward establishment of an independent Philippines. The street on which she lived in Cebu was called Guerrillero Street in honor of her father, a guerrilla and then a civil engineer involved in rebuilding shattered Philippine cities. Many of the anecdotes in her first novel, Song of Yvonne, came from tales of war remembered by her family. As a result, even when Brainard left home for graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1960’s, she brought with her an identity as a Filipina. She married a former member of the Peace Corps, Lauren Brainard, who had served on Leyte, an island close to Cebu. In California, she worked on documentary film scripts and public relations from 1969 to 1981. Then she began the newspaper columns later collected in Philippine Woman in America, which describe the enrichment and frustration felt by Philippine Americans who are straddling two cultures. Conscious of her own Americanization and anxious to provide her three sons with cultural choices, she formed Philippine American Women Writers and Artists, an organization intent on publishing remembered legends and scenes from the 71

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contributors’ childhoods. Brainard’s organization was intended to provide a continuum of presence from varied pasts to a shared future. Such dedication to the “memory of a people” is in the ancient Philippine tradition of the female babaylan, or priestess.

Woman with Horns and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1987 The stories in this collection by Brainard derive from the author’s attempt to compensate for the fact that Filipino culture, for hundreds of years, was considered too primitive to be significant in the eyes of nations such as Spain, the United States, and Japan. The author’s nationalism (reinforced by nostalgia after her emigration to California) is reinforced by her placing many of the tales in Ubec—the reverse spelling of Cebu, the Philippine island of the author’s birth. The fact that invading forces so often destroyed or neglected native records provided the final impulse for Brainard to depend on her imagination for invention of details wherever history has been forced to remain silent. Her stories also show her division of allegiance between her native land and her adopted country. An example of Brainard’s creative approach to history is found in the story “1521.” The failure of Ferdinand Magellan to complete his circumnavigation of the world is usually explained by his coming between two hostile Filipino chiefs. Yet “1521” suggests that Lapu-Lapu may have killed Magellan in revenge for the death of Lapu-Lapu’s infant son at Spanish hands. “Alba,” however, shows more tolerance when, in 1763, during the English occupation of Manila, Doña Saturnina gives birth to a fair-skinned son. The son is accepted by her husband. Similarly, in “The Black Man in the Forest” old guerrilla general Gregorio kills an African American soldier but will not let his body be cannibalized despite near-starvation brought on by the Philippine-American War. The title story recounts how, in 1903, an American public health director finds renewed interest in life, after the death of his wife, with Agustina, a seductive Filipina widow. The effects of war are remarked in “Miracle at Santo Niño Church,” in which Tecla suffers nightmares about the Japanese who bayoneted her family. “The Blue-Green Chiffon Dress” uses the period of the Vietnam War as occasion for a brief encounter between Gemma and a soldier heading back to combat. “The Discovery” describes a Filipina’s torn loyalties between her American husband and a former Filipino lover who, like her homeland, seems ravaged by time and violent circumstance. The collection does not observe the historical sequence. For the modern Filipino, perhaps, all past time is being experienced for the first time by a people whose history has been withheld from them. In any given period,

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however, Filipino resilience has proved to outweigh victimization. Melodrama in the stories’ circumstances repeatedly gives way to quietude and certitude.

Suggested readings Casper, Leonard. “Four Filipina Writers.” Amerasia Journal, Winter, 1998, 143. _______. Sunsurfers Seen from Afar: Critical Essays, 1991-1996. Metro Manila, Philippines: Anvil, 1996. Zapanta Manlapaz, Edna. Songs of Ourselves. Metro Manila, Philippines: Anvil, 1994. —Leonard Casper

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks Born: Topeka, Kansas; June 7, 1917

The first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, Brooks affirms the power of ordinary people. Traditions: African American Principal works: A Street in Bronzeville, 1945; Annie Allen, 1949; Maud Martha, 1953; The Bean Eaters, 1960; In the Mecca, 1968; Riot, 1969; Family Pictures, 1970; Report from Part One: An Autobiography, 1972; Beckonings, 1975; To Disembark, 1981; The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems, 1986; Blacks, 1987; Gottschalk and the Grand Tarantelle, 1988; Winnie, 1988; Children Coming Home, 1991; Report from Part Two, 1996 Gwendolyn Brooks, the child of loving parents who valued learning, was encouraged to write. Her father provided a desk and bookshelves; her mother took her to meet the writers Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. After being graduated from Wilson Junior College, she was married to Henry Lowington Blakely, also a writer, in 1939. From Langston Hughes she received encouragement to write about the everyday aspects of black life. She wrote about relatives she knew or stories she heard growing up. Her early poetry also reflects her dreams for romance. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Allen traces the growth of a young woman from childhood to maturity. Brooks is not, however, a romantic poet. Her work exhibits a realistic and unsentimental understanding of what it means to be a black woman in twentieth century America. The strength of her poetry lies in its illumination and criticism of a society that does not respect and reward those who are good. The forms of her work often contain a similar criticism of the literary world: Annie Allen, for example, is a parody of a traditional epic poem. Brooks’s novel Maud Martha compassionately explores a woman’s search for identity and her resulting spiritual growth. Many African American themes are illumined: The light skin versus dark skin motif is one. Much in the novel is taken from Brooks’s life. Her autobiography, Report from Part One, is a creative composite of experiences, memories, photographs, and interviews. It is less a literary chronology than it is a storytelling experience in the oral tradition. In the late 1960’s, Brooks began working closely with young black writers whose concerns for the poor and oppressed mirrored her own. Her poetry of this period, Riot and Family Pictures, exhibits a strong voice, an increased use 74

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of black speech patterns, and a larger focus on black consciousness. She celebrated her achievement of selfhood with a decision to publish her work with African American publishers. Throughout her career Brooks has looked to the men, women, and children in her black community for inspiration. Through them and for them she has made a difference.

Poetry First published: A Street in Bronzeville, 1945; Annie Allen, 1949; The Bean Eaters, 1960; Selected Poems, 1963; In the Mecca, 1968; Riot, 1969; Family Pictures, 1970; Aloneness, 1971; Beckonings, 1975; Primer for Blacks, 1980; To Disembark, 1981; The Near-Johannesburg Boy, 1986; Blacks, 1987; Gottschalk and the Grand Tarantelle, 1988; Winnie, 1988 Gwendolyn Brooks, who began her career in 1945 with the publication of her first book, A Street in Bronzeville, was first inspired by encouraging parents, her own wisdom, and a personal dedication to words. The Civil Rights movement of the late 1960’s, which fostered cultural renewal in black America, expanded her consciousness, nourished her growth, and sustained her lifelong love and appreciation for blackness. It is not unusual to hear Brooks speak of the period before 1967 as a time when she had “sturdy” artistic ideas, and the period after 1967 as a time when she felt “sure.” Her first two books of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville and Annie Allen, and others written in the 1950’s and 1960’s appear to conform to tradition in their use of the sonnet form and of slant rhyme. There is, however, nothing traditional about one 1945 sonnet’s subject: abortion. In many ways, A Street in Bronzeville is untraditional, innovative, and courageous, although written with a sturdy respect for tradition. Annie Allen, for which Brooks was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Gwendolyn Brooks (Jill Krementz)

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in poetry—the first awarded to an African American—uses narrative verse to trace the growth of a semiautobiographical character from girlhood to womanhood. Brooks drew upon personal experiences and social issues as subjects for many early poems. In 1960, she published The Bean Eaters, a collection containing two well-known poems: “We Real Cool,” about seven pool players at the Golden Shovel, and “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” written after the 1957 murder of Emmett Till. Her early career also includes publication of Bronzeville Girls and Boys (1956), a children’s book, and Selected Poems. Although her poetry remained grounded in the joy, frustration, injustice, and reality of black life, Brooks’s involvement with young writers in the late 1960’s and her poetry workshops for the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago gang, produced a new voice. Earlier structured forms gave way to free verse. Vocabulary flowed more freely into black vernacular. In In the Mecca, a book-length poem about Chicago’s old Mecca Building, a mother’s search for her child ultimately becomes a metaphor for the individual search for self in an inhumane society: “The Lord was their shepherd./ Yet did they want.” Her sure years produced another identity-affirming change in Brooks’s career: the decision to publish with black publishers. Riot, Family Pictures, and Beckonings chronicle social unrest and anger. Although discouraged by the lack of societal change, Brooks continually praises the indefatigable black spirit. Little Lincoln West in “The Life of Lincoln West” finds comfort in knowing he is “the real thing” in spite of society’s abuse. In “To Black Women” from To Disembark, she calls upon her black sisters in the diaspora to create flowers, to prevail despite “tramplings of monarchs and other men.” Later books, such as The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Winnie, reflect the wider black community. Whether writing about leaders in Africa or children in Chicago, Brooks is conscious of the fact that her people are black people. To them she appeals for understanding.

A Street in Bronzeville Type of work: Poetry First published: 1945 A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks’s first poetry collection, poignantly reflects the reality of oppression in the lives of urban blacks. The poems portraying ordinary yet unforgettable individuals—from the flamboyant Satin Legs Smith to the sad hunchback girl who yearns for a pain-free life—launched Brooks’s successful career. The poetic walk through Bronzeville begins with “the old-marrieds,” whose longtime exposure to crowded conditions has eliminated loving communication from their lives. The long-married couple is followed closely by poems exploring how life in a “kitchenette building” thwarts aspirations. Brooks wonders how dreams

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can endure in a fight with fried potatoes and garbage ripening in the hall. With honesty and love she portrays resilient characters: Pearl May Lee, whose man has been falsely accused of raping a white woman; Mame, the queen of the blues, who has no family and endures the slaps and pinches of rude men in the club where she sings; Moe Belle Jackson, whose husband “whipped her good last night”; and poor baby Percy, who was burned to death by his brother Brucie. Alongside this unblinking look at life’s pain, Brooks now and then gently conveys humorous moments, such as the woman at the hairdresser’s who wants an upsweep to “show them girls,” and the domestic worker who thinks her employer is a fool. Alienation in city life is a theme Brooks explores unflinchingly. Matthew Cole seems to be a pleasant man, but in the dirtiness of his room, with fat roaches strolling up the wall, he never smiles. Maud, in the poem “Sadie and Maud,” tries to escape Bronzeville by going to college, but finds herself living alone, a thin brown mouse in an old house. Composed of twelve poems, the last section of the book, “Gay Chaps at the Bar,” is dedicated to Brooks’s brother, Staff Sergeant Raymond Brooks, and other soldiers who returned from the war trembling and crying. The second poem, “still do I keep my look, my identity,” affirms a soldier’s individuality even as he dons a government-issue uniform and goes off to meet death on some distant hill. Each body has its pose, “the old personal art, the look.” Ultimately, the critique of America plays itself out in a critique of traditional literary form. Brooks parodies the sonnet in content and form. She uses slant rhyme for the entire collection because she thinks life in Bronzeville is “an off-rhyme situation.”

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold. ed. Gwendolyn Brooks. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Evans, Mari. Black Women Writers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Kent, George E. A Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. Melhem, D. H. Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987. Mootry, Maria K., and Gary Smith. A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Park, You-me, and Gayle Wald. “Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres.” American Literature 70, no. 3 (September, 1998): 607. —Carol F. Bender

Claude Brown

Claude Brown Born: New York, New York; February 23, 1937

Brown’s autobiography, Manchild in the Promised Land, is considered one of the best and most realistic descriptions of coming of age in a black urban ghetto. Traditions: African American Principal works: Manchild in the Promised Land, 1965; The Children of Ham, 1976 By the time he was thirteen years old, Claude Brown had been hit by a bus, whipped with chains, thrown into a river, and shot in the stomach. Spending more time on the streets of Harlem than in school, Brown was an accomplished thief by the age of ten, when he became a member of the Forty Thieves, a branch of the infamous Buccaneers gang. In a desperate attempt to save their son from his early downward spiral into the penal system, the Browns sent Claude to live with his grandparents for a year. The sojourn seemed to have had little effect on him, because soon after his return to Harlem he was sent to the Wiltwyck School for emotionally disturbed boys. Brown’s early life was a seemingly endless series of events leading to one form or another of incarceration. All told, Brown was sent to reform school three times, and in between those times he ran con games and sold hard drugs. He avoided heroin addiction only because the one time he tried the drug he nearly died. Avoiding drug dependency may have been the key factor in his ability to escape the fate of early death or lengthy incarceration that met so many of his peers. Sensing that he would perish if he remained in Harlem, Brown moved to Greenwich Village at seventeen and began to attend night school. As he began to understand that living in the ghetto did not mean a certain destiny of crime, misery, and poverty, he no longer believed that living in Harlem would inevitably ruin his life. While selling cosmetics he devoted many hours daily to playing the piano, and eventually enrolled in and was graduated from Howard University. During Brown’s first year at Howard, he was urged to write about Harlem for a magazine by Ernest Papanek, who had been the school psychologist at Wiltwyck School. As Brown reflected on his life he began to understand what a difficult feat it is to survive the ghetto, and his writing describes the reasons for the general despair found there. The magazine article led to an offer from a publisher for Brown to write what eventually became Manchild in the Promised Land. 78

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Manchild in the Promised Land Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1965 Brown’s classic autobiography Manchild in the Promised Land is a quintessentially American story of hardship and disadvantage overcome through determination and hard work, but with a critical difference. It became a best-seller when it was published in 1965 because of its startlingly realistic portrayal of growing up in Harlem. Without sermonizing or sentimentalizing, Brown manages to evoke a vivid sense of the day-to-day experience of the ghetto, which startled many readers and became required reading, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), for many civil rights activists. Manchild in the Promised Land describes Brown’s resistance to a life path that seemed predetermined by the color of his skin and the place he was born. In the tradition of the slave narrative of the nineteenth century, Brown sets about to establish his personhood to a wide audience, many of whom would write him off as a hopeless case. The book opens with the scene of Brown being shot in the stomach at the age of thirteen after he and his gang are caught stealing bed sheets off a laundry line. What follows is the storyline most would expect of a ghetto child—low achievement in school, little parental supervision, and a sense of hopelessness about the future. There are crime, violence, and drugs lurking in every corner of Harlem, and young Sonny (Claude) falls prey to many temptations. In spite of spending most of his early years committing various petty crimes, playing hooky from school, living in reform schools, and being the victim of assorted beatings and shootings, Brown manages to elude the destiny of so many of his boyhood friends—early death or successively longer incarcerations. Sensing that he would perish, literally or figuratively, if he remained on the path that seemed destined for him, he leaves Harlem for a few years and begins to chart a different outcome for his life, which includes night school, playing the piano, graduating from Howard University, and beginning law school. Although Brown offers no formula for escaping the devastation that so often plagues ghetto life, he shows by example that it is possible to succeed in constructing, even in the ghetto, a positive identity.

Suggested readings Baker, Houston A., Jr. “The Environment as Enemy in a Black Autobiography: Manchild in the Promised Land.” Phylon 32 (Spring-Summer, 1971): 53-59. Brown, Claude. “Manchild in Harlem.” The New York Times Magazine, September 16, 1984, 36-77. Hamalian, Leo. “Claude Brown, Writer.” Artist and Influence 14 (March 19, 1995): 80-92.

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Hartshorne, Thomas L. “Horatio Alger in Harlem: Manchild in the Promised Land.” Journal of American Studies 24, no. 2 (August, 1990): 243-251. —Christy Rishoi

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown Born: Lexington, Kentucky; c. 1814 Died: Chelsea, Massachusetts; November 6, 1884 A former slave and an outspoken critic of slavery, Brown wrote Clotel, which is the first known novel written by an African American.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, 1847; Clotel: Or, The President’s Daughter, a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, 1853; The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, 1863 The Southern laws that made slave literacy illegal were on the books for a reason. William Wells Brown, a former slave, employed his talents as a writer to argue for African American freedom. In the pre-Civil War years, his eloquence as an orator made him an important figure in the abolitionist crusade, and recognition of his literary activities led to appreciation of his pioneering uses of fiction to critique slavery. Brown’s speeches were often incisive and militant. He showed little admiration for those patriots (such as Thomas Jefferson) who, Brown pointed out, owned and fathered slaves even as they founded a new nation dedicated to liberty and equality. He questioned the respect that is generally accorded to the Declaration of Independence and to the Revolutionary War by revealing how these icons of American history failed to confront African enslavement. At an antislavery meeting in 1847 he said that if the United States “is the ‘cradle of liberty,’ they have rocked the child to death.” Opponents of abolition often founded their arguments on racist assumptions. Brown’s detractors made much of the fact that Brown’s father was a white man (probably his master’s brother), and implied that his achievements stemmed from the “white blood” of his father. For example, when Brown traveled to Europe to gain overseas support for abolitionism, an English journalist sneered that Brown was “far removed from the black race . . . his distinct enunciation evidently showed that a white man ‘spoke’ within.” Brown never sought to deny his racial heritage. In later versions of Clotel published in 1860 and 1864, Brown recast his mulatto hero as a black rebel. As he makes clear in Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, his works were motivated by a deep commitment to the plight of the three million American slaves, a number that included his own family. Brown’s literary efforts undertaken in behalf of his enslaved brethren were no doubt supported by his earlier role in secreting fugitive slaves to Canada. 81

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William Wells Brown (Associated Publishers, Inc.)

These fugitives, as Brown had himself, often fled slavery at the price of severing familial ties. He dramatized the strain that slavery places upon family connections in Clotel, the first known African American novel. Creating a historical fiction from the well-known fact that Jefferson had a slave mistress, Brown details the outrage of the auction block, the struggle for autonomy, and the tragic ends of slave women who could trace their blood-

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lines to the author of the Declaration of Independence. The mixed heritage of his heroines—white and black, free and enslaved—points to the contradictions of a nation that idealized liberty even as it practiced slavery.

The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1847 In his slave narrative, Brown assailed the prevailing notion of his time that slaves lacked legal or historical selfhood. His autobiography asserts that he has an autonomous identity. The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, like many of the stories written by former slaves, does more than chronicle a journey from bondage to freedom. The work also reveals the ways in which the former slave author writes a sense of self, denied by the South’s “peculiar institution,” into existence. So great was slavery’s disregard of black personhood that William, as a boy on a Kentucky plantation, is forced to change his name when his master’s nephew, also named William, comes to live as part of the white household. Brown never forgets this insult. He writes of his flight across the MasonDixon line: “So I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for a name.” He finds a name by accepting as his surname that of an Ohio Quaker, Wells Brown, who gives him food and shelter during his escape. He also insists on retaining his first name, showing that his conception of freedom includes the ability to define, shape, and control one’s own identity. Brown is careful to record that his achievement of an unfettered identity is not without its tragic consequences. His personal freedom is undercut by reminders that his mother and siblings remain enslaved. When an escape undertaken in 1833 with his mother fails, his mother is sent to the Deep South, and Brown temporarily gives up his plans of liberty. His repeated sorrowful musings about his mother and sister suggest that Brown’s freedom and self-definition are processes infused not only with hope and triumph but also with alienation and loss. His statement that “the fact that I was a freeman . . . made me feel that I was not myself” registers his ambivalence at forever leaving his family in order to find liberty. Although his purpose is at times weakened by a tragic family history that includes memories of his sister’s sale and visions of his mother performing hard labor on a cotton plantation, his understanding of national history lends resolve and determination to his quest. His thoughts of “democratic whips” and “republican chains” work to expose the severe contradictions that haunt the United States and reinforce his decision to risk becoming a fugitive once again in an attempt to reach Canada. In this way, Brown’s personal narrative

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functions as national criticism. His narrative is an American autobiography and an unflinching examination of America.

Suggested readings Andrews, William L. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Cassady, Marsh. “William W. Brown.” American History 30 ( January/February, 1996): 16-18. Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Slave’s Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Ernest, John. Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature: Brown, Wilson, Jacobs, Delany, Douglass, and Harper. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Farrison, William Edward. William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Yellin, Jean Fagan. The Intricate Knot: Black Figures in American Literature, 1776-1863. New York: New York University Press, 1972. —Russ Castronovo

Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan Born: Binalonan, Pangasinan, Luzon, Philippines; November 2, 1911 Died: Seattle, Washington; September 11, 1956 Bulosan provides the best introduction to the lives of Filipino immigrant workers in America. Traditions: Filipino American Principal works: Letter from America, 1942; The Voice of Bataan, 1943; The Laughter of My Father, 1944; America Is in the Heart, 1946 Carlos Bulosan never forgot his background as a Filipino farmer’s son. He expressed the pride he had in this background as well as the severe social situations which small farmers as well as other hired workers faced in their day-to-day attempts to earn a livelihood. A turning point in Bulosan’s life, which fixed in his memory and conscience the small farmers’ and hired workers’ need for a voice, came when Bulosan’s father lost the family’s small farm and entered the world of serfdom—slavery—in his native Philippines. Bulosan learned one important lesson from his father: Bulosan saw his father retain his personal identity by confronting his daily tasks and hardships with laughter and cunning. His father showed how one is able to speak as loudly against injustices through satire and laughter as through political diatribe. Bulosan recounts many stories of his father in the numerous pieces which appeared in leading American publications. In search of a better life, Bulosan worked his way to America, landing in Seattle on July 22, 1930, and found himself on the streets with others looking for work during the Depression. The good life escaped Bulosan because jobs were few and because of the extreme jingoism rampant in America at the time. Although Bulosan never intended to lose his identity as a Filipino, those with whom he came into contact constantly berated him for being an outsider and a Filipino. Bulosan began to take whatever job he could find, always being relegated to secondary positions because of his ethnicity. As hard as he tried to fit into the American Dream of a better life, he was denied entrance. Bulosan chronicles his father’s difficult life in America as an unwanted outsider in his autobiographical novel, America Is in the Heart. Bulosan’s dream of a life better than that of his father was never realized. He soon learned that he, too, was a slave to those controlling the jobs. This no doubt contributed to Bulosan’s strong support and activity in the many workers’ movements that arose during his life. Bulosan’s hard life also, no doubt, contributed to his early death. 85

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America Is in the Heart Type of work: Autobiography and novel First published: 1943 In this poignant tale of immigrant dreams and racial discrimination, Bulosan depicts growing up in the Philippines, voyaging to the United States, and enduring years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer and union organizer on the West Coast. Bulosan gives his readers the uncomfortable perspective of harsh discrimination because of racial and economic status. The actual form of the book, however, is difficult to characterize. Unlike a novel, it contains real-life situations, but neither is it autobiography, in the strictest sense. Though narrated in the first person by a character named Carlos Bulosan, the book is neither really nor exclusively an account of his life. For example, unlike the book’s narrator, the real Bulosan was not as impoverished. Bulosan states that the events in the book are a composite: They happened either to him or to someone he knew or heard about. The book, then, is a conglomerate portrait of Filipino-American life in the early twentieth century, but Bulosan presents the events as personal history so that the reader is more likely to take what he says to be truth. The use of the first-person narrative voice conveys immediacy and energy, arousing sympathy in a way that a third-person narrative would not. This is an “everyperson” story, an immigrant myth. As such, it is very episodic in nature, depicting brief or extended encounters first with one character who was influential to Bulosan and then moving on to another character. The voice of Bulosan is constant throughout the novel, and two of his brothers emerge periodically throughout, although no other long-term relationships are described. The book shows Bulosan growing up in a small barrio, or village, in the central Philippines, working in the fields with his father, selling salted fish with his mother, and attending school as he was able. At seventeen, he emigrates to the United States, landing in Seattle and being sold for five dollars to a labor contractor. He moves from one manual job to another up and down the Washington and California coasts, depending on which crops are ready to harvest. He becomes a union organizer and experiences abuse and cruelty at the hands of white leaders and townspeople. His hospitalization for two years because of tuberculosis enables him to read an average of a book a day and to write newsletters that promote the union cause. America Is in the Heart is a coming-of-age story from an immigrant’s point of view. The first third of the book shows Bulosan’s youth within the circle of his impoverished but loving family. In the beginning of the second third of the book, Bulosan is optimistic and naïve as he lands on the shores of Seattle at seventeen. Although he is soon duped, sold for hire, and abused, his disillusion never breaks his spiritual faith in the United States or his desire to forge ahead in his own intellectual development and for the welfare of all

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Filipino workers. He is forced by “oldtimers,” the more seasoned Filipino laborers, into losing his virginity with a Mexican prostitute; his maturity cannot be complete without this sexual awakening. The final third of the book depicts the fruits of his adult labor: the formation of fledgling labor unions and the beginnings of a grass-roots network that will begin to hold white owners and managers accountable for humane working and living conditions for their immigrant itinerant laborers.

Suggested readings Evangelista, Susan, ed. Carlos Bulosan and His Poetry: A Biography and Anthology. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985. Lee, Rachel C. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. San Juan, E., Jr. Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle. New York: Oriole Editions, 1976. _______, ed. Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature. New York: Twayne, 1974. —Tom Frazier/Jill B. Gidmark

Abraham Cahan

Abraham Cahan Born: Podberezy, Lithuania; July 6, 1860 Died: New York, New York; August 31, 1951 As a novelist and a journalist, Cahan was a voice for his fellow Jewish immigrants.

Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, 1896; The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto, 1898; The White Terror and the Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia, 1905; The Rise of David Levinsky, 1917 As a young man in Russia, Abraham Cahan experienced many different identities: pious Jew, Russian intellectual, Nihilist. By his early twenties, in response to prevalent anti-Semitism and recent pogroms, Cahan had become a full-fledged revolutionary socialist, dedicated to the overthrow of the czar and hunted by the Russian government. Hoping to create in America a prototype communist colony in which Jew and gentile were equal, Cahan immigrated to New York in 1882. Upon his arrival, Cahan modulated his outspoken socialism and embarked on a distinguished career as a Yiddish-language journalist, English teacher, and novelist. As editor for the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward, Cahan transformed the paper from a dry mouthpiece for socialist propaganda into a vital community voice, still socialist in its leanings but dedicated to improving the lives of its audience. One of the early realists, Cahan is appreciated for his frank portrayals of immigrant life. Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, Cahan’s first novel in English, follows the rocky road toward Americanization of Yekl Podkovnik, a Russian Jewish immigrant desperately trying to assimilate. Faced with two choices for a wife, Yekl chooses the more assimilated Mamie over his Old World spouse, Gitl, but for all his efforts to become “a Yankee,” Yekl’s tale ends on a melancholy note, demonstrating that he is unable to break out of his immigrant identity simply by changing his clothes, his language, and his wife. Cahan’s sense of the loss and confusion faced by immigrants to America is also evident in The Rise of David Levinsky. This masterful novel tells the rags-to-riches story of a clothier who, despite his wealth and success, is lonely and forlorn, distant from his Russian Jewish beginnings, and alienated from American culture. Following the publication of Yekl, Cahan was ushered into the national spotlight by William Dean Howells, who had encouraged many other regional and ethnic writers. Cahan’s career in mainstream English-lan88

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guage publishing, however, was short-lived. After The Rise of David Levinsky Cahan wrote no more fiction in English, choosing instead to act as a mentor for other writers and to pour his energies into the Jewish Daily Forward.

The Rise of David Levinsky Type of work: Novel First published: 1917 In 1913, in response to a request from the popular McClure’s magazine for articles describing the success of Eastern European immigrants in the U.S. garment trade, Cahan wrote several short stories instead. Subsequently published as a novel, these pieces of fiction permitted Cahan to explore problematic aspects of the process of Americanization, produce vignettes of immigrant Jewish life, and describe the development of a major American industry. Cahan uses the life of David Levinsky to explore three interrelated themes. From the opening paragraph, in which Levinsky asserts that although he is a millionaire he is not a happy man, Cahan examines the ambiguous meaning of success and the personal and psychological cost of achieving material gains. Success distances Levinsky from his friends—the companions who came to America with him and those who helped him during his early and difficult years in the New World. His great wealth overawes them, making them uncomfortable in his presence. In turn, Levinsky can never be certain whether people associate with him out of friendship or because they hope to get some of his money. His business success is accomplished through methods that are unethical when they are not illegal, in violation of the values he learned as a child. Appealing to the Social Darwinist creed of “survival of the fittest” to justify his actions, Levinsky is too insecure psychologically to be certain he is, in fact, truly one of “the fittest.” A second major theme is the development of the American ready-to-wear clothing industry and the surprisingly rapid rise to prominence within that industry of recent Russian Jewish immigrants. Levinsky’s success illustrates how this occurred, but the contradictions between his methods and his inherited values make the meaning of success ambiguous. The third theme, the process of adaptation to American life by Russian Jewish immigrants of Levinsky’s generation, takes up large segments of the novel. Levinsky experiences the teeming Lower East Side, with its peddlers and markets, its storefront synagogues of recent immigrants, their povertystricken homes, and their vigorous intellectual life. As he rises in wealth, Levinsky describes the overfurnished homes of the wealthy, their religious compromises, and the lavish resort hotels that also serve as marriage marts. The novel contains a social history of Jewish immigrants in the years before World War I, as they adapt to a new American reality.

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In fulfilling the commission from McClure’s, Cahan used his fictional manufacturer to show how, in the late 1880’s and early 1890’s, Russian Jews replaced German Jews at the head of the cloak-and-suit trade. Levinsky, always short of cash during his early years, learned to use unethical subterfuges to postpone payment of his bills. He could undercut major firms on prices because the Orthodox East European Jewish tailors he hired were willing to work longer hours for lower wages in return for not having to work on Saturday. Concentrating his clothing line on a few successful designs, frequently illegally copied from those of established manufacturers, Levinsky achieved an economy of operation that permitted him to sell stylish goods at low prices, a process that made fashionable clothes readily available to the majority of American women. When Cahan turned his McClure’s short stories into a longer work, with far greater depth of characterization and scope of social observation, he created the first major novel portraying the Jewish experience in America. In effect, he also created a new literary genre within which there have been many followers. Such acclaimed writers as Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow have continued to explore themes first articulated by Cahan.

Suggested readings Chametzky, Jules. From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham Cahan. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. Girgus, Sam B. The New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Marovitz, Sanford E. Abraham Cahan. New York: Twayne, 1996. _______. “The Lonely New Americans of Abraham Cahan.” American Quarterly 20 (Summer, 1968): 196-210. Sanders, Ronald. The Downtown Jews: Portraits of an Immigrant Generation. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Walden, Daniel, ed. The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth, and Ozick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. —Anne Fleischmann/Milton Berman

Bebe Moore Campbell

Bebe Moore Campbell Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1950

Campbell offers telling portraits of people of many backgrounds. Traditions: African American Principal works: Sweet Summer: Growing Up with and Without My Dad, 1989; Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, 1992; Brothers and Sisters, 1994; Singing in the Comeback Choir, 1998 As a child, Bebe Moore Campbell spent her school years in Philadelphia with her mother and her summers in North Carolina with her father. She writes of this divided life in Sweet Summer: Growing Up with and Without My Dad, drawing sharp contrasts between the two worlds. She credits both parents with shaping her into a writer. Her mother, an avid storyteller, designated Sundays as church day and library day. Having learned the value of stories and writing, Campbell composed stories for her father, cliffhangers designed to elicit his immediate response. By the third grade, she knew that she wanted to be a writer; however, not until her mother gave her a book written by an African American did she feel affirmed in that ambition. The knowledge that African Americans wrote books gave her the permission she needed to pursue her dream. Her first novel, Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, was inspired by the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, an African American teenager from Chicago who was killed in Mississippi after speaking to a white woman. Till’s death was widely discussed in the African American community, and Campbell grew up feeling that she had known him. Since his murderers were never brought to justice, she sought in Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine to create a fictional world in which the justice that society withheld exists. The novel showcases her ability to portray many diverse characters. Her second novel, Brothers and Sisters, is set around another event affecting the African American community. Rodney King, an African American motorist, was beaten by police officers in Los Angeles in 1992. The beating was captured on videotape, but the policemen were found not guilty in their first trial, resulting in riots. Delving into the aftermath of this event, Brothers and Sisters explores the way in which race affects the relationship between an African American woman and a white woman. Although Campbell’s works reflect her experiences as a woman, she feels that she has been oppressed more for her color than for her gender. Her 91

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writings are primarily shaped by her identity as an African American, but her diverse characters reveal more of the commonalities that exist between people than the differences.

Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, Campbell’s first novel, chronicles the aftermath of the murder of Armstrong Todd, an event which reverberates in the lives of two families, one black and one white. The novel opens in 1955 in Hopewell, Mississippi, where Armstrong, a fifteen-year-old African American, has come from Chicago to spend the summer with his grandmother. Unused to the ways of the South, he is not aware of the consequences that await him for speaking to Lily Cox, a white woman. When Armstrong is killed by Lily’s husband Floyd, family members of the murderer and the victim are forced to examine their lives in relation to this act. Over time Lily comes to realize that Armstrong’s death was prompted more by Floyd’s desire to please his father than to protect her. This growing awareness causes her to question her passive allegiance to her husband, a role which she had been taught that women should assume. This shift is furthered by her daughter Doreen, who is not afraid to stand up to her father, a man from whom she feels her mother needed more protection than from Armstrong. In Chicago, Todd’s parents, Delotha and Wydell, must deal with their feelings of guilt and failure which their son’s death produces. Delotha’s identity is bound up in her obsession to produce another male child to take Armstrong’s place, a son whom she must protect from white people. Yet her resolve is pitted against Wydell’s reluctance to be a father again, born of his fear of failing yet another child. Eventually, another son, W. T., is born to them, a boy threatening to be lost not to whites but to the streets of Chicago. When Wydell takes his son to Hopewell, another aspect of the interwoven identities of the two families surfaces. When the novel opens, Lily Cox is listening to the singing of African Americans as they work the cotton fields. She says that the music makes her feel “strong and hopeful,” as if she were being healed. When the novel closes, Wydell shows his son where he and others worked the fields, explaining to him that the workers battled the harshness of their lives with song. The songs recalled by Wydell form the backdrop of Lily’s life. Both acknowledge song as a source of healing for broken souls. Campbell has said that the title of her novel reflects some irony. In some ways all blues are the same, since human pain is human pain.

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Suggested readings Campbell, Bebe Moore. “Bebe Moore Campbell: Her Memoir of ‘A Special Childhood’ Celebrates the Different Styles of Her Upbringing in a Divided Black Family.” Interview by Lisa See. Publishers Weekly, June 30, 1989, 82-84. Edgerton, Clyde. Review of Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, by Bebe Moore Campbell. The New York Times Book Review, September 20, 1992, 7, 17. Groban, Betsy. Review of Singing in the Comeback Choir, by Bebe Moore Campbell. The New York Times Book Review, April 12, 1998, 17. Time. Review of Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, by Bebe Moore Campbell. November 9, 1992, 89. —Jacquelyn Benton

Denise Elia Chávez

Denise Elia Chávez Born: Las Cruces, New Mexico; August 15, 1948

Chávez’s poetry, fiction, and numerous plays show Mexican American women searching for personal identity and space in a complex cultural environment. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: The Last of the Menu Girls, 1986; Face of an Angel, 1990 Denise Chávez was born in the desert Southwest, and she writes about the Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Anglo-Americans, and others who provide the region’s rich cultural tapestry. Her works consistently focus on the strength and endurance of ordinary working-class Latino women. Chávez had twelve years of Catholic schooling and started writing diaries and skits while still in elementary school. She received her bachelor of arts degree in theater from New Mexico State University in 1971, her master of fine arts in theater from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1974, and her master of arts in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1984. During her school years she worked in a variety of jobs—in a hospital, in an art gallery, and in public relations. She also wrote poetry, fiction, and drama, always with emphasis on the lives of women. She taught at Northern New Mexico Community College, the University of Houston, Artist-in-theSchools programs, and writers’ workshops. Chávez has written numerous plays and literary pieces, which she often performed or directed, including a national tour with her one-woman performance piece. Her plays have been produced throughout the United States and Europe. Her plays (mostly unpublished), written in English and Spanish, include Novitiates (1971), The Flying Tortilla Man (1975), Rainy Day Waterloo (1976), The Third Door (1978), Sí, hay posada (1980), The Green Madonna (1982), La morenita (1983), El más pequeño de mis hijos (1983), Plague-Time (1984), Novena Narrativas (1986), and Language of Vision (1987). The Last of the Menu Girls, interrelated stories about a young Chicana, and the novel Face of an Angel have established Chávez’s high reputation as a fiction writer. Both works address critical questions of personal and cultural identity with extraordinary wit and compassion. Chávez has a striking ability to create a sense of individual voice for her characters, and she makes that voice resonate for readers who may or may not be familiar with the places and people about whom she writes. 94

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Face of an Angel Type of work: Novel First published: 1994 Face of an Angel specifically addresses the quest for identity of Soveida Dosamantes, a hardworking waitress at El Farol Mexican Restaurant in southern New Mexico. The rich cast of characters around Soveida provides detailed portraits of the lives of Mexican, American, and Mexican American workingclass men and women in the Southwest. The work describes these characters’ various struggles to know themselves and to be accepted in a multicultural setting. The novel speaks compellingly of the importance of the individual self and the social attitudes that allow the individual freedom to function. Soveida, who narrates most of the novel, has grown up in Agua Oscura, a fictional small town in the desert Southwest. Soveida explores the boundaries of her life through her interactions with her mother Dolores, her grandmother Mama Lupita, her cousin Mara, and a wide cast of other townspeople. As Chávez brings this population of memorable characters to life, their actions and motivations are shown to be reflections of social attitudes about race, ethnicity, gender, and class. It is difficult for them to break through these received attitudes to wholeness and acceptance of others. Soveida, for example, seems destined to repeat the same mistakes other women in her family made in their choice of partners, and she becomes involved with a number of lazy and hurtful men, including her two husbands. Soveida eventually writes a handbook for waitresses, called “The Book of Service,” based on her thirty years of work at El Farol. The advice she gives about service reflects her ideas about her life and her connections with other people, and it shows her growing sense of pride in herself as a Chicana. She has learned to question and reject the limited roles assigned to Mexican American women in a male-dominated society, and instead she develops a philosophy that encompasses individual strength and endurance combined with a genuine respect for others, as shown through service. Soveida’s philosophy is reinforced by the novel’s unrestrained, irreverent, and hilarious scenes, by the effective use of colloquial bilingual speech, and by the in-depth exploration of such universal issues as poverty, personal relationships, illness, and death. Chávez’s characters are all individuals with distinctive voices, and she draws them together in ways that show the possibilities of changing social prejudices. Her major themes focus on the rights and responsibilities of the individual and on the need for an evolving social consciousness.

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The Last of the Menu Girls Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1986 Chávez’s The Last of the Menu Girls is a collection of seven interrelated stories about Rocío Esquibel, a young Mexican American woman in southern New Mexico who seeks to understand herself, her family, and her community. Rocío’s development from girl to woman gives unity to the collage of stories. As Rocío observes those around her she provides a portrait of a culturally diverse community and a clear insight into the human condition. The title story introduces Rocío at age seventeen beginning her first job as an aide in a hospital in her home town. It is the summer of 1966. One of her tasks is to take menus to patients and get their requests for meals. Rocío studies the patients with great attention. She sees them as individuals with differing needs, and her heart reaches out to them so fully that she suspects she is too emotional for the job. Her emotional investment, however, helps Rocío understand others and makes her better able to understand herself. By the end of the summer Rocío has been promoted to other duties in the hospital, and the system has changed; she is literally the last of the menu girls. Her compassion for others continues to serve her well as a way of understanding herself and her relationship to the world. In the other stories Rocío increasingly looks to the past, to her personal history and to that of her Mexican American culture. She also tries to envision the future, to create the woman she hopes to be. By the end of the stories Rocío has found her mission. As her mother says, it would take a lifetime to write even the story of their home; there are stories all around. Rocío dedicates herself to writing the lives of the ordinary people she knows, people who often cannot speak for themselves. In the process of telling their stories, Rocío will speak for herself and for her culture. Chávez’s talents as a playwright and a poet give a distinctive quality to her fiction. She captures the small gestures and the precise voice of her characters and shows, rather than tells, their actions. Her work is filled with humor and the hope of the heart that makes her characters enduring.

Suggested readings Balassi, William, John F. Crawford, and Annie O. Eysturoy, eds. This Is About Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. Farah, Cynthia. Literature and Landscape: Writers of the Southwest. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1988. Herrera-Sobek, María, and Helena Maria Viramontes, eds. Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1988.

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Reed, Ishmael. Hispanic American Literature. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Salas, Abel M. “The Word Game.” Hispanic 9 (October, 1996): 18-20. —Lois A. Marchino

Frank Chin

Frank Chin Born: Berkeley, California; February 25, 1940

Author of the first Asian American play produced on the New York stage, Chin is among the first few writers to present the experiences of Chinese Americans. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: The Chickencoop Chinaman, pr. 1972, pb. 1981; Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, 1974, revised 1983 (with others); The Year of the Dragon, pr. 1974, pb. 1981; The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R. R. Co., 1988; Donald Duk, 1991; The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature, 1991 (with others); Gunga Din Highway, 1994; Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays, 1998 A fifth-generation Chinese American, Frank Chin has been witness to a most dramatic chapter in the history of his people. The chapter started with the 1943 repeal of the racially discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Chin has lived in a social and cultural environment that tends to distort the image of his people and to ignore their history. Chin sees it as his mission to restore their image and remember the heroism, the pioneering spirit, and the sufferings of his people by writing about them from a Chinese American perspective. His plays and novels are informed by his knowledge of the history of Chinese Americans, his understanding of their cultural heritage, and his vision of their future. Chin believes that the history of Chinese Americans constitutes a heroic and vital part of the history of the American West. In the 1970’s, his sense of history was accompanied by a pessimistic prediction. Chin was aware that legislative racism had turned the Chinese American community into a bachelor society in the past and that euphemized discrimination was luring many young Chinese Americans toward assimilation. Hence, he declared in an essay, “Yellow Seattle,” that Chinese America was doomed to extinction. This kind of pessimism permeates the two plays that he wrote in the 1970’s: The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon. Pervading these works is an atmosphere of gloom, decay, and death, with bitter young people full of self-contempt renouncing their racial identity and with their families and communities falling apart. The apparent revival of Chinatown and the growth of the Chinese community in the 1980’s seem to have helped change Chin’s view. Such a change is discerned in Donald Duk, in which an atmosphere of renewal and jubilant celebration prevail. In the play, a family and a commu98

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nity conscientiously and successfully pass on their heritage from one generation to another in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Frank Chin (Corky Lee)

The Chickencoop Chinaman Type of work: Drama First produced: 1972; first published, 1981 The Chickencoop Chinaman is a subtle depiction of the experiences of a Chinese American writer who loses and then regains his racial identity and cultural heritage. Laced with historical allusions to legislative and euphemized discrimination against Chinese Americans, the play centers on a visit the writer, Tam Lum, makes to Pittsburgh to collect materials for a documentary film about a famous black boxer. The events that take place during his visit make him realize that what he should do is pursue the lonely mission of telling stories to the unassimilated children of the Chinese railroad builders and gold miners. The play begins with Tam telling an airline hostess that he was born to be a writer for “the Chinamans sons of Chinamans.” As the ensuing scenes show, he has never had a chance to write about the heroism of his people. When a boy, he used to sit in the kitchen, listening to his grandmother’s stories of the Chinese railroaders, but he heard no such stories on the radio. In his desperate search for a hero of his own race, he imagined that the Lone Ranger

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with his mask was a Chinese American in disguise. To his dismay, the Ranger turned out to be a decrepit white racist who ordered Tam to go back to Chinatown to preserve his culture. Ironically, there was no Chinatown to which Tam could return to preserve his culture, for the old people there were trying to forget their history in order to survive. They urged him to destroy the past and get assimilated. Thus, he turned his back on his father, eradicated his memory of the railroaders, and married a white woman. A few years later, he found himself incompetent as a writer, deserted by his wife, and forgotten by his children. In order to keep himself busy and give his children a gift, he decided to make a film about a black former boxer and his father, Mr. Popcorn, who lived in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, Tam discovers that the boxer has invented a father. Mr. Popcorn adamantly refuses to play a fake father in a documentary film and chastises Tam for betraying his real father. Tam’s plan for the film collapses; however, he learns that he must be true to his own identity and fulfill his destiny. The play ends with Tam standing in a kitchen, asking a group of children to turn off the radio and listen to the stories that his grandmother used to tell him about the Chinese railroaders in the Old West.

Donald Duk Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 Donald Duk is a psychologically realistic depiction of a fifth-generation Chinese American boy who, by learning his family history and his cultural heritage, frees himself from the trauma caused by the racial stereotyping of his people. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during a New Year’s celebration, the novel delineates the initiation of its protagonist, Donald Duk, in a manner that interweaves history, legend, surrealistic dreams, and psychological realism. Donald is troubled more by his racial identity than by his funny name. Repeatedly he has heard people at school and in the media say that his people are traditionally timid and passive, introverted and nonassertive; therefore, they are alien to American heroism and pioneering spirit. He is thus filled with self-contempt and tormented by everything Chinese. With the Chinese New Year approaching, he becomes more and more depressed and withdrawn, for the New Year will provide another opportunity for his schoolteachers to repeat in class the same thing that everybody else says about his people. The New Year during which Donald completes the first twelve-year cycle of his life (there are twelve years in the Chinese zodiac) is the right time for the elders in his family and in the community to tell him what everybody has chosen not to say about his people. From these elders he learns that his people came from a land that had produced its own Robin Hoods, and that Chi-

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nese railroaders, his great-great grandfather among them, blasted their way through Nevada, lived in tunnels carved in deep frozen snow for two winters, set a world record in track-laying, and went on strike for back pay and Chinese foremen for Chinese gangs. He is so fascinated with these railroaders’ heroism and pioneering spirit that scenes of their toil and struggle appear one after another in his dreams. Through careful library research, Donald determines that his dreams are actually flashbacks to the real events that have been excluded in history books by the majority culture. With his newly gained understanding of the cultural heritage of his people, he is eager to go back to school to challenge the stereotype of his people with his story about their courage and assertiveness.

The Year of the Dragon Type of work: Drama First produced: 1974; first published, 1981 The Year of the Dragon is an anguished depiction of a Chinese American man and his family, in conflict between the younger generation’s urge toward assimilation and the older generation’s obsession with tradition. Set in the late 1960’s in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the play represents Frank Chin’s artistic expression of his view that historically Chinese America is doomed. The play begins with Fred Eng, a tour guide in Chinatown, welcoming a group of tourists and wishing them happiness in the Year of the Dragon. He speaks like Charlie Chan but he wants to drop his phony accent and just be himself. Fred cannot be just himself; he knows that tourists expect a Chinese American to speak like Charlie Chan. Fred wanted to be a writer and went to college, but his ailing father, Wing Eng, called him back to Chinatown to take over the father’s travel agency and care for Fred’s mother, Hyacinth, and two younger siblings, Mattie and Johnny. The ensuing scenes show that Wing has gathered his family, including his first wife from China, so that he can die as a Chinese would like to, surrounded by a happy family and assured that Fred will stay in Chinatown to care for his two mothers. Wing’s family is by no means happy. His first wife, who has just arrived from China and whose expected presence causes resentment from others, seems to feel out of place in her husband’s home. Hyacinth frequently escapes to the bathroom to sing her lullaby. Mattie, who has “married out white” like many other Chinese Americans, cannot stand her father’s home. She urges the family to “forget Chinatown and be just people.” Johnny is a juvenile delinquent still on probation, and Fred is torn between his obligation to his father as a son and his sense of himself as an individual. He plans to stay in Chinatown for a while but have everyone else leave for Boston after his father dies. He urges Johnny to marry a white girl. Wing vehemently rejects Fred’s plan, insisting that Fred and his two

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mothers should stay in Chinatown. He dies amid a violent argument with his son while the festive sounds are floating into the house. At the end of the play, Fred appears like “a shrunken Charlie Chan,” welcoming tourists to Chinatown.

Suggested readings Chen, Jack. The Chinese of America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. Davis, Robert Murray. “Frank Chin: Iconoclastic Icon.” Redneck Review of Literature 23 (Fall, 1992): 75-78. McDonald, Dorothy Ritsuk. “An Introduction to Frank Chin’s The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon.” In Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian American Literature for Teachers of American Literature, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982. Moran, Edward. “Frank Chin.” Current Biography 60 (March, 1999): 17-20. Samarth, Manini. “Affirmations: Speaking the Self into Being.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 17, no. 1 (1992): 88-101. Sechi, Joanne Harumi. “Being Japanese-American Doesn’t Mean ‘Made in Japan.’” In The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers of the United States, edited by Dexter Fisher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. —Chenliang Sheng

Louis H. Chu

Louis H. Chu Born: Toishan, Kwangtung Province, China; October 1, 1915 Died: New York, New York; 1970 Chu is acknowledged as the first Chinese American novelist to depict Chinatown life realistically. Traditions: Chinese American Principal work: Eat a Bowl of Tea, 1961 Born in China, Louis Chu emigrated to America when he was nine years old. Thus Asia and America played significant roles in his formative experience. In Eat a Bowl of Tea, Chu’s only published novel, he writes knowledgeably and feelingly about life in a rural community of South China as well as about life in New York’s urban Chinatown. Chu’s life and career in the United States followed a pattern of education and employment that many immigrants would envy. After completing high school in New Jersey, Chu attended Upsala College, earning his degree in 1937. He then attended New York University, obtaining an M.A. in 1940. Two years of graduate study at the New School for Social Research in New York rounded off his formal education. During World War II, Chu served in the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army. In 1940, he married Pong Fay, who had been born and raised in China; they brought up four children in Hollis, New York, a Queens suburb, where they made a Chinese-speaking home. Things Chinese American were very much a part of Chu’s career. From 1951 to 1961, he was a disc jockey for radio station WHOM in New York City (he was the only Chinese American disc jockey in the city). His radio show, called Chinese Festival, could be heard four evenings a week. In 1961, Chu went to work for the city’s Department of Welfare and became the director of a center in New York’s Chinatown. He was also an entrepreneur, being the owner of the Acme Company, and played an active role in the Chinatown community, holding the post of executive secretary of the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association for more than a decade. Chu’s experience and observation provided ample grist for the mill of his novel, Eat a Bowl of Tea, whose protagonist wrestles with issues of traditional Confucian filial duty, marital infidelity, and his identity as a Chinese in America during the 1940’s.

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Eat a Bowl of Tea Type of work: Novel First published: 1961 Widely acclaimed by Asian American writers and critics, Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea is the first Chinese American novel that realistically depicts New York’s Chinatown bachelor society in the United States shortly after World War II. The novel focuses on the struggles of a young Chinese American who attempts to define his identity. As the novel opens, it is revealed that the protagonist, Wang Ben Loy, a bridegroom of two months, has become impotent. Ben Loy is a Chinese American in his twenties, a filial son, obedient to his Confucian father, Wah Gay, who left him in China for twenty-five years while establishing himself in America. Wah Gay, owner of a gambling establishment in Chinatown, sends for Ben Loy, who works as a waiter, joins the U.S. Army, then returns to waiting tables at a Chinese restaurant. Ben Loy alleviates his frustrations by regularly patronizing prostitutes; unfortunately, he contracts several venereal diseases. In 1948, Ben Loy fulfills his filial duty by marrying Mei Oi, a China-born daughter of Wah Gay’s longtime friend. Neglected by her husband, Mei Oi becomes pregnant by Ah Song, a notorious Chinatown philanderer. Chu appears sympathetic with women by implying that husbands must share blame for the infidelity of their wives when sexual and emotional needs are unsatisfied. Mei Oi passes off the expected child as Ben Loy’s, but when Ah Song is sighted sneaking from her apartment, Chinatown buzzes with gossip. Feeling disgraced, Wah Gay ambushes Ah Song after a tryst at Mei Oi’s apartment and slices off his left ear. Justice is served when the unofficial Chinatown judicial system condemns Ah Song to five years’ ostracism. Having lost face, Wah Gay exiles himself. Ben Loy and Mei Oi go west to San Francisco, where Mei Oi has a baby whom Ben Loy accepts. They look forward to having others after Ben Loy’s impotence is cured by a Chinese herbalist, who makes him “eat a bowl of tea” of medicinal herbs. Most important, Ben Loy breaks from the patriarchal control of his traditionalist Confucian father and becomes the arbiter of his Asian American identity.

Suggested readings Chua, Cheng Lok. “Golden Mountain: Chinese Versions of the American Dream in Lin Yutang, Louis Chu, and Maxine Hong Kingston.” Ethnic Groups 4 (1982): 33-59. Hsiao, Ruth. “Facing the Incurable: Patriarchy in Eat a Bowl of Tea.” In Reading the Literatures of Asian America, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

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Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Ling, Jinqi. “Reading for Historical Specificities: Gender Negotiations in Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea.” MELUS 20, no. 1 (1995): 35-51. —C. L. Chua and Janet Fujimoto

Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros Born: Chicago, Illinois; December 20, 1954

Cisneros’s work introduced a powerful and zestful Latina voice to American literature. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: The House on Mango Street, 1984; My Wicked, Wicked Ways, 1987; Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, 1991; Loose Woman, 1994 Sandra Cisneros had a library card before she could read. Her mother insisted that Sandra and her six brothers know books, although the family was too poor to buy them. Her father was Mexican, her mother American-born. Cisneros spoke Spanish with her father and English outside the home and always identified herself as American. Her family moved frequently, and as a result she was shy, turning inward and to books. Not a distinguished student in schools where little was expected of Chicanas, she read voraciously, and she began to write when she was ten. After being graduated from Loyola University in Chicago, she enrolled at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she completed her master of fine arts in 1978. At the writers’ workshop she experienced an identity crisis that led to her finding her voice. She found this voice in her childhood and in the stories that became The House on Mango Street. This book is based on memories of her life after her family settled into their first house, a time important to her identity, because she then began to observe critically the kinds of Sandra Cisneros (Rubén Guzmàn) feminine identity her culture 106

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offered. Cisneros found a voice by creating the voice of Esperanza (hope). The success of The House on Mango Street led to Cisneros’s teaching writing, to international lectures, and to awards and grants, including a writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In most of her work, a woman’s struggle for self-determination is a central theme. Obstacles include confining Mexican American traditions of feminine identity and the racism and sexism that confront a Chicana in a white-dominated society. Although Cisneros takes this struggle seriously and some of her pieces are deeply bitter, the overall tone of her work is exuberant, as reflected in the longest poem title in Loose Woman: “I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won’t Because I’m Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen.”

The House on Mango Street Type of work: Novella First published: 1984 The House on Mango Street speaks in an adolescent Chicana’s voice of comingof-age in a poor Chicago neighborhood in the mid-twentieth century. Cisneros’s first book of fiction received immediate acclaim, becoming a widely studied text in schools and universities. The novella consists of sketches, each exploring some aspect of the experiences of the narrator, Esperanza Cordero, after her family moves into a house of their own. These sketches are drawn from Cisneros’s own life; her family moved into a Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago’s north side during her twelfth year. Cisneros discovered this voice and subject in resistance against the pressure to conform to what she felt was, at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a “terrible East-coast pretentiousness.” She realized that growing up Chicana in Chicago set her apart from most other writers. Esperanza’s story also is one of resistance, especially against the expectations for women in her culture. She and her family have dreamed of having an even grander home, but she discovers strongly ambivalent feelings about home once they have one. On one hand, it is a place to be and to become. On the other, it is a sort of prison, especially for women. In “The Family of Little Feet,” Esperanza and two girlfriends get highheeled shoes and wander playfully into the neighborhood, imagining themselves adults. At first, when men notice them and women seem jealous, they enjoy the attention, but when a drunk demands a kiss from Esperanza in exchange for a dollar, she and her friends flee and get rid of the shoes. Every other specifically feminine artifact and feature becomes a potential trap: hips, cooking, dresses, physical beauty, and most of all houses. Repeatedly, wives and daughters are locked in houses, where they serve men. Finally, Esperanza dreams of a house of her own, one that is not her husband’s or her father’s but hers. At the end of the novella, Esperanza begins

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the story again, revealing that her book has become her house on Mango Street, the home in her heart that her best female mentors have told her to find. By writing, she gets hold of it, and in this way she can have a home and still resist becoming a man’s property.

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1991 Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a widely admired collection of short stories. Most of the stories are set in Texas, some in Mexico. Most deal with the pressures upon Chicanas to conform to traditional ideas of femininity. The title story is about Cleo, a naïve Mexican girl who marries a Mexican American. She soon finds herself pregnant with her second child, isolated in a foreign land where she cannot even speak with most people. Her frustrated husband beats her, destroying the dreams of happiness in marriage she learned from Mexican soap operas. When she flees, she gets help from a woman who hollers joyfully as they cross the Woman Hollering Creek bridge, teaching Cleo a new meaning for the creek’s name and another way to be a woman. Two stories explore the problem of being “the other woman”: “Never Marry a Mexican” and “Eyes of Zapata.” This role may seem to be a form of rebellion against conventional women’s roles, but a mistress’s role can be as restrictive as a wife’s, and the price of what freedom it offers proves high. The narrator of “Bien Pretty” more successfully breaks free of traditional forms, living an artist’s life, taking lovers as she is inclined, learning that she can be in control, even after losing lovers. She becomes determined to change the image of women in love she sees in soap operas; she wants to re-create them as people who make things happen. Cisneros described writing this collection as a community project. She met friends at a San Antonio diner on weekends, drew on the unbelievable things they discussed, and then shared her drafts while revising them. This approach accounts in part for the variety of voices and forms. Two especially witty pieces are “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” and “Los Boxers.” The first consists of notes left at saints’ shrines, many requests for divine intervention in amusing problems. The final long note recounts the writer’s discovery that the Virgin Mary is a multifaceted goddess who has helped her begin to escape the restrictive traditional woman’s role. “Los Boxers” is the monologue of a widower who has learned to do his own laundry; he explains to a young mother the economies he has discovered by applying masculine intelligence to “woman’s work.” Using many voices, this collection explores themes of gender and identity in twentieth century Latino and general American culture.

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Suggested readings Carter, Nancy C. “Claiming the Bittersweet Matrix: Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, and Adrienne Rich.” Critique 35, no. 4 (Summer, 1994): 195-205. Cisneros, Sandra. “A Deluge of Voices: Interview with Sandra Cisneros.” Interview by Rosemary Bray. The New York Times Book Review, May 26, 1991, 6. _______. “On the Solitary Fate of Being Mexican, Female, Wicked, and Thirty-Three: An Interview with Writer Sandra Cisneros.” Interview by Pilar E. Rodríguez Aranda. The Americas Review 18, no. 1 (Spring, 1990): 64-80. Hoffert, Barbara. “Sandra Cisneros: Giving Back to Libraries.” Library Journal 117, no. 1 ( January, 1992): 55. Mirriam-Goldberg, Caryn. Sandra Cisneros: Latina Writer and Activist. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1998. Sagel, Jim. “Sandra Cisneros: Conveying the Riches of the Latin American Culture Is the Author’s Literary Goal.” Publishers Weekly 238, no. 15 (March 29, 1991): 74. Tabor, Mary B. W. “A Solo Traveler in Two Worlds: At the Library with Sandra Cisneros.” The New York Times, January 7, 1993, B2, C1. —Terry Heller

Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver Born: Wabbaseka, Arkansas; August 31, 1935 Died: Pomona, California; May 1, 1998 Soul on Ice, an electrifying mixture of confessional writing and social commentary, is one of the major documents of the 1960’s.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Soul on Ice, 1968; Soul on Fire, 1978 Eldridge Cleaver was born in the small village of Wabbaseka, Arkansas, near Little Rock. In 1946, he moved with his family to Rose Hill, a mainly Chicano neighborhood in the Los Angeles area. Cleaver was first arrested, for stealing bicycles, in 1947, and in 1949 he was sent to reform school, where he became a Roman Catholic. He explains in Soul on Ice that he chose the Catholic Church because “all the Negroes and Mexicans went there.” In 1954, Cleaver was sent to prison for selling marijuana. Four years later he was charged with attempted rape and assault with intent to kill and was sent to Folsom Prison, from which he was paroled in November, 1966. A year later, Cleaver married Kathleen Neal. The publication of Soul on Ice in

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February, 1968, marked Cleaver’s appearance as a self-educated intellectual to be reckoned with. In the work he speaks fluently on issues that were sensitive among blacks and whites. He attacks writer James Baldwin for his alleged bowing to whites, condemns homosexuality as a “sickness,” and reviles black women. Soul on Ice began a crucial year for Cleaver. On April 6, Cleaver was wounded in a shoot-out with the Oakland police that resulted in Bobby Hutton’s death. As a result of this incident, Cleaver’s parole was revoked. Faced with return to prison, Cleaver fled to Montreal and on to Havana. Cleaver was kept under guard for seven months in Cuba before being sent in 1969 to Algiers, where his hatred for capitalism intensified. In 1970, he led a group of eleven on a trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, and on to Hanoi and Peking. When two groups of black Americans hijacked planes to Algiers, Algeria forced the Cleavers to move to Paris, where they obtained legal residence in 1974. The two years he spent in Paris proved crucial to Cleaver; his thinking turned conservative, and in late 1975, he returned to the United States as an evangelical Christian. He was arrested but released in 1976 on $100,000 bail. His active career as an evangelist faltered in the 1980’s.

Soul on Ice Type of work: Essays First published: 1968 The seventeen essays collected in Soul on Ice contribute to the long tradition of prison writing. In the first essay, “On Becoming,” Cleaver recalls his earlier association in Soledad prison with angry young blacks who “cursed everything American.” His reading of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and the writings of Vladimir Ilich Lenin convinced Cleaver of the nearly universal confusion that ruled in the realm of political and social affairs. Cleaver became an iconoclast who took the writings of Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev (1847-1882) as his guide to political life. Following his release from Soledad, Cleaver became obsessed with “The Ogre,” or the white woman, cultivated an image of himself as an outlaw, and committed rape as an “insurrectionary act.” Imprisonment at Folsom forced him to look at himself and to write to save himself. “I had to find out who I am and what I want to be, what type of man I should be, and what I could do to become the best of which I was capable.” Soul on Ice, then, among other things, is a discovery of identity. Three decades after their writing, most of the essays retain considerable power. “The White Race and Its Heroes,” for example, offers penetrating insights into race relations in “schizophrenic” America, although its vision of

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a world revolution led by people of color turns out to have lacked prescience. “Lazarus, Come Forth” analyzes the significance of the black celebrity in a clear-eyed account of the Muhammad Ali boxing match with Floyd Patterson. “Notes on a Native Son” attacks James Baldwin for what Cleaver perceives as “the hatred for blacks permeating his writings” and for Baldwin’s “flippant, schoolmarmish dismissal” of Norman Mailer’s The White Negro (1957), which Cleaver found “prophetic and penetrating.” Cleaver’s contempt for Baldwin is complicated by Cleaver’s judgment of homosexuality as a sickness and by Cleaver’s charge that the homosexual Baldwin criticized Richard Wright because Baldwin despised Wright’s masculinity. Two of the more important themes in Soul on Ice are the identification of white oppression of blacks in the United States with white colonial capitalist exploitation of minorities everywhere, especially in Vietnam, and a rather mystical ethic of love and sexuality preached in “The Primeval Mitosis.” “The Primeval Mitosis” analyzes the power relations between the sexes and the black and white races. Soul on Ice resists dismissal as a period piece. The book continues to impress with its energy and powers of intelligent observation.

Suggested readings Anderson, Jervis. “Race, Rage, and Eldridge Cleaver.” Commentary 46 (December, 1968): 63-69. Cleaver, Eldridge. “Playboy Interview: Eldridge Cleaver.” Interview by Nat Hentoff. Playboy, December, 1968, 89-106. Foner, Philip. The Black Panthers Speak. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970. Forman, James. The Making of Black Revolutionaries. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Kimball, Roger. “Emotions of Virtue.” New Criterion 16 ( June, 1998): 5. Rout, Kathleen. Eldridge Cleaver. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Schanche, Don A. The Panther Paradox: A Liberal’s Dilemma. New York: David McKay, 1970. Thomas, Tony. “Black Nationalism and Confused Marxists.” Black Scholar 4 (September, 1972): 47-52. —Frank Day

Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton Born: Depew, New York; June 27, 1936

Clifton’s unique strength in poetry is her understated complexity in celebrating all life as an African American woman. Traditions: African American Principal works: Good Times, 1969; Good News About the Earth: New Poems, 1972; An Ordinary Woman, 1974; Generations: A Memoir, 1976; Two-Headed Woman, 1980; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980, 1987; Next: New Poems, 1987; Quilting: Poems 1987-1990, 1991; The Book of Light: Poems, 1993; Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000, 2000 Lucille Clifton’s parents had little education but were avid readers, and she grew to love books. Her father’s stories steeped her in ancestral heritage, going back to Mammy Caroline, who was born in 1822 in Dahomey, Africa, seized as a child, and enslaved in the United States for much of her life. Caroline and other family members appear in Generations: A Memoir and in many of Clifton’s poems. Clifton’s mother wrote and recited poetry. At age ten, Clifton became interested in writing, having learned from her mother that it is a means of self-expression. Being a writer never occurred to Clifton; she simply wrote. The first in her family to attend college, she had intellectual black friends, studied drama, and performed in plays—developing her voice and lyricism, and, in her writing, experimenting with sparse punctuation. In 1958, she married Fred Clifton, a philosophy professor. Continuing to write, Clifton did not attempt to have any poems published until her work was solicited. This happened when she was thirty-three, happily married, and with six children under the age of ten. By then, Clifton had a wealth of education, experiences, and a growing family from which to draw for her writing. Her first published book of poetry, Good Times, focuses on difficulties in urban life. The book also honors strength and celebration in the face of adversity. In Clifton’s second volume, she turns away from “white ways” to affirm “the Black.” She celebrates her religious heritage and joins many contemporaries in celebrating racial heritage. With succeeding years and poetry volumes, Clifton’s themes, subjects, and style have changed little. Clifton has also achieved acclaim, and has been more prolific, in writing children’s books. Some themes, ideas, and points of view found in her poetry are also found in her children’s literature. In her children’s books too, Clifton cultivates identity, values, and pride. 113

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Poetry Principal works: Good Times, 1969; Good News About the Earth: New Poems, 1972; An Ordinary Woman, 1974; Two-Headed Woman, 1980; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980, 1987; Next: New Poems, 1987; Quilting: Poems 1987-1990, 1991; The Book of Light: Poems, 1993 Hesitant to call herself a poet in spite of wide literary acclaim, Lucille Clifton has noted that poetry is her heart. She has unassumingly identified herself as a black woman, a wife, and mother who “makes poems.” Her poems celebrate all of life—its daily realities, its mysteries, and, most significantly, its continuity. She has claimed that celebrating life is what she is about; her poems validate the claim. Beginning with Good Times, Clifton has capitalized on what she knows best. Virtually all her poems fall into one or more of three broad areas of focus: family, African American experience, and female sensibility. Clifton is a lyric poet whose work is unpretentious and has little rhyme. She continually achieves her goal of rendering big ideas in simple ways. Through short poems of simple language she relates brief portraits, encounters, or disturbances that are neatly presented in a few lines. Clifton seems more guided by consciousness or heart than form or structure. Her use of precise, evocative images is masterful, as evidenced in “miss rosie,” which describes the title character as “a wet brown bag of a woman.” In that poem, and many others, what Clifton does not say is part of the poem’s power. Always significant are her use of spaces, few capital letters, and vernacular. In “homage to my hair,” the poet changes from standard English to a black dialect with great effect; in “holy night,” Mary speaks in a Caribbean dialect. Clifton’s use of metaphor is frequent, compelling, and nowhere better than in “lucy and her girls,” relating the power of family ties to natural phenomena. The contrast and tension Clifton achieves through frequent juxtaposition of concepts, as in “inner city,” are laudatory. Many of her lines are memorable, as “my mouth is a cave of cries” in “chemotherapy.” Only occasionally didactic, sometimes humorous, typically subtle or understated, Clifton’s poetry has emotion, conviction, moral stance, Christian tenets, and hope. It has changed little through the years, except to sometimes reflect aging and all that that implies. Always, Clifton defines and affirms the African American experience, politically and aesthetically, with originality, voice, dignity, and pride. She has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Suggested readings Beckles, Frances N. Twenty Black Women: A Profile of Contemporary Maryland Black Women. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1978. Clifton, Lucille. Generations: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1976.

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Madhubuti, Haki. “Lucille Clifton: Warm Water, Greased Legs, and Dangerous Poetry.” In Black Women Writers, 1950-1980: A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans. New York: Doubleday, 1984. Salas, Susan, and Laura A. Wisner-Broyles, eds. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale Research, 2000. Sims, Rudine. “Profile: Lucille Clifton.” Language Arts 59, no. 2 (February, 1982): 160-167. —Sandra F. Bone

Countée Cullen

Countée Cullen Born: New York, New York; May 30, 1903 Died: New York, New York; January 9, 1946 Cullen, one of the most prolific poets of the Harlem Renaissance, combined English poetic styles with racial themes and identities. Traditions: African American Principal works: Color, 1925; The Ballad of the Brown Girl: An Old Ballad Retold, 1927; Copper Sun, 1927; Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, 1927 (editor); The Black Christ and Other Poems, 1929; One Way to Heaven, 1932; The Medea and Some Poems, 1935; The Lost Zoo (A Rhyme for the Young, but Not Too Young), 1940; On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countée Cullen, 1947 Countée Cullen recognized early in his life that he wanted to use poetry to express his belief that a poet’s skin color should not dictate style and subject matter in a poem. He began writing poetry while in high school. Cullen, a Phi Beta Kappa honoree from New York University, had already published Color by the time he entered graduate school at Harvard University. With a master’s in English and three additional books of poetry, Cullen was widely known as the unofficial poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance. In his introduction to Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, Cullen set forth many of the ideas that shaped his identity as a poet and an African American. He believed that poetry elevated any race and that African American poets could benefit from using the rich traditions of English and American verse. Cullen also chose not to include dialect poetry in his anthology, viewing this style as out-of-date, restrictive, and best left to the white poets who were still using it. Cullen was not ashamed of his race, nor did he deliberately seek white approval. He did feel that he should be receptive to many ideas to enhance his poetry. Many of his poems, such as “Incident,” “From the Dark Tower,” and “Colors,” protest racism and bigotry. However, in his collection The Black Christ and Other Poems, themes of love and death prevail. Such themes show the influence of the British Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Keats especially was Cullen’s artistic mentor. Cullen records his response to having visited Keats’s grave in “Endymion,” a poem celebrating the power of Keats’s lyricism. Cullen’s use of genteel traditions and the black experience caused dilemmas and conflicts throughout his writing career. Critics praised Cullen for his skillful use of the sonnet form, but they castigated him when he did not use 116

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racial experiences as the primary source of his themes. However, even as he cautioned Harlem Renaissance poets about excessive use of racial themes, he published a novel about Harlem characters, One Way to Heaven. From 1934 until his death, Cullen taught French and English at Frederick Douglass Junior High School, guiding students in the traditions that made him a celebrated poet.

On These I Stand Type of work: Poetry First published: 1947 On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countée Cullen is a collection of the formerly published poems for which Cullen wanted to be remembered. Written during the 1920’s and 1930’s, these poems are from such works as Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1928), The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929), and The Medea and Some Poems (1935). Cullen also includes six new poems on subjects ranging from a tribute to John Brown (“A Negro Mother’s Lullaby”) to the evolution from birth to death (“Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts”). Cullen maintains the style of classical lyricists such as British poet John Keats in this collection, using rhymed couplets, ballads, or sonnet forms. Color emphasizes racial themes and shows the influence of ideas associated with the Harlem Renaissance. There are religious overtones in some of the poems about the burden of racial oppression. The speaker recognizes a loss of faith but laments the racial prejudice against more religious blacks in “Pagan Prayer.” Cullen’s Simon the Cyrenian transcends his race by helping Christ bear the cross in “Simon the Cyrenian Speaks.” The poem for which Cullen is widely known, “Yet Do I Marvel,” questions the value of God’s decision to give creative talent to a black person, whose talents are ignored. Cullen joined other Harlem Renaissance writers in using African motifs. In “Heritage,” one of the longer poems in Color, the speaker asks the question, What is Africa to me? An exotic and stereotyped image of Africa emerges, and the question is unanswered. The selections from Copper Sun and The Black Christ and Other Poems show that gradually Cullen moved away from ideas about racial identity to those that preoccupy a Romantic mind influenced by Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, or Edna St. Vincent Millay. There are numerous poems on love, death, and the difficulties of the creative spirit in overcoming the burdens of the physical self. “The Black Christ” is an extended narrative poem that demonstrates Cullen’s love of the Romantic or transcendent, his interest in religious themes, and his concern about the plight of African Americans. The narrator, a black Southerner, witnesses the lynching of his brother, Jim. As Jim is

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enjoying a spring day with a white woman, a white man insults the woman and attacks Jim, who responds by killing him. Jim’s lynching tests the narrator’s faith in God. As the narrator berates his mother for her faith, Jim appears, resurrected, helping the narrator reclaim his faith. To complete On These I Stand, Cullen chose examples from The Lost Zoo (1940), his book of poems for children. “The Wakeupworld” and “The-Snake-That-Walked-UponHis-Tail” instruct and delight. The collection On These I Stand attests Cullen’s Romantic vision, his attraction to Harlem Renaissance themes, and his depiction of the African American experience.

Suggested readings Baker, Houston A. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers, 1900-1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974. Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Onyeberechi, Sydney. Critical Essays: Achebe, Baldwin, Cullen, Ngugi, and Tutuola. Hyattsville, Md.: Rising Star, 1999. Turner, Darwin T. In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. —Australia Tarver

Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis Born: Birmingham, Alabama; January 26, 1944

Davis’s autobiographical work explores the development of the African American political consciousness in the late twentieth century. Traditions: African American Principal works: If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, 1971 (with others); Angela Davis: An Autobiography, 1974; Women, Race, and Class, 1981; Women, Culture, and Politics, 1989; Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, 1998 Primarily known as a political activist, Angela Davis began writing as a result of her activities within the Black Liberation movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Her work consistently explores the destructive influences of racism, sexism, and economic inequality on the development of African Americans, women, and the poor. Davis felt the full impact of racism beginning with her childhood, having been born and raised in segregated Birmingham. The racial inequality that prevailed particularly in the American South did much to shape her consciousness as an African American. In her autobiography, for example, she expresses her determination as a child to “never harbor or express the desire to be white” in spite of the fact that most whites lived what in comparison to hers was a privileged life. Davis attended Elizabeth Irwin High School in New York. She studied philosophy at Brandeis University, the Sorbonne in Paris, the University of Frankfurt, and the University of California at San Diego. In 1968, she officially joined the Communist Party, having concluded that “the emancipation of all oppressed groups” could be achieved through the emancipation of the proletariat. As a result of her membership in the Communist Party, the Board of Regents of the University of California fired Davis from her teaching position at UCLA in 1969; she was reinstated after a trial. Charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with an escape attempt from a California courthouse, Davis was arrested and imprisoned in 1970 after spending several months on the run. She was tried and acquitted in 1972. Davis’s early writings center on the difficulties African Americans face in trying to establish a positive African American identity and political consciousness within a system that is racially oppressive. In If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance and Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Davis presents a personal account of the ways the legal and penal systems stifle the African 119

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American community and political expression. In her autobiography, she touches on what it means to be an African American woman in a racially and sexually divided society. She explores this issue in greater detail in her works on the problems of racial division within the women’s movement, Women, Race, and Class and Women, Culture, and Politics. Many critics claim that in presenting her ideas from a decidedly Marxist perspective, Davis deprives her writing of personal insight. Most contend, however, that in spite of her ideological viewpoint, she gives a unique and passionate voice to the experience of African American women.

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Angela Davis Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1974 Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Davis’s most notable literary work, is the personal narrative of her development as an African American and feminist political activist. The autobiography explores how the forces of institutionalized racism shaped her consciousness as an African American and compelled her to seek political solutions. Her personal account also explores how her experiences as a woman in a movement dominated by males affected her awareness of the special challenges African American women face in overcoming sexism and racism. The autobiography opens not with Davis’s birth but with her flight from California legal authorities. She was charged with murder and kidnapping in relation to a failed escape attempt at a California courthouse. Her constant self-awareness as an African American woman attempting to evade discovery within an overwhelmingly white society underscores the problems African Americans have in establishing their identity. From the writer’s perspective, the charges against her stemmed not from a legal system that seeks justice but from a legal system that works to destroy those who fight to change the system. As a child in racially segregated Birmingham, Alabama, Davis’s fight to establish such an identity began at an early age. Growing up on “Dynamite Hill,” a racially mixed neighborhood that acquired its name from the frequent bombings of African American residences, she was, as a child, aware of the danger of simply being black and of fighting for the right to have an equal voice in society. In detailing her experiences within the Black Liberation movement, Davis expresses her growing awareness of attempts to stifle the voices of African American women in particular within the movement. Communism, she contends, would eradicate all such oppression. Davis is further convinced of the oppressive nature of the American legal system after she is captured and incarcerated to await trial. She describes continual attempts by the prison authorities to control the minds of her fellow prisoners through humiliating and nonsensical rules. She also gives an account of attempts to deprive her of her basic rights as a prisoner. When she is finally acquitted, Davis sees the verdict not as a vindication of the legal system but as a vindication of the political efforts to fight racial oppression. Many critics contend that Davis’s constant focus on political ideology prevents her from giving an honest and insightful account of her experiences in her autobiography. Most agree, however, that, in spite of such perceived flaws, the autobiography presents a powerful portrait of an African American woman passionately devoted to her battle against oppression.

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Suggested readings Ashman, Charles R. The People vs. Angela Davis. New York: Pinnacle, 1972. Jackson, George. Soledad Brother. New York: Coward, McCann, 1970. Perkins, Margo V. Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Smith, Nelda J. From Where I Sat. New York: Vantage, 1973. —Lisa R. Aunkst

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany Born: New York, New York; April 1, 1942

Delany is an intensely self-analytical explorer of the linguistic and imaginative possibilities of science fiction. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Jewels of Aptor, 1962; Babel-17, 1966; The Einstein Intersection, 1967; Nova, 1968; Dhalgren, 1975; Triton, 1976; The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, 1977; The American Shore, 1978; Heavenly Breakfast, 1979; Tales of Nevèryön, 1979; Nevèryöna, 1983; Flight from Nevèryön, 1985; The Bridge of Lost Desire, 1987; The Motion of Light in Water, 1988; Silent Interviews, 1994; Atlantis: Three Tales, 1995; Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, 1999 Samuel Delaney’s early science fiction is remarkable for its vivid imagination, its pyrotechnic style, and its interest in linguistic science. Several essays collected in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw began an analysis of the distinctive ways in which meaning is generated in texts that refer to imaginary worlds. This analysis is a central preoccupation of his academic writing and played a vital part in shaping his later fiction. The Einstein Intersection is the first of his novels that makes the creator visible within the text and that links the process of fictional creation to his parallel life experiences. The increasing openness of the science-fiction field allowed Delany to move on to an explicit and very elaborate examination of homosexual identity in Dhalgren. The intense introspective analysis of Dhalgren is inverted in Triton, which extrapolates the personal into the political with flamboyance in its analysis of a future “heterotopia” in which all kinds of sexual identities are readily accommodated and available for sampling. Delany began to subject his life to an unusually candid and thoughtful analysis. The primary product of this analysis is The Motion of Light in Water, a detailed autobiographical account of his life between 1957 and 1965. The semiautobiographical novella Heavenly Breakfast deals with an experiment in communal living in the late 1960’s. “Citre et Trans” (in Atlantis) describes a black American writer’s erotic experiences in Greece in the mid-1960’s. Silent Interviews is a collection of dialogues in which Delany responds in detail to various inquisitors. The remarkable fiction “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” (in Flight from Nevèryön), which offers a searching part-allegorical and part-autobiographical analysis of the advent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is the most complex and powerful of his works in this introspective vein. 123

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The hallmark of all Delany’s self-analytical work is a remarkable frankness, especially in matters of sexuality, although there is nothing self-aggrandizing in his examinations of his own sex life or the imaginary sex lives of characters like him. His curiosity about his experience as a gay black man is utterly scrupulous in its quest for honest expression and true explanation, and his attempts to understand and explain the different experiences of others are marked by great generosity of spirit and critical insight. His occasional adventures in pornography, recounted without embarrassment, demonstrate that his attempts to understand the erotic workings of the human mind are uninhibited by fear of stigmatization.

The Motion of Light in Water Type of work: Memoir First published: 1988 The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965 is an account of the late adolescence and early adulthood of one of the finest science-fiction writers to emerge in the 1960’s. Delany was the first black writer to rise to eminence in the genre and was one of the first writers to take advantage of the decline of censorship in the investigation of sexual identities. This memoir stops short of the period when he became a literary pioneer, but it examines in great detail the personal experiences that were later to feed that work. Its primary concern is the awakening of the author’s homosexual identity, augmented—and slightly confused—by his early marriage to Marilyn Hacker, a white poet, and their setting up home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The memoir describes—but not in strictly chronological order—Delany’s unsteady emergence from the educational hothouse of the Bronx High School of Science into the “real world” of work and marriage. It contemplates, with slightly self-demeaning but sympathetic fascination, his early and precocious adventures in science-fiction writing and the gradual forging of his highly distinctive literary voice. It ends, after an astonishing profusion of erotic encounters, with his setting forth from the city of his birth to cross the Atlantic and explore the Old World, modestly recapitulating the kind of experiential quest pursued by all the heroes of his early novels. The text of The Motion of Light in Water is broken up into brief numbered subchapters, some of which have further subchapters presumably introduced as elaborations and afterthoughts, emphasizing that it grew in a mosaic fashion rather than being written in a straightforward, linear manner. The second edition of the book is further augmented, offering additional testimony to the relentless curiosity with which the author has repeatedly worked through the catalog of his experiences. The Motion of Light in Water is remarkable for its frankness and for its

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scrupulousness. It attains a paradoxical combination of warm intimacy and clinical objectivity that is unique. The analysis of actual experiences is combined with and subtly tempered by an extended reflection on the vagaries of memory. The metaphorical title refers to the essential elusiveness of the process by which the filtration of memory converts the raw material of incident and confrontation into the wealth of self-knowledge. There are very few works that capture the elusiveness of memory and celebrate its mercurial quality as well as Delany’s.

Triton Type of work: Novel First published: 1976 Triton has two sections: The first is “Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part One,” and the second is “An Ambiguous Heterotopia.” The first section’s title links Triton to a series of Delany’s quasi-allegorical fictions, including the appendix to Tales of Nevèryön (1979), “Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part Three,” and his remarkable memoir and analysis of the advent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in New York, “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals: Or, Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part Five” (in Flight from Nevèryön, 1985). A calculatedly convoluted essay on the language of science fiction appears at the end of Triton as “Appendix B.” Triton’s second section’s title refers to the subtitle of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) and stresses the fact that unlike most Utopian novels, Triton describes a society in which the differences among individuals—especially differences in sexuality—are not merely tolerated but encouraged to flourish, thus lending the anarchy of difference a constructive and creative thrust. The addition of this element of calculated flamboyance to the traditional story of the ideal society does not rob Delany’s Utopia of its ambiguity. An ambiguity arising from Utopian fiction is the truth that one person’s Utopia is another person’s hell. The hero of Triton, Bron Helstrom, retains the only sexual trait that can still be called a perversity in the book’s utopia: an inability to exploit in a fully satisfying manner the Utopia’s rich potential for pleasure. This personal perversity is reflected in the plot on a larger scale when the scrupulously nonaggressive society of Triton is horribly maimed by the war fought between the Outer Satellites and the conservative Worlds of the inner solar system. Unlike many of Delany’s protagonists, Helstrom is not a version of the author. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water (1988) includes an account of the young author’s meeting with a prawn fisherman named Ron Helstrom, who seems to have provided a model for the character’s stubborn masculinity. The fictional Helstrom is a kind of negative image of De-

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lany’s own sexuality and values. The author’s identity is not only mirrored in The Spike—the novel’s writer character—but also is transfigured and magnified into the Tritonian society to which Helstrom cannot adapt. Although it did not have the commercial success of Dhalgren (1975), from the year before, Triton is tremendously impressive as an exploration of the personal and social possibilities inherent in freedom from traditional gender roles. The book is even more spectacular in its deployment of the narrative strategies of science fiction; it is a landmark work within the genre.

Suggested readings Barbour, Douglas. Worlds out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany. Frome, England: Ban’s Head, 1979. Broderick, Damien. “The Multiplicity of Worlds, of Others.” Foundation 55 (Summer, 1992): 66-81. _______. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1995. Fox, Robert Eliot. Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. McEvoy, Seth. Samuel R. Delany. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983. Sallis, James, ed. Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. —Brian Stableford

Michael Dorris

Michael Dorris Born: Louisville, Kentucky; January 30, 1945 Died: Concord, New Hampshire; April 11, 1997 Dorris’s works are among the best examples of fiction and nonfiction featuring Native Americans. Traditions: African American, American Indian Principal works: Native Americans: Five Hundred Years After, 1977; A Guide to Research on North American Indians, 1983 (with Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Mary Gloyne Byler); A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, 1987; The Broken Cord: A Family’s Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (1989; The Broken Cord: A Father’s Story, 1990); The Crown of Columbus, 1991 (with Louise Erdrich); Cloud Chamber, 1997 Michael Dorris’s involvement with Native American affairs came quite naturally. The only child of a non-Native American mother and a Modoc father, Dorris spent childhood vacations with relatives who lived on reservations in Montana and Washington. His disdain for being called a Native American writer stemmed from these early experiences; he learned to think of people as human beings rather than as members of particular ethnic groups. After his father’s death, Dorris was raised by his mother, aunts, and grandmothers. The result of this feminine influence is apparent in his novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, a story about three generations of women, narrated in their own voices. In 1981, Dorris married Louise Erdrich, another author of mixed ancestry. Dorris attributed his literary success to Erdrich, making her another of his women-as-mentors. Dorris and Erdrich collaborated as they wrote, producing works that authentically showcase Native Americans. After his adopted son, Abel, was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, a preventable but debilitating condition caused by alcohol consumption during pregnancy, Dorris began writing The Broken Cord: A Family’s Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The book includes a touching autobiographical account provided by Abel. The Broken Cord’s focus on alcohol abuse reflects Dorris’s concern that government policies are plunging Native Americans into a health and education crisis, and continues his work as a Native American activist. While a professor at Dartmouth, Dorris founded the Native American Studies Program and received the Indian Achievement Award. His empathy for Native Americans is apparent in his literary characters, who dramatize the often difficult living conditions of contemporary tribal members. 127

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Despite the focus on Native Americans in his works, the common experiences of humanity fueled Dorris’s passion for writing. As an anthropologist who valued differences, Dorris used his literary voice to promote acceptance of diversity, touching on the basic elements of life that connect all people.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water Type of work: Novel First published: 1987 A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Dorris’s first novel, chronicles incidents in the lives of his three women narrators. Readers have embraced the book, finding the story to be a compelling look at mothers and daughters. The novel opens with Rayona, a fifteen-year-old girl who is part Native American and part black. When her mother moves her to Montana to stay with her grandmother on a reservation, Rayona’s mixed heritage makes her the target of prejudiced teens, damaging her already fragile self-esteem. Eventually Rayona leaves the reservation and meets an understanding couple, who invite her to live with them. In Sky and Evelyn’s modest home, Rayona feels accepted and begins to value commitment, self-sacrifice, and honesty as prime ways to define oneself. By the novel’s end, Rayona develops the confidence and self-respect she needs to function in the tribal community and to be accepting of its diverse members. Rayona learns to accept Christine and Ida, the other two main characters. Early in Christine’s story, her sense of identity is complicated by an emotionally distant mother, who insists on being called “Aunt Ida.” Christine’s belief that she started life “in the hole” sends her on a quest for acceptance that leads to promiscuity, alcohol abuse, the fathers of her two children, and, finally, a fatal illness. As her life is ending, she moves toward harmony with herself, finally content simply to be Michael Dorris, with Louise Erdrich. (Jerry Bauer) Christine, a woman defined

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by the love of a good friend and forgiving family members. Ida’s story weaves together the autobiographies of all three women. During her teen years, her identity is negated by a family secret: She is not Christine’s mother but her half sister. Ida’s father and aunt, Christine’s biological parents, persuade Ida to pretend the baby is hers, saving the family from embarrassment. Ida’s true sense of self is obscured by the roles she plays and the tales she has been spinning for forty years. As her story closes, she is tentatively considering an honest relationship with Rayona. That Rayona, Christine, and Ida are Native American women struggling with poverty and abandoned by most of the men in their lives motivates their strength and independence. Diverse readers have identified with the three’s emotions and experiences.

Suggested readings Broyard, Anatole. “Eccentricity Was All They Could Afford.” Review of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris. The New York Times Book Review, June 7, 1987, 92-97. Chavkin, Allan, and Nancy Feyl Chavkin, eds. Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Owens, Louis. “Erdrich and Dorris’s Mixedbloods and Multiple Narratives.” In Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Rayson, Ann. “Shifting Identity in the Work of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 3 (Winter, 1991): 27-36. Weil, Ann. Michael Dorris. Austin, Tex.: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1997. —Lynne Klyse

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) Born: Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland; February, 1817? Died: Washington, D.C.; February 20, 1895 Douglass wrote one of the most artistic, articulate, and insightful slave narratives and lived a life dedicated to championing black civil rights.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, 1845; My Bondage and My Freedom, 1955; The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881 Frederick Augustus Bailey, who changed his name to Frederick Douglass after escaping slavery, was the son of a slave mother and a white man, probably his mother’s master, Captain Aaron Anthony. He grew up in a variety of slavery conditions, some very harsh. He nevertheless taught himself to read and write and became a skilled caulker at the Baltimore shipyards. In 1838, he escaped to New York disguised as a free sailor. After marrying Anna Murray, a freewoman who had helped him escape, he moved with her to Massachusetts. He took the name Douglass and began working for the abolitionist cause. For four years he was a popular and eloquent speaker for antislavery societies and in 1845 published his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, one of the finest slave narratives. As a precaution against recapture following the publication of his autobiography, Douglass went to England to lecture on racial conditions in the United States. In late 1846, British friends purchased and manumitted Douglass, and the following year he returned to New York a free man. Moving to Rochester, Douglass began an abolitionist newspaper, The North Star (later renamed Frederick Douglass’ Paper), became an Underground Railroad agent, wrote in support of women’s rights and temperance, and revised and expanded his autobiography. In 1859, he narrowly escaped arrest following John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. Although Douglass had not supported the raid, he was a friend of Brown. He fled to Canada, then England, returning months later when he learned of his daughter Annie’s death. During the Civil War, Douglass urged the recruitment and equal treatment of blacks in the military (his two sons were early volunteers) and became an unofficial adviser to Abraham Lincoln on matters of race. After Lincoln’s death, he opposed Andrew Johnson’s procolonization stance and worked for black civil rights, especially suffrage. 130

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A loyal supporter of the Republican Party, he was appointed to various posts by five presidents. In 1881, Douglass again updated his autobiography. The following year Anna Murray Douglass died. Two years later, Douglass married Helen Pitts, his white secretary, a marriage that shocked many. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Douglass minister to Haiti. Douglass retired in 1891 but remained a powerful voice speaking out for racial equality until his death in 1895. He is remembered as not only the most prominent black American of his era but also a man whose life of commitment to the concept of equality made him an outstanding American for all times.

Frederick Douglass (Library of Congress)

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1845 Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, one of the finest nineteenth century slave narratives, is the autobiography of the most well-known African American of his time. The narrative chronicles Douglass’s early life, ending soon after his escape from slavery when he was approximately twenty. It focuses on formative experiences that stand out in his life for their demonstration of the cruelty of slavery and of his ability to endure and transcend such conditions with his humanity intact. Douglass’s work follows the formula of many slave narratives of his day. He structures his story in a linear fashion, beginning with what little information he knew about his origins and progressing episodically through to his escape North. His recurring theme is the brutal nature of slavery, with an emphasis on the persevering humanity of the slaves despite unspeakable trials and the inhumanity of slave owners. Other themes common to Douglass’s and other slave narratives are the hypocrisy of white Christianity, the linkage of literacy to the desire for and attainment of freedom, and the assurance that with liberty the former slave achieved not only a new sense of self-worth but also an economic self-sufficiency. Douglass’s work is characteristic of the nineteenth century in that it is melodramatic and at times didactic. Despite its conventional traits, however, Douglass’s work transcends formulaic writing. The author’s astute analyses of the psychology of slavery, his eloquent assertions of self, and his striking command of rhetoric lift this work above others in its genre. Particularly memorable scenes include young Frederick’s teaching himself to read, the fight with the slave breaker Covey, the author’s apostrophe to freedom as he watches sailboats on Chesapeake Bay, and his interpretation of slave songs as songs of sorrow. When Douglass wrote this work in 1845, he had already earned a reputation as one of the most eloquent speakers for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published with a preface written by William Lloyd Garrison, which was followed by a letter by Wendell Phillips. An immediate success, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass soon went through five American and three European editions. Douglass revised and enlarged the autobiography with later expansions, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892). Although these later versions are of historical value for their extension of Douglass’s life story and for their expansion on matters—such as his method of escape—that Douglass purposefully avoided in his first publication, critics generally agree that the spareness and immediacy of the original Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass renders it the most artistically appealing of the autobiographies. Today Douglass’s book has become canonical as one of the best of the slave narratives, as an eloquent rendering of the American self-made success story,

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as a finely crafted example of protest literature, and for its influence on two important genres of African American literature—the autobiography and the literary treatment of slavery.

Suggested readings Bontemps, Arna. Free at Last: The Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971. Chesebrough, David B. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Dexter, Fisher, and Robert B. Stepto, eds. Afro-American Literature. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1979. Ernest, John. Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature: Brown, Wilson, Jacobs, Delany, Douglass, and Harper. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Jackson, Blyden. A History of Afro-American Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Lawson, Bill E., and Frank M. Kirkland, eds. Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Preston, Diopkon J. Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1948. Smith, Valorie. “Form and Ideology in Three Slave Narratives.” In Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Stephens, Gregory. On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. —Grace McEntee

Rita Dove

Rita Dove Born: Akron, Ohio; August 28, 1952

Dove’s poems give voice to the African American woman whose concerns are wider than region or race. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Yellow House on the Corner, 1980; Museum, 1983; Fifth Sunday, 1985; Thomas and Beulah, 1986; The Other Side of the House, 1988; Grace Notes, 1989; On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems, 1999 Rita Dove acknowledges that her writing is influenced by a range of experiences. Consequently, Dove consistently avoids being pigeonholed. As an undergraduate at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, she spent a year on a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Tübingen, in West Germany, where she realized that a writer cannot have a limited view of the world. Although her earlier work was influenced by African American writers of the 1960’s, she stands apart from African American writers who write primarily of the politics of ethnicity. Well-educated, Dove allows her poetry to reflect her wide interests. Many poems allude to the visual arts and music. Poems in Museum discuss Catherine of Alexandria, Catherine of Siena, William Shakespeare, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Giovanni Boccaccio. The cross-cultural thrust of her writing is indicative of the influence that Dove’s European experience had on her. Dove’s poetry uses family history as raw material. In Thomas and Beulah, Dove mixes fact and imagination to describe the lives of her maternal grandparents. A book-length narrative, the story of her family employs two separate points of view, that of her grandfather and that of her grandmother. Race is central to the story, but Dove focuses on the relationship that they had, in spite of the difference between their families. Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, the volume shows her concern with the voices of ordinary people. Through these lives she addresses more communal concerns. Dove’s work acknowledges the existence of race problems but allows the human spirit to triumph. Marriage to Fred Viebahn in 1979 produced one daughter, Aviva Chantal Tamu Dove-Viebahn. Dove’s poetry of the time explores mother-daughter relationships, especially when the child is biracial. Such poems are evident in Grace Notes. Dove experiments with other literary forms. She has produced a verse play, short stories, and a novel. Through the Ivory Gate, her first novel, explores the interplay between autobiography and artifice. Virginia King, a 134

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Rita Dove (Fred Viebahn)

character reflecting Dove’s experiences, returns to Akron to work with young students. Learning the stories of her family confirms Virginia in her desire for a career in the theater. In 1993, Dove became poet laureate of the United States. In that role, she worked with emerging writers, encouraging them to gain the breadth and depth of experience that would fuel their writing.

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Grace Notes Type of work: Poetry First published: 1989 In Grace Notes, Dove explores the implications of being an African American who is prepared to step forward into a world broader than any limiting labels would suggest. Many poems focus on the relationship between her biracial child and herself, revealing how the child discovers and accepts these differences. Others show the daughter learning what it means to become a woman. Still other poems question the effect that the development of identity can have on the artist. Dove sets the stage with the first poem, “Summit Beach, 1921,” which examines the risk of being at the edge of development. A girl watches her friends dance as she rests her broken leg. She had climbed to the top of her father’s shed, then stepped off. Dove shows that the girl wants to date but that her father had discouraged her. This poem suggests that the search for identity does not occur without risks because the search involves making choices. Married to a German, Dove’s daughter learns to belong in both worlds. “Genetic Expedition” contains images which delve into the physical differences between the black mother and her biracial child. Beginning with images of her own body, Dove mentions that she resembles pictures of natives in the National Geographic more than she does her own daughter. Because of the National Geographic’s sensual, naked women, her father had not allowed the children to read the magazine. While Dove identifies physically with the bodies of these women, she acknowledges that her daughter’s features and hair reflect her biracial heritage. Thus the poem exemplifies Dove’s rootedness in her own culture while being open to other cultures. Other poems that feature Dove’s daughter show the child as she discovers her mother’s body, the source of her life and future. “After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed” describes a tender moment between mother and daughter as the daughter compares her budding body with her mother’s mature body. Dove emphasizes the daughter’s innocent curiosity and her delight at realizing what her future holds. Several poems discuss artists searching for ways to express who they have come to be through their art. “Canary” looks at the difficulty of such inquiry. Focusing on Billie Holiday, the poem describes the downward spiral of her life. Whether it was more difficult for her to be black or to be female is the question of identity that Dove explores, suggesting that circumstances conspired to take away Holiday’s power to carve out her own identity. Dove’s poems allow the questions and implications of a search for identity to take shape as an ongoing process.

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Suggested readings Costello, Bonnie. “Scars and Wings: Rita Dove’s Grace Notes.” Callaloo 14, no. 2 (1991): 434-438. McDowell, Robert. “The Assembling Vision of Rita Dove.” Callaloo 25 (Winter, 1985): 61-70. Shaughnessy, Brenda. “Rita Dove: Taking the Heat.” Publishers Weekly 246 (April 12, 1999): 48. Steinman, Lisa M. “Dialogues Between History and Dream.” Michigan Quarterly Review 26 (Spring, 1987): 428-438. Vendler, Helen. The Given and the Made: Recent American Poets. London: Faber & Faber, 1995. Wallace, Patricia. “Divided Loyalties: Literal and Literary in the Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes, Cathy Song, and Rita Dove.” MELUS 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1993): 3-19. —Martha Modena Vertreace

W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois Born: Great Barrington, Massachusetts; February 23, 1868 Died: Accra, Ghana; August 27, 1963 Du Bois was the foremost African American intellectual of the twentieth century and a leader in civil rights and pan-Africanism.

Traditions: African American Principal works: The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, 1899; The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, 1903; Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 1920; Vospominaniia, 1962 (The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, 1968) W. E. B. Du Bois was a towering intellectual who created a new language of protest and ideas to understand and guide the African American experience. He wrote fiction and nonfiction, infusing his writings with eloquence and anger. He envisioned a world with equality for all people, emphasizing social justice for Africans and their descendants throughout the New World. Du Bois’s chronicle of his childhood begins with a tale of small-town conventionality in rural Massachusetts, where he experienced a loving home. In 1888, he entered Fisk University and saw firsthand the “color line” dividing the South. After graduating from Fisk, he returned to Massachusetts, where he earned a doctorate in history at Harvard. His first important academic position was a marginal one at the University of Pennsylvania, but it resulted in his brilliant exposition, The Philadelphia Negro. In that work he outlines the historical background of the black community in Philadelphia and documents its patterns of daily life. In 1897, he accepted a position at the University of Atlanta, where he worked until 1910. He held a yearly conference, resulting in a series of edited books on such topics as African Americans and business, religion, and social life. In 1903, Du Bois published the literary masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk, the first of four autobiographies that connect his personal experience with that of his community. In 1909, Du Bois helped organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He became the first editor of their journal Crisis in 1910. For the next quarter century, Du Bois was a center of debate on pressing social issues, and he was personally responsible for many columns, opinions, and reviews in the journal. By 1935, Du Bois was increasingly at odds with the leadership at the NAACP. He resigned his position there and returned to the University of Atlanta. He helped found the journal Phylon, which continues to provide an 138

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W. E. B. Du Bois (Library of Congress)

important voice for African American scholarship. Beginning in the 1920’s, Du Bois turned his attention to international affairs, organizing pan-African conferences and observing the racist and classist practices of the Western nations. He became a Marxist and was attacked by other intellectuals. Du Bois was indicted by the United States for being an agent of a foreign power; the indictment was the result of his peace activism and leftist politics during the Cold War. Although he was acquitted, the accusation that his government

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made against him remained a source of bitterness. Du Bois traveled widely around the world—after at first being denied a passport—and eventually settled in Ghana, whose leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was his friend. In Ghana, in his nineties, he began work on an encyclopedia of African culture. Much of Du Bois’s vision of racial equality and African American achievement remained unfulfilled at his death in 1963.

The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois Type of work: Autobiography First published: Vospominaniia, 1962 (English edition, 1968) The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century is the inspiring story of a foremost African American intellectual and civil rights leader of the twentieth century. Du Bois discusses his individual struggles and accomplishments, as well as his major ideas dedicated to promoting racial equality for Africans and African Americans. Moving from the reconstruction era after the U.S. Civil War, through World Wars I and II, to the height of the Cold War and the atomic age, Du Bois’s personal reflections provide a critical, panoramic sweep of American social history. Du Bois did not simply observe the American scene; he altered it as a leader of African Americans in the American Civil Rights movement. The chronological structure of The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois begins with five chapters on his travels to Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. After these travels, Du Bois announces the crowning ideological decision of his life: his conversion to communism. The remainder of The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois answers the question: How did Du Bois arrive at this crucial decision in the last years of his life? Du Bois chronicles his life patterns of childhood, education, work for civil rights, travel, friendships, and writings. This information is written in such a way that it explains his decision to adopt communism as his political worldview. Perhaps the most fascinating section of the book is Du Bois’s account of his trial and subsequent acquittal in 1950 and 1951 for alleged failure to register as an agent of a foreign government, a sobering story of public corruption. His fundamental faith in American institutions, already strained by racism, was destroyed. He moved to Ghana and threw his tremendous energies into that nation as it shed its colonial experience. The autobiography is subtitled as a soliloquy, but this categorization reflects the political realities of 1960 more than the specific literary form of speaking to oneself. At the time, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union made communism an abhorrent choice to many Americans. The autobiography finally appeared in English in 1968, at a publishing house known for its communist writings. The autobiography is the least read of

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Du Bois’s autobiographies, although it is an engaging exposition in which Du Bois shows his continuing growth and faith in human nature during his tenth decade.

The Souls of Black Folk Type of work: Essays First published: 1903 The Souls of Black Folk is the passionate and eloquent story of an individual, W. E. B. Du Bois, and a group, African Americans. Du Bois could not forget that his world was divided by a color line. Du Bois calls the experience generated by the color line the veil and allows his readers to walk with him within the veil. He does this with songs of sorrow that introduce each chapter. The second chapter begins with the famous lines: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” These prophetic words tell the story of American slaves and their descendants. One way to address these issues is to work for gradual change, as advocated by Booker T. Washington. Du Bois’s criticism of Washington created a public debate about how to fight discrimination. Du Bois then tells of entering Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He experiences the Jim Crow world of the South and teaches children who must endure its cruelty. Du Bois soon moves from the elementary school to higher education, but before leaving the South, he travels through it. Jim Crow railway cars physically and socially segregate black and white passengers. Plantations dot the landscape, recalling the slavery that maintained them and continuing their legacy through tenant farming. Du Bois reveals how the “faith of our fathers” is a communal heritage. Music and lyrics create a heritage from the past that lives in the present. Du Bois’s faith is tested by the death of his first and only son, Burghardt, who was refused medical care because of the color line. Du Bois’s keening cry against the evil that murdered his baby is heart-wrenching. People are able to survive and triumph behind the veil, nevertheless, and the African American leader is the key to ending the color line. Alexander Crummell, a friend of Du Bois, was such a hero. Ordinary people can be revealed to be extraordinary too. Their paths may be hard, but their triumphs cause joy and celebration. This book is a literary masterpiece that articulates the cost of hatred and the power to resist it. Although it has never been out of print, it was especially important in the 1960’s, when it helped inspire the American civil rights struggle. Du Bois continued to tell his life story and the story of a people during the rest of his long, productive life. The Souls of Black Folk, however, is unique in its passion and eloquence. His inspirational language reaches all people who resist hatred.

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Suggested readings Andress, Lillian, ed. Critical Essays on W. E. B. Du Bois. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985. Baber, Willie L. “Capitalism and Racism.” Critique of Anthropology 12, no. 3 (1992): 339-363. Du Bois, W. E. B. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Horne, Gerald, and Mary Young, eds. W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919. New York: Henry Holt, 1993. Stull, Bradford T. Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipation. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. —Mary Jo Deegan

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar Born: Dayton, Ohio; June 27, 1872 Died: Dayton, Ohio; February 9, 1906 Dunbar was one of the most popular American poets of his time and America’s first professional black writer.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Oak and Ivy, 1893; Majors and Minors, 1895; Lyrics of Lowly Life, 1896; Folks from Dixie, 1898; Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899; The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories, 1900; The Sport of the Gods, 1902; Lyrics of Love and Laughter, 1903; The Heart of Happy Hollow, 1904 Paul Laurence Dunbar’s creative genius and personal and professional tragedies have often been misunderstood by readers who neglect to consider the poet in the context of his time, which was not just marked, but defined, by all-encompassing racial politics. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, commonly referred to by scholars of African American history as the nadir, Dunbar was a singular phenomenon, trapped between his audience’s demands that he be the voice of his race and his own creative mandate that he not be restricted to any given subject matter. Dunbar wrote not merely evocative but enduring work, particularly as a poet. In addition to six volumes of verse, he also wrote four collections of short stories and four novels in the twelve prolific years before his untimely death at the age of thirty-three. Best known for his poems and stories about the Southern rural black world from which he came, Dunbar also wrote verse in standard English, often on black themes. His “We Wear the Mask” is a classic revelation of what it means to be black and American, and his “Sympathy” (“I know why the caged bird sings!”) is an ode to freedom with universal appeal. Dunbar was the only surviving child of Joshua and Matilda Glass Burton Murphy Dunbar, former slaves who had taught themselves to read and write. They nurtured their son with stories of their Kentucky plantation years, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and emancipation. These accounts became an important part of Dunbar’s consciousness of himself as an inheritor of a particular history and a voice for that identity. Ironically, however, white audiences exploited this work, even as they championed it, seeing it as a black confirmation of their stereotypical plantation tradition. Despite Dunbar’s apparent compromise in this regard, black audiences reveled in and memorized his verses, representing as they did the first national exposure of the black experience rendered in high art. In 1898, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore, a Creole from New Orleans 143

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and a writer. The couple separated, however, in 1902, the result of tensions from within the marriage, including her family’s disdain for the dark-skinned Dunbar and the demands of his professional life. These pressures contributed to Dunbar’s failing health from tuberculosis and his general melancholy, from which his late work suffered. He died childless and broken in spirit in the house he shared with his mother in Dayton.

Poetry Principal works: Oak and Ivy, 1893; Majors and Minors, 1895; Lyrics of Lowly Life, 1896; Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899; Lyrics of Love and Laughter, 1903; Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow, 1905; Complete Poems, 1913 The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar provided America with its first widely read view of black America in verse. Dunbar’s poems may be considered America’s first experience with an African American poet’s perspective on himself and his people and his conflicts with his world. Most of Dunbar’s poetry is written in standard English and recalls in form, subject matter, and language the influences of the classic English and American poets. The work most quoted and criticized, however, is that which reflects the identity and experience of African Americans. Dunbar’s race-conscious work is influenced by his appreciation for the oral tradition, by black folklore and mores, by the beliefs and expressive language of the black church, and by the historical works of black scholars such as George Washington Williams. Against the prevailing social and literary stereotype of black people as ignorant, contented, and comic, as seen in the work of Southern white writers, Dunbar tried to present his people realistically, in the fullness of their humanity and culture, with their particularities, and in their own voices. Sometimes, however, Dunbar’s character depictions were too gently deepened, Paul Laurence Dunbar (Library of Congress) and the poet was criticized for

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his alleged conciliatory tone, as in “Home Longings,” in which the speaker claims to want to “Drop the pen an’ take the plow,” a symbolically antiprogressive wish that a white racist could, clearly, misread. Common themes in Dunbar’s dialect poetry include a longing for and celebration of the South as home for the black community (“Goin’ Back,” “Possum Trot,” and “A Letter”), the affirmation of family and love relationships to be found there (“A Negro Love Song” and “Little Brown Baby”), and the celebration of black humanism and cultural gifts (“When Malindy Sings”). In “When Malindy Sings,” rhythmic language, rhyme, and exaggeration combine to praise Malindy’s innate ability and compare it favorably to Miss Lucy’s questionable learned skills. Often Dunbar’s more lighthearted poetry seems simply designed to amuse, but closer examination reveals his satiric awareness of social injustice (“Accountability” and “An Ante-Bellum Sermon”). Dunbar’s race-conscious poems in standard English reflect the perils, heroism, and survival techniques that come from living in a potentially violent, rigidly segregated, and racist society. Some poems eulogize black heroes and white allies of the freedom struggle (“Frederick Douglass” and “Robert Gould Shaw”). Others expose and condemn those who perpetuate injustices toward black people (“The Haunted Oak” and “To the South”). Still others praise the glory of the African race (“Ode to Ethiopia”). Dunbar’s most popular and enduring poems express his awareness of his dilemma as a black man and poet in a restrictive society (“We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy”).

Suggested readings Braxton, Joanne M., ed. The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Hudson, Gossie Harold. A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1999. Martin, Jay, ed. A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975. Martin, Jay, and Gossie H. Hudson, eds. Paul Laurence Dunbar Reader. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975. Revell, Peter. Paul Laurence Dunbar. Boston: Twayne, 1979. —Cynthia Packard

Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin Born: Camden, New Jersey; September 26, 1946

Dworkin, a radical feminist, presents alternative views of sexuality and gender roles in society. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, 1974; Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, 1976; Pornography: Men Possessing Women, 1981; Right-Wing Women, 1983; Ice and Fire, 1986; Intercourse, 1987; Letters from a War Zone, 1989; Mercy, 1990; Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation, 2000 Andrea Dworkin was born to left-wing Jewish parents. Inspired by the peace movement of the 1960’s, Dworkin participated in a number of antiwar demonstrations. It was at one of these demonstrations that she had the experience that changed her life. At eighteen she was arrested and taken to the Women’s House of Detention. Her treatment there was brutal: bullying, harsh internal examinations, and authoritarian contempt left her emotionally and physically scarred. Released after four days, Dworkin hemorrhaged vaginally for two weeks. She spoke out publicly about her trauma in an attempt to find out why any woman should be humiliated in so sexual a way. Her marriage to a Dutch anarchist awakened her to the reality of sexual violence in relationships; he beat her severely until she escaped from him with the help of feminist friends. She was an intelligent, educated woman who had been graduated from Bennington College, but she could not prevent herself from being hurt. Dworkin describes her childhood as one that taught her to defy convention. As a Jewish child, she refused to sing Christmas carols such as “Silent Night” at school. When her brush with the law and her nightmarish marriage left her horrified by the status of women, she took action. Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, Dworkin’s first major work, echoes the pain of her personal experiences of misogyny. Later books, such as Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics and Intercourse, go further into the implications of the sexual act itself. Dworkin analyzes the historical perceptions of rape and possession and of the biology of sexual contact. She also studies pornographic magazines in an attempt to understand how women are demeaned by pornography. Since many critics, such as one reviewer from the London Review of Books, find Dworkin’s lack of makeup, her unflattering clothes, and her heaviness to be unattractive, Dworkin has had 146

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to relate to a double standard of beauty that does not apply to male writers, no matter how polemic they may be. As do other feminist writers, Dworkin enlightens women about gender roles in society.

Intercourse Type of work: Essay First published: 1987 Intercourse, one of Andrea Dworkin’s most powerful books on sexuality in a repressive culture, is about self-disgust and self-hatred. Dworkin’s “Amerika” is the modern world, or rather, the world that lives within the modern American. In “Amerika,” sex is good and liking it is morally right. In “Amerika,” sex is defined solely as vaginal penetration. In “Amerika,” women are happy to be passive and accepting while their men are aggressive and demanding. Intercourse attempts to question the rigid sexual roles that define the male as literally and figuratively on top of the woman and the symbolic implications of sexual contact—entry, penetration, and occupation. Intercourse, documenting a series of literary excerpts and comments by and for women, develops Dworkin’s theory that sexual congress is an act in which, typically, men rape women. The book’s theory is that because the penis of a man goes inside a woman during the sexual act, intercourse is a hostile act of occupation, ready to degenerate into gynocide and cannibalism. Dworkin describes a woman’s individuality as being surrounded by her body and bordered by her skin. The privacy of the inner self is essential to understanding exactly who one is. Thus, having no boundaries between one’s own body and the body of another makes one feel invaded and skinless. The experience of being skinless is the primary force behind “Amerika’s” sexuality, since “Amerikan” sexuality relies so heavily on the man being superior or on top of the woman. Strictly speaking, however, it is not only the act of heterosexual penetration that causes one to lose one’s sense of individuality. In Intercourse, even lesbianism seems to be no answer to the repressive society that Dworkin describes. The “real privacy” of the body can be as violated by another woman’s objectification of her lover as it can be by a heterosexual rape. So long as women can stay outside each other’s skins, metaphorically speaking, then and only then will they escape sexual domination of one another. One of Dworkin’s earlier books, Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality (1974), describes heterosexual contact as being acceptable so long as men do not insist on the superiority of an erect penis. In Intercourse, even a flaccid member does not negate female suppression in the sexual act. Dworkin’s preoccupation is the obscenity of the ordinary; she encourages women to closely examine what they may have originally thought to be harmless, even trivial.

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Suggested readings Blakely, Mary Kay. “Is One Woman’s Sexuality Another Woman’s Pornography?” Ms. 13 (April, 1985): 37-38. Dworkin, Andrea. Letter to The New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1992, 15-16. Glastonbury, Marion. “Unsisterly.” New Statesmen 106, no. 2732 ( July 29, 1983): 57-64. Heller, Zoe. “Mercy.” The Times Literary Supplement, October 5, 1990, 1072. Jenefsky, Cindy, with Anne Russo. Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin’s Art and Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998. O’Driscoll, Sally. “Andrea Dworkin: Guilt Without Sex.” The Village Voice 26, no. 29 ( July 15-21, 1981): 26-29. Rosenthal, Carole. “Rejecting Equality.” Ms. 5, no. 8 (February, 1977): 86-90, 114. Sage, Lorna. “Staying Outside the Skin.” The Times Literary Supplement, October 16, 1987, 49-54. —Julia M. Meyers

Stanley Elkin

Stanley Elkin Born: Brooklyn, New York; May 11, 1930 Died: St. Louis, Missouri; May 31, 1995 Through dark humor and inventive use of language, Elkin captures a unique Jewish American identity. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Boswell: A Modern Comedy, 1964; Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, 1965; A Bad Man, 1967; The Six-Year-Old Man, 1968; The Dick Gibson Show, 1971; Searches and Seizures, 1973; The Franchiser, 1976; The Living End, 1979; Stanley Elkin’s Greatest Hits, 1980; George Mills, 1982; Early Elkin, 1985; Stanley Elkin’s the Magic Kingdom, 1985; The Rabbi of Lud, 1987; The MacGuffin, 1991; Pieces of Soap: Essays, 1992; Van Gogh’s Room at Arles: Three Novellas, 1993; Mrs. Ted Bliss, 1995 Stanley Elkin wrote darkly humorous works. About half of his characters are Jewish, mostly secular Jews. Many of them, however, resist assimilation into mainstream American life. In his short stories and novels, Elkin establishes Jewish identity in two major ways. He captures Jewish humor through the unique intonations of Jewish American speech, and he casts his characters in professions often entered by Jewish men. A consummate stylist, Elkin often presents his characters as caught between their religious heritage, which they consider anachronistic and from which they have distanced themselves, and late twentieth century American society, into which they refuse to integrate. To repair a tattered self-image, the gentile protagonist in Boswell: A Modern Comedy forms a club for famous and successful people; he then cannot sacrifice his individuality by joining. Although Elkin considered himself a novelist, Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, which clearly established his identity as a Jewish writer, caused many readers and some critics to consider Elkin essentially as a short-story writer. Elkin clearly established his identity as a novelist, however, by producing more than ten novels. Aside from Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, about half of whose stories treat Jewish subjects, Elkin deals with Jews and Jewish themes in a number of his other books. A Bad Man focuses on Leo Feldman, a department store owner hemmed in by a crazy father and a tedious son. In “The Condominium,” a novella in Searches and Seizures, Elkin focuses on shiva, the Jewish funeral rite. In The Franchiser, Elkin puts Ben Flesh, adopted by Julius Finsberg during the Depression, into an unbelievable family of eighteen twins and triplets, all 149

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afflicted with degenerative diseases. In George Mills, however, in which the protagonists are gentile, Elkin sacrifices ethnic identity for universality.

The Franchiser Type of work: Novel First published: 1976 The protagonist of The Franchiser suffers from multiple sclerosis, a disease that deteriorates the nervous system. Between attacks of the disease, Ben Flesh roams the American landscape, “the packed masonry of states,” looking after the massive network of franchises he has built upon an inheritance from his godfather, Julius Finsberg, an industrial kingpin. What Ben inherits from Finsberg, who has cheated Ben’s father out of his share of a successful business, is not a substantial sum of money but the prime interest rate—“Not money but the use of money.” With the low interest rates of the preinflationary 1960’s, Ben is able to build up a financial empire consisting entirely of franchises—Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream parlors. In fact, Ben has his hand in literally every franchise in the United States. Along with the interest rate, Ben has inherited a responsibility for Finsberg’s children, eighteen in all. Like Ben, each of the Finsbergs suffers from an incurable disease, which is their physical inheritance from old Julius, bearer of bad genes. As he invests their money in his franchises, Ben becomes a lover to each of the Finsberg daughters and a confidant to each son, so that, between Ben and the children, business and familial relationships are interchangeable. In his ramblings, Flesh might be seen as a reader and interpreter of cultural signs. He observes the minute phenomena of the huStanley Elkin (Miriam Berkley) man world and attempts to

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make connections between the scattered manifestations of life and death. Ben spends a lot of time with Patty Finsberg, who refers to herself as “The Insight Lady” because she is obsessed with the parallels to be drawn among disparate cultural events. While some of her insights are breathtaking, it is clear that Patty is paranoically concerned with “connections.” From her, Ben learns that there is order in disorder, contradiction in synthesis. Flesh as a character is, then, like a reader of his own novel, who interprets his life and observations as a commentator might discuss the patterns and repetitions of a fiction. Then, too, Flesh is like a writer: As a franchiser, he both organizes and disseminates the separated units of his financial network. Almost continually in physical discomfort and confronting the visible evidence of his own death, Flesh looks outward, on life, for the external order that will confer meaning upon his existence. Elkin has always been interested in the exaggerated peculiarities of the individual vision and voice; he is a master of intonation and nuance. Perhaps no other contemporary writer has so successfully captured the varied lifestyles and patois of contemporary Americans as they have been affected by the avid consumerism of their culture.

The MacGuffin Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 Set in a large unnamed American city in the Midwest that seems much like St. Louis, The MacGuffin is the story of some two days in the life of Bobbo Druff, commissioner of streets. The novel successfully functions on many levels; it exhibits a multifaceted complexity in that it is the story of a family, a love intrigue of the husband with mistress, a murder mystery, a tale of smuggling, and a political statement. While being all of these, it is mostly about Bobbo Druff and “The MacGuffin,” his psychological other and controlling self. Bobbo Druff, the narrator and main character of the story, is truly the only subject of this complex novel that has so many other threads and aspects. He represents the modern American, and his life embodies, for Elkin at least, life in America in the 1990’s. He is materialistic and corrupt; he is neurotic, psychotic, and schizophrenic (and, importantly, justly so); he is intellectual, witty, and smart; he is hopelessly middle-class; he finds relief in life by incessantly getting high on coca leaves and taking at least four different prescription medicines; he is both humor and pathos—a strangely correct mixture. Elkin’s main purpose is to reveal the hopeless and meaningless entanglements of life in the United States in the 1990’s—for the thinking and thoughtless alike. There is no escape from problems, no solution to them, only an

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awareness of facts that add up to craziness (a matter blended with humor and bitterness) in a world in which borderline insanity is necessary for survival. Bobbo Druff is not, however, insane; he is victimized by society and politics and legalities—but yet entirely by self. Survival requires some control of the system in which one lives. For Druff and other characters, that system is corrupt, somehow defunct yet going on anyway. The MacGuffin succeeds in making significant and correct statements about modern politics. The global situation is so involved that even such traditional enemies as the Arabs and Jews cannot disentangle themselves from the complexity of the various problems. They depend upon one another to have someone to hate, to have an enemy; just as certainly and more important, however, they depend upon one another to fund and sustain their own problems and hatreds. Local politics, as exemplified by Druff, the mayor, other commissioners, and even the two chauffeurs, parallels the mess and havoc of larger problems. No one can be trusted in a world where friends serve the causes of enemies and, conversely, enemies serve the causes of friends—all knowingly, but never openly. It is internal politics with which Elkin is doubtless most concerned. This is represented in Druff’s family life with both his wife and son, and with his relationship with himself and The MacGuffin. The context of family politics finally makes it impossible for Druff to make sense out of the entanglements around him, even when he has full knowledge of all the facts. In The MacGuffin, Elkin’s goal is to make a statement not merely about problems in the Middle East (he is actually little concerned about relations between Jews and Arabs) but rather about problems in self-definition facing all readers.

Suggested readings Bailey, Peter J. Reading Stanley Elkin. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Bargen, Doris G. The Fiction of Stanley Elkin. Bern, Switzerland: Lang, 1980. Charney, Maurice. “Stanley Elkin and Jewish Black Humor.” In Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor, edited by Sarah Blacher Cohen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Delta, no. 20 (February, 1985). Special issue. Edwards, Thomas R. Review of The MacGuffin, by Stanley Elkin. The New Republic 204 (May 20, 1991): 44-47. Elkin, Stanley. “A Conversation with Stanley Elkin.” Interview by David C. Dougherty. Literary Review 34 (Winter, 1991): 175-195. Emerson, Ken. “The Indecorous, Rabelaisian, Convoluted Righteousness of Stanley Elkin.” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1991, 40-43. Guttmann, Allen. The Jewish Writer in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

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Saltzman, Arthur M., and Mark Axelrod, eds. The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Stanley Elkin, Alasdair Gray. Normal, Ill.: Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1995. —R. Baird Shuman/Patrick O’Donnell/Carl Singleton

Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison Born: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; March 1, 1914 Died: New York, New York; April 16, 1994 In his writings, Ellison emphasizes his belief in integration and pluralism in American society. Traditions: African American Principal works: Invisible Man, 1952; Shadow and Act, 1964; Going to the Territory, 1986; The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, 1995; Flying Home and Other Stories, 1996; Juneteenth, 1999 A native of rural Oklahoma, Ralph Ellison moved to New York City in 1936, where he met fellow black writer Richard Wright. Wright helped Ellison begin his writing career. In 1938, Ellison joined the Federal Writers’ Project, which launched his educational and literary life, which was dedicated to exploring social and personal identities as defined by racial lines. In 1945, Ellison, who was then exploring and espousing leftist views, began work on Invisible Man, a novel based on his post-World War II interest in racial identity, ethnic unity, and social justice. Invisible Man won the National Book Award and the Russwarm Award in 1953, catapulting Ellison into national prominence as an important black author. Invisible Man traces the life of a young African American male who is attempting to define his identity in the context of his race and of society as a whole. Ellison received numerous honors, including the 1969 Medal of Freedom Award for his leadership in the black literary community. Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory are considered his spiritual and literary autobiographies. They are collections of essays, criticism, and reviews advocating integration and plurality. Describing “geography as fate,” Ellison wrote much about growing up in Oklahoma and about his deep interest in the creative process, in black folklore and myth, in vernacular and popular styles versus traditional and elite cultures, in jazz, in the blues, in literary modernism, and particularly in the dynamics of race. Ellison frequently focuses on the complexity of these dynamics, which, for him, impose the obligation to question and challenge codified portrayals of African American life and to embrace the promise of American democracy despite its historic betrayals of the black community. Ellison’s individualism often moved against the grain of public opinion; for example, his essay “The Myth of the Flawed White Southerner” defends Lyndon Johnson, then president of the United States, against the attacks of anti-Vietnam War protesters. He claimed he was an integrationist of the imagination, where ideas are 154

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difficult to control by social, economic, and political processes. Such ideas made him a target of black nationalists during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Ellison is often compared to Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway, all of whom Ellison spoke of as literary mentors.

Invisible Man Type of work: Novel First published: 1952 Frequently discussed as a novel addressing racial identity in modern, urban America, Invisible Man is also discussed regarding the larger issue of personal identity, especially self-assertion and personal expression in a metaphorically blind world. In the novel, the unnamed young black narrator is invisible within the larger culture because of his race. Race itself, in turn, is a metaphor for the individual’s anonymity in modern life. The novel is scathing, angry, and humorous, incorporating a wide range of African American experiences and using a variety of styles, settings, characters, and images. Ellison uses jazz as a metaphor, especially that of the role of a soloist who is bound within the traditions and forms of a group performance. The novel describes a series of incidents that show how racism has warped the American psyche. As a boy, the nameless narrator hears his grandfather say: “Undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction.” Later, the youth sees a social function degenerate into a surrealistic and barbarous paroxysm of racism. Next, the narrator is expelled from a black college and heads north. After a job in a paint factory ends in shock treatment, the narrator heads to the big city and falls in with the Brotherhood, a group of political radicals. After realizing that the Brotherhood is just as power-hunRalph Ellison (National Archives) gry and manipulative as the

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other organizations and institutions that have victimized him, the narrator leaves the Brotherhood. He comes to understand that racism denies personal identity: As long as he is seen by others as a sample of a group rather than as an individual, he is invisible. The narrator finally becomes an urban hermit, living anonymously in a cellar and using pirated electricity. The novel’s narrator is typically viewed as representing a generation of intelligent African Americans born and raised in the rural South before World War II who moved to large cities such as New York to widen their opportunities. Such historical context aside, readers also see him as a black Everyman, whose story symbolically recapitulates black history. Attending a Southern black college, the narrator’s idealism is built on black educator Booker T. Washington’s teaching that racial uplift will occur by way of humility, accommodation, and hard work. The narrator’s ideals erode, however, in a series of encounters with white and black leaders. The narrator learns of hypocrisy, blindness, and the need to play roles even when each pose leads to violence. The larger, white culture does not accept the narrator’s independent nature. Accidents, and betrayals by educators, Communists, and fellow African Americans, among others, show him that life is largely chaotic, with no clear pattern of order to follow. The narrator’s complexity shatters white culture’s predetermined, stereotyped notions of what role he should play. He finds himself obliged as a result to move from role to role, providing the reader a wide spectrum of personalities that reflect the range of the black community. In the end the narrator rejects cynicism and hatred and advocates a philosophy of hope, a rejection mirroring Ellison’s desire to write a novel that transcended protest novels, emphasizing rage and hopelessness, of the period. The narrator decides to look within himself for self-definition, and the act of telling his story provides meaning to his existence, an affirmation and celebration preceding his return to the world. He has learned first of his invisibility, second of his manhood. In his later years, Ellison realized that his novel expands the meaning of the word “invisible.” He observed that invisibility “touches anyone who lives in a big metropolis.” A winner of numerous awards, including the National Book Award in 1953, Invisible Man has continually been regarded as one of the most important novels in twentieth century American literature.

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Ellison. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Busby, Mark. Ralph Ellison. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Hersey, John, ed. Ralph Ellison: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Margolis, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” In Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth Century Black American Writers. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1966.

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Reilly, John M., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of “Invisible Man”: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Stephens, Gregory. On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. —Wesley Britton

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich Born: Little Falls, Minnesota; June 7, 1954

Erdrich’s poetry and novels represent some of the most creative and accessible writing by a Native American. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: Jacklight, 1984; Love Medicine, 1984 (expanded version, 1993); The Beet Queen, 1986; Tracks, 1988; Baptism of Desire, 1989; The Crown of Columbus (with Michael Dorris), 1991; The Bingo Palace, 1994; Tales of Burning Love, 1996; The Antelope Wife, 1998 Louise Erdrich’s identity as a mixed blood, the daughter of a Chippewa mother and a German American father, is at the heart of her writing. The oldest of seven children and the granddaughter of the tribal chair of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, she has stated that her family was typical of Native American families in its telling of stories, and that those stories became a part of her and are reflected in her own work. In her poetry and novels, she explores Native American ideas, ordeals, and delights, with characters representing the European American and Native American sides of her heritage. Erdrich entered Dartmouth College in 1972, the year the Native American Studies Department was formed. The chair of that department was Michael Dorris, who later became her trusted literary collaborator and eventually her husband. Her work at Dartmouth was the beginning of a continuing exploration of her ancestry, the animating influence in her novels. Erdrich frequently weaves stories in nonchronological patterns with multiple narrators. Her characters are multidimensional and entertaining while communicating the positives and negatives of Native American life in the twentieth century. Family relationships, community relationships, issues of assimilation, and the roles of tradition and religion are primary motifs in her novels. Tracks, The Beet Queen, Love Medicine, and The Bingo Palace form a quartet that follows four families living in North Dakota between the early 1930’s and the late 1980’s, exploring the relationships among themselves and within the larger cultures. The novel The Crown of Columbus, written with coauthor Michael Dorris, explores many of the same ideas and is a literary adventure story. In these novels about the search for identity, some of her characters are hopelessly caught between worlds, but most of her characters battle the hurt caused by mixed identities with humor, tenacity, and a will to construct their own sense of identity. The result is some of the most accomplished and popular ethnic fiction 158

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available. The excellence of her work has earned for her numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984, and each of her five novels has achieved The New York Times best-seller list.

Louise Erdrich (Michael Dorris)

The Beet Queen Type of work: Novel First published: 1986 Erdrich’s second novel, The Beet Queen, is centered in the fictional little town of Argus, somewhere in North Dakota. Unlike her other novels of people living on reservations, the characters in this story are mostly European Americans, and those Native Americans who exist have very tenuous ties to their roots and to the reservation that lies just outside the town. Racism,

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poverty, and cultural conflict are not in the foreground in this novel, which makes it different from most novels by Native American authors. Instead, European Americans, Native Americans, and mixed bloods are all in the same economic and cultural situation, and each of them is involved in a search for identity. The prose in The Beet Queen is lyrical and finely crafted, as is evident in the description of Mary Adare, the novel’s central character. Abandoned by a mother who literally vanishes in the air, she builds her identity by developing a solid grounding. She is described as heavy and immovable, and she makes a home for herself in a butcher shop that is described as having thick walls and green, watery light coming through glass block windows. She has found an earthy den, which attaches her to the one thing that will never abandon her—the earth. Her brother, Karl, is her opposite. Thin, flighty, always moving, he is a European American who fits perfectly the archetype of the Native American trickster figure. He is the destroyer, lover of men and women, game-player, and cocreator of the character who ties the main characters of the novel together, his daughter, Dot. Dot is a strong, willful girl who is adored by her mother, a strong, mixed blood Chippewa woman named Celestine, her Aunt Mary, and Walter Pfef, a town leader and her father’s former lover. It is Dot, the Beet Queen in a contest fixed by Pfef, who brings together the web of characters who are otherwise loosely joined in fragile relationships. During the Beet Celebration in which she is to be crowned, her father returns. Pfef, Celestine, and Mary are also there, and Russell, Celestine’s paralyzed war-hero brother, is the centerpiece of a float honoring veterans. Mary’s vain cousin, Sita, is also there, although she is dead. When the day is over, the circle of family is complete. Poetic and graceful, The Beet Queen is widely recognized as one of Erdrich’s finest accomplishments.

Love Medicine Type of work: Novel First published: 1984 A dazzling meld of Native American storytelling and postmodern literary craft, Erdrich’s first novel, Love Medicine, was an immediate success. It quickly made the best-seller lists and gathered an impressive group of awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award for best first novel, the Virginia McCormack Scully Prize for best book of 1984 dealing with Indians or Chicanos, the American Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times award for best novel of the year. Sad and funny, realistic and lyrical, mystical and down-to-earth, the novel tells the story of three generations of four Chippewa and mixed-blood

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families—the Kashpaws, Morriseys, Lamartines, and Lazarres—from the 1930’s to the 1980’s. Seven separate narrators tell their own stories in a discontinuous time line, each a puzzle piece of its own, but by the novel’s end there is one story, one jigsaw puzzle picture of lost identities and the often humorous but always meaningful efforts of a fragmented people to hold on to what is left to them. The characters in Love Medicine experience individual forms of alienation caused by physical and emotional separation from the communal root of their existence. They contend with the United States government and its policies of allotment and commodities; the Catholic Church, which makes no allowances for the Chippewas’ traditional religion; and with the seductive pull of life off the reservation, a life that cuts them off from the community whose traditions keep them centered and give them a sense of their identities. These three factors place the characters under the constant threat of loss of their culture. Erdrich makes this clear, but she presents the lives of her Native American characters as human experiences that readers who have no background in Native American cultures can readily understand. The three generations of characters in Love Medicine surface as human beings who deal with an unfair world with strength, frailty, love, anger, and most of all, a sense of humor.

Where I Ought to Be Type of work: Essay First published: 1988 In the essay Where I Ought to Be: A Writer’s Sense of Place, Erdrich explores the ways in which a sense of place changes the ways in which people think of themselves. Using examples from American authors of the last hundred and fifty years, she carefully compares and contrasts the approaches of European Americans and of Native Americans to a sense of place. She begins the essay with a description of the Tewa Pueblo people’s creation story. In that narrative, Grandmother Spider shows the people the Sandia Mountains and tells them the mountains are their home. Erdrich explains that the Tewa listening to that story would be living in the place where their ancestors lived, and the story would be a personal story and a collective story, told among lifelong friends and relatives. In contrast with this view of a timeless, stable world, that of pre-invasion Native American cultures, Erdrich suggests that European American writers are invested in establishing a historical narrative for their landscapes. European American writers are interested in recording place, even predicting destruction, before their world changes again. Erdrich proposes that the threat of destruction of place, such as in the extreme case of nuclear obliteration, may be one reason that writers catalog

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and describe landscapes so thoroughly. She takes the reader into a world of complete destruction, where nothing is left, and then she asks the reader to consider that this unthinkable thing has actually happened to the Native American population. “Many Native American cultures were annihilated more thoroughly than even a nuclear disaster might destroy ours, and others live on with the fallout of that destruction, effects as persistent as radiation—poverty, fetal alcohol syndrome, chronic despair.” She points out that because of this, Native American writers have a different task. They “must tell the stories of contemporary survivors while protecting and celebrating the cores of cultures left in the wake of catastrophe.” She ends her essay with a description of her own sense of place, the area of North Dakota where she lived as a child. She points out that it is truly knowing a place that provides the link between details and meaning. A sense of place is, then, at the foundation of a sense of identity.

Suggested readings Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Bartlett, Mary, ed. The New Native American Novel: Works in Progress. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Beck, Peggy V., and Anna Lee Walters. The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life. Tsaile, Ariz.: Navajo Community College Press, 1977. Beidler, Peter G., and Gay Barton. A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. Chamberlin, J. E. The Harrowing of Eden: White Attitudes Toward Native Americans. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Coltelli, Laura. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Erdrich, Louise, and Michael Dorris. “On Native Ground: An Interview with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.” Interview by Sharon White and Glenda Burnside. Bloomsbury Review 8, no. 4 (1988): 16-18. Hobson, Geary, ed. The Remembered Earth. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981. Ortiz, Alfonso. The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Rainwater, Catherine. “Reading Between Worlds: Narrativity in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich.” American Literature 62 (1990): 405-422. —Jacquelyn Kilpatrick

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset Born: Snow Hill, New Jersey; April 27, 1882 Died: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; April 30, 1961 Fauset’s fiction depicts an unusual perspective of middle-class African American life.

Traditions: African American Principal works: There Is Confusion, 1924; Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral, 1929; The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life, 1931; Comedy, American Style, 1933 Jessie Fauset, believing that black writers could more accurately depict their race, wrote to “put the best foot of the race forward.” Writing about the people she knew—the middle class—Fauset presents images different from those of other New Negro novelists of the Harlem Renaissance. In Fauset’s first novel, There Is Confusion, the main character, Joanna Marshall, daughter of middle-class parents, believes that African Americans “can do everything anybody else can.” Only after experiencing discrimination in her attempt to become a dancer does she realize the problems posed by race. Joanna, her boyfriend Peter Bye, and a neighbor, Maggie Ellersley, overcome the difficulties of race, family, and class distinctions; Joanna’s initial belief is affirmed by the novel’s end. The characters, and by extension all African Americans, can triumph in spite of the hardships they have endured. In her second novel, Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral, Fauset complicates the race issue by creating characters light enough to pass for white. The protagonist, Angela Murray, also from a middle-class family, grows up observing her mother occasionally pass. In order to realize her dreams of becoming an artist, Angela passes, which has its consequences. By denying her only sister, Virginia, Angela is isolated from family. Rejected by her boyfriend, Roger, because they are not of the same economic class, Angela learns that being white does not ensure happiness. When Rachel, a black art student, is denied a scholarship to study abroad, Angela turns down her own prize and acknowledges her race. The novel ends with a happier, wiser Angela continuing her art training in Paris. Revealing the problems facing African Americans who pass, Fauset suggests that values are more important than race. In her final novel, Comedy: American Style, Fauset examines the consequences of color consciousness within the family. The color-obsessed Olivia Blanchard marries Dr. Christopher Cary because he is also light enough to 163

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pass. They have three children, Teresa, Christopher, Jr., and Oliver, whose lives are affected by their mother’s obsession. Teresa marries a Frenchman she does not love. Oliver, who is too dark to pass and is therefore mistreated by his mother, commits suicide. Christopher, Jr., survives and marries a blond, blue-eyed black woman. When the novel ends, Olivia is in Europe while her family seeks to recover from her mania. In her novels, Fauset explores the problems of identity through characters who triumph by accepting their race, class, and gender.

The Chinaberry Tree Type of work: Novel First published: 1931 The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life, Fauset’s third novel, is her attempt to illustrate that “to be a Negro in America posits a dramatic situation.” Believing that fate plays an important role in the lives of blacks and whites, Fauset depicts the domestic lives of African Americans who are not struggling with the harsh realities of day-to-day existence. The Chinaberry Tree relates the story of two cousins, Laurentine Strange and Melissa Paul. Because Laurentine is the product of an illicit romantic relationship between a former slave and her master, Laurentine accepts the community’s opinion that she has “bad blood.” Rejection from a male suitor reinforces her feelings of inadequacy and propels her to further isolation from the community. The young Melissa, although the daughter of an adulterous relationship between Judy Strange and Sylvester Forten, believes herself superior. Sent to Red Brook to live with her relatives, Melissa meets and falls in love with Malory Forten, who, unknown to her, is her half brother. The “drama” of the novel is the exploration of both women’s responses to being innocent victims of fate. Laurentine overcomes her feelings of inadequacy, and Melissa learns that she too is a product of “bad blood.” The Chinaberry Tree is also Fauset’s attempt to prove that African Americans are not so vastly different from any other American. To illustrate this, Fauset creates characters such as Dr. Stephen Denleigh (whom Laurentine eventually marries) and Mrs. Ismay and Mrs. Brown, wives of prominent physicians, who enjoy the leisurely pursuits of bridge and whist and travel to Newark or Atlantic City to view moving pictures or to shop. There are also their offspring, children who attend private schools, enjoy winter sports, and have servants. Fauset’s characters are not very different in their daily lives from financially comfortable whites. Fauset’s characters experience the joys and sorrows of love. Sarah’s and Colonel Halloway’s was a forbidden love; they were denied marriage because of the times in which they lived. He could not marry Sarah, but Colonel Halloway provided a comfortable home for Sarah and Laurentine. Although

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Laurentine experiences rejection by her first suitor, she attains love and happiness after she learns to accept herself. Melissa, who cannot marry Malory, is loved by Asshur Lane, someone she initially rejects because he aspires to be a farmer. Fauset argues that the African American is “endowed with the stuff of which chronicles may be made.” In this novel Fauset addresses issues of identity in terms of race and social standing amid the disorder of her characters’ daily lives.

Suggested readings Feeney, Joseph. “Greek Tragic Patterns in a Black Novel: Jessie Fauset’s The Chinaberry Tree.” CLA Journal 18 (December, 1974): 211-215. Lupton, Mary. “Bad Blood in Jersey: Jessie Fauset’s The Chinaberry Tree.” CLA Journal 27 ( June, 1984): 383-392. Sylvander, Carolyn. Jessie Redmon Fauset: Black American Writer. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston, 1981. Wall, Cheryl. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. —Paula C. Barnes

Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein Born: Brooklyn, New York; June 6, 1954

Fierstein’s work challenges assumptions regarding the lives of gay and bisexual Americans. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Torch Song Trilogy, pr. 1979, pb. 1981; La Cage aux Folles, pr. 1983 Harvey Fierstein’s 1981 trio of one-act plays titled Torch Song Trilogy successfully introduced gay characters to the American stage without apology. The central character, Arnold Becker, is a drag queen with a desire to live a life consistent with the American Dream. He wants to secure a loving family life and sees no reason why he should be denied the opportunity of creating one simply because of his sexual orientation. The uniqueness of the play’s statement lies in the fact that the work was premiered at the end of the sexual revolution of the 1970’s, when gay life was viewed by many as simply a series of casual encounters. Americans seemed content with a view of gays as emotional children who lived strange, uncommitted lives. Fierstein’s characters challenge this view. The son of a handkerchief manufacturer and a librarian, Fierstein grew up in a tight family unit that accepted his gayness. His first encounters with the lifestyle were through family friends who shared long-term, committed relationships. These were his role models, who helped him develop his somewhat conservative view of gay life. Fierstein’s reworking of the popular French film La Cage aux Folles (1978) is another example of the playwright’s ability to present fully developed gay characters for mixed audiences. Fierstein received a Tony Award for the best book for a musical in 1984. The musical enjoyed a long run in the United States and abroad. Like Torch Song Trilogy, the play is an old-fashioned love story espousing the virtues of family and commitment. Fierstein’s writing style is a fusion of his several identities. His work is distinguished by a mixture of Jewish and gay humor interspersed with poignant self-revelation. It is this combination that has endeared him to straight and gay audiences. Through laughter and dramatic truth, his characters are able to tap the human thread that brings all people together. Although best known as a playwright, Fierstein is also an actor who has played various roles on stage, on national television, and in film, most notably as Frank, the gay brother in the film Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). In addition to his 166

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work as an artist, Fierstein is active in various gay rights organizations and devotes considerable time and energy as an activist for causes relating to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Torch Song Trilogy Type of work: Drama First produced: 1979; first published, 1981 Torch Song Trilogy is Fierstein’s groundbreaking portrait of a gay man’s struggle for respect and love in a homophobic world. The play, comprising three one acts titled “International Stud,” “Fugue in a Nursery,” and “Widows and Children First,” chronicles the journey of the central character, Arnold Becker, from a life of transitory sexual encounters with strangers in the back rooms of New York’s gay bars to his insistence on relationships based on commitment, respect, and love. In the first play, “International Stud,” Arnold meets Ed Reiss in a gay bar. For Arnold, the encounter offers the possibility of an honest relationship that will put an end to his loneliness. Ed, however, sees his meeting with Arnold as simply a one-night stand and returns to his developing relationship with Laurel. He describes himself as bisexual but chooses to hide his homosexuality for fear of public opinion. Ed attempts to terminate the relationship but finds himself returning to Arnold and is even able to acknowledge his love for Arnold. Arnold, however, cannot accept an undercover and uncommitted relationship and finally walks away. “International Stud” presents the reader with two characters who are at different places regarding their understanding of themselves. Arnold is comfortable with himself as a gay man and is in search of a lover who is also a friend. Ed, however, is in denial as to his sexuality and, therefore, incapable of giving himself to anyone as either friend or lover. “Fugue in a Nursery” takes place one year after “International Stud.” By this time Ed and Arnold have what each wanted; Arnold has Alan, an eighteen-year-old model, and Ed is involved in a relationship with Laurel. The action of the play takes place on an oversized bed. Arnold and Alan have been invited to spend a weekend with Ed and Laurel. In a brilliantly written series of overlapping lines and interwoven actions, the playwright demonstrates the confusion of each character as he or she attempts to resolve the conflict between what one has and what one wants. It becomes clear that none of the characters has found all that he or she was seeking. In Alan, however, Arnold has found someone who loves and respects him. “Fugue in a Nursery” continues the argument of “International Stud.” It clearly demonstrates that one cannot give love until one has learned to love oneself. Alan and Arnold have a better chance of building a solid relationship because each is aware of who he is and can, therefore, be honest with the

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other. Ed, however, can talk to Laurel about his confusions but cannot confront the truth of his attraction to and preference for Arnold. The final play in the trilogy, “Widows and Children First,” takes place five years after the preceding play. Arnold has lost Alan to a mob of gay-bashers and is currently in the process of adopting David, a gay teenager. Ed’s marriage to Laurel has failed, and he is temporarily staying with Arnold. The action of the play centers around a visit from Arnold’s recently widowed mother and her inability to accept her son’s need for love and the security of a family. Although she is aware of Arnold’s lifestyle, she does not accept it. She is insulted when he compares his suffering at the death of Alan to her loss of her husband, and she questions the morality of a gay man rearing a child. A series of arguments ensues, and Arnold states that his mother is unwelcome in his life unless she can respect him and the validity of his feelings and desires. She leaves. David affirms his love for his soon-to-be father, and Ed finally confronts the truth of his desire to be with Arnold. Torch Song Trilogy addresses the issue of gay identity and asks its audience to deal with the broader questions of honesty and respect regardless of sexual preference or lifestyle.

Suggested readings Kroll, Jack. “His Heart Is Young and Gay.” Newsweek, June 13, 1983, 36. Winn, Steven. “Anything but a Drag: Gay Theater Takes New Directions and More Risks.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 9, 2000, DAT 33. —Don Evans

Rudolph Fisher

Rudolph Fisher Born: Washington, D.C.; May 9, 1897 Died: New York, New York; December 26, 1934 Fisher depicts the layers of Harlem life during the 1920’s with humor, wit, and satirical grace. Traditions: African American Principal works: “The City of Refuge,” 1925; The Walls of Jericho, 1928; The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem, 1932 Rudolph Fisher was educated in the arts and sciences. His first short story, “The City of Refuge,” was published while Fisher was in medical school, and throughout his life he maintained careers as a doctor and as a writer of fiction and medical research. For all his medical degrees, Fisher wanted to be known as a writer who could interpret Harlem life. Little seemed to have escaped his vision and analysis. He saw Harlem as a vast canvas upon which he painted characters from several different levels of life. There were the “rats,” a Harlem term for the working class; the “dickties,” which was Harlemese for upper-class aspirants to white values; Pullman porters; gangsters; barbers; pool hall owners; doctors; lawyers; misguided white liberals; and white celebrants and aspirants to Harlem culture. In the novel The Walls of Jericho, Fisher brings all of the economic, racial, and political strata of Harlem together at the annual costume ball. The dickties and the rats mingle with whites who are in search of what they think is black bohemia. The dance hall setting that Fisher enlivens in The Walls of Jericho was modeled after the Harlem cabarets and nightclubs he frequented. Fisher achieved remarkable balance between the medical and artistic worlds. His short stories were published in national magazines in which other Harlem Renaissance writers could not publish. The Walls of Jericho was well received. The detective novel The Conjure-Man Dies was hailed as a first. From 1929 to 1934, Fisher was a hospital superintendent, a roentgenologist, a first lieutenant in the medical division of the 369th Infantry, and a lecturer at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Fisher seemed to know that working-class blacks in Harlem led lives that were far removed from the artistic renaissance popularized by intellectuals. In such short stories as “The City of Refuge” and “Vestiges, Harlem Sketches,” he sympathetically depicts the struggles of many who have come from the South and who are disappointed or tricked by the fast, indifferent ways of the city. Characters such as Jinx Jenkins, Bubber Brown, and Joshua “Shine” 169

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Jones in The Walls of Jericho are subject to the competition and physical dangers of furniture moving. A maid in The Walls of Jericho is viewed by her white employer as slightly better than most blacks because of her light skin. In 1934, Fisher died of cancer caused by X-ray exposure. A retinue of Harlem artists, including Countée Cullen and Noble Sissle, joined Fisher’s wife and son to mourn the loss of one of Harlem’s visionaries.

The Conjure-Man Dies Type of work: Novel First published: 1932 In The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem, Fisher combines his talent and comedic wit with his knowledge of medicine to produce the first-known detective novel by an African American. Fisher introduces a variety of Harlem characters, including Jinx Jenkins and Bubber Brown, unemployed furniture movers who also appear in The Walls of Jericho (1928). Other characters include John Archer, the doctor who helps Harlem police solve the murder. The complex plot highlights characters and settings popularized in Fisher’s works. When Jinx and Bubber discover the murdered conjure man, they become suspects with several others: a numbers-runner, Spider Webb, who works in Harlem’s illegal lottery system; a drug addict named Doty Hicks; a railroad worker; and a church worker. Mr. Crouch, mortician and owner of the building in which the conjure man is a tenant, and Crouch’s wife Martha are quickly dismissed as suspects. When the corpse disappears and reappears as the live conjure man, Archer and Detective Dart know that there has been a murder but are unable to find the corpse. The conjure man is seen burning a body in the furnace. The body is of his servant, who was mistakenly killed instead of the conjure man. The conjure man adamantly insists he is innocent and helps to set a trap for the real murderer, but the conjure man is fatally shot by the railroad worker. Distraught that he has killed her lover, Martha assaults the railroad man, and all discover he is none other than the avenging Mr. Crouch, in disguise. The detective story framework of The Conjure-Man Dies does not overshadow Fisher’s depiction of several issues of Harlem life. Residents of Harlem resort to creative means to survive as the Depression makes their difficult economic situations worse. Bubber becomes a self-appointed detective for spouses who suspect their partners are being unfaithful. The numbers racket provides a living for many, including the conjure man. African Americans who are “firsts” to achieve a specific rank are under pressure to prove themselves worthy. Such is the case for detective Dart, who privately thanks Dr. Archer for promising that the city administration will be informed that Dart solved the murder.

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Although Fisher’s development of the hard-boiled character may have been influenced by the detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, his most remarkable character is the conjure man, N’Gana Frimbo, a Harvard-educated West African king who imparts the traditions of his culture to Dr. Archer. Frimbo reflects Fisher’s interest in the connections among blacks in Harlem, the Caribbean, and Africa. In the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, Fisher creates a new path with The Conjure-Man Dies, one that would influence later writers such as Chester Himes and Walter Mosley.

Suggested readings De Jongh, James. Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Gloster, Hugh M. Negro Voices in American Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948. Gosselin, Adrienne Johnson. “The World Would Do Better to Ask ‘Why Is Frimbo Sherlock Holmes?’” African American Review 32 (Winter, 1998): 607. Kramer, Victor, ed. The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined. New York: AMS Press, 1987. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. —Australia Tarver

Charles Fuller

Charles Fuller Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; March 5, 1939

Fuller has helped break a long tradition of stereotyping blacks, especially black men, in literature. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Village: A Party, pr. 1968; An Untitled Play, pr. 1970; In My Many Names and Days, pr. 1972; The Candidate, pr. 1974; First Love, pr. 1974; In the Deepest Part of Sleep, pr. 1974; The Lay Out Letter, pr. 1975; The Brownsville Raid, pr. 1976; Sparrow in Flight, pr. 1978; Zooman and the Sign, pr. 1980, pb. 1982; A Soldier’s Play, pr. 1981, pb. 1982; Sally, pr. 1988; Prince, pr. 1988 (Sally and Prince performed together as We, 1989); Jonquil, pr. 1990 Charles Fuller wrote and produced his first play, The Village: A Party, in 1968. His place as a significant and talented playwright in contemporary African American theater is marked by an impressive number of dramas, among them Zooman and the Sign, for which he received two Obie Awards for best play and best playwright in 1980, and A Soldier’s Play, which received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play, the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and a film contract in 1984. Fuller was reared in comfortable circumstances in an extended family of many foster children in North Philadelphia. He attended a Roman Catholic high school with his lifelong friend, Larry Neal, and attended Villanova University from 1956 to 1958. After a four-year hiatus in the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea, he returned to complete his undergraduate studies at LaSalle College from 1965 to 1968. Fuller began writing short stories, poetry, and essays in the 1960’s in Philadelphia mostly at night after working various daytime jobs. His interest in literature, largely a result of assuming the responsibility of proofreading his father’s print jobs, began early and served as the fertile source for a formal writing career, which developed from his short stories long after he began writing. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier’s Play, a number of his best-known plays have been produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, notably The Brownsville Raid, Zooman and the Sign, and the We plays. As a social reformer, Fuller is concerned with brushing away deeply rooted stereotypes and uprooting preconceptions in order to explore the complexities of human relationships—particularly black-white relationships in America—and rectify the portrayals that distort African Americans, especially the black male. Critical of black hatred for and treatment of other blacks, Fuller 172

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is just as critical of the negative portrayal of the black male by the white media. Convinced that the stage is a powerful medium that can effectively rectify the stereotyped image of blacks shaped by white media, Fuller combined the mystery genre with his knowledge of the military structure of the U.S. Army to expose some of the real conflicts of white and black, and of black and black in America.

A Soldier’s Play Type of work: Drama First produced: 1981; first published, 1982 A Soldier’s Play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1982, is a murder mystery in which Fuller examines many social issues and poses provocative questions. The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, with a citation for best American play. The screenplay adaptation, A Soldier’s Story (1984), which Fuller wrote, garnered an Academy Award nomination for adapted screenplay. A play in two acts, A Soldier’s Play examines and evaluates the causes of oppression of African Americans and the obstacles to their advancement. Unlike Fuller’s two other award-winning plays, The Brownsville Raid (1976) and Zooman and the Sign (1979), A Soldier’s Play has no particular, actual historical source. The play very realistically describes, however, the complex social issues that pervade his work: institutional, systemic racism in the U.S. Army during World War II; race relations; black genocide and the search for the meaning and definition of blackness in America; the meaning of democracy and the place of African Americans in it; and what it means to be black in a racially biased society. Outside a segregated U.S. Army camp in Tynin, Louisiana, during World War II, a tyrannical technical sergeant, Vernon Waters, is murdered. The local brass has succeeded in playing down the murder until a Howard-trained attorney, Captain Davenport, is sent by Washington, D.C., to investigate the case. Initially assumed to be racially motivated, the murder’s prime suspects are the white townspeople. The Ku Klux Klan is the first suspect, then two white officers. Davenport’s thorough investigation, conducted in an atmosphere of racial hostility, mistrust on all sides, and condescension, leads to a surprising discovery of the murderer and the motives for the murder. The murderer is Private Peterson, the least-likely suspect. Strong, outspoken, and opinionated, Peterson faces off with Waters, whose militant agenda for black destiny causes the innocent, naïve C. J. to commit suicide. Waters’s heinous, sinister, and obsessive master plan to cleanse the black race of “geeches” such as C. J. meets its match in Peterson’s own calculated perspective of how to refashion the black image. Mutual hatred eventually leads to murder, not before, however, Waters realizes the flaw in

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his inhumane master plan, grieves his obsession with blackness, and challenges the source of his misdirected self-justifying posture. In focusing on the character of Waters rather than on the murder or the murderer, Fuller is able to engage and address the major causes and effects of the race problem, particularly the psychological. The play indicts all of the characters—white and black, except C. J.—for racially motivated violence informed by pervasive prejudice and dangerous stereotypical assumptions.

Suggested readings Anadolu-Okur, Nigun. Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller. New York: Garland, 1997. Carter, Steven R. “The Detective as Solution: Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play.” Clues 12, no. 1 (Spring-Summer, 1991): 33-42. Demastes, William W. Beyond Naturalism: A New Realism in American Theater. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988. Harriot, Esther. American Voices: Contemporary Playwrights in Essays and Interviews. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988. Hughes, Linda, and Howard Faulkner. “The Roles of Detection in A Soldier’s Play.” Clues 7, no. 2 (Fall/Winter, 1986): 83-97. —Pamela J. Olubunmi Smith

Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines Born: Oscar, Louisiana; January 15, 1933

Gaines’s regionalist short stories and novels are distinguished contributions to modern African American fiction. Traditions: African American Principal works: Catherine Carmier, 1964; Of Love and Dust, 1967; Bloodline, 1968; The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, 1971; In My Father’s House, 1978; A Gathering of Old Men, 1983; A Lesson Before Dying, 1993 Born on a southern Louisiana plantation, Ernest J. Gaines was raised by a disabled aunt who became the model for the strong women in his works, including Miss Jane Pittman. There was no high school for Gaines to attend, so he left Louisiana in 1948 to live with relatives in California, where he suffered from the effects of his displacement. Displacement—caused by racism, by Cajuns’ acquisition of land, or by loss of community ties—is a major theme for Gaines. Young Gaines discovered works by John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Anton Chekhov, who wrote about the land. Not finding acceptable literary depictions of African Americans, Gaines resolved to write stories illuminating the lives and identities of his people. After completing military service, he earned a degree in English, published his first short stories, and received a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. Gaines rejected California as a subject for fiction, chose southern Louisiana as his major setting, and, like the Southern literary giant Faulkner, invented his own county. Catherine Carmier, an uneven apprentice novel, is the first of Gaines’s works revealing Louisiana’s physical beauty and folk speech. Receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Gaines published Of Love and Dust, inspired by a blues song about an African American who escapes prison by doing hard labor on a Louisiana plantation. This and other works by Gaines are not protest fiction, but they are concerned with human rights, justice, and equality. Years of listening to the conversations of plantation folk led Gaines to employ multiple narrators in “Just Like a Tree” in Bloodline, a short-story collection. He also employs the technique in A Gathering of Old Men, which gives new form to another favorite theme, the achievement of manhood. Twelve elderly African American men, after a lifetime of passivity, stand up against ruthless Cajuns and rednecks who have mistreated them, taken over 175

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Ernest J. Gaines (Jerry Bauer)

their farmland, and threatened to destroy their past, represented by family homes and graveyards. In Gaines’s somber moral drama, A Lesson Before Dying, an African American teacher who has difficulty being a man in his segregated society learns to love. He helps to humanize an illiterate teenager wrongly condemned for murder and to convince the boy to die courageously. With a firmer personal and racial identity, the teacher becomes dedicated to educating young African Americans.

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Gaines has served as a teacher in his position as writer-in-residence at a Louisiana university. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the MacArthur Foundation.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Type of work: Novel First published: 1971 In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman the heroine and many African Americans in south Louisiana move from passivity to heroic assertion and achieve a new identity. Gaines’s best-known novel is not an autobiography but a first-person reminiscence of a fictional 110-year-old former slave whose memories extend from the Emancipation Proclamation to Martin Luther King, Jr. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman tells her unschooled but adept version of state and national occurrences and personalities (Huey Long, the flood of 1927, the rise of black athletes such as Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis). Her version of history is given to a tape-recording young schoolteacher who wants historical facts; Jane helps him to understand the dynamics of living history, the way she remembers it. Her accounts are loving, sane, and responsible. Her language—speech patterns and pronunciations—is authentic, since Gaines read interviews with former slaves. Renamed Jane Brown by a Union soldier because Ticey (her original name) is “a slave name,” Jane wears her new designation proudly, as a badge of her identity as a free woman, when she and other former slaves attempt to escape from Louisiana. Many of them are brutally murdered by Klansmen. Jane, who is about ten at the time, escapes along with a small orphan, Ned. Jane becomes Ned’s mother and during Reconstruction she raises him when they settle on another plantation as field hands. Ned receives some schooling and as a teenager is involved in civil rights struggles. His life in danger, Ned escapes to Kansas. Jane chooses to remain in Louisiana. Ned represents the first of three African American males in Jane’s life who struggle to define their racial and personal identities. The second is Joe Pittman, with whom Jane lives after Ned leaves. Joe loves Jane and wants her with him even though she is barren as a result of childhood beatings. He finds personal fulfillment in breaking wild horses on a Texas ranch; he accepts danger and the risk of death unflinchingly. Like Ned, who is murdered after he returns to Louisiana and sets up a school for black children, Joe is also killed fulfilling his destiny. Ned describes his identity as that of a black American who cares, and will always struggle. With these men, Jane finds a personal identity as a woman and demonstrates her desire to work with her black men but not to control them. When Jimmy, a young civil rights worker much loved by Jane and others,

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is murdered, Jane—age 110—goes into the nearby town to drink from the segregated water fountain at the courthouse. She moves from the safety of silence and obscurity to join the ranks of African Americans who assert themselves and who risk losing their homes and lives but gain courage, dignity, and a heroic identity.

Suggested readings Babb, Valerie. Ernest Gaines. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Bryant, Jerry H. “Ernest J. Gaines: Change, Growth, and History.” Southern Review 10 (October, 1984): 851-864. Lowe, John, ed. Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Rowell, Charles H. “The Quarters: Ernest Gaines and the Sense of Place.” Southern Review 21 (1985): 733-750. Simpson, Anne K. A Gathering of Gaines. Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1991. —Philip A. Tapley

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg Born: Newark, New Jersey; June 3, 1926 Died: New York, New York; April 5, 1997 Ginsberg helped inaugurate major literary, social, and cultural changes in the post-World War II United States through his role as one of the members of the Beat generation. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Howl, 1956; Kaddish and Other Poems, 1961; The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971, 1972; Death and Fame: Poems, 1993-1997, 1999; Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays, 1952-1995, 2000 Allen Ginsberg’s earliest literary influences were his childhood experiences among the politically disenfranchised: socialists, communists, the working class, Russians, and Jews. His mother, Naomi, a teacher, was a Russian Jewish immigrant whose family was active in the Communist Party. Louis, his father, a teacher and poet, was a child of Russian Jewish immigrants and was active in the Socialist Party. Ginsberg’s earliest ambition was to become a labor lawyer. As Ginsberg grew older, his concerns for class inequities continued, even when he decided to give up law school for literary ambitions. In college he became less inclined to hide his homosexuality, and in his writing he increasingly sought to legitimize gay and bisexual experience. These identities—socialist, communist, gay, bisexual—are most fully realized in Howl, a major poem that broke the hegemony of the impersonal, academic poetry that had dominated much of the century. The poem eulogizes “the best minds” of the era, those Allen Ginsberg (George Holmes) imprisoned or driven mad by 179

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their resistance to the sexual and political uniformity of postwar American capitalist culture. In 1957, Howl was seized by San Francisco authorities and declared obscene. Ginsberg won the subsequent trial, the first of his many encounters with political and legal establishments. In 1965 he was expelled from Cuba and Czechoslovakia because of his adamant support for gay civil rights in those countries. His later poetry, including The Fall of America and Plutonian Ode (1982), is influenced by his work in the United States in support of gay rights, the peace movement, freedom of speech, and drug decriminalization. Ginsberg’s career was marked by the convergence of Western and Eastern religious practices. He took vows as a Tibetan Buddhist in 1972. In 1974, he cofounded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world.

Howl Type of work: Poetry First published: 1956 The protagonists of Howl, Ginsberg’s best-known book, are marginalized because of their rejection of, or failure to measure up to, the social, religious, and sexual values of American capitalism. The poem “Howl,” central to the book, is divided into three sections. Part 1 eulogizes “the best minds of my generation,” whose individual battles with social, religious, and sexual uniformity leave them “destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.” Ginsberg said that his use of the long line in Howl, inspired by Walt Whitman, is an attempt to “free speech for emotional expression.” The poem is structured to give voice to those otherwise silenced by the dominant culture, to produce from their silence a “cry that shivers the cities down to the last radio.” Part 2 focuses on Moloch, the god for whom parents burned their children in sacrifice. Moloch symbolizes the physical and psychological effects of American capitalism. From America’s “mind” of “pure machinery” emerges Moloch’s military-industrial complex, whose bomb threatens to destroy the world. Part 3 is structured as a call-and-response litany, specifically directed to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met in 1949 when both were committed to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. Solomon, to whom the poem is dedicated, represents the postwar counterculture, all of those whose “madness basically is rebellion against Moloch.” The addendum to the poem, “Footnote to Howl,” celebrates the holy cleansing that follows the apocalyptic confrontation dramatized in the poem. Ginsberg termed crucial those elements of the poem that specifically describe the gay and bisexual practices of his protagonists as “saintly” and

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“ecstatic.” Drawing from Ginsberg’s experiences as a gay man in the sexually conformist 1940’s and 1950’s, the poem affirms gay eroticism as a natural form of sexual expression, replacing, as he said, “vulgar stereotype with a statement of act.” The sexual explicitness of the poem prompted the San Francisco police to seize Howl and to charge Ginsberg’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, with obscenity. The judge in the case found the book to be “not obscene” because of its “redeeming social importance.” The Howl case remains a landmark victory for freedom of expression in the twentieth century.

Kaddish Type of work: Poetry First published: 1961 Kaddish is Ginsberg’s elegy for his mother, Naomi. In Kaddish Ginsberg portrays the course of Naomi’s mental illness and its effect on the extended Ginsberg family. The perceptions of Ginsberg, the narrator, are crucial to understanding how sexual and religious themes of identity work in the poem. Naomi’s worsening condition coincides with Ginsberg’s realization as a young boy that he is gay, and with his emerging discomfort with traditional American religious institutions. Invoking both “prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem” and “the Buddhist Book of Answers,” section 1 remembers Naomi’s childhood. Naomi passes through major American cultural institutions—school, work, marriage—all of which contribute to her illness. Section 2 details her descent into madness and its harrowing effects on the family. Throughout the poem, Ginsberg seeks rescue from Naomi’s madness, yet recognizes that her condition also inspires his own critique of the United States. “Naomi’s mad idealism” frightens him; it also helps him understand the sinister qualities of middle-class American institutions. As he admits Naomi’s condition caused him sexual confusion, he also confers imaginative inspiration to her. She is the “glorious muse that bore me from the womb, gave suck/ first mystic life”; and it was from her “pained/ head I first took vision.” Unlike Naomi, the truly mad in Kaddish are those incapable of compassion, such as the psychiatric authorities who brutalize Naomi with electroshock treatments, leaving her “tortured and beaten in the skull.” By the end of Kaddish, Ginsberg seeks to redeem Naomi’s life according to the Eastern and Western religious traditions which inform the poem. The final sections of Kaddish seek to transform the trauma of Naomi’s illness into sacred poetry. The key to this transformation is Ginsberg’s revision of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. The Kaddish was not said at Naomi’s grave because the required minimum of ten Jewish adults—a minyan, in traditional Judaism—was not present, as required by Jewish law. Therefore, the poem accomplishes what Naomi’s original mourners could not: Ginsberg eulogizes

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Naomi with his Kaddish, and by doing so he offers his own revision of traditional Judaic law.

Suggested readings Caveney, Graham. Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Hyde, Lewis, ed. On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Portugés, Paul. The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Ross-Erikson, 1978. Rosenthal, M. L. The New Poets: American and British Poetry Since World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion: A Critical Biography of Allen Ginsberg. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Tonkinson, Carol, ed. Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. Tytell, John. Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. —Tony Trigilio

Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni (Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr.) Born: Knoxville, Tennessee; June 7, 1943

Giovanni’s works have earned critical acclaim and have remained in print in an era when poetry typically does not sell. Traditions: African American Principal works: Black Feeling, Black Talk, 1968; Black Judgement, 1970; Re:Creation, 1970; Gemini, 1971; Spin a Soft Black Song: Poems for Children, 1971; My House, 1972; Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People, 1973; The Women and the Men, 1975; Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, 1978; Vacation Time: Poems for Children, 1980; Those Who Ride the Night Winds, 1983; Sacred Cows and Other Edibles, 1988; Racism 101: A Collection of Essays, 1994; Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, 1996; Love Poems, 1997; Blues: For All the Changes, 1999 When Nikki Giovanni began, in journal publications and readings, to appear on the literary scene in the late 1960’s, she was hailed as one of its most noted black poets. Critics praised her work for its themes of militancy, black pride, and revolution. The majority of poems in her volumes, however, address themes such as love, family, and friendship. Her militant poems received more attention, however, and they reflected Giovanni’s own activism. It is then, arguably, not accurate when critics argue that Giovanni abandoned the cause of black militancy when, in the 1970’s, her poems became more personal. The change was not as marked as some believed. Giovanni’s work took on a different perspective in 1970, when she became a mother. That year she published Re:Creation, whose themes are black female identity and motherhood. In My House, Giovanni more clearly addresses issues of family, love, and a twofold perspective on life, which is revealed in the two divisions of the book. With poems about the “inside” and “outside,” Giovanni acknowledges the importance of not only the personal but also the world at large. Another dimension of this two-part unity is seen in The Women and the Men. Giovanni’s poetry, over time, also seems to have undergone another change—an increased awareness of the outside world. Giovanni’s poetry since 1978 reflects her interest in the human condition. The poems become more meditative, more introspective, and eventually more hopeful as they focus upon life’s realities. Examined as a whole, Giovanni’s work reveals concerns for identity, self-exploration, and self-realization. These 183

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concerns also appear in her works of other genres: recorded poetry, read to music; children’s poetry, which she wrote to present positive images to black children; and essays. Giovanni’s most consistent theme is the continual, evolving exploration of personal identity and individualism amid familial, social, and political realities.

Black Feeling, Black Talk Type of work: Poetry First published: 1968 Although Giovanni’s reputation as a revolutionary poet is based upon this work, fewer than half of its poems address the theme of revolution. Critics point to often quoted incendiary poems in this collection to indicate Giovanni’s revolutionary stance. They also note the poems about political figures and poems addressing black identity to illustrate Giovanni’s militancy. These poems are important in this volume, but they are not Giovanni’s sole concern. What has been overlooked are the highly personal poems. In tallying the themes that appear in this work, it becomes apparent that love, loss, and loneliness are important to Giovanni. She also writes personal tributes and reminiscences to those who helped shape her life and ideology. Then there are Giovanni’s personal responses to political events. She mourns the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. She states that the 1960’s were one long funeral day. She also notes atrocities in Germany, Vietnam, and Israel and compares them to 1960’s America. Black Feeling, Black Talk, then, is a compilation of political and personal poetry. Amid calls for revolution and afNikki Giovanni (Jill Krementz) firmations of blackness are an

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insistence on maintaining one’s individuality in the face of the political. There is also the importance of acknowledging the contributions of others in one’s development. Thus, what is central to Giovanni’s revolution is helping people to think about new ways of viewing and understanding their lives, personally and politically. Black Feeling, Black Talk is not a call for revolution that will destroy the world. The book is about how people, in the words of its final poem, may “build what we can become when we dream.”

Gemini Type of work: Essays First published: 1971 Giovanni identifies her first work of prose, Gemini, in its subtitle as “an extended autobiographical statement on my first twenty-five years of being a black poet.” Gemini is in a sense neither an autobiography nor an extended statement; rather, it is a collection of thirteen essays, about half of which discuss aspects of Giovanni’s life. Readers learn something of Giovanni’s life, but Gemini reveals more of her ideas. All of the essays involve personal observations mingled with political concerns, as the final lines of the essay “400 Mulvaney Street” illustrate: “They had come to say Welcome Home. And I thought Tommy, my son, must know about this. He must know we come from somewhere. That we belong.” These lines are a capsule of Giovanni’s major themes: family and belonging, identity, and one’s relationship to the world. As the people of Knoxville come to hear her, Giovanni realizes her connection to a place and people. Sharing this with her son underscores the importance of family and passing on legacies, a lesson for not only him but also all blacks. To know that they come from somewhere and therefore belong is part of the message in this work. The central message in Gemini is love. Giovanni claims, “If you don’t love your mama and papa then you don’t love yourself.” This includes racial love; Giovanni provides tributes to black writer Charles Waddell Chesnutt and to black musicians Lena Horne and Aretha Franklin. Giovanni states that black people “must become the critics and protectors” of black music and literature. Love of oneself leads to a sense of identity: This is Giovanni’s second message. Giovanni cautions blacks against carelessly adopting “white philosophies.” Her advice is to “know who’s playing the music before you dance.” Giovanni discusses respect as an outgrowth of love and identity, particularly for blacks of other nationalities and for the elderly. In Giovanni’s discussion of the black revolution, she emphasizes the need to change the world. She addresses what one should be willing to live for: hope to change the world or some aspect of it. The essays of Gemini combine to give readers a sense of Giovanni, her world, and their world.

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Suggested readings Fabio, Sarah Webster. “Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment.” Black World, December, 1970, 102-104. Fowler, Virginia. Nikki Giovanni. New York: Twayne, 1992. Gaffke, Carol T., ed. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Jago, Carol. Nikki Giovanni in the Classroom. Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999. Jordan, June. Review of Gemini, by Nikki Giovanni. The New York Times Book Review, February 13, 1972, 6, 26. Lee, Don L. Dynamite Voices I: Black Poets of the 1960’s. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1971. Mitchell, Carolyn. “Nikki Giovanni.” In Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Darlene Clark Hine. New York: Carlson, 1993. —Paula C. Barnes

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn Born: Manila, Philippines; 1949

Hagedorn expresses the “tough and noble” lives of Asian immigrants who feel only partially assimilated. Traditions: Filipino American Principal works: Dangerous Music, 1975; Pet Food and Tropical Apparitions, 1981; Dogeaters, 1990; Danger and Beauty, 1993; Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, 1993 (editor); The Gangster of Love, 1996 Born and raised in the Philippines, Jessica Hagedorn experienced the United States through the eyes of her mother and through images provided by American textbooks and movies. “The colonization of our imagination was relentless,” she has said. Only when she started living in California in 1963 did she begin to appreciate what was precious in the Filipino extended family, a cultural feature partially left behind. In California, she began to feel allied with persons of various national origins who challenged American myths. Kenneth Rexroth, who had been patron of the Beat generation in San Francisco during the 1950’s, introduced her to the poets who gathered at the City Lights bookstore. In 1973, Rexroth helped her publish her first poems, later collectively titled “The Death of Anna May Wong.” Her principal concern was the exploitation of Filipino workers. Her poetry became more and more influenced by the rhythms of popular street music. In 1975, she gathered together a volume of prose and poetry called Dangerous Music. That same year Hagedorn formed her band, The West Coast Gangster Choir, and sang lyrics of her own invention with them. In 1978, she left San Francisco without her band and established herself in New York Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (Nancy Wong) City. There, along with Ntozake 187

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Shange and Thulani Davis, she performed her poetry at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. In 1981, Hagedorn published her second collection of mixed prose and poetry. During the 1980’s she worked on her first novel, Dogeaters, which exposes corruption in her homeland as a result of Ferdinand Marcos’s years of “constitutional authoritarianism.” Dogeaters is also a novel that she has described as a love letter to her motherland. The characters in her novel for the most part are trapped by consumerism; this plight is caused by the Filipinos’ long history as a colony and by their dreams of success, which too often come from American soap operas. Hagedorn’s work is devoted to substituting for such stereotypes the complexities visible among people in Metro Manila and the urban reaches of the American coasts. Her anthology, Charlie Chan Is Dead, signifies a new image for Asians.

Dangerous Music Type of work: Poetry First published: 1975 The poems in Dangerous Music were composed after Hagedorn began “discovering myself as a Filipino-American writer” in California. Orientalist Kenneth Rexroth had placed five of her early poems in his 1973 anthology, Four Young Women Poets. “The Death of Anna May Wong,” included in that edition, signified the poet’s rejection of Hollywood stereotypes of Asian women as demure or exotically sinister. Dangerous Music continues the author’s search for authentic images of non-Europeans that describe her own situation as well as those of other minorities. The intensity of many of these lyrics, written while she was performing with her West Coast Gangster Choir, became a way of expressing whole dimensions of society largely ignored or misunderstood by generations of European Americans. Although on the page such poems resemble songs without music, their occasional arrangement in ballad quatrains sometimes imitates blues music. The influence of Latino or African music is visible in the more jagged, syncopated lines of such poems as “Latin Music in New York” or “Canto Negro.” The cultural environment that is so much a part of the voices she assumes in Dangerous Music can readily be imagined. “Something About You,” for example, affectionately connects Hagedorn with fellow artists Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis, with whom she performed poems set to music for New York’s Public Theater. Other poems identify her with Puerto Rican or Cuban musicians. More typical poems, however, describe a love-hate relationship with the American Dream. In “Natural Death,” a Cuban refugee seems satisfied with fantasies of cosmetic splendor, though warned about bodies buried in saran wrap on a California beach. Loneliness and anger are conveyed by the mocking refrain: “o the grandeur of it.” Yet the Philippines, which is remembered in “Sometimes” (“life is very cheap”), is equally far

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from being ideal. “Justifiable Homicide” warns of urban dangers anywhere in the world, when differences among people become cause for mutual indifference. The only defense against the insanity that comes from cultural and economic stress is found in singing, according to “Sorcery” and “Easter Sunday,” even if the songs themselves are passionate outcries of pain, not lullabies. The unacceptable alternative to release through song is to surrender one’s memories of better dreams or, as in the case of “The Blossoming of Bongbong,” the one prose fantasy included with these poems, total forgetfulness of one’s personal identity.

Suggested readings Casper, Leonard. Sunsurfers Seen from Afar: Critical Essays, 1991-1996. Metro Manila, Philippines: Anvil, 1996. Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Lee, Rachel C. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Zapanta Manlapaz, Edna. Songs of Ourselves. Metro Manila, Philippines: Anvil, 1994. —Leonard Casper

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry Born: Chicago, Illinois; May 19, 1930 Died: New York, New York; January 12, 1965 Hansberry is credited with being the first African American woman playwright to have a play produced on Broadway.

Traditions: African American Principal works: A Raisin in the Sun, pr., pb. 1959; The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, pr. 1964, pb. 1965; To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, pr. 1969, pb. 1971 With the successful Broadway opening in 1959 of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry became a major voice in behalf of racial, sexual, economic, and class justice. During Hansberry’s childhood, her father, a successful real estate broker, and her mother, a schoolteacher, were involved in politics and were active supporters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and its causes. Hansberry grew up in a Chicago household where racial issues, oppression, African American identity, and the struggle against discrimination were major concerns. Her early intellectual development was influenced by her uncle, William Leo Hansberry, a professor and scholar at Howard University and writer of African history. He put Hansberry in contact with her African roots and introduced her to a world of articulate black artists and thinkers who personified the struggle to overcome discrimination in Lorraine Hansberry (Library of Congress) American society. 190

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Hansberry was a student in the segregated Chicago public school system. She proceeded to the University of Wisconsin, where she became the first African American woman to live in her dormitory. At the university she was active in politics and developed an interest in the theater and its power. Dropping out of school, Hansberry moved to New York and became a writer and associate editor for the progressive newspaper Freedom. She championed civil rights causes, writing not only on behalf of blacks but also on behalf of other socially repressed groups, including women and gays. With encouragement and inspiration from such luminaries as W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson, her active professional and intellectual life in Harlem soon blossomed into stories, poems, and plays. After marrying Robert Nemiroff in 1953, Hansberry left Freedom to devote all her attention to writing. Drawing upon her Chicago experiences, she completed A Raisin in the Sun, a play that explores the tensions that arise as a black family in Chicago tries to escape the ghetto. The family faces white hostility as it plans to move into a white neighborhood. The play was a phenomenal success. Hansberry’s second Broadway production, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, explores such topics as prostitution, marriage, homosexuality, and anti-Semitism. The play’s depictions of the plight of those oppressed and discriminated against and of the nature of society’s reaction to injustice and prejudice are vivid and thoughtful. Hansberry died from cancer at the age of only thirty-four. Her call for justice and human sympathy continues to reverberate in the work she left behind.

A Raisin in the Sun Type of work: Drama First produced: 1959; first published, 1959 A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry’s most celebrated play, is a realistic portrait of a working-class black family struggling to achieve the American Dream of careers and home ownership while gripped by the reality of their lives as African Americans who must survive in a racist society. Hansberry based her play on her knowledge of life in Chicago’s black ghetto and the families to whom her father, a successful real estate broker, rented low-income housing. The action takes place in the cramped, roach-infested apartment of the Youngers, where three generations of the family have resided for years. With the death of her husband, Lena (Mama) becomes the head of the family. She has the right to decide how to use the $10,000 in life insurance money that has come with her husband’s death. Tensions develop quickly. Mama dreams of using the money to move out of the apartment into a new, large home where her family can breathe the free, clean air outside the ghetto. Her son Walter, seeing himself as the new

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head of the family, envisions the money as a way to free himself and his family from poverty by investing in a liquor store. Walter’s intellectual sister hopes the windfall may be a way for her to break racist and sexist barriers by getting a college education and becoming a doctor. As the play unfolds, Hansberry explores issues of African American identity, pride, male-female relationships within the black family, and the problems of segregation. Mama makes a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood. Fearing that her exercise of authority will diminish her son’s sense of masculine self-worth, and in spite of her opposition to buying a liquor store, she reminds Walter of his sister’s right to some of the money for a college education and entrusts him with what is left of the money after the down payment. When he returns despairingly after losing all of it, he considers that the only way to recoup the loss is to humiliate himself and his family by making a deal with the Clybourne Park Association, a group of white homeowners who want to buy back the new home in order to keep their neighborhood white. In a dramatic conclusion, the disillusioned Walter enacts the dilemma of the modern African American male. Trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder, he must again submit to matriarchal authority. Mama despairs at having to take control and wield the authority she knows is destroying her son’s masculine identity. Walter finally realizes that he cannot accept the degradation he would bring upon himself, his family, and his father’s memory by accepting the association’s offer. Discovering his manhood and his responsibility to his family and his race, he refuses to sell back the house. When the association’s representative appeals to Mama to reverse her son’s decision, she poignantly and pridefully says, “I am afraid you don’t understand. My son said we was going to move and there ain’t nothing left for me to say.” The play closes with the family leaving their cramped apartment for their new home and the challenges that surely await them there.

To Be Young, Gifted, and Black Type of work: Drama First produced: 1969; first published, 1971 After Hansberry’s untimely death, Robert Nemiroff, her former husband and literary executor, edited versions of her writings and adapted them for the stage under the title To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. He also expanded that work into an informal autobiography of the same title. In Nemiroff’s words, the work is “biography and autobiography, part fact, part fiction, an act of re-creation utilizing first person materials as well as, inferentially, autobiographical projections of herself in her characters.” “Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage,” James Baldwin said of

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To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. Characters from Hansberry’s plays, including the character of Lorraine Hansberry, portray and relate various strands of African American life in modern America. Walter Lee, for example, embodies the frustrations of black men trying to cope in an economic system that promises advancement but holds them back because of their race. His sister, Beneatha, is an example of the gifted, intelligent black woman (not unlike Hansberry herself) who aspires to participate fully in the American culture. She also, as does Asagai, the Africanist intellectual, strives to remember her African roots. Then there is Sidney Brustein of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (1964), the play most represented in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. Sidney, after leading a life of sleepy noncommitment, grows to care about himself and his society; he takes action, political and otherwise, to improve things. This sort of character growth, in one way or another apparent in all of Hansberry’s work, defines her own belief in the possibility for human goodness to prevail. It is this conviction that allows her to anticipate a healing of familial and social ills that comes when people are moved to dedicate themselves to change. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black also addresses the deep connections between black Americans and emerging African nations, black empowerment, sexual relationships, the generation gap, and black art. Woven throughout To Be Young, Gifted, and Black is the character of Lorraine Hansberry herself, who, at the beginning of the work, states perhaps somewhat despairingly: “I was born on the South Side of Chicago. I was born black and female,” but by the end is proclaiming proudly, “My name is Lorraine Hansberry. I am a writer.” She has ceased allowing the ghetto, with its economic, social, and cultural deprivation, to define her. She has overthrown her enslavement by oppressive sexual stereotypes. In this, the character of Lorraine Hansberry and the playwright are one in the embodiment of a hope for the black race and the female sex. Just as they have, through commitment and perseverance, discovered and defined themselves in name and vocation, so, too, must their people insist on partaking of that vital experience and self-definition that leads to a discovery of self-worth, purpose, and genuine human sympathy.

Suggested readings Carter, Steven R. Hansberry’s Drama: Commitment and Complexity. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Cheney, Anne. Lorraine Hansberry. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984. Scheader, Catherine. Lorraine Hansberry: Playwright and Voice of Justice. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1998. Sharadha, Y. S. Black Women’s Writing: Quest for Identity in the Plays of Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange. New Delhi, India: Prestige Books, 1998. Wilkerson, Margaret B. “The Dark Vision of Lorraine Hansberry: Excerpts

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from a Literary Biography.” Massachusetts Review 28 (Winter, 1987): 642650. _______. “Lorraine Hansberry.” In African American Writers, edited by Valerie Smith, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. —Richard M. Leeson

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo Born: Tulsa, Oklahoma; May 9, 1951

Harjo’s poetry has won acclaim for its substance, style, and themes, combining many elements of Native American and mainstream American experience. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: She Had Some Horses, 1983; In Mad Love and War, 1990; The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, 1994; A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales, 2000 Joy Harjo’s collections of poetry express a close relationship to the environment and the particularities of the Native American and white cultures from which she is descended. She is an enrolled member of the Creek tribe, the mother of two children (a son, Phil, and a daughter, Rainy Dawn), and a grandmother. Various forms of art were always a part of her life, even in childhood. Her grandmother and aunt were painters. In high school, she trained as a dancer and toured as a dancer and actress with one of the first Indian dance troupes in the country. When her tour ended, she returned to Oklahoma, where her son was born when she was seventeen years old. She left her son’s father to move to New Mexico, enrolling at the university as a pre-med student. After one semester, she decided that her interest in art was compelling enough to engage in its formal study. Educated at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she later worked as an instructor, she received a bachelor’s degree from the University of New MexJoy Harjo ico and a master’s degree in 195

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fine arts from the University of Iowa. She was a professor of English at both the University of Arizona and the University of New Mexico. Harjo has received numerous awards for her writing, including the William Carlos Williams award from the Poetry Society of America, the Delmore Schwartz Award, the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, and two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Harjo’s poetry has been increasingly influenced by her interest in music, especially jazz. She plays the saxophone in a band, Poetic Justice, that combines the musical influences of jazz and reggae with her poetry. Many of her poems are tributes to the various musicians who have influenced her work, including saxophonists John Coltrane and Jim Pepper. The history and mythology of her people and the current state of their oppression also are prominent themes in her work. As she states in the explanation of her poem “Witness,” “The Indian wars never ended in this country . . . we were hated for our difference by our enemies.”

In Mad Love and War Type of work: Poetry First published: 1990 In Mad Love and War is composed of two sections of poems expressing the conflicts and joys of Harjo’s experiences as a Native American woman living in contemporary American culture. The poems draw on a wealth of experiences, including those relating to tribal tradition and sacredness of the land. Such positive experiences are compared with the sometimes grim realities inherent in the modern society in which Harjo lives. The first section, titled “The Wars,” offers poetry that imagistically develops themes relating to oppression and to survival in the face of daunting problems of poverty, alcoholism, and deferred dreams. In her notable poem “Deer Dancer,” Harjo retells a traditional myth in the contemporary setting of “a bar of broken survivors, the club of shotgun, knife wound, of poison by culture.” Through the dance, the deer dancer becomes “the myth slipped down through dreamtime. The promise of feast we all knew was coming.” Like many of Harjo’s poems, “The Deer Dancer” ends with beauty being experienced amid lost hope and despair. Many of the other poems in “The Wars” are political in nature, containing stark images of violence and deprivation, most notably her poem dedicated to Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a member of the American Indian Movement whose murdered body was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the poems “We Must Call a Meeting,” “Autobiography,” “The Real Revolution Is Love,” and “Resurrection.” The poems of the second section, “Mad Love,” are more personal in their treatment of subject, more lyrical in their voice, and quieter in their tone. In

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a poem titled with the name of Harjo’s daughter, “Rainy Dawn,” Harjo concludes by expressing the joy of Rainy Dawn’s birth. And when you were born I held you wet and unfolding, like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body. And breathed with you as you breathed your first breath. Then was your promise to take it on like the rest of us, the immense journey, for love, for rain.

In Mad Love and War encompasses a variety of styles, from narrative poems written in expansive lines to tightly chiseled lyrics. Many of the poems in the “Mad Love” section are prose poems, whose unlined stanzas create a notable incongruity with respect to the increasingly personal, softer mood of the pieces. The book offers a journey from the ruins of dislocation to the joys of membership and love. In the final masterful poem of the collection, “The Eagle,” Harjo writes, “That we must take the utmost care/ And kindness in all things. . . . We pray that it will be done/ In beauty/ In beauty.”

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky Type of work: Poetry First published: 1994 The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, Harjo’s seventh collection of poetry, consists primarily of prose poems. The collection is divided into two sections, “Tribal Memory” and “The World Ends Here,” which express the lore of Harjo’s Native American ancestry and her observations of contemporary life. These poems show a concern for content over style. The poetry is presented without conventions of patterned rhyme or meter; the imagery is stark and unadorned. Each poem is followed by an explanation that contextualizes the piece by offering a brief history of the genesis of the poem or commenting on themes elucidated by the writing. The majority of the book’s poems are narrative, developing stories that explain the destinies of Native American characters who retain identity despite the onslaught of European culture, which strips away their language, lore, and religion. The poems create a universe of oppositions: darkness and light, violence and peace. Other poems relate stories of ancestry on a more personal level, illuminating a view of many worlds existing at once, interconnected and affecting one another. In “The Naming,” a grandmother “who never had any peace in this life” is “blessed with animals and songs”; after the birth of a “daughter-bornof-my-son . . . the earth is wet with happiness.” As Harjo notes in the explanation of this piece, “When my granddaughter Haleigh was born I felt the spirit of this grandmother in the hospital room. Her presence was a blessing.” In the world that Harjo creates, the living and the dead are united and the

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physical universe is animate, pulsing with feeling of its own. “The World Ends Here” offers shorter and more concrete poems than those in “Tribal Memory.” In addition, the poems are concerned with wounds suffered through a history of genocide inflicted upon Native Americans. “When a people institute a bureaucratic department to serve justice then be suspicious,” Harjo warns in “Wolf Warrior.” “The Indian wars never ended in this country,” she writes in the postscript to “Witness.” The poems do not, however, fall into despair. The beauty of nature, the rich rewards of friendship, the joys of music, and the hope of love are continually evident, emerging with their healing power. As Harjo writes in “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” “The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and so it will go on.”

Suggested readings Allen, Frank. Review of The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, by Joy Harjo. Library Journal, November 15, 1994, 70-71. Leen, Mary. “An Art of Saying.” American Indian Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Winter, 1995): 1-16. McQuade, Molly. Review of The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, by Joy Harjo. Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1994, 54-55. Pettit, Rhonda. Joy Harjo. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1998. Smith, Stephanie. “Joy Harjo.” Poets and Writers 21, no. 4 ( July/August, 1993): 23-27. —Robert Haight

Michael S. Harper

Michael S. Harper Born: Brooklyn, New York; March 18, 1938

Harper’s poetry synthesizes diverse ethnic, racial, and historic components to create an inclusive perspective on American culture. Traditions: African American Principal works: Dear John, Dear Coltrane, 1970; History Is Your Own Heartbeat, 1971; Song: I Want a Witness, 1972; Debridement, 1973; Nightmare Begins Responsibility, 1974; Images of Kin: New and Selected Poems, 1977; Rhode Island: Eight Poems, 1981; Healing Song for the Inner Ear, 1985; Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems, 2000 The first son in his middle-class African American family, Michael S. Harper was encouraged to follow the career path of his grandfather and great-grandfather: medicine. An intense interest in the rhythms of language and in exploring the apparent schisms in American society, however, led Harper to his dual vocations of writer and scholar. In the Harper home, music and poetry were important parts of family life. Poems by Langston Hughes were a familiar presence in Harper’s childhood home. Harper’s parents also owned an extensive collection of contemporary jazz recordings. The poet recalled spending many happy hours listening to, among others, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane. As an adolescent, Harper was forced into an awareness of racism in America. The family moved from New York to West Los Angeles, where African Americans were the targets of racial violence. During high school, Harper began experimenting with creative writing. In college, he continued writing in addition to working full time for the post office. He later attended the famous Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. As the only African American student in the poetry and fiction workshop classes, Harper endured misunderstanding and prejudice. These experiences motivated him to confront the dualism inherent in being an African American writer. Harper refused exclusive containment in either the African American or in the American category. Rather, he affirmed his identity in both groups. Harper interrupted his studies at Iowa to enter the student teacher program at Pasadena City College in 1962. He became the first African American to complete the program, and after finishing his courses at Iowa, he accepted an instructorship at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California. This was the 199

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beginning of an extensive and distinguished teaching career, including professorships at Colgate University, Brown University, and Harvard University. In addition to eight volumes of poetry, Harper has contributed to numerous journals and anthologies and has edited several anthologies of poetry.

Poetry Michael S. Harper is a poet with a strong individual style. His poetry is notable for the variable rhythm of its lines. Harper’s poems echo a variety of human speech patterns and rhythms. This characteristic distinguishes his rhythm from the more traditionally metric patterns of many poets. Harper’s looser rhythms work along with such techniques as repetition, internal rhyme, and enjambment (lines flowing together without pause at the end) to modulate sound in the poem. Sound is important in Harper’s poems; they are most effective when read aloud. The content of Harper’s poetry reflects a concern with unification. Harper’s poetic speakers explore connections. For Harper, the poem evidences the connections between the poet’s individual utterances and universal concerns that transcend time and place. A major theme through all of Harper’s books is that of connections among racial and ethnic groups. Other major themes include the importance of an awareness of history, the relationship between the individual and the group, and the connections between one geographic location and another. Harper’s development of these major themes begins in Dear John, Dear Coltrane. The poems in this book pay homage to the greats of jazz and the blues. The musicians also represent individual and collective human achievement, achievement attained and achievement still possible. The exploration of the individual’s connection to history and possibility continues in History Is Your Own Heartbeat. This second book won the Poetry Award of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. The idea that an awareness of individual and collective history is essential is further developed in Song: I Want a Witness. In the preface, Harper writes: “Where there is no history/ there is no metaphor.” In other words, an individual ignorant of history has no basis for comparison (metaphors are comparisons), for testing feelings and attitudes. In Debridement Harper narrows the theme of the importance of history to explore the historical relationships between black and white Americans. The poems collectively suggest that understanding of history is necessary for the individual’s moving beyond misunderstanding and hatred. “Debridement” means surgically removing dead flesh from old wounds so that healing can begin. In Nightmare Begins Responsibility, Harper metaphorically reviews his own personal history. In his two later books, Images of Kin: New and Selected Poems

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and Healing Song for the Inner Ear, Harper steps back somewhat from personal history to consider the universal traditions of black and white poets. In addition to his books of thematically linked poetry, Harper has published in many journals and anthologies. His poems testify in the voice of the American trying to reconcile the past, present, and future of the individual’s relationship with the nation.

Suggested readings Brown, Joseph A. “Their Long Scars Touch Ours: A Reflection on the Poetry of Michael Harper.” Callaloo 9, no. 1 (Winter, 1986): 209-220. Harper, Michael S. “It Is the Man/Woman Outside Who Judges: The Minority Writer’s Perspective on Literature.” TriQuarterly 65 (Winter, 1986): 57-65. _______. “Interview with Michael S. Harper.” Interview by David Lloyd. TriQuarterly 65 (Winter, 1986): 119-128. _______. “My Poetic Technique and the Humanization of the American Audience.” In Black American Literature and Humanism, edited by Miller R. Baxter. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Nicholas, Xavier. “Robert Hayden and Michael S. Harper.” Callaloo 17, no. 4 (Fall, 1994): 976-1016. Stepto, Robert B. “Let’s Call Your Mama and Other Lies About Michael S. Harper.” Callaloo 13, no. 4 (Fall, 1990): 801-804. Young, Al, Larry Kart, and Michael S. Harper. “Jazz and Letters: A Colloquy.” TriQuarterly 68 (Winter, 1987): 118-158. —Anne B. Mangum

Wilson Harris

Wilson Harris Born: New Amsterdam, British Guiana (now Guyana); March 24, 1921

As philosopher, novelist, and critic, Harris imagines recent world history and colonialism in order to present a vision of a possible human community that celebrates multiple, mixed, and interrelating identities. Traditions: African American, American Indian, Caribbean Principal works: Palace of the Peacock, 1960; The Secret Ladder, 1963; Tradition, the Writer, and Society: Critical Essays, 1967; Fossil and Psyche, 1974; The Tree of the Sun, 1978; The Womb of Space, 1983; Carnival, 1985; Jonestown, 1996; The Selected Essays of Wilson Harris, 1999 Wilson Harris is an extremely eclectic and expansive writer. In The Womb of Space, he writes that “literature is still constrained by regional and other conventional suffocating categories.” Harris has spent his career attempting to transcend notions of genre, tradition, and discipline, constructing texts founded on philosophical speculation. Harris attempts, in his writing, to promote new models for civilization and for creative art. Influenced by Carl Gustav Jung, Martin Buber, Elizabethan poetry, William Blake, Native American folklore, and nineteenth century expedition literature, Harris investigates the ambiguities of life and death, of history and innovation, of self and other, and of reality and illusion. Harris questions received concepts of origin, history, and reality. It is Harris’s hope that such inquisitions of the self may prove crucial in the development of a radical revision of history, origin, and identity. Opening with a series of nightmare vignettes that awaken into each other, the narrator of Harris’s Palace of the Peacock declares: “I dreamt I awoke with one dead eye seeing and one living eye closed.” The novel hovers between reality and illusion, death and life, insight and blindness. It chronicles an expeditionary party’s journey into the interior of Guyana. In this expedition into the territory of the self, each member of the party embodies a part of Guyanese identity. A European, an African, and a Native American set out together in a quest to retrieve renegade farmworkers but find along the way that they are, perhaps, the ghostly repetitions of a party that perished on the same river in the early days of European conquest. The allegorical and existential significances of the quest give Harris the opportunity to delve into the nature of narration, of time, of space, and of being. He asserts that humanity can alter fate through recognition of connections and by articulating and celebrating commonly held identities. 202

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The themes Palace of the Peacock raises are also found in the novels that succeed it. In subsequent novels, Harris returns to elaborate and examine the psychological and existential structures by way of which identity ossifies and resists participation in change. By carefully constructing contradictory narrative puzzles, Harris leads his readers into ambiguous regions of understanding where opposites (life and death, reality and illusion, self and other) meet. It is his hope that such expeditions of the imagination will result in greater understanding of identity and community.

Fossil and Psyche Type of work: Essay First published: 1974 Fossil and Psyche articulates Wilson Harris’s belief that “the potentiality for dialogue, for change, for the miracle of roots, for new community is real.” Using the metaphor of archery (psychic arrows and fossil targets), he situates his novels and the work of other writers within a realm of attempts to reach architectonic (mythic) realities. He argues against the opposition of the material to the spiritual and critiques the borders by means of which the real is held separate from the imaginary. Harris asserts the potential of the imaginary to illuminate the transcendent possibilities of history and identity. Such possibilities, if realized, would result in a culturally heterogeneous world community and in an alteration of world power hierarchies. The “idolatry of absolutes” holds readers and writers hostage to the temporal, spatial, and cultural limitations of literature when in fact those limitations are illusory. Arrows of language and imagination can reach the fossil targets of architectonic, mythic, eternal, atemporal, renewing experience. Novels by authors such as Patrick White and Malcolm Lowry, Harris claims, are dream-expeditions signaling humanity toward “a third perhaps nameless revolutionary dimension of sensibility” that evades commonly held notions of material and spiritual reality. Such an evasion is the key to enriching and understanding the value of the multiplicity of identities. Accessing these wells of timeless connection will “deepen and heighten the role of imaginative literature to wrestle with categories and to visualize the birth of community as other than the animism of fate.” Traditional oppositions lead to inadequate readings of imaginative literature and to misreadings of the processes that underlie imaginative composition. Literature, like every aspect of human experience, is lodged within a matrix of time and space. The literature Harris addresses in Fossil and Psyche attempts to transcend this matrix, to confound time and space, to mine the architectonic fossils of human community with present psychic projections of imagination. Novels of expedition, then, revise history and reveal the hopeful, transfor-

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mative energies of life locked away in even the most deadly and deadening acts of history. Writers who embrace such a process of revision renew the creative, psychic act of imagination. Such psychic projections of imagination join past to present and future and European to African and Native American.

The Womb of Space Type of work: Essays First published: 1983 Harris’s The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination is a collection of critical essays that attempt to describe how multiculturalism can inform the reading of texts. “Imaginative sensibility,” Harris asserts, “is uniquely equipped by forces of dream and paradox to mirror the inimitable activity of subordinated psyche.” Harris’s cross-cultural rereadings of specific texts in The Womb of Space reveal bridges of myth, imagination, and dream that link culture to culture, despite the appearance of disparity. Harris interprets works by William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, Juan Rulfo, Raja Rao, Jean Rhys, Derek Walcott, Edward Brathwaite, and others in order to demonstrate the applicability of a cross-cultural analysis to world literature. For example, Harris rereads Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) as a psychic text in which the unconscious subtext critiques the cultural hierarchy that the surface of the tale intends to uphold. Instead of emphasizing the tale’s narrative focus on the consolidation of Western values, Harris underscores the unconscious “twinships” (pairings) of characters and events that point to an unconsciously scripted psychic, mythic dimension. Such a subversion of the text leads Harris to “perceive the decay of order conditioned by conquest; that order begins to review its daylight deeds . . . in the night-time rebellious dream life of the half-conscious and unconscious psyche.” Despite the conscious intentions of Poe, the text is for Harris a revision of pre-Columbian mythic antecedents which illuminate the psychic, mythic, and communal dimensions of the literary imagination. Harris generalizes that cross-cultural readings reveal, in literature, correlations and unity that spring from the dialectic of explicit statement and implicit subversion of that statement. Stressing the undermining of Western texts by consulting mythic, psychic (often non-Western) roots, Harris hopes to open a cultural dialogue among cultures and identities. Harris suggests that such a dialogue will encourage the growth of broader, multicultural, inclusive communities. The “womb of space” is the generative region where such a community may begin to develop. “The paradox of cultural heterogeneity, or cross-cultural capacity, lies in the evolutionary thrust it restores to orders of the imagination, the ceaseless dialogue it inserts between hardened conventions and eclipsed or half-

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eclipsed otherness.” By bringing the cross-cultural imagination to bear on a variety of texts in The Womb of Space, Wilson Harris affirms his particular vision of literature and of the role texts play in reconstructing identity, culture, and community.

Suggested readings Drake, Sandra E. Wilson Harris and the Modern Tradition: A New Architecture of the World. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. Gilkes, Michael. Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel. New York: Longman, 1975. Harris, Wilson. Tradition, the Writer, and Society: Critical Essays. London: New Beacon, 1967. Maes-Jelinek, Hena, ed. Wilson Harris: The Uncompromising Imagination. Aarhus, Denmark: Dangaroo, 1991. Moore, Gerald. The Chosen Tongue. London: Longman, 1969. The Review of Contemporary Fiction 17, no. 2 (Summer, 1997). —Daniel M. Scott III

Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden Born: Detroit, Michigan; August 4, 1913 Died: Ann Arbor, Michigan; February 25, 1980 Hayden’s poetry provides a learned, kind observer’s view of major events and figures in American and African American history. Traditions: African American Principal works: Heart-Shape in the Dust, 1940; The Lion and the Archer, 1948; Figure of Time, 1955; A Ballad of Remembrance, 1962; Selected Poems, 1966; Words in the Mourning Time, 1970; The Night-Blooming Cereus, 1972; Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems, 1975; American Journal, 1978, 1982; Collected Prose, 1984; Collected Poems, 1985 Robert Hayden’s childhood independence was instrumental to his becoming a scholar and poet. He was reared in a poor Detroit neighborhood, where such distinctions were rare. Soon after he was born Asa Bundy Sheffey, Hayden was adopted by the Haydens, neighbors of his birth parents. A sufferer of extreme myopia as a child, Hayden was separated from his peers into a “sight conservation” class; although his handicap kept him from participating in most sports, the resulting time alone allowed him to read (especially poetry, which demanded less of his vision), write, and play the violin, thereby developing rhythmical and tonal sensitivities that would well serve his eventual vocation. Several fortuitous events and encounters in Robert Hayden’s life supported his choosing texts in African American history, especially the narratives of rebellious slaves, as fruitful subjects for his verse. After attending Detroit City College (which later became Wayne State University), Hayden, in 1936, began working for the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration; he was assigned to research “Negro folklore.” Two major figures encouraged his ensuing interest in African American history. The first, Erma Inez Morris, a pianist and a teacher in Detroit’s public schools, became Hayden’s wife and, for a time, his financial support. She also introduced her new husband to Countée Cullen, the Harlem Renaissance poet who admired Hayden’s first book, Heart-Shape in the Dust, and who motivated Hayden to keep writing. Hayden also found inspiration from the British poet W. H. Auden, also a folklorist, who instructed Hayden at the University of Michigan when the younger poet began graduate work there. In 1946, Hayden began a twenty-three-year tenure as a professor at Fisk College in segregated Nashville. During this time Hayden wrote steadily, despite being hampered by a heavy teaching load. The quality of Hayden’s 206

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work was recognized internationally—it was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company, and his 1962 book A Ballad of Remembrance won the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal— before he was discovered in the United States. Eventual recognition included invitations to teach at several universities and to edit anthologies of work by his poetic heroes and contemporaries. The year that Angle of Ascent was published, 1975, Hayden was elected fellow of the Academy of American Poets and Appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Hayden’s greatest personal successes, however, occurred in the last few months of his life. The poet was publicly celebrated both by President Jimmy Carter, at “A White House Salute to American Poetry,” and by his peers at the University of Michigan with “A Tribute to Robert Hayden,” the latter occurring the day before Hayden died of a respiratory embolism at age sixty-six. Popular appreciation of Hayden’s sensitive lyrics, dramatic monologues, and poignant remembrances has grown since his death.

Poetry Principal works: Heart-Shape in the Dust, 1940; The Lion and the Archer, 1948; Figure of Time, 1955; A Ballad of Remembrance, 1962; Selected Poems, 1966; Words in the Mourning Time, 1970; The Night-Blooming Cereus, 1972; Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems, 1975; American Journal, 1978, 1982; Collected Poems, 1985 Much of Robert Hayden’s poetry reflects one man’s wrestling with the sway of poetic influence. His early verse echoes the themes and styles of many of his immediate forebears: Harlem Renaissance poets such as Langston Hughes and Countée Cullen, and American modernists such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Hart Crane. The subjects of Hayden’s later poetry reflect his belief that African American poets need not focus exclusively on sociological study or on protest. Early mentors such as Hughes and Cullen guided Hayden through his years of apprenticeship and obscurity, and defended Hayden during his later successful years, when he was often upbraided by some black poets for being insufficiently political. Hayden’s persevering confidence in his poetic voice and learning inured him against such criticism. Throughout most of his career as a poet, from the publication of HeartShape in the Dust to that of his breakthrough book, Angle of Ascent, Hayden was sustained by academic work—heavy teaching loads and an occasional funded research project—more than he was by popular acclaim. Working in the 1930’s and 1940’s as a researcher for the Federal Writers’ Project, and in various university libraries, Hayden found the historical material for some of his most celebrated poems. Interested especially in the motivations of rebellious slaves, Hayden in “The Ballad of Nat Turner” imagines Turner’s almost sympathetic understanding of his captors as the educated slave “Beheld the

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conqueror faces and, lo,/ they were like mine.” In “Runagate Runagate” Hayden celebrates Harriet Tubman as “woman of earth, whipscarred,” who has “a shining/ Mean to be free.” The culmination of Hayden’s study of his political heroes can be found in the perfectly crafted sonnet titled “Frederick Douglass,” a poignant paean to “this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro/ beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world/ where none is lonely, none hunted, alien.” Throughout his middle years Hayden himself might have felt like an alien, teaching at Fisk University in segregated Nashville. He was composing often formal, often disinterested poetry in a time when confessional poetry was fashionable. As was the case with Frederick Douglass a century earlier, Robert Hayden did not let his dissimilarity from those around him keep him from speaking his mind. An inherently peaceful person, Hayden was most upset by the violence of the 1960’s; the title poem of his 1970 book Words in the Mourning Time mourns “for King for Kennedy . . . / And for America, self-destructive, self-betrayed.” Himself feeling betrayed by America’s policies in Vietnam, Hayden asks: “Killing people to save, to free them?/ With napalm lighting routes to the future?” Despite this expressed skepticism toward American nationalism, in the 1960’s and 1970’s Hayden was welcomed by the poetic and political establishment. Named poetry consultant at the Library of Congress and invited to read at the Carter White House, Hayden felt particularly gratified regarding his late ascendancy. His successes corroborated Hayden’s belief that literature composed by African Americans should be judged objectively and should meet the same high standards as the best literature written in English.

Suggested readings Conniff, Brian. “Answering ‘The Waste Land’: Robert Hayden and the Rise of the African American Poetic Sequence.” African American Review 33 (Fall, 1999): 487. Fetrow, Fred M. Robert Hayden. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Hatcher, John. From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden. Oxford, England: G. Ronald, 1984. Nicholas, Xavier. “Robert Hayden and Michael S. Harper.” Callaloo 17, no. 4 (Fall, 1994): 976-1016. _______. “Robert Hayden: Some Introductory Notes.” Michigan Quarterly Review 31, no. 3 (Summer, 1992): 8. Williams, Pontheolla. Robert Hayden: A Critical Analysis of His Poetry. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987. —Andrew O. Jones

Le Ly Hayslip

Le Ly Hayslip (Phung Thi Le Ly) Born: Ly La, Vietnam; December 19, 1949

Hayslip’s memoirs chronicle a largely successful merger of her Vietnamese ancestry with her acquired American identity. Traditions: Vietnamese American Principal works: When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace, 1989 (with Jay Wurts); Child of War, Woman of Peace, 1993 (with James Hayslip) Born Phung Thi Le Ly in 1949 to Buddhist peasants living under Vietnam’s French colonial rule, Le Ly Hayslip ardently supported her nation’s struggle for independence. Years later, when Viet Cong soldiers of the North wrongly accused her of treason, she fled her village in central Vietnam to live in Danang and, later, Saigon. After giving birth to her wealthy employer’s son and witnessing the cruelty of Communist rebels against the peasants they purported to defend, she shifted her allegiance to the republican-backed American forces. She supported herself and her child through black marketeering and other illegal activity and entered into a series of unhappy love affairs with United States servicemen before marrying Ed Munro, an American contractor more than forty years her senior. In 1970, without notifying her family, she left Vietnam for the United States as Munro’s bride and the mother of his infant son. The pattern of being caught in the middle—between the North and the South or between allies and enemies—continued in her new home in suburban San Diego, where Hayslip experienced culture shock, homesickness, and racial antagonism. Soon after Munro’s death in 1973, she married Dennis Hayslip, a mentally unstable man by whom she had her third son before he committed suicide. The resilient Hayslip supported herself in the United States as a maid, nurse’s aide, and factory worker; with money from her late husband’s insurance settlement and trust fund, she purchased stock options, real estate, and a share in a successful restaurant. Combining investment revenues with the proceeds from her memoir about her life in Vietnam (When Heaven and Earth Changed Places), Hayslip founded the nonprofit East Meets West Foundation, a humanitarian relief organization that delivers medical and relief supplies to the Vietnamese. Child of War, Woman of Peace, the sequel to her first memoir and the account 209

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of her American acculturation and subsequent return trips to Vietnam, attests Hayslip’s ability to endure and heal, which she attributes to her potential to forgive. That second memoir, cowritten with her eldest son, James Hayslip, reveals her ability to embrace America while reconnecting to her Vietnamese past. She explains that her philanthropy, financing her mission in Vietnam through resources acquired in the United States, is the means to bind her old country to her new one, “to sponsor a healing handshake across time and space.” The two autobiographies form the basis for Oliver Stone’s 1993 film, Heaven and Earth, about Hayslip’s life in Vietnam and America.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places Type of work: Memoir First published: 1989 When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace, cowritten with Jay Wurts, recounts Hayslip’s life in war-ravaged Vietnam, her emigration to the United States in 1970, and her dangerous return visit to her homeland in 1986. As a young girl, Phung Thi Le Ly (her name before marriage) promises her father, a devote Buddhist farmer, that she will become a woman warrior. She interprets that charge to mean that she must stay alive in order to nurture other life and preserve her ancestral heritage. The memoir is her means of fulfilling that responsibility. She nevertheless offends her family by her presumed betrayal by marriage to an American civilian contractor and flight from Vietnam to join him in California. The autobiography is her tribute to her ancestral traditions and her testimony that she has not forsaken them. Le Ly’s loyalties shift throughout her autobiography. Like most peasants in her village on the border between North and South Vietnam, she supports the Viet Cong against the republican government and its American backers. She performs many daring acts to advance the Communist cause, but the Viet Cong wrongly suspect her of collaborating with the South. She evades their deadly reprisals by fleeing to Danang and, later, Saigon. There she pins her hope for a better life onto the American servicemen she comes to know as she struggles to support her illegitimate son and other family members by working as a nurse’s assistant, black marketeer, and, briefly, a prostitute. Although Le Ly leaves Vietnam during the war and enters the United States as the wife of one American and marries another when she is widowed, her expatriate status distresses her. She proudly regards her three sons—two born in Vietnam and one in the United States—as Americans but regrets that she is “something else: not quite Vietnamese anymore, but not so American as they.” By returning to Vietnam with a fresh perspective to write the account of her family’s suffering, she aids in their survival and recovery, thus reconciling with them and healing her divided sense of self. The memoir’s dual

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time frames, which alternate chapters of Le Ly moving toward emigration with ones of her preparing to return, converge near the end of the book when her departure and homecoming are complete. The narrative strategy suggests that the difference between leaving home and remaining there is not significant. Rather than forsaking her homeland by emigrating, Le Ly has protected and prepared herself for the mission of telling its story and preserving its culture.

Suggested readings Hayslip, Le Ly, and James Hayslip. Child of War, Woman of Peace. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Hoang, Trang. “When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.” Amerasia Journal 20, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 119-121. Rose, Phyllis, ed. The Norton Book of Women’s Lives. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Shipler, David. Review of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, by Le Ly Hayslip. The New York Times Book Review, June 25, 1989, 1. —Theresa M. Kanoza

Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos Born: New York, New York; August 24, 1951

Hijuelos, a Latino writer, was awarded the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Traditions: Cuban American Principal works: Our House in the Last World, 1983; The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, 1989; The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien, 1993; Mr. Ives’ Christmas, 1995; Empress of the Splendid Season, 1999 Oscar Hijuelos’s family came from Oriente province in Cuba. Hijuelos was reared amid two divergent worlds: that of Columbia University, teeming with scholars, and that of Morningside Park, overflowing with drug addicts and muggers. At age four, Hijuelos and his mother visited Cuba, and upon his return, he succumbed to nephritis. Bedridden, Hijuelos lingered in a hospital for two years. The theme of separation and isolation, especially from family, saturates Hijuelos’s novels. After receiving his master’s degree in 1976 from the City University of New York, Hijuelos moved to within a few blocks of his childhood home to begin his author’s life, supported by a menial job in an advertising agency.

Oscar Hijuelos (Roberto Koch)

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Our House in the Last World is a portrait of his family’s exodus from Cuba. The work recalls Hijuelos’s family relationships; he hated and loved his alcoholic father, and he misunderstood and miscommunicated with his mother. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love also recalls Hijuelos’s family life. One of Hijuelos’s uncles had been a musician with Xavier Cugat. The elevator operator in Hijuelos’s building played music. Hijuelos jumbled these two characters into Cesar Castillo. Cesar and his brother Nestor reach the highest point in their lives when the Mambo Kings appear on the I Love Lucy television show. Later, the brothers are separated. In The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien, Hijuelos addresses issues of cross-cultural identity with the connection of Cuban and Irish families in a marriage. In Mr. Ives’ Christmas, Hijuelos examines father-son relationships from the father’s perspective. Mr. Ives seeks penance and peace after the disaster of his son’s murder.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Type of work: Novel First published: 1989 Hijuelos’s life in an advertising agency had little to do with his passion for writing. When he first began thinking of the story that would become The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, he knew that an uncle and an elevator operator would be his models. The uncle, a musician with Xavier Cugat in the 1930’s, and a building superintendent patterned after an elevator-operator-musician merged to become Cesar Castillo, the Mambo King. Cesar’s brother, Nestor, laconic, retrospective, lamenting the loss of a lover he left behind in Cuba, writes the song in her memory that draws the attention of Ricky Ricardo. He hears “Beautiful María of My Soul” as he catches the Mambo Kings in a seedy nightclub where gigs are cheap but long. Ricky’s interest changes their lives. The book altered Hijuelos’s literary career by winning for him the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1990. As the book opens, Cesar rots with his half-empty whiskey glass tipped at the television beaming reruns. He seeks the I Love Lucy spot featuring Nestor and him as the Mambo Kings. Nestor has died. Cesar pathetically broods on the aging process, cirrhosis, and the loss of flamboyant times. Cesar’s old, scratchy records—brittle and warped—resurrect his music stardom. He laments his brother’s death by leafing through fading pictures. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos presents pre-Castro Cubans, who, after World War II, streamed to New York. All communities may strive for the American Dream, but in Latino quarters, music, the mainstream of a culture, sought to free the oppressed. Hijuelos pursues thematic progression: The Castillo brothers become, for a moment, cultural icons by their appearance on I Love Lucy. Their fame does not last, however; Cesar comforts his

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ego with debauchery, and Nestor dies suddenly. The ironically named Hotel Splendour is where Cesar commits suicide.

Mr. Ives’ Christmas Type of work: Novel First published: 1995 Hijuelos, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1990 for his splendid rendition of a life going sour, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), presents, in Mr. Ives’ Christmas, the somber Mr. Ives. Mr. Ives sanely goes through his life with no malice toward fellow man or woman. He seeks the rewards of work and patience that he has become accustomed to earning, but one date, Christmas Eve, consistently seems to interfere with his life. Hijuelos, born in New York City, grew up in a humble, immigrant Cuban family. At age four, he was exiled from the family by nephritis, a kidney inflammation that crippled his youth with a two-year quarantine from home and loved ones. Perhaps that near-orphan status inspired Hijuelos to develop the Edward Ives of this novel. A widowed printmaker visits the orphan Edward Ives on Christmas Eve, and, a few Christmases later, adopts him. His adoptive father idyllically rears the dark-skinned child, inspires him to pursue his love for drawing, and eventually guides him to the Art Students League where he meets, on Christmas Eve, his future wife. The picture postcard family image is shattered when, on Christmas Eve, the Ives’s seventeen-year-old son is gunned down as he leaves church choir practice. A fourteen-year-old Puerto Rican kills the boy for ten dollars. Mr. Ives devotes his life to obsessive, unerring attempts to rehabilitate the murderer. Symbolically, Mr. Ives’s favorite book is a signed copy of British novelist Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843). Hijuelos strongly relies on this book to link the two tales. The author emulates Dickens’s populous canvases and uses his love of coincidence and contrivance as a metaphor for God’s mysterious workings. The temperance of Mr. Ives allows him a longing for grace, a gift for contemplation, and a steady curiosity. Hijuelos draws heavily on images from his New York neighborhood, his coterie of friends, and the milieu of gangs, muggers, and dope addicts at the end of his street. Differing from his other novels, Mr. Ives’ Christmas leaves no doubt that Hijuelos speaks of faith; a faith that mysteriously probes emotions, tested by death and the opportunity of forgiveness.

Suggested readings Barbato, Joseph. “Latino Writers in the American Market.” Publishers Weekly 238, no. 6 (February 1, 1991): 17-21.

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Chávez, Lydia. “Cuban Riffs: Songs of Love.” Los Angeles Times Magazine, April 18, 1993, 22-28. Coffey, Michael. “Oscar Hijuelos.” Publishers Weekly 236, no. 3 ( July 21, 1989): 42-44. Elias, Amy. “Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and Robert Coover’s The Public Burning.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 41, no. 2 (Winter, 2000). Kamp, James, ed. Reference Guide to American Literature. 3d ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. —Craig Gilbert

Chester Himes

Chester Himes Born: Jefferson City, Missouri; July 29, 1909 Died: Moraira, Spain; November 12, 1984 Himes’s work evokes the social and psychological burden of being a black man in a white society. Traditions: African American Principal works: If He Hollers, Let Him Go, 1945; Lonely Crusade, 1947; The Third Generation, 1954; The Quality of Hurt, 1972; My Life of Absurdity, 1976 Chester Himes wrote nearly twenty novels, two volumes of autobiography, and a series of popular crime thrillers. Whatever form his writing took, the dominant theme was usually racism: the pain it causes and the hateful legacy it creates. In If He Hollers, Let Him Go, Himes uses a wartime West Coast shipyard to set the central confrontation between an educated Northern black man and his poor Southern white coworkers. The results are violent. In spare, functional prose that highlights the psychological paths the novel charts, Himes describes what has been called the American dilemma, or the contrast between a black man believing in democracy and the realities that bruise his dreams. Critics, while not always enamored with the novel, praised Himes for his relentless honesty. Lonely Crusade, Himes’s second novel, treats the betrayal, dislocation, and terror at the nexus of race and sex in United States society. The book makes a laudable effort to understand the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor. Third Generation, thought by many critics to be thinly veiled autobiography, dramatizes three generations in a family, from slavery to the Chester Himes (Library of Congress) middle of the twentieth 216

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century. It tellingly captures the fear and hatred that can fester in a troubled family, making it perhaps Himes’s most ambitious and moving novel. Himes left the United States in 1954 for Europe, where he received greater literary recognition than he had ever achieved at home. In France, Himes published ten sophisticated, fast-paced crime novels. The protagonists, a pair of cynical street-smart black detectives, were hailed by French critics. When, years later, the novels were finally printed in the United States, the series achieved wide success. Himes’s two-volume autobiography, The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity, was written in Spain.

Autobiographies First published: The Quality of Hurt, 1972; My Life of Absurdity, 1976 “I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary,” writes Chester Himes in The Quality of Hurt, a book that is less an organized autobiography than a series of poignant sketches, in which he writes about the many hurts that poisoned his life in the United States. Himes is one of the least known, most prolific African American writers of the twentieth century. Over a fifty-year career, Himes wrote scores of novels, short stories, articles, and poems, all marked by a naked sincerity and raging anger at racism. Himes began writing, drawing on his experiences as a young man in prison. He gained critical attention first with a short story, “To What Red Hell,” a fictionalized account of the 1930 fire that killed more than three hundred inmates at the Ohio State Penitentiary. Released during the Depression, Himes became involved with the Federal Writers’ Project, the labor movement, and the Communist Party. He also worked as a journalist in Cleveland. In 1941, Himes moved to California, where he began writing novels of rage and frustration, including If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945), Lonely Crusade (1947), and Cast the First Stone (1952). By 1953, disgusted with the racism he encountered and the lukewarm, when not hostile, reception his work received, Himes left for Europe. My Life of Absurdity is not a deep examination of his life so much as a commentary on the meaning of being a black expatriate writer. “No American,” he writes, “has lived a life more absurd than mine.” In Europe, Himes published the series of detective stories that brought him fame in later years. Among them are The Crazy Kill (1959), The Heat’s On (1966), and Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965). Himes also wrote stories that are sometimes painfully funny and often bitterly desolate. In them, cops, robbers, and all-around losers—the people Himes knew well in his youth—trade in the debased currency of lies and secrets. Himes’s work resounds with wit and indignation but is too often incorrectly identified simply as social protest. His novels made the best-seller lists in foreign countries as well as in the United States.

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Suggested readings Fabre, Michel, Robert E. Skinner, and Lester Sullivan, comps. Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Margolies, Edward, and Michel Fabre. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Milliken, Stephen. Chester Himes: A Critical Appraisal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976. Skinner, Robert. Two Guns from Harlem: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989. —Barbara Day

Rolando Hinojosa

Rolando Hinojosa Born: Mercedes, Texas; January 21, 1929

Hinojosa’s fiction gives a view of Mexican American life in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the twentieth century. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: Estampas del valle y otras obras/Sketches of the Valley and Other Works, 1973 (English revision, The Valley, 1983); Korean Love Songs from Klail City Death Trip, 1978 (printed 1980); Mi querido Rafa, 1981 (Dear Rafe, 1985); Rites and Witnesses: A Comedy, 1982; Partners in Crime, 1985; Klail City y sus alrededores, 1976 (Klail City: A Novel, 1987); Becky and Her Friends, 1990; The Useless Servants, 1993; Ask a Policeman, 1998 Rolando Hinojosa began writing book-length works of fiction in the 1970’s when he was in his forties and after he had established a successful academic career. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, but he left to serve in Korea before returning to complete his degree in Spanish in 1953. In the 1950’s, he taught at Brownsville High School. He next took a master’s degree in Spanish from New Mexico Highlands University (1962) and a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Illinois (1969). From 1968 to the present, he has taught and held administrative posts at various universities in Texas. Korean Love Songs from Klail City Death Trip, which is poetry, and his novels form the Klail City Death Trip series, which deals with ethnic identity, the perils and rewards of cultural assimilation, and the importance of education. Hinojosa’s major characters undergo epic struggles with the issues of identity, moving from a discrete, self-contained Mexican American community of the 1930’s into a world in which young Mexican American men fight and die for the institutions that have relegated them to second-class citizenry. Hinojosa shows that life in the Rio Grande Valley must change. The Klail City Death Trip series in particular shows the subtle mid-century changes in the social and economic landscape of the small towns of the valley and the ways in which Mexican Americans began to demand equality. Because many of Hinojosa’s characters believe in the American Dream, they become more Americanized and less Chicano as the twentieth century moves forward. By the time of Partners in Crime and Becky and Her Friends, the main characters have achieved status within the Anglo community and appear to thrive within it. 219

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Klail City Type of work: Novel First published: Klail City y sus alrededores, 1976 (English translation, 1987) Klail City is part of the Klail City Death Trip, a chronicle of the Texas Rio Grande Valley. This novel moves between past and present so that the past and the present often appear to be the same. Like most of Hinojosa’s novels, Klail City lacks linear plot development. A series of vignettes create a sense of place and ultimately present a picture of a changing world. Several narrators, including the main characters of the series, Rafe Buenrostro (“Buenostro” means “good face”) and Jehú Malacara (“Malacara” means “bad face”) tell the stories. P. Galindo, Esteban Echevarría (a kind of wise man throughout the series), Rafe, and Jehú recount a variety of tales ranging from the story of a hastily arranged marriage between the pregnant Jovita de Anda and Joaquín Tamez to tales of the Texas Rangers’ abuse of Mexican Americans to the story of how Alejandro Leguizamón planned the murder of Rafe’s father, Jesús, and the revenge exacted by Jesús’s brother, don Julián. There is also a kind of interior monologue by Jehú as he and Rafe attend their twenty-second high school class reunion. The past is interwoven with the present, particularly in the scenes that occur in the bars, where the old men, the viejitos, sit drinking and talking until don Manuel Guzmán, Klail City’s only Mexican American police officer, comes to take them home. The section entitled “The Searchers” tells the stories of migrant workers as they leave their homes in the valley to travel north to pick produce. The narrator P. Galindo is introduced, and he reveals himself to be a kind of surrogate author for Hinojosa as he explains his interest in preserving a history of these people. In addition, Rafe gives a personal account of what it was like in the 1940’s for Mexican American students in the American high school, and Jehú recounts some of his experiences as an orphan, an acolyte, and a traveling evangelist with Brother Imás. Brother Imás’s life story is told, as is Viola Barragán’s (Hinojosa’s prototype of the liberated woman), along with an account of how the whites used “bought” Mexicans to get their hand-picked candidates elected. This eclectic collection of vignettes makes up a book that, in 1976, won Latin America’s most prestigious literary award, the Casa de las Américas prize.

Suggested readings Broyles, Yolanda Julia. “Klail City y sus alrededores: Oral Culture and Print Culture.” In The Rolando Hinojosa Reader, edited by José David Saldívar. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1985.

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_______. “Texas Border Literature: Cultural Transformation and Historical Reflection in the Works of Américo Paredes, Rolando Hinojosa, and Gloria Anzaldúa.” Disposito 16, no. 41 (1991): 13-27. Hinojosa, Rolando. “The Texas-Mexico Border: This Writer’s Sense of Place.” In Open Spaces, City Places: Contemporary American Writers on the Changing Southwest, edited by Judy Nolte Temple. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994. Lee, Joyce Glover. Rolando Hinojosa and the American Dream. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1997. Penzenstadler, Joan. “La frontera, Aztlán, el barrio: Frontiers in Chicano Literature.” In The Frontier Experience and the American Dream, edited by David Mogen, Mark Busby, and Paul Bryant. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1989. Saldívar, José David. “Chicano Border Narratives as Cultural Critique.” In Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, edited by Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991. —Joyce J. Glover

Garrett Kaoru Hongo

Garrett Kaoru Hongo Born: Volcano, Hawaii; May 30, 1951

Hongo writes lyrically and evocatively about personal history, place of origin, and ethnicity. Traditions: Japanese American Principal works: Yellow Light, 1982; The River of Heaven, 1988; Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai’i, 1995 Garrett Hongo was born in the shadow of the Kilauea volcano but reared near Los Angeles. When he comes to terms with his origins during his first sojourn to Hawaii at middle age, he liberates his spirit with a moving insight that solidifies his sense of self. His poetry and prose are reverent, precise, and evocative, celebrating male ancestors, early Japanese poets, family, birthplace, and home. Estranged from his past, Hongo was sheltered from the bitter truths of the World War II internment by his family. Gardena, California, the town where he grew up, boasted the largest community of Japanese Americans on the mainland United States at the time and was bordered on the north by the predominantly black towns of Watts and Compton and on the southwest by Torrance and Redondo Beach, white towns. Thus, Hongo was sensitized to issues of uneasy race relations and urban street life early in life. Hongo studied in Japan for a year following graduation from Pomona College, then earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of California at Irvine. As a poet in residence in Seattle, he founded and directed a local theater group called The Asian Exclusion Act. Hongo identifies largely with the West Coast, a mecca for many Asian American writers, and early became a friend and collaborator with Lawson Fusao Inada, a pioneer Japanese American poet. His marriage to white violinist Cynthia Thiessen and their rearing of two sons, Alexander and Hudson, have given Hongo particular sensitivity to the cultural terrain he calls “the borderlands.” The only Asian member of the faculty at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Hongo has directed the creative writing program there since 1989 and has received several extended leaves that allowed time in Hawaii to work on his prose memoirs, published in 1995 as Volcano. Among the most important influences he identifies is Wakako Yamauchi, a widely anthologized Japanese American short-story writer and playwrite, whose works Hongo collected and edited under the title Songs My Mother Taught Me, which was published in 1994. 222

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Volcano Type of work: Memoir First published: 1995 Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai’i evocatively describes flora, fauna, and geographical features of an exuberantly lush and exotic landscape. The book contains biographical portraits of a handful of Hongo’s flamboyant, melancholy, or mercenary ancestors, intriguing in themselves. In the artful way in which it combines place with personal history, and in which it seeks to reconcile Hongo’s Japanese heritage with his American circumstances, the book explores a larger truth: To achieve true peace of mind, it is necessary to seek, acknowledge, and celebrate one’s own ethnic, geographical, and biological origins. Hongo’s last name means “homeland,” and he conducts a pilgrimage, crossing the Pacific Ocean to immerse himself in the birthplace he left when he was only a few weeks old, Volcano. Growing up near Los Angeles and living as an adult in Missouri and Oregon, Hongo first returns to Volcano when he is thirty years old, his Caucasian violinist wife and their infant son, Alexander, in tow. Having felt a profound sense of estrangement from his past, knowing little about his father or grandfather, Hongo soon makes acquaintances in Volcano with locals and distant relatives, who reveal painful truths about the ravages of the Japanese American internment on his family. His cabin in the rainforest is in the shadow of the Kilauea volcano, which takes on symbolism as his narrative continues. He shops in the general store that his grandfather once owned. He witnesses a volcano erupting in the early morning and hikes around lava flows. He eats food such as poi and miso soup, which for him become a wayside of culture and memory. The first visit makes Hongo eager to return, having given him particulars of ancestral memory and having shown him a way to belong in and to make sense of his world. In the poignancy and drama of coming face-to-face with ugly racial and personal secrets and also with the beauties of place that lift him above the pain, Hongo becomes inspired to compose the poGarrett Kaoru Hongo (Ellen Foscue Johnson) etry that had been locked deep in-

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side. The book ends with the wish that the reader achieve similar healing self-knowledge.

Suggested readings Chock, Eric, and Darrell H. Y. Lum, eds. The Best of Bamboo Ridge: The Hawaii Writer’s Quarterly. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press, 1986. Filipelli, Laurie. Garrett Hongo. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1997. Hongo, Garrett. “A Vicious Kind of Tenderness: An Interview with Garrett Hongo.” Interview by Alice Evans. Poets and Writers 20, no. 5 (September/October, 1992): 36-46. Jarman, Mark. “The Volcano Inside.” The Southern Review 32, no. 2 (Spring, 1996): 337-343. Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. —Jill B. Gidmark

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Born: Joplin, Missouri; February 1, 1902 Died: New York, New York; May 22, 1967 Hughes’s writings reflect on the struggles and triumphs of African American people, in the idiom of black America. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Ways of White Folks, 1934; The Big Sea, 1940; I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, 1956; Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1959; The Best of Simple, 1961; The Panther and the Lash: Or, Poems of Our Times, 1967 A prominent African American writer, Langston Hughes led an active literary life. His writings extend from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s to the Black Arts movement of the 1960’s. Hughes’s father abandoned his wife and infant son in 1903 to seek wealth in Mexico. His mother, unable to find even menial labor in Joplin, moved frequently to look for work. In his youth, Hughes lived predominantly with his maternal grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Hughes understood poverty, dejection, and loneliness, but from his grandmother he learned the valuable lessons of perseverance and laughter. Her resilience and ingenuity made a lasting impression upon Hughes’s imagination, and she seems the prototype of his self-assured female characters. After his grandmother’s death, Hughes reunited with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois, but for a time was placed with his Auntie Reed and her husband, religious people who pressured Hughes into joining their church. Hughes marked this unsuccessful attempt at conversion as the beginning of his religious disbelief, as illustrated in the story “Salvation.” Hughes later moved to Cleveland, where his intellectual growth began in earnest. His earliest poems were influenced by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg. He read the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche and was introduced to socialist ideas. When Hughes’s father, having become prosperous, asked Hughes to join him in Mexico in 1920, Hughes rode a train across the Mississippi River at St. Louis and penned the famous “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” on the back of an envelope. In Mexico, Hughes became dissatisfied with his father’s materialism and his plans to send him to a European university. Hughes escaped and attended bullfights and studied Mexican culture. He wrote little of these experiences, although a few pieces were published in The Brownies’ Book, founded by 225

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W. E. B. Du Bois’s staff at Crisis, the official journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1921, Hughes enrolled at Columbia University. He was quickly disillusioned with Columbia’s coldness and spent more time in Harlem and at Broadway productions. Consequently, Hughes failed most of his classes and dropped out. He worked odd jobs while devoting his free time to the shaping forces of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes led a nomadic life for two years as a cabin boy on freighters that took him to Europe and Africa. On his initial voyage, he threw away his books because they reminded him of past hardships. He discovered how cities such as Venice had poor people too. These voyages and observations became the genesis of his first autobiography, The

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Big Sea. Hughes made many influential friends, among them Countée Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, and Arna Bontemps. Van Vechten helped Hughes find a publisher for his work. Bontemps and Hughes later collaborated on numerous children’s books and anthologies. Hughes matriculated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1926, the year that his first book, The Weary Blues, was published. This book was soon followed by many others. During the 1930’s, Hughes made trips to Haiti and to the Soviet Union. In 1937, he was a correspondent in Spain during that country’s civil war. He wrote about these excursions in his second autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander. During the 1940’s, he wrote columns for the Chicago Defender, formulating the humorous persona Jesse B. Semple, or “Simple,” who would later become the basis of the “Simple” stories. In the 1950’s, his politically edged writings made Hughes a brief target of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for communists. In the last years of his life, Hughes continued to produce volumes of edited and creative work. Hughes died following prostate surgery at Polyclinic Hospital in New York City.

Autobiographies First published: The Big Sea, 1940; I Wonder as I Wander, 1956 In the opening of Hughes’s first autobiography, The Big Sea, the author recalls how he heaved his books overboard at the start of his first journey to Africa in 1923. The gesture may be seen as adolescent and anti-intellectual, but it suggests the commencement of Hughes’s role as a Renaissance man in Black American letters. The book chronicles the first twenty-seven years of Hughes’s life, from the 1920’s, when he explored the idiom and jazz rhythms of African Americans in his poetry, to the shift to his bitter prose of the 1930’s. The autobiography is written typically as a confession, but it remains comparatively impersonal. Only three guarded personal accounts appear in the text of The Big Sea. The first concerns a religious revival Hughes attended at age thirteen at which he waited in vain for Jesus. The second describes the morning in Mexico when he realized that he hated his father. The third, at the book’s end, details the break with his patron and mentor, Charlotte Mason. He ties the latter experience to the other two: “The light went out with a sudden crash in the dark, and everything became like that night in Kansas when I had failed to see Jesus and had lied about it afterwards. Or that morning in Mexico when I suddenly hated my father.” Other than these specific episodes, controversy rarely enters the book. Instead, Hughes presents himself as a man who loves his race and is optimistic about his people. He nevertheless carries doubts and fears within himself. The book, furthermore, is peopled by Hughes’s many friends, including Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, and others involved with the Harlem Renais-


sance. Hughes’s publisher, Blanche Knopf, thought that the references were excessive, but Hughes convinced her to retain them. Consequently, The Big Sea is perhaps the best chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance. The second autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander, received less favor than its predecessor, although Hughes thought that his second autobiography was more important to his future as a writer. Knopf rejected the book, claiming it was “pretty weighted . . . and not a book.” Covering his life from 1929 to 1950, it includes his travels to Haiti, Spain, and Russia. More than half of the collection explores his 1932 trip to the Soviet Union, and a second long section covers his excursion to Spain during its civil war. The book seems less a literary life than a political commentary on his travels. One of the criticisms directed at I Wonder as I Wander was its detachment from the personal and reflective. The Big Sea contains few enough personal reflections, but those that it contains are balanced between pain and joy. I Wonder as I Wander shows a Hughes who is more secure in his world and who is suffering less, despite his poverty (which fame did little to diminish). I Wonder as I Wander is a mature recollection, written without radicalism or prejudice.

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes Type of work: Poetry First published: 1959 The poems of Selected Poems of Langston Hughes were gathered by the poet from several of his earlier collections, including The Weary Blues (1926), Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), Dear Lovely Death (1931), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Fields of Wonder (1947), One Way Ticket (1949), and Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). Representative of the body of Hughes’s poetry, the collection includes his best poems: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “Song for a Dark Girl,” “Sylvester’s Dying Bed,” “I, Too,” “Montage of a Dream Deferred,” and “Refugee in America.” Hughes’s poetry is an exploration of black identity, not only the sorrows and tribulations faced by black Americans but also the warm joy and humor of Hughes’s people. He writes in “Negro”: “I am a Negro:/ Black as the night is black,/ Black like the depths of my Africa.” This is a resolute proclamation confronting racial adversity: “The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo./ They lynch me still in Mississippi.” Hughes refuses, however, to allow his poetry to become a podium for anger; rather, he offers readers portraits of the black experience and, consequently, draws his readers into a nearer understanding of black identity. One of the strongest of Hughes’s poems is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The poem muses upon what rivers mean to black culture and how the rivers symbolize the strength and longevity of a proud race:

Langston Hughes / 229 I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

The beauty of the poem, which reads like a hymn or spiritual, is unmistakable and permanent. Elsewhere, Hughes experiments with blues rhythms and jazz improvisations, as in “The Weary Blues”: In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— “Ain’t got nobody in all this world, Ain’t got nobody but ma self. I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ And put ma troubles on the shelf.” Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more— “I got the Weary Blues And I can’t be satisfied.”

The blues touch upon black sorrow, but the music of the blues makes its listeners feel better. Some of Hughes’s characters, as found in the “Madam to You” sequence, are not blue, or troubled, or even angry. Rather, they are secure and pleased with themselves. In “Madam’s Calling Cards,” Alberta K. Johnson tells the printer: “There’s nothing foreign/ To my pedigree:/ Alberta K. Johnson—/ American that’s me.” Ultimately, Hughes’s objective seems to be to provide blacks with identities as Americans, living in a democracy that ensures life without prejudice. Thus, in “I, Too,” a poem echoing Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the poet looks to a future when a black man can “be at the table/ When company comes” and that “they’ll see/ How beautiful I am/ And be ashamed.”

The Ways of White Folks Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1934 During Hughes’s travels to Russia in 1931, he became intensely interested in D. H. Lawrence’s short fiction. As he later described in I Wonder as I Wander, he had never read Lawrence before and remarked that both “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “The Lovely Lady” had made his “hair stand on end.” “I


could not put the book down,” he wrote. Furthermore, he wrote: “If D. H. Lawrence can write such psychologically powerful accounts of folks in England . . . maybe I could write stories like his about folks in America.” This fascination led to The Ways of White Folks, a collection of fourteen stories. The title is derived from the story “Berry,” an account of a young black man who works as a handyman in a home for handicapped children. Berry is exploited and does more than his share of work for a pittance. He cannot understand why this happens and remarks, “The ways of white folks, I mean some white folks, is too much for me. I rekon they must be a few good ones, but most of ‘em ain’t good—least wise they don’t treat me good. And Lawd knows, I ain’t never done nothin’ to them, nothin’ a-tall.” Overall, the stories comment on the suffering the black community endures at the hands of white society. “Slave on the Block,” for example, details how a white couple strives to make a young black artist fit into their aesthetic mold. Humorously, the young man, rebelling, runs off with the cook. In “Father and Son,” Bert, a college student, returns home to the South but does not relinquish his independence. Despite warnings to respect white society, Bert ignores them and finds himself and his father hunted by a lynch mob. To save themselves from the disgrace of public hanging, Bert kills his father and himself before the mob overtakes them. In “Home,” Hughes writes of an elderly musician who has returned home; while his career had been successful elsewhere, he is murdered by locals offended by his talking to a white woman. “The Blues I’m Playing” describes how a white patron, a spinster who collects artists, tries to mold a talented black woman into a respectable classical pianist. While the young woman plays exceptional music, she often reverts to her first loves: gospel and blues. Oceola tells her patron, “This is mine. . . . Listen! . . . How sad and gay it is. Blue and happy—laughing and crying. . . . How white like you and black like me.” Her music is rooted in “bass notes [that] throb like tomtoms deep in the earth.” Her patron, who cannot understand this music’s value, prefers looking at the stars, which are unattainable, futile, and distant. Underlying most of this collection is the difficulty of black-white relationships. Hughes illustrates how blacks are never regarded as individuals but rather as members of a group, how they are always treated with mistrust and hate. Hughes makes it clear in The Ways of White Folks that white people do not comprehend their own actions.

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold, ed. Langston Hughes. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Emanuel, James A. Langston Hughes. New York: Twayne, 1967. McLaren, Joseph. Langston Hughes, Folk Dramatist in the Protest Tradition, 1921-1943. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997.

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Miller, R. Baxter. The Art of Imagination of Langston Hughes. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: 1902-1941. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. _______. The Life of Langston Hughes: 1941-1967. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. —Mark Sanders

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston Born: Eatonville, Florida; January 7, 1891 Died: Fort Pierce, Florida; January 28, 1960 Hurston depicts the plight and records the language of her people.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Mules and Men, 1935; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942 Zora Neale Hurston was born in the first incorporated all-black town in America; her father was one of its influential citizens. Her identity was formed in Eatonville; her works clearly show her attachments to that community. When Hurston was nine, her mother died. Hurston was moved among relatives, deprived of a stable home. She worked to support herself from an early age; at only fourteen she worked as a maid with a touring Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. She later went to night school in Baltimore to catch up on her schooling, to Howard University, and to Barnard College as a scholarship student. She loved learning. Settled in New York in the early 1920’s, Hurston filled her life with people who encouraged her work and gave her advice. Some of the most important of these were white: novelist Fanny Hurst and anthropologist Franz Boas, for example. Yet her identity comes from her own people: African American folklore was the focus of her research, and black women’s experience informs her best work. Hurston was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and is considered one of its stars, but she was not readily accepted in the movement at the time. Protest writers such as Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison found her writing “quaint” and “romantic.” She speaks in a clear feminine voice that, if not full of protest, affirms the black woman’s identity. Hurston was equally at home with upper-class whites and poor blacks, but she never forgot her heritage. Hurston’s most important works were published during the 1930’s: her collection of folklore, Mules and Men, in 1935; her novels Jonah’s Gourd Vine and her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1934 and 1937, respectively. An autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942. She was married and divorced twice. Throughout her life Hurston was compelled to discover and translate the Southern black, often female, existence. In her collections of folklore, her fiction, her articles, and her life, she presented her people honestly and sympathetically, faithfully recording their language and their beliefs. Not 232

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until after her death was the significance of her work fully appreciated. She died in a welfare home in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1973, acclaimed black writer Alice Walker found Hurston’s grave and led a revival of interest in her work.

Dust Tracks on a Road Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1942 Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography was written when Hurston was about fifty years old. The book poignantly describes what it was like to grow up poor, black, and female; it shows an energetic woman who overcomes odds to achieve a liberated, rewarding life. Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida, America’s first incorporated black community. Her father was a driving force in the community; her mother died when she was nine. The liberating force for Hurston was her love of knowledge. While at the black grammar school, she won a reading contest, receiving books that ignited her imagination. In turn, she learned about real life at Joe Clarke’s store, the meeting place of the men in town. After her mother’s death, she was moved from place to place. It was her own initiative that released her from her circumstances. When she learned that an actress in a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan troupe was looking for a lady’s maid, she approached the woman with “I come to work for you.” When her service ended—a service that had been a marvelous education in humanity and the arts—she went back to night high school, then to Howard University and Barnard College. At Barnard, working under anthropologist Franz Boas, she studied the folklore of her people in Polk County, Florida. Zora Neale Hurston (Library of Congress) This began a lifelong interest

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in the roots of her people. Yet some of Hurston’s greatest friends and confidants were the upper-class whites she met both in school and after. Author Fannie Hurst, singer Ethel Waters, and critic Carl Van Vechten were among the many who encouraged her and introduced her to other writers of her times. Hurston at times bemoans her own people and their plight. She sees their disillusionment and oftentimes ill-suited efforts to break out of a stereotype. She lovingly describes the black race as not a race chosen by God but “a collection of people who overslept our time and got caught in the draft.” Hurston’s descriptions of her own dedication and hard work inspire the reader to see what a poor African American woman could achieve with forwardness and luck. Her sensitive pictures of her race show people who have the power to overcome obstacles and succeed. Her generous view of humanity and lack of prejudice against anyone because of background or color give the reader a hopeful vision for the future in which love, hope, and hard work make the American Dream possible for anyone.

Their Eyes Were Watching God Type of work: Novel First published: 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston’s most lauded work. It is the story of Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods, a thrice-married, twice-widowed woman who learns the hard way: through her own experience. Granddaughter of a slave and daughter of a runaway mother, Janie grows up not realizing her color till she sees a picture of herself among white children. Rather than worry about Janie in her adolescence, her grandmother marries her off to Logan Killicks, an old, narrow-minded, and abusive husband. Hoping for more to life than she has, Janie ends that marriage herself by walking off with Joe Starks, a passerby with a dream, who becomes the mayor of Eatonville, Florida, a new all-black town. Janie reigns as queen of the town, yet she is still unhappily under the control of a jealous, controlling husband. The town is incensed when, after Starks’s death, Janie runs off with Teacake Woods, a young, charming ne’er-do-well. Living with Teacake “on the muck”— picking and planting beans in the Everglades—Janie finds happiness. Teacake truly loves her and cherishes her company, and Janie and Teacake’s home is the center of a community of lively, happy, hardworking folks. Janie ends up a widow again. In trying to save Janie from a rabid dog during a flood, Teacake is bitten. In his delirium, he threatens Janie’s life, and she must shoot him. Despite the tragedy in her life, Janie comes across as powerful and selfreliant. She moves from being controlled by men to being assertive and independent. She provides a positive image of the black woman who rises

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above her circumstances and learns to deal with life on her own terms. After Teacake’s death and her trial, she returns to Eatonville with her head high. She is saddened but not defeated; she tells her friend Phoeby that she has “been a delegate to de big ’ssociation of life” and that she has learned that everybody “got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” Although Hurston’s novel received some harsh criticism for being quaint and romantic and was out of print for years, it is now considered an important work for its understanding of the African American folkloric tradition, for its language, and for its female hero, a woman who struggles and successfully finds her own identity.

Suggested readings Awkward, Michael, ed. New Essays on “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bloom, Harold, ed. Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Cronin, Gloria L., ed. Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. Gates, Henry Louis, and Anthony Appiah. Zora Neale Hurston: Cultural Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad, 1993. Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Howard, Lillie. Zora Neale Hurston. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Lyons, Mary E. Sorrow’s Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Collier Books, 1990. Peters, Pearlie Mae Fisher. The Assertive Woman in Zora Neale Hurston’s Fiction, Folklore, and Drama. New York: Garland, 1998. Witcover, Paul. Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. Yanuzzi, Della A. Zora Neale Hurston: Southern Storyteller. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1996. —Janine Rider

David Henry Hwang

David Henry Hwang Born: Los Angeles, California; August 11, 1957

Hwang is the first playwright to depict the identity, culture, and history of Chinese Americans in mainstream American theater. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: F.O.B., pr. 1978, pb. 1983; The Dance and the Railroad, pr. 1981, pb. 1983; Family Devotions, pr. 1981, pb. 1983; M. Butterfly, pr., pb. 1988; Bondage, pr. 1992, pb. 1993; Golden Child, pr., pb. 1998 David Henry Hwang is a second-generation Chinese American. From his earliest plays, Hwang has been concerned with the Chinese American experience. Hwang has identified three developmental phases in his early work. His “assimilationist” phase was motivated by the overwhelming desire to be accepted by white American culture. Hwang’s first play, F.O.B., exemplifies this first period. Dave, a Chinese American, reacts negatively to a “fresh-offthe-boat” Chinese, Steve, because Steve exhibits all the stereotypic mannerisms that Dave has tried to suppress his entire life. In college, Hwang lived in an all-Asian dormitory and was caught up in an “isolationist-nationalist” phase. During this phase, Hwang was primarily concerned with writing for a Chinese American audience. This resulted in The Dance and the Railroad, which recaptures the history of the Chinese American railroad strike of 1867, and Family Devotions, which encourages Chinese Americans to reject negative Western perceptions and remember their Chinese heritage. After the isolationist phase, Hwang next became interested in the love story. He adapted two classic Japanese love stories and wrote a play without identified Asian characters. Although not successful, this last experiment led directly to Hwang’s masterpiece, M. Butterfly, in which a French diplomat carries on an affair with a Chinese actress for years, only to discover that “she” is really a man. Identity is explored as Hwang shows how the Frenchman Gallimard falls in love with an Asian stereotype. Gallimard commits suicide at the loss of his lover, a role-reversal of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904). Wanting to advocate a broader forum against sexism and racism in literature, Hwang created Bondage, an allegory of love that challenges a variety of prejudices. Bondage takes place in a fantasy bondage parlor where domination is subverted when stereotypes are rejected by masked participants. The historical and cultural identity of Chinese Americans is at the heart of 236

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Hwang’s plays, which present a significant exploration of the evolving identity of Asians in a pluralistic society.

David Henry Hwang

Bondage Type of work: Drama First produced: 1992; first published, 1993 Bondage, a one-act play set in a fantasy bondage parlor, is an exploration of racial, cultural, and sexual stereotypes. It is presented as an allegory depicting their overwhelming influence in society and offering one alternative for society’s progressing beyond them. The play demonstrates Chinese American playwright Hwang’s development beyond exclusively Asian American themes to encompass the destructiveness of all stereotyping, be it racial, cultural, or sexual. Mark, identifiable only as a male, is the client of dominatrix Terri, identifiable only as a female, in a fantasy bondage parlor. Both characters’ identities are fully disguised. They are merely a man and a woman who assume the characteristics required for whatever fantasy is suggested. During this encounter, however, both Mark and Terri refuse to accept the stereotypes associated with their fantasy roles.

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Terri informs Mark that today he will be a Chinese man and she will be a blonde woman. She immediately characterizes Mark as a horn-rimmedglasses-wearing engineer afraid of her because she is popular with cowboys and jocks. Mark rejects her Asian stereotypes and, in turn, uses blonde stereotypes to describe her. A personal confrontation ensues because Mark will not accept her ridicule. This leads to male-female stereotyping, and on to progressive levels of racial stereotyping. As they are unable to resolve this confrontation, they move on to become a white man and a black woman, with underlying stereotyped images of the white liberal. Terri charges that he may try to “play” all races, but she has already “become” all races. Next they assume the roles of Chinese American man and an Asian American woman, exploring intercultural stereotypes. Finally they explore Mark’s need for penitence as a stereotypical businessman, which drives him to the bondage parlor to be dominated and humiliated in a fantasy world as he dominates and humiliates in the real one. The plight of both men and women, and the roles society forces upon them, dominate the final confrontation. Her resistance having been worn down by Mark’s arguing, Terri begins to remove her disguise. She offers Mark his moment of victory, but instead he, too, removes his mask. When he confesses his real love for Terri, she reveals herself—they are as the original fantasy, an Asian man and a blonde woman. Their confrontation has put the stereotypes of their disparate groups behind them. They see each other as individuals and are ready to move beyond their fantasies. Hwang’s optimism that society can move beyond oppressing societal stereotypes pervades Bondage. He presents a balanced attack on all stereotyping, showing that regardless of cultural, political, or sexual identity, society will only move forward when all stereotypes are destroyed and people are regarded as individuals.

The Dance and the Railroad Type of work: Drama First produced: 1981; first published, 1983 The Dance and the Railroad is a history play based on the Chinese railroad workers’ strike of 1867. It reveals a significant event in the Chinese American past, rejecting the stereotype of submissive coolies and depicting assertive men who demanded their rights in spite of great personal risk. Originally intended as a contribution toward the reclaiming of the Chinese American past, it accomplished much broader artistic goals. Ma, a young Chinese emigrant who has been in America only four weeks, comes to warn Lone, a performer, that the other Chinese do not like his superior attitude. Hired to build the railroad across the Sierras, they are now in the fourth day of a strike against the labor practices of the “white devils.”


The Chinese have demanded an eight-hour workday and a fourteen-dollara-week increase in pay. Lone is estranged from the other Chinese because he refuses to waste time drinking and gambling and instead practices the traditional Chinese opera. Captivated by Lone’s beautiful dance, Ma decides to become a performer when he returns to China a wealthy man. Lone scoffs at Ma’s naïve beliefs that America is a place with a mythical Gold Mountain, that his cheating Chinese coworkers are his friends, and that he will ever be able to portray the great Gwan Gung, god of fighters. Lone tells Ma that if he is to succeed he must face reality and willingly accept being shunned by the “already dead” Chinese men. Undaunted by this challenge, Ma begins to practice Chinese opera. Ma is subsequently shocked, however, to learn that if he works hard, he might successfully portray the Second Clown. Lone reveals how he spent eight years in opera school training to play Gwan Gung, only to be “kidnapped” by his parents and sent to the Sierras to work. Ma is determined and practices by spending the night in the “locust” position, a metaphor for the emigrant awakening. Lone returns, reporting that the strike is over. The Chinese have achieved their eight-hour day but only an eightdollar-a-week raise. Ma finally realizes that, although a few Chinese men in America might achieve their dreams, most become dead to China. Ma and Lone improvise a Chinese opera revealing their voyages to America and experiences on the Gold Mountain. When the mountain fights back, Lone is exhilarated but Ma falls, his spirit broken. Now a realist, Ma returns to work with the “already dead” men, while Lone continues practicing for the Chinese opera. Hwang contrasts two portraits of emigrant Chinese becoming Americans. Ma loses his innocence, discards his traditions, and joins the “already dead” laborers. Lone adapts Chinese mythology and tradition to his American experience. The Asian community has lauded Hwang’s work, praising its depiction of the lives of Chinese Americans.

Family Devotions Type of work: Drama First produced: 1981; first published, 1983 Family Devotions was written when Hwang was primarily interested in writing for and about the identity of Asian Americans. The play is autobiographical in that Hwang was raised an evangelical Christian; Family Devotions advocates casting off the Western mythology imposed upon Asian cultures. The play is set in an idealized house with an enclosed patio and tennis court, representing a shallow, materialistic American Dream. The extended families of Ama and Popo, first-generation Chinese Americans, are awaiting the arrival of Di-Gou, their brother whom they have not seen for thirty years and who is arriving from Communist China. As they anticipate Di-Gou’s

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arrival, the women discuss the atrocities of the Communists, whose evil rule they are certain Di-Gou will be grateful to escape. The family descended from the great Chinese Christian evangelist See-goh-poo, and, as a boy, Di-Gou witnessed her miracles, so Ama and Popo anticipate hearing Di-Gou repeat his fervent testimony. When he arrives, however, Di-Gou quietly disavows ever being Christian. Di-Gou confides to Popo’s grandson, Chester, that to establish a true American identity, he must believe the stories “written on his face,” and these stories reflect many generations. In act 2 the sisters organize a family devotional and invite Di-Gou to witness for Christ, but a family squabble erupts. Di-Gou is left with the women, who physically force him to submit before their neon cross. They implore him to remember See-goh-poo’s miracles. Chester rushes in to rescue Di-Gou, and the scene transforms into a kind of Chinese opera. Di-Gou rises up speaking in tongues, the gas grill bursts into flame, and Chester interprets the revelation: Di-Gou witnessed See-goh-poo give birth out of wedlock, claiming evangelicalism to deceive her family. Di-Gou proclaims that because they now know the truth, their stories are meaningless. The old sisters collapse, dead, and Di-Gou realizes that “No one leaves America.” The play ends with Chester standing where Di-Gou first stood, and the “shape of his face begins to change,” a metaphor for the beginning acceptance of his Chinese heritage. Family Devotions is an allegory depicting a cultural awakening of the individual. The world is reversed; “civilized” Christians behave as heathens, and the “heathen” Asian offers wisdom, solace, and love. Hwang calls for Asian Americans to embrace their Asian heritage.

M. Butterfly Type of work: Drama First produced: 1988; first published, 1988 M. Butterfly is Hwang’s fictionalized account of a real French diplomat who carried on an affair with a Chinese opera singer for twenty years, only to discover she was actually a man. Hwang’s compelling drama examines themes of sexual and racial stereotyping, Western imperialism, the role illusion plays in perceptions, and the ability of one person truly to know another. M. Butterfly contrasts Rene Gallimard with Pinkerton in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (produced, 1904; published, 1935). Gallimard sees himself as awkward, clumsy at love, but somehow blessed with the utter devotion of Song Liling, a beautiful Oriental woman. Hwang uses the word “Oriental” to convey an exotic, imperialistic view of the East. Gallimard becomes so absorbed with his sexist perception of Asian women that it distorts his thinking. He tests Liling’s devotion by neglecting and humiliating her, ulti-


mately forcing her to admit she is his “Butterfly,” a character she has publicly denounced. Unknown to Gallimard, Liling is a Communist agent, manipulating him to extract information about the Vietnam War. At the embassy Gallimard finds increased status because of his Oriental affair. When his analysis of East-West relations, based entirely on his self-delusions, prove wrong, Gallimard is demoted and returned to France. His usefulness spent, Liling is forced to endure hard labor, an official embarrassment because “there are no homosexuals in China.” Eventually, the Communists send Liling to France to reestablish his affair with Gallimard. When Gallimard is caught and tried for espionage, it is publicly revealed that Liling is a man. Liling now changes to men’s clothing, effecting a complete role-reversal between Liling and Gallimard. Liling becomes the dominant masculine figure while Gallimard becomes the submissive feminine figure. Preferring fantasy to reality, Gallimard becomes “Butterfly,” donning Liling’s wig and kimono, choosing an honorable death over a dishonorable life. M. Butterfly demonstrates the dangers inherent in living a life satisfied with shallow stereotypes and misconceptions. Gallimard’s singular desire for a submissive Oriental woman was fulfilled only in his mind. It blinded him to every truth about his mistress, refusing even to accept the truth about Liling until he stood naked before him. It first cost him his career, then his wife, then his dignity, then his lover, and finally his life. Even when he is confronted by the truth, Gallimard can only respond that he has “known, and been loved by, the perfect woman.”

Suggested readings DiGaetani, John Lewis. “M. Butterfly: An Interview with David Henry Hwang.” The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies 33, no. 3 (Fall, 1989): 141-153. Gerard, Jeremy. “David Hwang: Riding the Hyphen.” The New York Times Magazine, March 13, 1988, 44, 88-89. Hwang, David Henry. Introduction to FOB and Other Plays. New York: Plume, 1990. _______. “‘Making His Muscles Work for Himself’: An Interview with David Henry Hwang.” Interview by Bonnie Lyons. Literary Review 42, no. 2 (Winter, 1999): 230. Skloot, Robert. “Breaking the Butterfly: The Politics of David Henry Hwang.” Modern Drama 33, no. 1 (March, 1990): 59-66. Street, Douglas. David Henry Hwang. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1989. —Gerald S. Argetsinger

Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson Born: Evanston, Illinois; April 23, 1948

Johnson’s philosophical fiction continues an African American literary tradition. Traditions: African American Principal works: Faith and the Good Thing, 1974; Oxherding Tale, 1982; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, 1986; Middle Passage, 1990; Dreamer, 1998 Reared in a tight-knit Midwestern black community, Charles Johnson remembers his childhood environment as loving and secure. An only child, he often read to fill up his time. Johnson especially loved comic books and spent hours practicing drawing in hopes of becoming a professional cartoonist. To this end he took a two-year correspondence course and was publishing cartoons and illustrations by the time he completed high school. At the last minute Johnson decided to attend Southern Illinois University rather than art school. There he became passionately drawn to the study of philosophy and to writing. During his first summer vacation he began to pursue another lifelong interest, the martial arts. Before his undergraduate college days were over he had published a book of his own cartoons, Black Humor (1970), had hosted a television series on drawing, and had worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. In 1970, he married Joan New, whom he had met two years earlier. After graduation, Johnson began working as a reporter for the Illinoisan; however, he had already decided to become a novelist. Over the next two years, with John Gardner as his mentor, he wrote six “apprentice novels.” Finally, in 1974, he published Faith and the Good Thing, which he had extensively researched while completing his master’s degree in philosophy and writing a thesis on Marxism. Johnson continued his studies in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, this time concentrating on phenomenology. Oxherding Tale is a work he intended, he wrote, to be a reply to German novelist Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha (1922; English translation, 1951). Johnson fashioned Oxherding into a “neo-slave narrative for the second half of the twentieth century.” A melding of Eastern thought, the American slave experience, and a sharp, witty twentieth-century consciousness, Oxherding Tale traces the misadventures of Andrew Hawkins, a privileged slave given the finest education because of his status as the child of the plantation’s black butler and the white mistress. Eventually, Andrew leaves home and begins to experience a variety 242

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of identities and to test various philosophical stances toward life. His tale culminates with his marriage, his reconciliation with his past, and his final encounter with Soulcatcher, the fugitive slave hunter long on his trail. By the time Oxherding Tale was published, Johnson had accepted an invitation to teach creative writing at the University of Washington. There, he continued to write; in addition to numerous essays, book reviews, and works for television, his credits include a collection of short stories, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988), and his most acclaimed success Middle Passage, winner of the National Book Award. Another neo-slave narrative in the style of Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage continues Johnson’s quest to produce entertaining yet seriously philosophical black literature. Johnson also continues his commitment to the martial arts and to Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism.

Middle Passage Type of work: Novel First published: 1990 Middle Passage is the story of Rutherford Calhoun’s life-changing journey aboard the slaver Republic in 1830. Like Johnson’s earlier Oxherding Tale, this book is narrated by a young black man born into slavery but with a superior education, whose story is rooted in nineteenth century history but whose savvy, humorous voice bespeaks a twentieth century intellectual consciousness. Rutherford’s adventures begin when he stows aboard a ship to escape a woman determined to bring him to the altar. The Republic, a slaver, ships out to Africa; there it picks up a special cargo—a hold full of men, women, and children of the mystical Allmuseri tribe. The Republic’s captain also secretly brings on board a crate containing the captured Allmuseri god. Middle Passage blatantly evokes Moby Dick: Or, The Whale (1851), “Benito Cereno,” and Homer’s Odyssey (c. 800 b.c., English translation, 1616) among others. Johnson flaunts, mocks, and turns on end these similarities: His dwarfish Captain Falcon is a caricature of the crazed Ahab; the ringleaders of the rebelling Allmuseri are Babo, Fernando, and Atufel; Isadora, Rutherford’s intended, knits by day and unravels her work by night to forestall marriage to her new suitor. The Republic’s voyage is a darkly comic version of the Pequod’s, but one highlighting slavery’s role in American history and economy. Whereas Herman Melville’s Ishmael asks the philosophical question, “Who ain’t a slave?” Johnson’s Falcon educates Rutherford in the fundamentals of capitalism by pointing out, “Who ain’t up for auction when it comes to it?” Fittingly, then, Johnson’s novel does not end when Falcon dies, the Republic sinks, and Rutherford is rescued. Rather, these events deliver Rutherford into the clutches of the Republic’s owners, come to check up on their investment.

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Also aboard the rescue ship is Isadora and her fiancé, wealthy black New Orleans mobster Papa Zeringue. Once Zeringue is exposed as a part owner of the Republic, Isadora is free to marry Rutherford, who joyfully embraces marriage as an emotional haven in a cannibalistic world. Middle Passage charts Rutherford’s growth from a self-serving opportunist to a responsible man who values the ties that link human beings. His passage from a worldview based on multiplicity, individualism, dualism, and linearity to acceptance of the Allmuseri concept of “unity of being” opens him up to love, compassion, and commitment. Rutherford’s growth into this new identity seems also to comment on Johnson’s identity as a sophisticated black writer navigating his way through African American, American, Western, and Eastern traditions. Johnson calls Middle Passage his attempt to fill a literary void by producing “philosophical black literature.” An admirer of writers such as Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hermann Hesse, Herman Melville, and Ralph Ellison, who “understood instinctively that fiction and philosophy were sister disciplines,” Johnson weds, in this work, his own interests in philosophy, African American history, and fiction. In Middle Passage, Johnson reminds readers that the received American epic (literary and historical) has an African American counterpart, and he adds a new dimension to the slave narrative tradition by creating an African American narrator who speaks in a formidably intellectual voice. Johnson also insists that Rutherford be taken seriously simply as a human being engaged in exploring fundamental underpinnings of the human condition. Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award for Middle Passage.

Suggested readings Byrd, Rudolph, ed. I Call Myself an Artist: Writings by and About Charles Johnson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Coleman, J. W. “Charles Johnson’s Quest for Black Freedom in Oxherding Tale.” African American Review 29, no. 4 (Winter, 1995): 631-644. Johnson, Charles. “An Interview with Charles Johnson.” Interview by Jonathan Little. Contemporary Literature 34, no. 12 (Summer, 1993): 158-182. Keneally, Thomas. Review of Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson. The New York Times Book Review, July 1, 1990, 8. Rushdy, Ashraf. “The Phenomenology of the Allmuseri.” African American Review 26 (Fall, 1992): 373-394. Scott, D. M. “Interrogating Identity: Appropriation and Transformation in Middle Passage.” African American Review 29, no. 4 (Winter, 1995): 645-655. Travis, M. A. “Beloved and Middle Passage: Race, Narrative, and the Critics’ Essentialism.” Narrative 2, no. 3 (October, 1994): 179-200. —Grace McEntee

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson Born: Jacksonville, Florida; June 17, 1871 Died: Wiscasset, Maine; June 26, 1938 One of the first to celebrate African American art forms, Johnson was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Traditions: African American Principal works: The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, 1912; The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922 (editor); The Book of American Negro Spirituals, 1925 (editor); God’s Trombones: Seven Sermons in Verse, 1927; Along This Way, 1933; Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems, 1935 James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, was graduated from Atlanta University in 1894, and went on to become one of the most versatile artists of his time. In addition to expressing his artistic talents, he led a successful professional life and was an influential civil rights advocate. After his graduation in 1894, Johnson became principal of Stanton School and edited a newspaper, the Daily American. He advocated civil rights in his articles in a time that saw a dramatic rise in the number of lynchings. He thus assumed a public role in the African American community. Encouraged by his brother Rosamond, Johnson and his brother went to New York in 1899 to work on a musical career. Their most lasting achievement of that period is the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the African American national anthem. After having been apJames Weldon Johnson (Library of Congress) pointed consul in Vene245

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zuela and Nicaragua, Johnson, after publication of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, decided to attempt to support himself through literary work. He returned to New York to begin writing an influential column for the New York Age, commenting on literary matters and encouraging black literary activity. He published The Book of American Negro Poetry three years before Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925) officially ushered in the Harlem Renaissance. Beginning in 1916, Johnson was field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organizing new branches and looking into matters of racial injustice nationwide. In 1920, he became the first African American secretary of the NAACP, a post he would hold until 1930. Johnson saw his civil rights work and his artistic activity as complementary, believing that the production of great works of art would improve African Americans’ position in society. Johnson contributed major work to that effort with the publication of God’s Trombones, bringing the language of the African American church into the realm of literature. Weldon also collected two volumes of African American spirituals, which made clear that this expression of African American folk spirit belonged to the world of art. His death in a car accident in 1938 interrupted Johnson in his wide-ranging efforts.

Along This Way Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1933 Johnson claimed that one of the reasons for publishing his autobiography, Along This Way, was to finally make clear that his novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) was not a record of his life. A public figure as important as Johnson hardly needed, however, a justification for adding another book to the growing shelf of autobiographies of distinguished African Americans, such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois. In a controlled and often ironic narrative tone, Johnson not only provides insights into his life and times but also focuses on African American accomplishments in the hostile social climate that he battled against all his life. Despite a middle-class upbringing, a university degree, and immediate success first as a school principal, in passing the Florida bar examination—the first African American to do so—and then as songwriter, writer, consul, and civil rights activist, Johnson always committed himself to the cause of African Americans. When on university vacation, he spent three months teaching African American farmers’ children in rural Georgia, realizing “that they were me, and I was they; that a force stronger than blood made us one.” Accordingly, all his artistic work was committed to improving the social

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situation of African Americans and to exploring African American art forms. When embarking on his composing and songwriting career, he “began to grope toward a realization of the American Negro’s cultural background and his creative folk-art.” In much of his poetry, too, Johnson built on African American folk traditions. He did so because he believed in the uniqueness of the African American heritage, based as it was on a deep spirituality. Thus, he implies that African Americans are a main resource for the United States in matters of artistry and spirituality, and that, in turn, the United States will be measured by how it treats African Americans. He pithily summarizes this belief in saying “that in large measure the race question involves the saving of black America’s body and white America’s soul.” A considerable part of the book is devoted to Johnson’s fight for racial justice and his time in the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Johnson reveals explicitly that his program for improving the social status of African Americans, despite his own artistic, legal, and political efforts, is really a moral one: “The only kind of revolution that would have an immediately significant effect on the American Negro’s status would be a moral revolution.” As Along This Way makes clear, Johnson did his best on all fronts.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man Type of work: Novel First published: 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man was first published anonymously in 1912, but only became a success when republished in 1927 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. The novel chronicles the coming-of-age of its unnamed protagonist, who switches back and forth between ethnic identities until he finally decides to pass as a European American. Its most striking feature might well be that it calls the notion of ethnic identity into question. In order to explore ethnic identity, Johnson has his protagonist experience both sides of the “color line,” to use the famous phrase by W. E. B. Du Bois. Growing up believing himself European American, as the white-looking child of a light-skinned African American mother and a European American father, the protagonist finds out in school that he is African American. Having harbored prejudice against African Americans, he now becomes an object of prejudice. Once over this initial shock, he resolves to become famous in the service of African Americans. In order to learn about his mother’s heritage, he leaves for the South, where he often finds himself an outsider to African American society. He knows little of African American folk customs, so at first he reacts to African Americans ambiguously. In this way, Johnson shows that the culture of one’s upbringing is a more important factor in determining one’s outlook on other cultures than ethnic bloodlines are.

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After losing his money in the South, the protagonist eventually embarks on a musical career, which takes him to New York. He discovers ragtime there and is fascinated by it, renewing his resolve to become famous, and intending to do so through African American music. After a sojourn in Europe, he returns to the South in order to learn more about the roots of African American music, which he calls “a mine of material” when visiting a religious meeting at which spirituals are sung. The reader discovers that the protagonist’s interest in African American culture is mainly commercial. He nevertheless often comments enthusiastically on African American contributions to American culture. The protagonist gives up his idea of becoming famous through African American music, however, after witnessing a lynching. He returns North, marries a European American woman, and becomes a white businessman. In the end, he wishes he had followed his musical inclinations, which are connected to his African American heritage, instead of achieving material success. Thus, the novel shows that a hostile social climate can bring people to forsake their heritage, but also that ethnic identity is partly a matter of choice.

Saint Peter Relates an Incident Type of work: Poetry First published: 1935 Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems and God’s Trombones (1927) mark the culmination of Johnson’s poetic work. His most famous poems appear in Saint Peter Relates an Incident, including the title poem, “O Black and Unknown Bards,” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” “Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day,” originally published in 1930, was written in response to the visit by mothers of highly decorated World War I soldiers to their sons’ graves in France. The State Department, which sponsored the visit, sent white mothers in one ship and African American mothers in another, second-class ship. The poem imagines Saint Peter telling the assembled angels of Heaven an incident occurring on Judgment Day. The dead are called from their graves, and white war veterans, among them members of the Ku Klux Klan, gather together in order to escort the Unknown Soldier to Heaven. Once they liberate him from his grave, they are shocked to find that he is black and debate whether they should bury him again. Until the white war veterans knew the Unknown Soldier’s color, they intended to honor him; his color alone turns their admiration into hatred. The Unknown Soldier marches triumphantly into Heaven, while, it is implied, the war veterans dismayed by his skin color end up in Hell. Johnson points out the bitter irony and absurdity of drawing a color line even after death, particularly when death was incurred in the service of one’s country. “O Black and Unknown Bards” originally appeared in Fifty Years and Other

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Poems (1917). The title refers to the unknown creators of the spirituals, a musical form that Johnson regarded as artistic work of the first rank, a point he makes by comparing it with the creations of classical composers. Incorporating titles of actual spirituals, such as “Steal Away to Jesus” and “Go Down, Moses,” into the poem, Johnson pays homage to African American folk art, admiring its spiritual and artistic accomplishments, and bridges the gap between folk art forms and so-called high art. “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” perhaps the work which has done most to keep Johnson’s name alive, was originally composed as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and set to music. It is still known as the African American national anthem. Inspirational in nature, the poem makes no direct reference to ethnicity but refers metaphorically to hardships endured by African Americans while also celebrating liberties won in hard struggle. The third and last stanza reminds the listeners to remain faithful to God and ends on a patriotic note, which claims the United States as African Americans’ “native land.”

Suggested readings Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974. Fleming, Robert E. James Weldon Johnson. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Levy, Eugene. James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Phylon 32 (Winter, 1971): 330-402. Price, Kenneth M., and Lawrence J. Oliver, eds. Critical Essays on James Weldon Johnson. New York: G. K. Hall, 1997. Redmond, Eugene B. Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1976. Stepto, Robert B. From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979. Sundquist, Eric J. The Hammers of Creation: Folk Culture in Modern AfricanAmerican Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Wagner, Jean. Black Poets of the United States. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1973. Wisner-Broyles, Laura A., ed. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 24. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999. —Martin Japtok

Gayl Jones

Gayl Jones Born: Lexington, Kentucky; November 23, 1949

Jones’s conventional gothic novels and short stories are among the most intense psychological portrayals of black female characters in African American literature. Traditions: African American Principal works: Chile Woman, pr. 1973, pb. 1974; Corregidora, 1975; Eva’s Man, 1976; White Rat, 1977; Song of Anninho, 1981; The Hermit-Woman, 1983; Xarque and Other Poems, 1985; Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature, 1991; The Healing, 1998 Poet, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and teacher, Gayl Jones is best known for the intensity and probing nature of her gothic tales, which mix the conventions of the gothic with radically unconventional worlds of madness, sexuality, and violence. Jones began writing seriously at age seven under the encouraging and guiding influence of her grandmother, her mother, and her high school Spanish teacher, Anna Dodd. Later, her mentors would be Michael Harper and William Meredith at Brown University, where she earned two degrees in creative writing. She published her first and bestknown novel, Corregidora, while still at Brown. No stranger to the art of writing and storytelling, Jones grew up in a household of female creative writers: Her grandmother wrote plays for church production. Jones’s mother, Lucille, started writing in fifth grade and read stories she had written to Jones and her brother. It is therefore not surprising that stories, storytelling, and family history are the source of most of the material for her fiction. In addition to her distinction as teller of intense stories about insanity and the psychological effects of violence on black women, another characteristic of Jones’s art is her consistent use of the first person for her protagonists. Claiming neither “political compulsions nor moral compulsions,” Jones is first and foremost interested in the “psychology of characters” and therefore seeks to examine their “puzzles,” as she states, by simply letting her characters “tell their stories.” Her interest in the character as storyteller permits her to evoke oral history and engage the African American tradition of storytelling, which she accomplishes in her novels Corregidora and Eva’s Man. Corregidora, a historical novel, is what Jones calls a blues narrative. The novel examines the psychological effects of slavery and sexual abuse on three generations of women, particularly Ursa, a professional blues singer. Eva’s 250

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Man, Jones’s more provocative and controversial second novel, explores the psychological effects of violence. Eva Medina Canada, the protagonist-narrator, tells in confusing but gripping detail the story of her violent reaction to her victimization in a male-dominated society. Jones continues her thematic concerns with White Rat, a volume of twelve short stories, and Song of Anninho, a long narrative poem. In addition to her fiction and essay writing, Jones teaches full-time, writes poetry, and conducts research.

Eva’s Man Type of work: Novel First published: 1976 Eva’s Man, Jones’s provocative second novel, is a psychological tale of repression, manipulation, and suffering. It is a gothic story of madness—Eva’s madness—and the psychological effects of violence on black women. From her prison asylum room, where she has been incarcerated for five years for poisoning, then castrating, her lover, Eva Medina Canada, the psychotic title character, narrates the events which led up to her bizarre and violent act. Although she has maintained a steadfast and defiant silence in response to the grinding interrogation of the male judicial authorities—the police and psychiatrists—Eva readily tells her story to the reader. Through time and space intrusions, many flashbacks and a combination of dreams, fantasies, memories, interrogation, and exchanges between herself and her cellmate, Elvira, Eva tells everything except her motive. In the unsequential narrative, Eva’s story delineates unequivocally men’s malevolence and women’s natural acceptance of a destiny inevitably circumscribed by this malevolence. Eva’s appropriating of and identification with the story of Queen Bee, the femme fatale whose love, like a deadly sting, kills off every man with whom she falls in love, suggests that women resign themselves to a female destiny. This horrid fatalism blames and punishes women for their sexuality. Paradoxically, since the drone is always at the service of the queen bee, it is women who have power to affirm or deny manhood. Aligning herself with the queen bee, Eva kills Davis, the drone, rather than submit to his excessive domination. For Eva the lessons in the violent consequences of womanhood and female sexuality began early. Prepubescent Freddy, a neighbor boy, initiates her sexually with a dirty Popsicle stick. Her mother’s lover, Tyrone, makes her feel him. She sees her father punish her mother’s infidelity with rape. Cousin Alphonse solicits sex from her, and a thumbless man harasses her sexually. Moses Tribbs propositions her, thereby provoking her attack on him with a pocket knife. Her fifty-five-year-old husband James, out of jealousy, disallows a telephone in the house. Finally, Davis, her lover, imprisons and uses her for five days. To each of these men, Eva (like other women characters in the

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novel, including her mother) exists merely as an object to satisfy insatiable male sexual needs. In response to this objectification and violence by men, Eva remains steadfastly silent, choosing neither to explain her extreme action nor to defend herself. Apart from the bizarreness of Eva’s brutal act, which delineates the level of her madness, it is perhaps the exclusive use of the first-person narrative voice and the lack of authorial intrusion or questioning of Eva’s viewpoint that make Eva’s Man controversial and successful.

Suggested readings Coser, Stelamaris. Bridging the Americas: The Literatures of Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison and Gayl Jones. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Davidson, C. M. “Love ’em and Lynch ’em: The Castration Motif in Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man.” African American Review 29 (Fall, 1995): 393-410. Dixon, Melvin. Ride out the Wilderness. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Evans, Mari, ed. Black Women Writers: 1950-1980. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Plummer, William. “Beyond Healing.” People Weekly 49 (March 16, 1998): 81-82. Robinson, Sally. Engendering the Subject. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. —Pamela J. Olubunmi Smith

Cynthia Lynn Kadohata

Cynthia Lynn Kadohata Born: Chicago, Illinois; July 2, 1956

Kadohata is best known for her portrayal of a Japanese American family in her first novel, The Floating World. Traditions: Japanese American Principal works: The Floating World, 1989; In the Heart of the Valley of Love, 1992; The Glass Mountains, 1995 Cynthia Lynn Kadohata aspired to be a journalist after she was graduated from college, believing that only nonfiction can express the truth. Her parents, as were other Japanese Americans, were uprooted during World War II and traveled extensively across the country in search of work. Kadohata’s keen observation of landscape and people during these long drives prepared her for her later career. Kadohata changed her plans for the future after she was seriously injured in an automobile accident. While recuperating, she read extensively and discovered the power of fiction, its ability to say what could not be said otherwise. She tried her hand at writing short stories, and, after several rejections, one of her stories was accepted by The New Yorker. She felt encouraged to devote her life to writing fiction. Kadohata’s two attempts at obtaining formal instruction in creative writing were of little use to her. She found her own observations and travels to be more useful than any theoretical discussions. In her first novel, The Floating World, Kadohata drew upon her own experiences of moving with her family from various cities on the Pacific coast to Arkansas. The protagonist and narrator, Olivia Osaka, is a third-generation Japanese American whose years of growing up are typical of all adolescents. The novel was well received and commended for its portrayal of a Japanese American migrant family. The success of the novel enabled her to win awards from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In the Heart of the Valley of Love, Kadohata’s second novel, depicts Los Angeles in the 1950’s. Her picture of grim and bleak life in the years to come is based on the implications of the changing demographics in California in the 1990’s. Living in a period when a widening chasm between the classes breeds discontent and lawlessness, the protagonist, Francie, a young woman of Asian-African American ancestry, undergoes traumatic experiences. She loses her parents and then her surrogate parents, but eventually finds love, hope, and the possibility of renewal. She expresses Kadohata’s optimism 253

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about the survival of a multicultural society in the future. Kadohata is clearly influenced by writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, who draw upon their Chinese heritage. She adds another dimension to the multicultural experience by adding the Japanese American perspective.

The Floating World Type of work: Novel First published: 1989 The Floating World deals with the theme of identity at two levels. The narrator, Olivia Osaka, a girl of twelve at the beginning of this episodic novel, is, like all adolescents, trying to understand the world around her. In her case, the problems normally associated with growing up are further complicated by the fact that her parents are of Japanese origin. Thus Olivia has to find her place not just as an adult but as an American of Japanese descent. The experiences recounted by Olivia take place in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The internment camps for the Japanese Americans had been disbanded soon after World War II, but the effects of their dislocation were still discernible. The title of the novel comes from the Japanese word ukiyo—the floating world—the world of gas station attendants, restaurants, and temporary jobs encountered by the Osaka family. Charles Osaka is constantly on the move with his wife and four children—Olivia and three sons—to seek better opportunities. Olivia discovers that Charlie is not her biological father and that her charming, graceful mother still mourns the loss of her first love. Olivia is baffled by her mother’s unhappiness, for she cannot understand why the love of a decent man like Charlie is not enough for her mother. Like all children in families with marital tensions, Olivia wonders if she and her brothers are responsible for the unhappiness of their parents. Obasan, Olivia’s grandmother, lives with them for some years before her death. For Olivia, she becomes the link with her Japanese heritage. She is fascinated yet repelled by the seventy-three-year-old tyrant. Olivia enjoys her grandmother’s fantastic tales of growing up in Japan, but she abhors her strict, Japanese ways of disciplining the children. She hates Obasan while she is alive, but Olivia realizes later that the memories of her grandmother’s stories and the observations in her diaries are invaluable in helping her understand the lives of her parents and of the Japanese American community. In Gibson, Arkansas, the family stays long enough for Olivia to finish high school. During this period, she experiences her first love, and begins to appreciate the hardships endured by the Japanese Americans. By the time she leaves for Los Angeles, she has learned certain truths about herself and her relationship to her community. She recognizes the fears and uncertainties that

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govern her parents’ lives but has confidence in her own ability to overcome these uncertainties. Olivia’s narrative comes to an end with her decision to go to college. She has turned twenty-one and her years in Los Angeles have given her time to learn independence, to make her own mistakes, and to come to terms with the memories of Obasan and her biological father. With the acceptance of her past and her hyphenated identity, Olivia seems ready to take her place in American society.

In the Heart of the Valley of Love Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 In the Heart of the Valley of Love is a futuristic novel depicting life in Los Angeles in the 2050’s. Narrated by Francie, who comes to stay with her aunt in Los Angeles after she loses her African American father and Japanese mother to cancer, the novel portrays the decline of the once-prosperous city. The picture that Francie draws of Los Angeles in the 2050’s is clearly based on the demographical changes in California and the widening chasm between the rich and the poor in the 1990’s. Kadohata envisions a bleak city where the nonwhites and poor whites make up 64 percent of the population and where extreme pollution causes unusual and unheard-of diseases. Shortages of all essential commodities have led to rationing of water and gas; corruption and lawlessness among officials is widespread. The city is clearly divided into the areas of haves and have-nots, and rioting by unhappy citizens is commonplace. It is no surprise, then, that this city of despair is inhabited by “expressionless people.” Young people lead undisciplined lives in the absence of responsible adults in their lives. They tattoo their faces and their bodies—a way of “obliterating themselves,” according to the narrator. Francie, too, is affected by the times. Her adoptive family is disintegrated after Rohn, her aunt’s boyfriend, disappears. It is suspected that he has been arrested by the authorities. As her aunt risks her life and devotes all her time to tracing him, Francie drifts, like her young peers. She joins a community college where there are several other men and women in their twenties and thirties keeping themselves occupied in aimless activities. Eventually, she overcomes her cynical approach to love and life in general, for amid the ruins she sees signs of renewal of the land. Francie observes at the end of the novel: “I didn’t know whether, a hundred years from now, this would be called The Dark Century or The Century of Light. Though others had already declared it the former, I hoped it would turn out to be the latter.” Her comment does little to diminish the chilling picture of a possible future for Los Angeles.

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Suggested readings Kakutani, Michiko. “Growing up Rootless in an Immigrant Family.” The New York Times, June 30, 1989, C15. Park, You-me, and Gayle Wald. “Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres.” American Literature 70, no. 3 (September, 1998): 607. Pearlman, Mickey. Listen to Their Voices: Twenty Interviews with Women Who Write. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. See, Lisa. “Cynthia Kadohata.” Publishers Weekly 239 (August 3, 1992): 48-49. —Leela Kapai

Adrienne Kennedy

Adrienne Kennedy Born: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; September 13, 1931

Kennedy’s surrealist plays are leading examples of African American drama. Traditions: African American Principal works: A Rat’s Mass, pr. 1966, pb. 1968; Cities in Bezique, pb. 1969; Funnyhouse of a Negro, pr. 1962, pb. 1969; The Lennon Play: In His Own Write, pr. 1967, pb. 1969 (with John Lennon and Victor Spinetti); A Lesson in a Dead Language, pr., pb. 1968; Sun: A Poem for Malcolm X Inspired by His Murder, pr. 1968, pb. 1971; A Beast’s Story, pr., pb. 1969; Boats, pr. 1969; An Evening with Dead Essex, pr. 1973; A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, pr. 1976; A Lancashire Lad, pr. 1980; Orestes and Electra, pr. 1980; Black Children’s Day, pr. 1980; People Who Led to My Plays, 1987; Adrienne Kennedy in One Act, 1988; Deadly Triplets: A Theatre Mystery and Journal, 1990; The Alexander Plays, pb. 1992; June and Jean in Concert, pr. 1995 Adrienne Kennedy’s plays baffle and entice theater critics. In Kennedy, critics recognize a singularly able writer whose surrealism equals that of Tom Stoppard and Amiri Baraka. Edward Albee’s early recognition of Kennedy’s ability encouraged the yet-unpublished playwright to persist in her writing and led to the production of her Funnyhouse of a Negro. Raised in a multiethnic neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father, Cornell Wallace Hawkins, was an executive secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association and her mother, Etta Haugabook Hawkins, was a teacher, Kennedy was secure in her identity. She grew up associating with her neighbors: blacks, Jews, Italians, eastern Europeans. Where she lived, these people existed harmoniously, so Adrienne was not exposed to a racially motivated identity crisis until she entered Ohio State University in Columbus in 1949. There Kennedy felt isolated and inferior. Columbus’s restaurants were still segregated, and there was little interaction between blacks and whites. By the time she was graduated in 1953, her anger and her detestation of prejudice had eaten away at her in ways that would shape her future writing career. Kennedy married Joseph Kennedy shortly after graduation and followed him to New York City, where they both attended Columbia University. She studied creative writing there from 1954 until 1956. In 1958, she studied at the American Theatre Wing, then at the New School for Social Research, and finally at Edward Albee’s Circle-in-the-Square School in 1962, where she was the only black student. Albee’s encouragement led to Kennedy’s continuing her writing career. 257

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Her drama examines the inner struggles people encounter as they cope with their identities in relation to the outside forces that confront them. Kennedy’s plays are essentially without plot. Her leading characters have multiple personalities, reflecting aspects of their identities. She relies heavily on the use of masks, each reflecting the different identities of her characters and suggesting elements of African art and culture as well.

Funnyhouse of a Negro Type of work: Drama First produced: 1962; first published, 1969 The struggle of the individual with internalized social and cultural forces is the focal point of most of Adrienne Kennedy’s plays. In particular, she focuses on the internal conflict of the African American, whose existence is a result of the violent blending of European and African cultures. This conflict in Funnyhouse of a Negro is imaged in the Negro-Sarah’s idolatrous love of her fair-skinned mother and rejection of her black father. The mother’s whiteness has driven her insane; the father’s darkness has tied him to revolution and bloodshed. Sarah’s eventual escape is suicide. The play is set in Sarah’s space. The characters in the play are views of herself, or they are inspired by the objects in her room. The space is filled with relics of European civilization: dusty books, pictures of castles and monarchs, the bust of Queen Victoria. Sarah’s occupation is writing, the geometric placement of words on white paper. The space is also a coffin; the white material of the curtain looks as though it has been “gnawed by rats.” Throughout the play the space becomes more confining as the walls drop down. Eventually it becomes the jungle, overgrown and wild. In the context of the play’s imagery of death, the jungle represents the earth’s reclamation of the body. Adrienne Kennedy

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On another level, the play is set within a “funnyhouse,” an “amusement park house of horrors.” Raymond and the Landlady are representations of the two grinning minstrel faces outside the funnyhouse. They are white society mocking the Negro’s confusion. The bald heads and dropping walls are cheap effects designed to create confusion and fear; the mirrors in Raymond’s room conceal true reflections, as distorted funnyhouse mirrors do. Kennedy is also a woman writer, and the play makes a statement about the roles of black women and white women in society. The mother was lightskinned and beautiful by European standards. There was no destiny for her in society except madness: To be a light-skinned woman is to invite the rape of black men. Sarah is dating a white man, and this seems to give her some power in the scene with Raymond when she is the Duchess of Hapsburg. It is Raymond, however, who is asking the questions and who has control over the environment. Even the white female characters in the play who represent powerful figures are victims of hair loss; they too are unable to escape the dark man who pursues them. In the playwright’s view, the world is a disturbing place. The lure of power is held out to women, when in fact they are powerless. For the Negro, to be assimilated into white society is to go mad or self-destruct. Funnyhouse of a Negro invites the viewer into the mind of a very confused young black woman. The characters of the play are identified as facets of herself. She sees herself as omnipotent ( Jesus), powerful (Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Hapsburg), and revolutionary (Patrice Lumumba). According to the dream logic of the play, these diverse characters all suffer from the conflict between their father, a black man, and their mother, a light-complexioned black woman who was raped and driven to insanity. The characters evoke the era of European colonialism, the zealotry of Christian missionaries, and the subsequent search for liberation by the peoples of Africa.

A Rat’s Mass Type of work: Drama First produced: 1966; first published, 1968 A Rat’s Mass is a play about the negative aspects of the black experience, about prejudice and hatred and rejection, about being an outsider with no hope of ever belonging, and about the failure of traditional institutions to offer any solutions to the problem. Brother Rat and Sister Rat represent the black population, Rosemary the white society that subjugates and oppresses, and the Procession of holy figures the uncaring, impersonal church, which offers neither succor nor forgiveness. For Brother and Sister Rat, the pain of living black in a white world is realized in their adoration of Rosemary, the white child who is all that they

260 / Adrienne Kennedy

can never be—“a descendant of the Pope and Julius Caesar and the Virgin Mary.” Rosemary is the source of their feelings of rejection (“Colored people are not Catholics, are they?”), the instigator of their sin (“Rosemary said if I loved her I would do what she said”), the reminder of their guilt (“I will never atone you”). Clad in her white Communion dress, Rosemary is both the unattainable ideal and the avenging angel. Perhaps what is most theatrical—and sometimes most frustrating to audiences about A Rat’s Mass is the surrealistic quality of the play. The set, composed as it is of two black chains, a red aisle runner, and candles, evokes images of a Black Mass and forbidden rituals, creating inevitable unease in the audience. The main characters, who are described as “two pale Negro children,” are part rat, part human, and as their despair mounts and their hope dies, they sound more and more like rats, less and less human. Adrienne Kennedy’s choice of rats as representative of a maligned and mistreated minority is especially apt: Rats—unlike mice—evoke no sympathy, elicit only disgust and the desire to exterminate them, and conjure up images of filth and degradation, which are violently juxtaposed to the Holy Family and their entourage and Rosemary in her white dress. Most startling of the visual images in the play is the finale, in which the Holy Procession—composed of the familiar biblical figures who grace every Nativity scene ever displayed— guns down the fleeing Brother Rat and Sister Rat. This nightmarish ending provides strong reinforcement for one of the play’s more pervasive ideas: that the organized church is responsible in large part for racism and hatred and indeed can be directly implicated in some of the deaths of oppressed peoples. The biblical characters so long held to be symbols of salvation and redemption become in this play the agents of destruction for a pair of innocent children, whose only fault is their color and their desire to emulate and be accepted by the dominant race and culture. Like most of Adrienne Kennedy’s plays, A Rat’s Mass is a curious blend of monologue and dream vision, informed by highly evocative symbolism and incantatory dialogue, laced with references to mythical and historical figures. Neither her most ambitious nor her most important work, the play nevertheless is a good example of the kind of work that has earned Kennedy the acclaim of theater critics, scholars, and audiences. Like her better-known plays, A Rat’s Mass is concerned with the anguish of not belonging, with the pain of rejection.

Suggested readings Betsko, Kathleen, and Rachel Konig. “Adrienne Kennedy.” In Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights. New York: William Morrow, 1987. Blau, Herbert. “The American Dream in American Gothic: The Plays of Sam Shepard and Adrienne Kennedy.” Modern Drama 27 (December, 1984): 520-539.

Adrienne Kennedy / 261

Bryant-Jackson, Paul K., and Lois More Overbeck, eds. Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre of Adrienne Kennedy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Cohn, Ruby. New American Dramatists: 1960-1990. New York: Grove, 1982. Kennedy, Adrienne. “An Interview with Adrienne Kennedy.” Interview by Elin Diamond. Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 4 (1989): 143-157. _______. “A MELUS Interview with Adrienne Kennedy.” Interview by Wolfgang Binder. MELUS 12 (Fall, 1985): 99-108. Meigs, Susan E. “No Place Like the Funnyhouse: The Struggle for Identity in Three Adrienne Kennedy Plays.” In Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, edited by June Schlueter. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. Posnock, Ross. Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Sollors, Werner. “Owls and Rats in the American Funnyhouse.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 63 (September, 1991): 507-532. Tener, Robert. “Theatre of Identity: Adrienne Kennedy’s Portrait of the Black Woman.” Studies in Black Literature 6 (1975): 1-5. —R. Baird Shuman/Kathryn Ervin Williams/E. D. Huntley


Indexes


Author Index Ai, 1-4 Alexander, Meena, 5-7 Alexie, Sherman, 8-12 Allen, Paula Gunn, 13-17 Allende, Isabel, 18-21 Alvarez, Julia, 22-25 Anaya, Rudolfo A., 26-30 Angelou, Maya, 31-35 Anthony, Florence. See Ai Antin, Mary, 36-38 Arenas, Reinaldo, 39-42 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43-47 Bailey, Frederick Augustus Washington. See Douglass, Frederick Baldwin, James, 48-51 Bambara, Toni Cade, 52-56 Baraka, Amiri, 57-62 Bellow, Saul, 63-65 Bontemps, Arna Wendell, 66-70 Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra, 71-73 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 74-77 Brown, Claude, 78-80 Brown, William Wells, 81-84 Bulosan, Carlos, 85-87 Cahan, Abraham, 88-90 Campbell, Bebe Moore, 91-93 Chávez, Denise Elia, 94-97 Chin, Frank, 98-102 Chu, Louis H., 103-105 Cisneros, Sandra, 106-109 Cleaver, Eldridge, 110-112 Clifton, Lucille, 113-115 Cullen, Countée, 116-118 Davis, Angela Y., 119-122 Delany, Samuel R., 123-126 Dorris, Michael, 127-129 Douglass, Frederick, 130-133 Dove, Rita, 134-137 Driver, Wilsonia Benita. See Sanchez, Sonia

Du Bois, W. E. B., 138-142 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 143-145 Dworkin, Andrea, 146-148 Elkin, Stanley, 149-153 Ellison, Ralph, 154-157 Erdrich, Louise, 158-162 Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 163-165 Fierstein, Harvey, 166-168 Fisher, Rudolph, 169-171 Fuller, Charles, 172-174 Gaines, Ernest J., 175-178 Ginsberg, Allen, 179-182 Giovanni, Nikki, 183-186 Giovanni, Yolande Cornelia, Jr.. See Giovanni, Nikki Goichi, Joy Nozomi. See Kogawa, Joy Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata, 187-189 Hansberry, Lorraine, 190-194 Harjo, Joy, 195-198 Harper, Michael S., 199-201 Harris, Wilson, 202-205 Hayden, Robert, 206-208 Hayslip, Le Ly, 209-211 Hijuelos, Oscar, 212-215 Himes, Chester, 216-218 Hinojosa, Rolando, 219-221 Hongo, Garrett Kaoru, 222-224 Hughes, Langston, 225-231 Hurston, Zora Neale, 232-235 Hwang, David Henry, 236-241 Johnson, Charles, 242-244 Johnson, James Weldon, 245-249 Johnson, Marguerite. See Angelou, Maya Jones, Gayl, 250-252 Jones, LeRoi. See Baraka, Amiri

265

American Ethnic Writers Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn, 253-256 Kennedy, Adrienne, 257-261 Kincaid, Jamaica, 273-276 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 277-280 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 281-282, 284-285 Kogawa, Joy, 286-288 Kosinski, Jerzy, 289-292 Kunitz, Stanley, 293-296 Kushner, Tony, 297-299 Larsen, Nella, 300-303 Lau, Evelyn, 304-307 Law-Yone, Wendy, 308-310 Lee, Augustus Samuel Jian-Sun. See Lee, Gus Lee, Gus, 311-313 Lee, Li-Young, 314-316 Lorde, Audre, 317-321 McKay, Claude, 322-328 McMillan, Terry, 329-331 McNickle, D’Arcy, 332-336 Malamud, Bernard, 337-340 Malcolm X, 341-343 Mehta, Ved, 344-346 Miller, Arthur, 347-349 Min, Anchee, 350-352 Mohr, Nicholasa, 353-355 Momaday, N. Scott, 356-359 Morrison, Toni, 360-363 Mukherjee, Bharati, 364, 366-368 Naylor, Gloria, 369-372 Ng, Fae Myenne, 373-375 Okada, John, 376-378 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 379-381 Ozick, Cynthia, 382-384 Paley, Grace, 385-389 Petry, Ann, 390-393 Phung Thi Le Ly. See Hayslip, Le Ly Potok, Chaim, 394-397

Rechy, John, 398-401 Reed, Ishmael, 402-405 Rich, Adrienne, 406-408 Richardson, Elaine Potter. See Kincaid, Jamaica Richler, Mordecai, 409-411 Rivera, Tomás, 412-414 Rodriguez, Richard, 415-417 Rosca, Ninotchka, 418-421 Roth, Philip, 422-425 Rukeyser, Muriel, 426-430 Sanchez, Sonia, 431-433 Sanchez, Thomas, 434-436 Schuyler, George S., 437-439 Schwartz, Delmore, 440-442 Shange, Ntozake, 443-446 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 447-449 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 450-453 Song, Cathy, 454-456 Soto, Gary, 457-459 Steele, Shelby, 460, 462-463 Tan, Amy, 464-469 Villarreal, José Antonio, 470-472 Viramontes, Helena María, 473-476 Vizenor, Gerald, 477-481 Walker, Alice, 482-485 Washington, Booker T., 486-489 Wasserstein, Wendy, 490-493 Welch, James, 494-496 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 497-499 Wideman, John Edgar, 500-503 Wiesel, Elie, 504-508 Williams, Paulette. See Shange, Ntozake Wilson, August, 509-513 Wong, Jade Snow, 514-516 Wright, Jay, 517-519 Wright, Richard, 520-523 Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake, 524-526 Yamamoto, Hisaye, 527-529

266

Title Index Adventures of Augie March, The (Bellow, Saul), 64 “Ajanta” (Rukeyser, Muriel), 427 All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (Angelou, Maya), 32 All Rivers Run to the Sea (Wiesel, Elie), 505 Along This Way ( Johnson, James Weldon), 246 America Is in the Heart (Bulosan, Carlos), 86 American Hunger (Wright, Richard), 521 Ancient Child, The (Momaday, N. Scott), 357 and the earth did not part (Rivera, Tomás), 413 Angela Davis (Davis, Angela Y.), 121 Angels in America (Kushner, Tony), 298 Annie John (Kincaid, Jamaica), 274 Arturo, the Most Brilliant Star (Arenas, Reinaldo), 40 Assistant, The (Malamud, Bernard), 338 At the Bottom of the River (Kincaid, Jamaica), 275 Autobiographies (Himes, Chester), 217 Autobiographies (Hughes, Langston), 227 Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, The ( Johnson, James Weldon), 247 Autobiography of Malcolm X, The (Malcolm X), 342 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The (Gaines, Ernest J.), 177 Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, The (Du Bois, W. E. B.), 140 Bailey’s Cafe (Naylor, Gloria), 370 Banana Bottom (McKay, Claude), 323 Banjo (McKay, Claude), 324 Beet Queen, The (Erdrich, Louise), 159 Beggar in Jerusalem, A (Wiesel, Elie), 506 Beloved (Morrison, Toni), 361 Betsey Brown (Shange, Ntozake), 444

Black Boy (Wright, Richard), 522 Black Feeling, Black Talk (Giovanni, Nikki), 184 Black Mesa Poems (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 44 Black No More (Schuyler, George S.), 438 Black Thunder (Bontemps, Arna Wendell), 67 Bless Me, Ultima (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 27 Blues People (Baraka, Amiri), 58 Bondage (Hwang, David Henry), 237 Bone (Ng, Fae Myenne), 374 Brothers and Keepers (Wideman, John Edgar), 501 Camp Notes and Other Poems (Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake), 525 Cancer Journals, The (Lorde, Audre), 317 Chickencoop Chinaman, The (Chin, Frank), 99 China Boy (Lee, Gus), 312 China Men (Kingston, Maxine Hong), 282 Chinaberry Tree, The (Fauset, Jessie Redmon), 164 City of Night (Rechy, John), 399 Coal (Lorde, Audre), 319 Coffin Tree, The (Law-Yone, Wendy), 309 Color Purple, The (Walker, Alice), 483 Conjure-Man Dies, The (Fisher, Rudolph), 170 Content of Our Character, The (Steele, Shelby), 462 Continents of Exile (Mehta, Ved), 345 “Crown of Feathers, A” (Singer, Isaac Bashevis), 451 Cruelty (Ai), 2 Crusade for Justice (Wells-Barnett, Ida B.), 498 Daggers and Javelins (Baraka, Amiri), 59 Dance and the Railroad, The (Hwang, David Henry), 238 267

American Ethnic Writers Dangerous Music (Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata), 188 Death of a Salesman (Miller, Arthur), 348 Donald Duk (Chin, Frank), 100 Dust Tracks on a Road (Hurston, Zora Neale), 233 Dutchman (Baraka, Amiri), 60 Eat a Bowl of Tea (Chu, Louis H.), 104 El Bronx Remembered (Mohr, Nicholasa), 354 Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Paley, Grace), 387 Eva’s Man ( Jones, Gayl), 251 “Eyes of Night-Time” (Rukeyser, Muriel), 428 Face of an Angel (Chávez, Denise Elia), 95 Family Devotions (Hwang, David Henry), 239 “Father and Son” (Kunitz, Stanley), 294 Fences (Wilson, August), 510 Fifth Chinese Daughter (Wong, Jade Snow), 515 Fixer, The (Malamud, Bernard), 339 Floating World, The (Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn), 254 Fools Crow (Welch, James), 495 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (Shange, Ntozake), 445 Fossil and Psyche (Harris, Wilson), 203 Franchiser, The (Elkin, Stanley), 150 Fresh Girls, and Other Stories (Lau, Evelyn), 305 Funnyhouse of a Negro (Kennedy, Adrienne), 258 Gemini (Giovanni, Nikki), 185 “Gimpel the Fool” (Singer, Isaac Bashevis), 452 Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin, James), 49 God Made Alaska for the Indians (Reed, Ishmael), 403 Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories (Roth, Philip), 423 Gorilla, My Love (Bambara, Toni Cade), 54

Grace Notes (Dove, Rita), 136 Great Slave Narratives (Bontemps, Arna Wendell), 68 Greed (Ai), 3 Heart of Aztlán (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 28 Heidi Chronicles, The (Wasserstein, Wendy), 491 Heirs of Columbus, The (Vizenor, Gerald), 478 Home to Harlem (McKay, Claude), 325 Homewood Trilogy, The (Wideman, John Edgar), 502 House Made of Dawn (Momaday, N. Scott), 358 House of a Thousand Doors (Alexander, Meena), 6 House of the Spirits, The (Allende, Isabel), 19 House on Mango Street, The (Cisneros, Sandra), 107 How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (Alvarez, Julia), 24 Howl (Ginsberg, Allen), 180 Hundred Secret Senses, The (Tan, Amy), 465 Hunger of Memory (Rodriguez, Richard), 416 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou, Maya), 32 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (Schwartz, Delmore), 441 In Mad Love and War (Harjo, Joy), 196 In the Heart of the Valley of Love (Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn), 255 Infinite Plan, The (Allende, Isabel), 20 Intercourse (Dworkin, Andrea), 147 Interior Landscapes (Vizenor, Gerald), 479 Invisible Man (Ellison, Ralph), 155 I’ve Been a Woman (Sanchez, Sonia), 432 Joy Luck Club, The (Tan, Amy), 466 Kaddish (Ginsberg, Allen), 181 Kitchen God’s Wife, The (Tan, Amy), 467 Klail City (Hinojosa, Rolando), 220

268

Title Index Last of the Menu Girls, The (Chávez, Denise Elia), 96 Later the Same Day (Paley, Grace), 388 Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The (Alexie, Sherman), 10 Love Medicine (Erdrich, Louise), 160 M. Butterfly (Hwang, David Henry), 240 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Wilson, August), 511 MacGuffin, The (Elkin, Stanley), 151 Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The (Hijuelos, Oscar), 213 “Management of Grief, The” (Mukherjee, Bharati), 366 Manchild in the Promised Land (Brown, Claude), 79 Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 45 Middle Passage ( Johnson, Charles), 243 Middleman and Other Stories, The (Mukherjee, Bharati), 367 Mile Zero (Sanchez, Thomas), 435 Moths and Other Stories, The (Viramontes, Helena María), 474 Motion of Light in Water, The (Delany, Samuel R.), 124 Mr. Ives’ Christmas (Hijuelos, Oscar), 214 My Name Is Asher Lev (Potok, Chaim), 395 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass, Frederick), 132 Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, The (Brown, William Wells), 83 New and Collected Poems (Reed, Ishmael), 404 Night (Wiesel, Elie), 507 No-No Boy (Okada, John), 377 Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin, James), 50 Obasan (Kogawa, Joy), 287 On These I Stand (Cullen, Countée), 117 Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, The (Ozick, Cynthia), 383 Painted Bird, The (Kosinski, Jerzy), 290 Pentagonía, The (Arenas, Reinaldo), 41 Picture Bride (Song, Cathy), 455

Pocho (Villarreal, José Antonio), 471 Poetry (Angelou, Maya), 34 Poetry (Brooks, Gwendolyn), 75 Poetry (Clifton, Lucille), 114 Poetry (Dunbar, Paul Laurence), 144 Poetry (Harper, Michael S.), 200 Poetry (Hayden, Robert), 207 Poetry (McKay, Claude), 326 Poetry (Rich, Adrienne), 407 Poetry (Wright, Jay), 518 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth, Philip), 424 Possessing the Secret of Joy (Walker, Alice), 484 Promised Land, The (Antin, Mary), 37 Quicksand (Larsen, Nella), 301 Raisin in the Sun, A (Hansberry, Lorraine), 191 Rat’s Mass, A (Kennedy, Adrienne), 259 Red Azalea (Min, Anchee), 351 Reservation Blues (Alexie, Sherman), 11 Rise of David Levinsky, The (Cahan, Abraham), 89 Runaway (Lau, Evelyn), 306 Sacred Hoop, The (Allen, Paula Gunn), 14 Saint Peter Relates an Incident ( Johnson, James Weldon), 248 Salt Eaters, The (Bambara, Toni Cade), 55 Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (Hughes, Langston), 228 Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (Baraka, Amiri), 61 “Seventeen Syllables” (Yamamoto, Hisaye), 528 Silent Dancing (Ortiz Cofer, Judith), 380 Sisters Rosensweig, The (Wasserstein, Wendy), 492 Soldier’s Play, A (Fuller, Charles), 173 Son of a Smaller Hero (Richler, Mordecai), 410 Song of Solomon (Morrison, Toni), 362 Soul on Ice (Cleaver, Eldridge), 111 Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois, W. E. B.), 141 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters (Allen, Paula Gunn), 15 269

American Ethnic Writers State of War (Rosca, Ninotchka), 419 Steps (Kosinski, Jerzy), 291 Storyteller (Silko, Leslie Marmon), 448 Street, The (Petry, Ann), 391 Street in Bronzeville, A (Brooks, Gwendolyn), 76 Summer Life, A (Soto, Gary), 458 Surrounded, The (McNickle, D’Arcy), 333 Testament of Hope, A (King, Martin Luther, Jr.), 279 Their Eyes Were Watching God, The (Hurston, Zora Neale), 234 This Day’s Death (Rechy, John), 400 “Three Floors” (Kunitz, Stanley), 295 To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (Hansberry, Lorraine), 192 Torch Song Trilogy (Fierstein, Harvey), 167 Tortuga (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 29 Triton (Delany, Samuel R.), 125 Twice Blessed (Rosca, Ninotchka), 420 Two Trains Running (Wilson, August), 512 Under the Feet of Jesus (Viramontes, Helena María), 475 Up from Slavery (Washington, Booker T.), 488

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Hayslip, Le Ly), 210 Where I Ought to Be (Erdrich, Louise), 161 Wind from an Enemy Sky (McNickle, D’Arcy), 334 Winged Seed, The (Lee, Li-Young), 315 “Witness, The” (Petry, Ann), 392 Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Cisneros, Sandra), 108 Woman Warrior, The (Kingston, Maxine Hong), 283 Woman Who Fell from the Sky, The (Harjo, Joy), 197 Woman with Horns and Other Stories (Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra), 72 Womb of Space, The (Harris, Wilson), 204 Women of Brewster Place, The (Naylor, Gloria), 371 Wordarrows (Vizenor, Gerald), 480 Working in the Dark (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 46 Year of the Dragon, The (Chin, Frank), 101 Yellow Raft in Blue Water, a (Dorris, Michael), 128 Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine (Campbell, Bebe Moore), 92

Volcano (Hongo, Garrett Kaoru), 223 Zami (Lorde, Audre), 319 Waiting to Exhale (McMillan, Terry), 330 Ways of White Folks, The (Hughes, Langston), 229

270

Ethnic Identity List AFRICAN AMERICAN Ai, 1 Angelou, Maya, 31 Baldwin, James, 48 Bambara, Toni Cade, 52 Baraka, Amiri, 57 Bontemps, Arna Wendell, 66 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 74 Brown, Claude, 78 Brown, William Wells, 81 Campbell, Bebe Moore, 91 Cleaver, Eldridge, 110 Clifton, Lucille, 113 Cullen, Countée, 116 Davis, Angela Y., 119 Delany, Samuel R., 123 Dorris, Michael, 127 Douglass, Frederick, 130 Dove, Rita, 134 Du Bois, W. E. B., 138 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 143 Ellison, Ralph, 154 Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 163 Fisher, Rudolph, 169 Fuller, Charles, 172 Gaines, Ernest J., 175 Giovanni, Nikki, 183 Hansberry, Lorraine, 190 Harper, Michael S., 199 Harris, Wilson, 202 Hayden, Robert, 206 Himes, Chester, 216 Hughes, Langston, 225 Hurston, Zora Neale, 232 Johnson, Charles, 242 Johnson, James Weldon, 245 Jones, Gayl, 250 Kennedy, Adrienne, 257 Kincaid, Jamaica, 273 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 277 Larsen, Nella, 300 Lorde, Audre, 317

McKay, Claude, 322 McMillan, Terry, 329 Malcolm X, 341 Morrison, Toni, 360 Naylor, Gloria, 369 Petry, Ann, 390 Reed, Ishmael, 402 Sanchez, Sonia, 431 Schuyler, George S., 437 Shange, Ntozake, 443 Steele, Shelby, 460 Walker, Alice, 482 Washington, Booker T., 486 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 497 Wideman, John Edgar, 500 Wilson, August, 509 Wright, Jay, 517 Wright, Richard, 520 AMERICAN INDIAN Ai, 1 Alexie, Sherman, 8 Allen, Paula Gunn, 13 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43 Dorris, Michael, 127 Erdrich, Louise, 158 Harjo, Joy, 195 Harris, Wilson, 202 McNickle, D’Arcy, 332 Momaday, N. Scott, 356 Reed, Ishmael, 402 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 447 Vizenor, Gerald, 477 Walker, Alice, 482 Welch, James, 494 ASIAN AMERICAN Ai, 1 Alexander, Meena, 5 Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra, 71 Bulosan, Carlos, 85 Chin, Frank, 98 271

American Ethnic Writers Chu, Louis H., 103 Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata, 187 Hayslip, Le Ly, 209 Hongo, Garrett Kaoru, 222 Hwang, David Henry, 236 Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn, 253 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 281 Kogawa, Joy, 286 Lau, Evelyn, 304 Law-Yone, Wendy, 308 Lee, Gus, 311 Lee, Li-Young, 314 Mehta, Ved, 344 Min, Anchee, 350 Mukherjee, Bharati, 364 Ng, Fae Myenne, 373 Okada, John, 376 Rosca, Ninotchka, 418 Song, Cathy, 454 Tan, Amy, 464 Wong, Jade Snow, 514 Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake, 524 Yamamoto, Hisaye, 527 JEWISH Antin, Mary, 36 Bellow, Saul, 63 Cahan, Abraham, 88 Dworkin, Andrea, 146 Elkin, Stanley, 149 Fierstein, Harvey, 166 Ginsberg, Allen, 179 Kosinski, Jerzy, 289 Kunitz, Stanley, 293

Malamud, Bernard, 337 Miller, Arthur, 347 Ozick, Cynthia, 382 Paley, Grace, 385 Potok, Chaim, 394 Rich, Adrienne, 406 Richler, Mordecai, 409 Roth, Philip, 422 Rukeyser, Muriel, 426 Schwartz, Delmore, 440 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 450 Wasserstein, Wendy, 490 Wiesel, Elie, 504 LATINO Allende, Isabel, 18 Alvarez, Julia, 22 Anaya, Rudolfo A., 26 Arenas, Reinaldo, 39 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43 Chávez, Denise Elia, 94 Cisneros, Sandra, 106 Hijuelos, Oscar, 212 Hinojosa, Rolando, 219 Mohr, Nicholasa, 353 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 379 Rechy, John, 398 Rivera, Tomás, 412 Rodriguez, Richard, 415 Sanchez, Thomas, 434 Soto, Gary, 457 Villarreal, José Antonio, 470 Viramontes, Helena María, 473

272



MAGILL’S C H O I C E

American Ethnic Writers Volume 2 Jamaica Kincaid — Hisaye Yamamoto Edited by

David Peck University of California, Long Beach Project Editor

Tracy Irons-Georges

SALEM PRESS, INC. Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey

Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.

Copyright © 2000, by Salem Press, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115. Most of these essays originally appeared in Identities and Issues in Literature, 1997, edited by David Peck. The remainder were adapted from Magill’s Literary Annual, from Masterplots, Revised Second Edition, 1996, and from the following Masterplots II series: Drama, 1990; Poetry, 1992; African American Literature, 1994; Women’s Literature, 1994; and American Fiction, Revised Edition, 2000. All bibliographies and lists of published works have been updated. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data American ethnic writers / David Peck; project editor Tracy Irons-Georges. p. cm. — (Magill’s choice) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-89356-157-6 (set : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-89356-172-X (v. 1 : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-89356-184-3 (v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. American literature—Minority authors—Bio-bibliography—Dictionaries. 2. Minority authors—United States—Biography—Dictionaries. 3. Authors, American—Biography— Dictionaries. 4. Ethnic groups in literature—Dictionaries. 5. Minorities in literature—Dictionaries. 6. Ethnicity in literature—Dictionaries. I. Peck, David R. II. Irons-Georges, Tracy. III. Series. PS153.M56 A414 2000 810.9’920693—dc21 00-059529 First Printing

printed in the united states of america

Table of Contents Jamaica Kincaid

Audre Lorde

273

Annie John . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 At the Bottom of the River . . . . . 275

Martin Luther King, Jr.

277

Claude McKay

A Testament of Hope . . . . . . . . 279

Maxine Hong Kingston

Banana Bottom . Banjo . . . . . . Home to Harlem Poetry . . . . .

281

China Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 The Woman Warrior . . . . . . . . 283

Joy Kogawa

286 289

D’Arcy McNickle

Angels in America

Nella Larsen

293

Bernard Malamud

297

Malcolm X

. . . . . . . . . 298

300

Ved Mehta

304

Arthur Miller

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

323 324 325 326

329 332

337

341

344 347

Death of a Salesman . . . . . . . . 348

308

Anchee Min

350

Red Azalea . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

311

Nicholasa Mohr

China Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Li-Young Lee

. . . .

Continents of Exile . . . . . . . . . 345

The Coffin Tree . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Gus Lee

. . . .

The Autobiography of Malcolm X . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Fresh Girls, and Other Stories . . . . 305 Runaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Wendy Law-Yone

. . . .

The Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 The Fixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Quicksand . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Evelyn Lau

. . . .

The Surrounded . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Wind from an Enemy Sky . . . . . . 334

“Father and Son” . . . . . . . . . 294 “Three Floors” . . . . . . . . . . 295

Tony Kushner

. . . .

Waiting to Exhale . . . . . . . . . . 330

The Painted Bird . . . . . . . . . . 290 Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Stanley Kunitz

322 . . . .

Terry McMillan

Obasan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Jerzy Kosinski

317

The Cancer Journals . . . . . . . . 317 Coal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Zami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

353

El Bronx Remembered . . . . . . . . 354

314

N. Scott Momaday

The Winged Seed . . . . . . . . . . 315

356

The Ancient Child . . . . . . . . . . 357 House Made of Dawn . . . . . . . . 358 xxi


Toni Morrison

360

Beloved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Song of Solomon . . . . . . . . . . . 362

Bharati Mukherjee

Fae Myenne Ng

Richard Rodriguez Ninotchka Rosca

Philip Roth

Muriel Rukeyser

No-No Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Judith Ortiz Cofer Cynthia Ozick

Grace Paley

385

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Later the Same Day . . . . . . . . . 388

Ann Petry

I’ve Been a Woman . . . . . . . .

Thomas Sanchez George S. Schuyler Delmore Schwartz

Ishmael Reed

Ntozake Shange

402

Adrienne Rich Mordecai Richler

Leslie Marmon Silko

440

443

447

Storyteller . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

Isaac Bashevis Singer

450

“A Crown of Feathers” . . . . . . . 451 “Gimpel the Fool” . . . . . . . . 452

Cathy Song

406

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

437

Betsey Brown . . . . . . . . . . . 444 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

398

God Made Alaska for the Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 New and Collected Poems . . . . . . 404

434

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . 441

394

City of Night . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 This Day’s Death . . . . . . . . . . 400

432

Black No More . . . . . . . . . . . 438

My Name Is Asher Lev . . . . . . . . 395

John Rechy

431

Mile Zero . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

390

The Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 “The Witness” . . . . . . . . . . . 392

Chaim Potok

Sonia Sanchez

382

The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

426

“Ajanta” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 “Eyes of Night-Time” . . . . . . 428

379

Silent Dancing . . . . . . . . . . . 380

422

Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Portnoy’s Complaint . . . . . . . . 424

373 376

418

State of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 Twice Blessed . . . . . . . . . . . 420

Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374

John Okada

415

Hunger of Memory . . . . . . . . . . 416

369

Bailey’s Cafe . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 The Women of Brewster Place . . . . 371

412

and the earth did not part . . . . . . 413

364

“The Management of Grief” . . . 366 The Middleman and Other Stories . . 367

Gloria Naylor

Tomás Rivera

Picture Bride

Gary Soto

409

Son of a Smaller Hero . . . . . . . . 410 xxii

454 . . . . . . . . . . . 455

457

A Summer Life . . . . . . . . . . 458

Table of Contents

Shelby Steele

460

John Edgar Wideman

The Content of Our Character . . . . 462

Amy Tan

464

The Hundred Secret Senses . . . . . 465 The Joy Luck Club . . . . . . . . . 466 The Kitchen God’s Wife . . . . . . . 467

José Antonio Villarreal Pocho

Helena María Viramontes

Elie Wiesel

August Wilson

477

The Heirs of Columbus . . . . . . . 478 Interior Landscapes . . . . . . . . . 479 Wordarrows . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

Alice Walker

482

Jade Snow Wong

486

Jay Wright

490

Richard Wright

494

Fools Crow . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

520

American Hunger . . . . . . . . . . 521 Black Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

Mitsuye Yasutake Yamada

524

Camp Notes and Other Poems . . . . 525

Hisaye Yamamoto

The Heidi Chronicles . . . . . . . . 491 The Sisters Rosensweig . . . . . . . 492

James Welch

517

Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Up from Slavery . . . . . . . . . . 488

Wendy Wasserstein

514

Fifth Chinese Daughter . . . . . . . 515

The Color Purple . . . . . . . . . . 483 Possessing the Secret of Joy . . . . . . 484

Booker T. Washington

509

Fences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom . . . . . 511 Two Trains Running . . . . . . . . 512

473

The Moths and Other Stories . . . . 474 Under the Feet of Jesus . . . . . . . 475

Gerald Vizenor

504

All Rivers Run to the Sea . . . . . . 505 A Beggar in Jerusalem . . . . . . . . 506 Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507

470

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

500

Brothers and Keepers . . . . . . . . 501 The Homewood Trilogy . . . . . . . 502

527

“Seventeen Syllables” . . . . . . . 528

Author Index Title Index Ethnic Identity List

497

Crusade for Justice . . . . . . . . . 498

xxiii

533 535 539




Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid (Elaine Potter Richardson) Born: Saint Johns, Antigua; May 25, 1949

Kincaid’s short stories and novels are admired for their lyricism and for their insights into feminist and racial issues. Traditions: African American, Caribbean Principal works: At the Bottom of the River, 1983; Annie John, 1985; A Small Place, 1988; Lucy, 1990; The Autobiography of My Mother, 1996; My Brother, 1997 Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on the tiny Caribbean island of Antigua. The family was poor, but she recalls her early years as idyllic. As does the protagonist of Annie John, Kincaid felt secure as the focus of her mother’s attention. With the births of three younger brothers, however, Kincaid became increasingly alienated from her mother, and with adolescence, her alienation turned to bitter resentment. In addition to her antipathy toward her mother, there were other reasons for Kincaid to leave her Caribbean home as soon as she was old enough to do so. As she points out in A Small Place, on Antigua blacks were still relegated to the bottom tiers of the social structure, just as they had been in the colonial past. Black women were even more repressed than black men. In her short story “Girl,” which appears in the collection At the Bottom of the River, the mother makes it clear to her daughter that a woman’s sole purpose in life is to wait on a Jamaica Kincaid (Sigrid Estrada) man and to keep him happy. 273

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Determined to find her way in the world, in 1966, the seventeen-year-old young woman left Antigua for the United States. Her impressions of the different country are reflected in her second semiautobiographical novel, Lucy. In common with the title character, Kincaid first supported herself by working as a live-in baby-sitter in New York City. Although Kincaid took high school and college courses, in the main she educated herself by reading. Eventually she found a job on a magazine, turned out articles, and tried her hand at short stories. She was finding a new identity as a writer; in 1973, she took the name Jamaica Kincaid, in a sense inventing herself as a person. In 1978, “Girl” was published in The New Yorker, the first of many stories to appear there. Shortly thereafter, Kincaid married and moved to Vermont. After an absence of nearly two decades, Kincaid returned to Antigua. Having found herself, Kincaid was now free, and in the years which followed she often took her children to visit her early home. By leaving her native island, Kincaid learned not only to understand herself but also to empathize with women who, like the protagonist in The Autobiography of My Mother and like her own mother, were assigned their identities in a society that permitted them no options.

Annie John Type of work: Novel First published: 1985 Annie John, Kincaid’s first novel, is a story of a girl’s coming-of-age. On a conscious level the protagonist is contemplating death, friendship, sexual desire, and the developments in her body; she is also experiencing a deeper need to cut herself off from her mother, even if in the process she must hurt them both. The novel is set on the Caribbean island of Antigua. As a young child, Annie John clings to her beautiful and loving mother. She likes to caress her, smell her perfume, take baths with her, and wear dresses made of the same fabric as hers. At school, Annie shows that she has a mind of her own, but at home she takes note of everything her mother says or does. Soon, however, Annie begins to realize that human relationships are fragile. They can be dissolved by death, by infidelity, or by changes in one’s feelings. At a new school, Annie finds herself abandoning her best friend, Gwyneth Joseph, for a dirty, defiant red-haired girl. At home, Annie betrays her mother’s trust and love. She lies to her about unimportant matters, such as whether or not she has any marbles, and she even insults her. To some degree Annie is acting out her feelings about her parents’ lovemaking and about her own sexual development. Annie is also reacting to her mother’s evident embarrassment when Annie assumes a woman’s identity. On a deeper level, Annie’s love for her mother is so strong that only by rejecting her can she establish a space for herself and a personality of her own.

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At school, Annie gets into trouble by writing under the picture of Christopher Columbus the same words that her mother had said in mockery of her father, Pa Chess. Clearly, Annie senses that there is a similarity between the colonial system, which guaranteed that blacks would remain low in the economic system, and the patriarchal family, which ensures the subordination of females. By the time she is fifteen, Annie is thoroughly miserable, loathing her mother, herself, and her existence. She becomes ill, and for almost four months she is bedridden, nursed by her mother, her father, and finally, by her grandmother, Ma Chess, who appears mysteriously and evidently effects a cure. At last, when she is seventeen, Annie is sent to England. As the ship prepares to sail, Annie and her mother weep, and Annie relents enough to wave good-bye. Now free to find her own identity, she is free to love her mother, if only at a distance.

At the Bottom of the River Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1983 Some critics call At the Bottom of the River a novel; others call it a collection of stories. Certainly the stories’ interconnections lend a sense of continuity to this thin volume. Much of At the Bottom of the River is a recollection of Jamaica Kincaid’s childhood on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The author captures the identity of this region and its people with remarkable accuracy in her sketches. By telling her stories largely from a child’s point of view, Kincaid gracefully intermixes the outside world with her protagonist’s mental world of dreams, images, fantasy, and mysticism. The book’s ten stories dwell upon racial and mother-daughter relationships. The daughter is obsessed by her mother, an overpowering love object for her. Her attempts to break from her maternal dependence are central to many of the sketches. The sketch “My Mother” recounts with great poignancy a girl’s emotional odyssey from early childhood to the point of needing to loose herself from a reliance upon the mother she dearly loves. The narrative is disarmingly simple and direct. The child’s dreamworld intrudes constantly upon the outside world, with which she must necessarily merge. She cries a “pond of tears” at separating from her mother. The girl’s exile, expressed in the words “she [the mother] shook me out and stood me under a tree,” is connected to her memory of the childhood punishment of being banished, when she had misbehaved, from her house to take her dinner under the breadloaf trees. This story is about lost innocence and the attempt to recapture it. The sketch “At Last” considers the essence of things. The child asks what becomes of the hen whose feathers are scattered, whose flesh is stripped away, whose bones disappear. Kincaid broaches similar universal questions

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in “Blackness,” in which she deals with the mystery of the generations, with the child who grows up to become a mother to the succeeding generation. The questions posed in this story are questions that puzzled the ancient Greek philosophers and that still puzzle thinking people everywhere.

Suggested readings Bemrose, John. “Growing Pains of Girlhood.” Maclean’s, May 20, 1985, 61. Bloom, Harold. ed. Jamaica Kincaid. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1998. Kenney, Susan. “Paradise with Snake.” The New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1985, 6. Kreilkamp, Ivan. “Jamaica Kincaid: Daring to Discomfort.” Publishers Weekly 243 ( January 1, 1996): 54-55. Lee, Felicia R. “Dark Words, Light Being.” The New York Times, January 25, 1996, C1, C10. Natov, Roni. “Mother and Daughters: Jamaica Kincaid’s Pre-Oedipal Narrative.” In Children’s Literature: Annual of the Modern Language Association Seminar on Children’s Literature and the Children’s Literature Association. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990. Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Perry, Donna. “Initiation in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” In Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux, 1990. Timothy, Helen Pyne. “Adolescent Rebellion and Gender Relations in At the Bottom of the River and Annie John.” In Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux, 1990. Van Wyngarden, Bruce. “First Novel.” Saturday Review 11 (May-June, 1985): 68. Weather, Diane. “Jamaica Kincaid: Her Small Place.” Essence 26 (March, 1996): 98-99. —R. Baird Shuman/Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Born: Atlanta, Georgia; January 15, 1929 Died: Memphis, Tennessee; April 4, 1968 King’s speeches and essays united, motivated, and mobilized people of all colors during the civil rights struggles of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Stride Toward Freedom, 1958; Strength to Love, 1963, “I Have a Dream,” 1963; Why We Can’t Wait, 1964; Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967; “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” 1968; A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1986 Martin Luther King, Jr., was formally ordained at the age of nineteen, in the church over which his father presided, thus officially beginning his publicspeaking career. Within ten years, he had secured a position as pastor of a Montgomery, Alabama, church and had established himself as a civil rights leader by leading a boycott against the Montgomery public transportation system. After the successful conclusion of the boycott, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in the hope of harnessing the momentum of the movement to further the cause of racial equality. Supported by a network of churches and civil rights organizations, King became the most vocal opponent to segregation, and thus became a lightning rod for criticism and accolades. On August 28, 1963, King led a march on Washington, D.C., at which he delivered his best-known speech, “I Have a Dream.” The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Also during 1963 and 1964, King was arrested four times on charges such as parading without a permit, trespassing, and contempt of court. One of King’s most powerful works, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” was composed while he was incarcerated during this time, and several other pieces were occasioned by the arrests and subsequent confinements. The focus of most of King’s writings was upon the necessity for all citizens to effect necessary social changes by using a system of passive resistance and economic empowerment. The tenets of his strategy were outlined in such speeches as “The Power of Nonviolence” (1957) and “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” (1961). In addresses such as “A Time to Break Silence” (1967), he spoke of the need for Americans to examine their beliefs about race and culture, with respect not only to conflicts within the United States but also in international relations, such as those with Vietnam. King’s later works, such as Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, show King’s reluctant recognition that the struggle for racial equality would 277

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (©The Nobel Foundation)

be a long-term battle. Although he believed that civil rights would eventually be equally afforded to all Americans, he warned of the dangers of complacency and backsliding. In his final address (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”), given on April 3, 1968, he urged supporters of civil rights to continue the struggle in his absence. The next day, he was shot to death.

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A Testament of Hope Type of work: Essays, interviews, speeches, and sermons First published: 1986 A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a compendium of the writings of King and of transcripts of some of his better-known interviews, speeches, and sermons, all of which were compiled and published at the request of his widow, Coretta Scott King. The book is divided into subject matter sections and an appendix. The first section, “Religious: Nonviolence,” explores the theological underpinnings of King’s passive resistance philosophy. Because he was connected at an early age with the church, it is not surprising that many of the works in this section focus on the role of Christian love in the struggle for equal rights. Most of the selections in the second section, “Social: Integration,” are oriented toward the more practical aspects of the Civil Rights movement. Topics include the necessity of passive resistance, the need for eloquent speakers, and the difficulties caused by internal conflicts within the movement. The third section, “Political: Wedged Between Democracy and Black Nationalism,” addresses the difficulties King encountered while campaigning for immediate change; it was difficult to do so and not to lose the support of moderate and conservative sympathizers. This theme echoes through much of the next section, “Famous Sermons and Public Addresses,” as well. The fourth section contains King’s best-known speeches, including the “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963 and the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, which was delivered shortly before King’s death in 1968. The fifth section of A Testament of Hope contains some of King’s best-known essays, including the “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” (1963). In this and the title essay, King impugns not only the staunch conservatives who resist social change but also the apathetic moderates who, King charges, perpetuate social injustice. The sixth section, “Interviews,” contains transcripts of conversations King had with Kenneth B. Clark, Playboy magazine, Meet the Press, and Face to Face. The sixth and final section contains King’s more formal written works, those that were written as, or developed into, books. James M. Washington, editor of A Testament of Hope, admits that, as a public figure, King sometimes had help with the invention and composition of the works contained in this volume. This collection is valuable, he asserts, not only as a record of what King actually penned, but also of the principles he espoused and the ideals for which he stood. Because each section is arranged chronologically, it is possible to chart aspects of King’s philosophical development. He changed in response to the changing political and social climate of America. His focus, however—the necessity of nonviolent civil disobedience in order to accomplish the greater good of racial equality—remains evident throughout.

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Suggested readings Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Fairclough, Adam. Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Miller, Keith D. Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources. Rev. ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Oates, Stephen B. Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. Phillips, Donald T. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Leadership: Inspiration and Wisdom for Challenging Times. New York: Warner Books, 1999. Stull, Bradford T. Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipation. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. —T. A. Fishman

Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston Born: Stockton, California; October 27, 1940

Kingston’s autobiographical books and her novel, brilliantly interweaving imagination and fact, convey Chinese American immigrant experience to a wide readership. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, 1976; China Men, 1980; Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, 1989 Born Maxine Ting Ting Hong, Kingston’s first language was Say Up, a Cantonese dialect spoken by her immigrant parents, who made their living in California by running a laundry. They struggled to retain their Chinese identity and values in a new world peopled by ominous aliens: immigration officials, teachers, non-Chinese. Kingston’s mother admonished and inspired her six children, particularly her daughters, with talks of the disasters that befell women who broke men’s rules and of legendary heroines who dared battle for justice. Silent and wordless among “white ghosts,” Kingston was also threatened in childhood and adolescence by the specter of traditional Chinese prejudices against women. “Better to raise geese than girls,” was a family motto. Kingston nevertheless became an A student and entered the University of California at Berkeley, where she drank in all the idealism of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960’s. Kingston married classmate and actor, Earll Kingston, and for many years pursued a career as a teacher, first in California and then in Hawaii. Meanwhile, finding her voice and experimenting with the linguistic means by which she could express the rich imagery and rhythms of Chinese American speech in her writing, she began working on two autobiographical books simultaneously. Enthusiastic critical acclaim accompanied the publication of the best-selling The Woman Warrior and China Men. Often called novels, these autobiographies combine imaginative flights and her memories of Chinese myths with the facts of Chinese immigrant history. In these works, Kingston claims full citizenship for Chinese Americans. “We Chinese belong here. This is our country, this is our history, we are a part of America. If it weren’t for us, America would be a different place.” Kingston says that, in telling the story of the Chinese in America, a major influence was William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain (1925). Besides asserting the justice of the struggle against racism, Kingston also 281

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affirms the right of women of all races to full equality. Her writings make important contributions to feminist literature and women’s studies. She stands as the most widely read and influential interpreter of the Chinese American experience.

Maxine Hong Kingston (Franco Salmoiraghi)

China Men Type of work: Memoir First published: 1980 In China Men, Kingston tells the stories of her male relatives who came to America. The opening chapter, “Our Fathers,” signals her intention to embrace the community of Chinese immigrants. She challenges readers to reconsider the Eurocentric version of American history by bringing to their attention the contributions of Chinese to the building of America.

Kingston weaves her narrative from a poetic association of folklore, fantasy, and fact. In “On Discovery,” she relates a Chinese legend: the arrival in North America of Tang Ao during the reign of the Empress Wu (694-705). Captured and forced to become a transvestite, feet bound, face powdered and rouged, ears studded with jade and gold, Tang Ao was forced to serve meals to the court. The bewildering experience of this precursor is a metaphor for the emasculation of Chinese men in America as racism disempowered them, forcing them to perform women’s tasks: laundering and cooking. In America, Kingston’s forefathers find themselves off center as they are marginalized by U.S. laws. A chapter on laws, in the middle of China Men, documents the legislation and court decisions that, beginning in 1868, systematically excluded Chinese immigrants from normal treatment until 1958. Particularly dehumanizing was the law prohibiting the immigration of the wives and children of Chinese men working in America. Through the portraits of her many forefathers, Kingston describes a multitude of immigration experiences. Great-grandfather Bak Goong sails to Hawaii in the hold of a ship and works for endless years under the whip on a sugar plantation. His dream of saving enough money to reach Gold Mountain is a mirage. The story of grandfather Ah Goong details the courage and skills of the Chinese who built the most difficult and dangerous section of the transcontinental railroad. They worked for lower wages and endured longer hours than white laborers but were denied the right to own property and become citizens. Nevertheless, Ah Goong prophesies: “We’re marking the land now. The tracks are numbered.” Kingston’s father, Baba, a man of scholarly accomplishment in China, enters America full of hope, only to be reduced to washing other people’s clothes. Then, demonstrating the changing status of the Chinese in America after World War II, his son, drafted into the U.S. Navy to serve in the Vietnam War, receives the highest level of security clearance. “The government was certifying that the family was really American, not precariously American but super-American.” Kingston’s brother declines the invitation to attend language school, however, because he fears his improved Chinese will be used by intelligence to “gouge Viet Cong eyes, cattleprod their genitals.” Kingston thus ends her chronicle of Chinese American history on a questioning note. The Chinese American is now a full citizen but must share in all that is questionable in American culture.

The Woman Warrior Type of work: Memoir First published: 1976 The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is an autobiographical novel of Kingston’s life, illuminated by references to the women whose

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histories influenced her. In the United States, the meager opportunities available to Chinese immigrants force her parents to earn a living by running a small laundry. Kingston’s mother, Brave Orchid, a midwife in China, is a forceful character who admonishes her daughter with ever-changing renditions of Chinese legends and myths as well as tales about women who have been driven to madness or death by a culture that has traditionally viewed girls and women as subordinate to boys and men. In “No Name Woman,” Kingston recalls the haunting story of her aunt, who gave birth to a child years after her husband had gone to America. Driven to madness by the persecution of vengeful neighbors, a disgrace to her kin, she drowns herself and the baby in the family well. “Now that you have started to menstruate what happened to her could happen to you,” Brave Orchid cautions. It is one of many frightening lessons for the young Kingston as she becomes increasingly aware of the different expectations placed upon women by the Chinese traditions that continue to dominate the attitudes of immigrants. The book takes its title, however, from Fa Mu Lan, the legendary woman warrior who, disguised as a man, sword in hand, goes forth to fight for justice. Kingston takes inspiration from this story and imagines herself an avenger of the hurts she experiences as a woman and an Asian American. As she acquires a nontraditional consciousness, her listing of grievances transcends personal and family hurts to embrace broader struggles against racism and war. Kingston loses her job at a real estate firm when she refuses to type invitations to a banquet at a restaurant that discriminates against African Americans. She also struggles to evade the expectations that she sees American girls facing: wearing makeup, becoming cheerleaders, learning to be typists, marrying rich men. In the final chapter, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” Kingston testifies to her passage out of the confinements and prejudices that obsess her parents. She discovers that she can speak her mind. She alludes to the story of the Chinese princess, Ts’ai Yen, who, carried off by barbarians, finds her voice and sings high and clear like a flute, a song that blends the sounds of China and of the world beyond. The Woman Warrior is distinguished by its rich, poetic language. Chinese oral tradition and classical literature blend with the myriad impressions crowding into the mind of a Chinese American girl striving to make sense of the competing mores of California’s diverse populations.

Suggested readings Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Ho, Wendy. In Her Mother’s House: The Politics of Asian American Mother-Daughter Writing. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1999.

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Islas, Arturo. “Maxine Hong Kingston.” In Women Writers of the West Coast: Speaking of Their Lives and Careers, edited by Marilyn Yalom. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1983. Juhasz, Suzanne. “Maxine Hong Kingston.” In Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catharine Rainwater and William J. Scheick. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Kim, Elaine H. “Such Opposite Creatures: Men and Women in Asian American Literature.” Michigan Quarterly Review 29, no. 1 (1990): 77-83. Kingston, Maxine Hong. “Talk with Mrs. Kingston.” Interview by Timothy Pfaff. The New York Times Book Review, June 18, 1980, 1, 26-27. Li, David Leiwei. “China Men: Maxine Hong Kingston and the American Canon.” American Literary History 2 (Fall, 1990): 482-502. Ling, Amy. “Focus on America: Seeking a Self and a Place.” In Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry. Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1990. Simmons, Diane. Maxine Hong Kingston. New York: Twayne, 1999. Skandera-Trombley, Laura E., ed. Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. —Joseleyne Ashford Slade

Joy Kogawa

Joy Kogawa (Joy Nozomi Goichi) Born: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; June 6, 1935

Kogawa’s novel Obasan brings literature of the World War II internment camp experience to a new level of psychological depth and lyrical brilliance. Traditions: Japanese American Principal works: A Choice of Dreams, 1974; Jericho Road, 1977; Obasan, 1981; Woman in the Woods, 1985; Itsuka, 1992; The Rain Ascends, 1995 Joy Kogawa grew up in the relatively sheltered environment provided by her minister father in Vancouver. That security was shattered with World War II relocation policies, which sent Japanese Canadians to internment camps in the inhospitable interior lands of Canada. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States also profoundly affected her. As a young woman Kogawa attended the University of Alberta, the Anglican Women’s Training College, and the Conservatory of Music. She married David Kogawa on May 2, 1957; they had two children, Gordon and Deirdre. The years 1967 to 1968 seem to have been a transitional period in Kogawa’s life, since her first book of poems (The Splintered Moon, 1968) was published, she divorced David Kogawa, and she returned to college, attending the University of Saskatchewan, in those two years. The next ten years of Kogawa’s life were increasingly productive. Her second collection of poems, A Choice of Dreams, was published in 1974. Kogawa worked in the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa, Ontario, as a staff writer from 1974 to 1976. A third collection of poetry, Joy Kogawa Jericho Road, was published in 286

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1977. During this time Kogawa worked primarily as a freelance writer. Kogawa contributed poems to magazines and journals in Canada and the United States. In 1981, Obasan was published. Widely acclaimed as one of the most psychologically complex and lyrically beautiful novels on the topic of Japanese Canadians’ wartime experiences, Obasan continues to intrigue readers and critics alike with its powerful story of a silent, reserved woman, Megumi Naomi Nakane, learning of the fate of her family in Japan many years after the fact. Naomi’s experience of dispossession, relocation, and internment, as well as the loss of her parents, has made her ethnicity, her self-image, and her relationships with others deeply problematic. Published in 1986, Naomi’s Road retells the tale of Obasan in a manner intended for child readers. Itsuka is Kogawa’s sequel to Obasan. Itsuka follows Naomi’s political awakening and the healing of her wounds from the past.

Obasan Type of work: Novel First published: 1981 Kogawa’s Obasan has forced critics to include Asian Canadians in their study of ethnic literature; it is such a fine work no critic can ignore it. Kogawa has defined political and cultural connections between the Japanese immigrants of Canada and America. Both groups were held in internment camps during World War II. Their property was seized, and their families were often separated. In Canada and the United States the men of the families fought for their new countries while their wives, children, and siblings remained interned. Arguably one of the finest literary renderings of this experience, Obasan investigates what happened as a result of these practices. Naomi Nakane, the protagonist of Obasan, appears emotionally paralyzed at the beginning of the novel. Unable to move beyond her own past in the camps and unable to reconcile the loss of her parents, Naomi has retreated into silence and isolation. Canada has essentially told Japanese Canadians that they are untrustworthy, second-class citizens at best, so Naomi retreats from her ethnic identity as well. Her Aunt Emily, however, is articulate, learned, professional, and politically active. Aunt Emily encourages Naomi to learn about the terrible things done to Japanese Canadians and to act on her anger. Naomi gains the impetus for change. Shortly before the family’s relocation to the internment camps (when Naomi is a child), Mrs. Nakane leaves to visit family in Japan. She never returns and the family carefully guards the secret of her fate. It is only as a thirty-six-year-old adult that Naomi is given the letters that reveal her mother’s story of disfigurement and subsequent death as a result of the atomic bombing. The mother, herself, has imposed silence on the other family

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members. Naomi tries to engage her mother’s presence, to heal the rift between them, although her mother is not physically there. In writing the novel Kogawa has constructed an elaborate attempt to embrace the absent voice, to contain the mother in some manner useful to Naomi’s own construction of identity. Poetic passages describe this imagined reunion. Dream sequences also punctuate the narrative, providing the touching lyricism that moves the novel beyond most of the literature written around the internment camp experience. Bound with the sociopolitical analysis provided by Aunt Emily and Naomi’s personal history, the novel sets high standards for literature on ethnic identity.

Suggested readings Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Darias-Beautell, Eva. Division, Language, and Doubleness in the Writings of Joy Kogawa. La Laguna, Canary Islands: Universidad de La Laguna, 1998. Davidson, Arnold E. Writing Against the Silence: Joy Kogawa’s “Obasan.” Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. “Japanese American Women’s Life Stories: Maternality in Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.” Feminist Studies 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1990): 289-312. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. —Julie Tharp

Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski Born: Lodz, Poland; June 14, 1933 Died: Manhattan, New York; May 3, 1991 Kosinski is best known for his depiction of the Holocaust in The Painted Bird and for his creation of characters who grapple with the absurdity and cruelty of contemporary life. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: The Painted Bird, 1965; Steps, 1968; Being There, 1971; The Devil Tree, 1973; Cockpit, 1975; Blind Date, 1977; Passion Play, 1979; Pinball, 1982; The Hermit of Sixty-ninth Street: The Working Papers of Norbert Kosky, 1988 Jerzy Kosinski achieved immediate success with his first novel, The Painted Bird, which Kosinski claimed was an autobiographical account of his childhood experiences during the German occupation of Poland. The author spent the rest of his life defending those experiences, and the autobiographical content of his other books, against his critics and supporters. There are two central questions raised by Kosinski’s work. First, were his novels merely records of his extraordinary life—and his life was without question extraordinary—as many have claimed, or are the novels a creative refashioning of his experience? Kosinski experienced enormous popularity as a novelist; his books sold in the tens of millions of copies. As one critic has noted: Can a writer who pandered to the crassest commercial standards of popular fiction by employing graphic sex and violence, conventional fictional types, and sensational contemporary events really have anything seriously significant to say to his readers? The search for answers to such questions has dominated the writing about Kosinski’s life and art. There is no question that Kosinski’s life had a profound effect on his writing. The search for identity, with all that implies, is the primary focus of his fiction and began with his own quest occasioned by his profoundly unsettling experiences as a child. Most of his protagonists try on a series of personas, creating roles with which to attempt to cope with the perplexity of contemporary life. The most obvious of these is Chance, the central character in Being There, whose whole life is formed by his television watching. Chance is not unique in reflecting Kosinski’s fascination with popular culture and its effect in determining identity. The implications Kosinski pursued regarding personality-shaping events make him, along with Albert Camus, one of the primary writers to deal with important postwar existentialist questions. His search for personal definition 289

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in a hostile and alienating world earned for him a prominent place among writers of the late twentieth century.

The Painted Bird Type of work: Novel First published: 1965 The Painted Bird is one of the most powerful novels about World War II and the Holocaust. Since it only obliquely deals with both events, the novel is a kind of allegory for the senseless cruelty and brutality of any war. Kosinski claimed, falsely, that the novel was based on his own experiences. He was not averse to creating fiction in more than one realm; he was candid about this practice. The point of Kosinski’s claim, it may be argued, is that the book’s unspeakable brutalities are realistic—indeed, they are much less than what happened. Characterization is notably thin in The Painted Bird, and even the narrator is two-dimensional. The scenes that he narrates are, however, often overwhelming, and the power of the novel comes in large part from its simple language and imagery. At one level, this short, episodic novel is an allegory. Kosinski has written that the novel is a fairy tale experienced by a child rather than told to him, and this is an apt description. Each incident in The Painted Bird can be considered as a stepping stone in an allegorical Bildungsroman, or novel of education. In each encounter, the boy learns another lesson, only to discard it for a new lesson in the following chapter or incident—religion from the priest, politics from Gavrila, vengeance from Mitka and the Silent One, and so on. The final answer with which Kosinski leaves readers is ambiguous. At the end, the boy is losing the muteness into which the horror of the world forced him. There is evil in the world, surely, and, as the boy has seen, neither the religious nor the political solution cancels it—in fact, they often exacerbate it. The only thing that is certain is the individual. At another level the novel is about not merely an individual boy but also the Holocaust of World War II. The Painted Bird can be read as one of the most powerful indictments of the madness and terror of the Holocaust in literature. Although the horrors depicted in The Painted Bird are much less brutal than the actuality—no death camps or gas ovens are in the novel—they are horrible for their starkness and immediacy; they are the concrete and individual horrors of one alien child in a world gone mad. The major thematic question the novel raises is the one at the center of the Book of Job and other classic pieces of literature: What is one to make of the evil of the world? Kosinski has no clear answer—except that the novel, with all its horror, is its own answer. The boy begins to speak again; the novel is testimony to what he has witnessed—the powerful communication is that The Painted Bird exists.

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For all of its realistic detail, the novel also has a symbolic meaning. There are a number of incidents that have this symbolic quality—the story to which the title makes reference, for example. The painted bird is an apt symbol for the boy himself. Lekh captures a bird, paints it, and releases it. The bird’s own flock, not recognizing it, pecks the bird to death. This bird also represents all those who are marked as aliens and who thus are destroyed—including the millions in the death camps of World War II. Kosinski’s novel, in language and theme, forces readers to confront the potential horror of human behavior, without recourse to easy answers.

Steps Type of work: Novel First published: 1968 Winner of the National Book Award in 1969, Steps is experimental fiction belonging to the “new wave” school led by the French author Alain RobbeGrillet. Events dominate, and readers must participate in the action if they are to find meaning. Its unusual, brilliant tone and technique sets the work apart from other fiction of its time. In 1967, Kosinski received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write the novel. His purpose, as he explained it, was to discover the self through incidents that were symbolic of the world. He said that the book’s characters and their relationships existed in a fissure of time between past and present. The significance of the title is elusive. Steps should go somewhere, but these steps seem only to travel between experiences. Some readers see the steps as a moral descent into hell, but it is certain that the author hoped that the steps would be his narrator’s progression toward self-discovery. Place names are not given. Poland may be the setting for some of the incidents, America that for others. The author lived in both places. There is no unifying plot, no order to time. Characters are like stick figures, stripped to their bare bones. They have no personality and are nameless. Only women are allowed admirable traits. The narrator is a man trying to discover who he is in a world he considers hostile. Having come from a Communist country where human beings are externally controlled, he is surprised to find that there are collective forces in the new country that prevent the self from being free. Both society and religion exert control over people. Much of Kosinski’s writing is autobiographical. He spews the horrors he encountered in Poland out onto his pages in graphic form, colored dramatically by his vivid imagination. The jobs held by his narrator are jobs that Kosinski, too, held at various times. An outgrowth of his first novel, The Painted Bird (1965), in which he was a child, Steps shows the author as a young man. The incidents seem discon-

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nected, like a mirror that has been broken and the fragments scattered. If the protagonist could only find the pieces and put them together again, perhaps he could look into the reflective surface and see himself clearly. His self is shattered like the narrative, and the chaotic society in which he lives seems shattered as well. A former photographer, Kosinski records each event in visual detail as a camera would see it. He uses sight to achieve neutrality. The book is almost totally without emotion. The theme of the book may be that brutality and violence are so destructive that they make life meaningless. Dispassionate acceptance of crude, degrading acts in an uncaring world gives tremendous power to the narrative. Distinguished by a commanding structure, poetic prose, and, despite its portrayal of depravity, an underlying morality, the work has been called existential. Its epigraph from the Bhagavad Gita (c. fifth century b.c.e.) indicates that the author hoped for peace and happiness to be restored to human life. That cannot occur if manipulative sex and brutal violence are the sum total of an individual’s experience. The stark reality of this powerful novel is an admonition to modern society that bizarre relationships and fragmented experiences are capable of destroying the self.

Suggested readings Cahill, David. “Jerzy Kosinski: Retreat from Violence.” Twentieth Century Literature 18, no. 2 (April, 1972): 121-132. Coale, Samuel. “The Quest for the Elusive Self: The Fiction of Jerzy Kosinski.” Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 14, no. 3 (1973): 25-37. Everman, Welch D. Jerzy Kosinski: The Literature of Violation. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1991. Lavers, Norman. Jerzy Kosinski. Boston: Twayne, 1982. Lilly, Paul R., Jr. Words in Search of a Victim: The Achievement of Jerzy Kosinski. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1988. Lupack, Barbara Tepa, ed. Critical Essays on Jerzy Kosinski. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. _______. Plays of Passion, Games of Chance: Jerzy Kosinski and His Fiction. Bristol, Ind.: Wyndham Hall Press, 1988. Sherwin, Byron L. Jerzy Kosinski: Literary Alarmclock. Chicago: Cabala Press, 1981. Sloan, James Park. Jerzy Kosinski. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1996. —Charles L. P. Silet/David Peck/Josephine Raburn

Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz Born: Worcester, Massachusetts; July 29, 1905

Kunitz achieves a complexity and coherence unique in lyric poetry. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Intellectual Things, 1930; Passport to the War: A Selection of Poems, 1944; Selected Poems, 1928-1958, 1958; The Testing-Tree: Poems, 1971; The Terrible Threshold: Selected Poems, 1940-1970, 1974; Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays, 1985; Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, 1997 While a scholarship student at Harvard University, Stanley Kunitz won a prize for a poem anticipating his acknowledged themes of time and mutability. Critics speculate that Kunitz’s thematic preoccupations stem from an event that occurred weeks before his birth: his father’s suicide. Kunitz suffered a further blow at the age of fourteen when his beloved stepfather died. Significantly, the dramatized “I”—the protagonist throughout Kunitz’s poetry—is the ever-questing self, determined to survive against the odds, “the hurt/ Which is unanswerable [and] fill[s] the brow/ with early death.” The basis of Kunitz’s work is personal, but he is not a poet of the confessional school. He intends his poetry to be a vehicle that transforms private themes and events into legend. That is, the poetry is meant to give the particular and the personal a universal dimension. “All the essential details of the poem are true as dreams are,” Kunitz explains in his commentary on “Father and Son.” The “I” in “Father and Son” pursues his ghostly father across a dreamscape. His face a “white ignorant hollow,” the figure remains to the end wordless, incapable of imparting knowledge. Kunitz characteristically sounds the note of bitterness against family and tradition in his early poetry. “Let sons learn from their lipless fathers how/ Man enters hell,” he declares in “For the World Is Flesh.” With World War II, during which, as a conscientious objector, he took a noncombatant role, Kunitz appears to have reforged links with his Jewish immigrant heritage. In “Reflection by a Mailbox,” then-current horrors in Adolf Hitler’s Europe precipitate an imaginative journey backward through time to the pogroms that brought his parents from Russia to America. The discovery of Russian poetry, which he began to translate, also revived ancestral ties. “Journal for My Daughter,” occasioned by Kunitz’s divorce in 1958, marks a major development toward reconciliation in his work, as he confronts his own parental responsibility for a child’s suffering. 293

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Kunitz’s love of the natural world, traced to his boyhood solace in exploring the woods and fields surrounding his home, has remained a source of renewal, evident particularly in the expansive perspective of his later poetry. Recognition has included the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1959 for Selected Poems, 1928-1958, designations as Library of Congress consultant on poetry from 1974 to 1976 and, in 1987, State Poet of New York.

“Father and Son” Type of work: Poetry First published: 1944, in Passport to War: A Selection of Poems “Father and Son” is about the desire for a source of psychological and spiritual certitude. It is also about the acute frustration in the individual prematurely deprived of one who could have provided it. Yet the poem is not for the fatherless or orphaned alone. In the ordinary course of life, everyone loses his or her parents. Later, one may yearn, consciously or not, for a bygone security that they represent. Such feeling does not require that security to have existed in fact. It is fueled by loss and by the alienation and dissolution which often follow from it. Moreover, the one lost may or may not have possessed the love requisite to this need. The two-line stanza that concludes the poem reveals the fruit of the son’s entreaties—a vision of the father’s skull. Nothing remains to be conveyed. The brevity of this climax and denouement is arresting. The son’s yearning and his belief in his father’s love make “the white ignorant hollow of his face” an unexpected and shocking final image. Does the concluding couplet, then, cynically denigrate this yearning? Probably not, because this desire and its gratification are imagined as in a dream, suggesting their unconscious nature. The voice of the poem is not engaged in a realistic social exchange. What the son finally realizes is not the sort of rebuff one gets from an impatient realist. It is more like the half-conscious, desultory insight that follows a dream embodying some personal unhappiness. Such an insight could be as salutary in the long run as it is disquieting for the moment. Maturity finally requires one to acknowledge that a dead source of surety cannot be otherwise. In addition, an absolute and dead guarantor of one’s well-being, by its magical, unconscious empowerment, enslaves one. (The dead father’s “indomitable love” has kept the son in “chains.”) One may esteem that love, real or not, but one wishes the person who seeks it free of bondage as well. Thus, the terrible experience of the “white ignorant hollow” is ultimately liberating. Learning to live independently of perfect guidance is often a painful experience, but it vitalizes one’s autonomy and self-reliance. The son is finally free to be a real moral agent, to act through his own judgment, even ignorance, there being no morally omniscient guide anyway, as the innocently “ignorant . . . face” makes clear.

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“Three Floors” Type of work: Poetry First published: 1971, in The Testing-Tree “Three Floors” is a short formal poem; divided into four rhyming stanzas, it resembles a ballad or hymn. The title suggests the interior of a house and raises the question of what is happening on each floor. The reader is thus led to expect some contrast or tension. “Three Floors” is one of several poems in which Kunitz mentions his father—or rather the felt absence of his father. In the final stanza, the poem itself becomes a vehicle for the imagination, creating a father for the son. The child adds the possessive pronoun and the lowercase (“my father”—he cannot call him “Father”) as he wills him into being. The father is “flying,” though. Even as he is apprehended, he seems to be leaving. In a frenzy, the child perceives an elemental loss where the external world reflects his own amorphous grief. Loss is at the heart of this poem. The mother is hardly real as she hovers on the other side of the door. The sister is soon to be lost, and the child is all too aware of her impending marriage. The father has never been there at all; he becomes a mystery to be solved. The child picks at the metaphorical lock of the family, hoping to discover his own identity. In the trunk, he finds only a hat that suggests a secret adult male society and a walking stick, with its implications of freedom and mobility. These powerful absences add up to a very real (if imagined) presence. The sister has a fiancé—a “doughboy,” or soldier—who has recently asked her to marry him. The boy listens as she plays the piano, one sound over and over, Warum. The word means “why” in German. The sister plays the song, almost absentmindedly, thinking of her soldier and the war. Behind loss is the question “why?” The question, along with its rhythm, pervades the poem, establishing a fatal sense that some things have no reason. The father’s death, the mother’s anger, the child’s internalized conflict—nothing makes sense. Without an answer, the child is fated to ask this question throughout his life. The imaginative act, then, is seen as a way of discovering meaning—of making a divided house, however briefly, whole. In sixteen lines, “Three Floors” has peopled the house with ghosts: The mother is sensed but not seen, the sister is remembered as a scrap of song, and the few vestiges of the father are locked in a trunk. The small boy is literally caught in the middle between the past (his father’s loss) and the future (his sister’s marriage, his own manhood). The poet re-creates the various claims on his affections as he presents the immediate moment of the poem— the darkness and the visionary sight of his father flying. His private thoughts are depicted as turbulent, guilty, and psychologically necessary. The reader is drawn into the poem’s emotional complex in such a way that childhood itself, with all of its confusions, is awakened in memory.

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Suggested readings Gaffke, Carol T., ed. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Hagstrum, Jean H. “The Poetry of Stanley Kunitz: An Introductory Essay.” In Poets in Progress, edited by Edward Hungerford. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962. Hénault, Marie. Stanley Kunitz. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Orr, Gregory. Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Rodman, Selden. Tongues of Fallen Angels. New York: New Directions, 1974. —Amy Allison/David M. Heaton/Judith Kitchen

Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner Born: New York, New York; July 16, 1956 Kushner’s work brings together issues of national politics, sexuality, and community. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: A Bright Room Called Day, pr. 1985, pb. 1991; Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, part 1, Millennium Approaches, pr. 1990, pb. 1993, part 2, Perestroika, pr. 1991, pb. 1994; Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, 1995 (including the play Slavs!, pr. 1994); Death and Taxes: Hydrioptaphia, and Other Plays, 1998 Tony Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His parents, musicians, immersed him in culture, leftist politics, and the arts. He returned to New York City, his birthplace, to attend Columbia University, where he studied medieval history, developed an interest in Marxist thought, and began to come to terms with his homosexuality. He underwent psychoanalysis during his early years in New York, attempting to “cure” himself of being gay. After being graduated from Columbia in 1978, Kushner earned a Master in Fine Arts degree in directing from New York University in 1984. Kushner is best known for Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a play about life in Ronald Reagan’s America and the pandemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Much of Angels in America— and of Kushner’s other work—focuses on political thought, especially the connections between world history and contemporary politics. Kushner’s first major play, A Bright Room Called Day, uses an artistic character to draw explicit links between the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930’s and what Kushner saw as the smothering conservatism of the 1980’s. Slavs!, Kushner’s sequel to Angels in America, opens with a character from Perestroika, Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Perlapsarianov, the world’s oldest Bolshevik. The play focuses on a postsocialist world in which leftist politics has lost out to its more conservative counterparts. Kushner sees the loss of the left to be a loss of hope and a foreboding of a dangerous, heartless future. These themes are also developed in Angels in America, but in Slavs! Kushner does not use sexuality as a major symbol, although two main characters of Slavs! are a lesbian couple. Kushner writes what he has referred to as Theater of the Fabulous. His plots examine the close relationship between the public, political world and the private lives of people. An activist who has been arrested more than once at demonstrations against government inaction in the face of the AIDS crisis, Kushner sees himself as an inheritor of Bertolt Brecht’s explicitly political 297

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theater. In order for theater to be socially relevant, moving, and artistically successful, Kushner believes that theater must be confrontational, that it must not leave its audience comfortable or satisfied with the status quo. Theater, for Kushner, is an art of engagement, with politics, with issues, and with audiences—and theater is always political.

Angels in America Type of work: Drama First published: Millennium Approaches, pr. 1990, pb. 1993 (part 1); Perestroika, pr. 1991, pb. 1994 (part 2) A two-part, seven-hour play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is an epic of life in America in the mid-1980’s. In the play, self-interest has overtaken love and compassion, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is decimating the gay male population, and victory in the ideological battle between liberals and conservatives seems to be going to the conservatives. Kushner’s leftist politics are unmistakably present in his play, but Angels in America is not a polemic. Instead, it is a fantastic journey through the lives of two couples. One couple is Louis, a Jewish word processor, and Prior Walter, a former drag queen who has AIDS. The other is Joe Pitt, a Mormon republican and lawyer, and his wife, Harper. Another key player is the ethically questionable lawyer Roy Cohn, a dramatized version of the real person. (Cohn was counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the “Communist witch-hunts” of the 1950’s.) Cohn is dying of AIDS and is in the process of being disbarred. Angels in America uses AIDS as a metaphor for an investigation of life in the 1980’s. Kushner views the greed of that era as having frightening implications for personal relations. Louis spouts grand ideas in bombastic speeches but flees when faced with a lover who has AIDS. Louis is unable to face the responsibilities associated with caring for a person with AIDS. Joe, who becomes Louis’s lover, abandons his wife, deciding that he can no longer repress his homosexuality. Cohn tries to enlist Joe’s help in stopping the disbarment process by getting Joe a job in the Reagan Administration, but Joe refuses. Prior, the protagonist, is the character who suffers most. As AIDS-related complications jeopardize his health, he becomes more panicked. He also becomes a prophet after being visited by an angel at the end of part 1, Millennium Approaches. With the help of Hannah Pitt, Joe’s mother, he learns how to resist the Angel and how to make the Angel bless him. In spite of his failing health, Prior tells the Angel: “We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough, so inadequate. . . . Bless me anyway. I want more life.” This message of hope, near the end of part 2, Perestroika, affirms the

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movement of the play toward the interconnectedness of people across boundaries of race, religion, sexuality, or ideology. Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg say kaddish over the dead body of Cohn. Hannah, a devout Mormon, nurses Prior, a stranger to her. Belize, a black, gay nurse, advises Cohn on his medical treatment. Louis and Prior get back together, as the epilogue reveals.

Suggested readings Clum, John. Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Felman, Jyl Lynn. “Lost Jewish (Male) Souls: A Midrash on Angels in America.” Tikkun 10, no. 3 (May, 1995): 27-30. Kushner, Tony. Interview by David Savran. In Speaking on Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights, edited by Philip C. Kolin and Colby H. Kullman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995. Savran, David. “Ambivalence, Utopia, and a Queer Sort of Materialism: How Angels in America Reconstructs the Nation.” Theater Journal 47 (1995): 207227. Vorlicky, Robert, ed. Tony Kushner in Conversation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. —Chris Freeman

Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen Born: Chicago, Illinois; April 13, 1891 Died: New York, New York; March 30, 1964 Larsen’s novels are among the first to portray realistically the dilemma of identity for biracial women. Traditions: African American Principal works: Quicksand, 1928; Passing, 1929 In common with her protagonists—Helga Crane in Quicksand and Clare Kendry in Passing—Nella Larsen, throughout her life, never thoroughly resolved the crisis of her identity. Larsen often invented details about her life to suit her audience and the effect she wanted to have on it; it may be said that she learned this habit of invention from her parents. Mystery surrounds her identity because she wanted it that way. Even in such matters as her birth certificate, school records, and early childhood whereabouts, it is possible that no absolutely definitive history will arise. Thadious M. Davis, in the biography Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled, makes a thorough summary of the information available on the basics of Larsen’s identity. Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker, child of a Danish woman and a cook designated as “colored.” The baby was designated, therefore, as “colored.” When the girl entered school, she did so under the name Nellie Larson. It is possible that her supposed stepfather, Peter Larson, was in fact the same person as her “colored” father, Peter Walker, and that Peter Walker had begun to pass for white. Nellie Larson also attended school as Nelleye Larson. In 1907, she began to use the surname Larsen. The 1910 census of her household does not include her (her officially white sister, Anna, is mentioned), perhaps because her birth certificate, with the word “colored,” was being disassociated from the family. Later, she adopted the first name Nella; with marriage, she became Nella Larsen Imes. Larsen thus had considerable experience in her life with such issues as passing and identity. After completing a nursing degree at Lincoln Hospital, Larsen worked as a nurse at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. As does her character Helga, Larsen quickly tired of the uplifting philosophy at Tuskegee and headed north. Larsen worked for the New York City Department of Health and married Elmer S. Imes. Between 1921 and 1926, Larsen worked for the New York City Public Library in Harlem. There, Larsen became involved with Harlem Renaissance writers, capturing her own following with the publication of several critically 300

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acclaimed short stories. Shortly afterward, Larsen wrote Quicksand, a novel for which she was awarded a Harmon Award in literature. Following the success of this book and her next novel, Passing, Larsen became the first African American woman to receive the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Her popularity ended, however, with the public embarrassment of being accused in 1930 of plagiarizing one of her short stories, “Sanctuary,” and a messy divorce from her husband, whose unfaithfulness was the talk of the town. Larsen’s readership abandoned her, and she retreated to nursing at New York City’s Gouverneur Hospital, transferring Nella Larsen to Metropolitan Hospital in 1961. In 1963, she endured a period of depression that may have been because her white sister (or perhaps half-sister) had shunned Larsen for the last of many times. In 1964, her absence from work being noted, Larsen was found dead in her apartment. Larsen enjoyed literary success only briefly during her lifetime. Her literary talents and achievements went largely unrecognized until reappraisal of women’s literature elevated her works as contributing a distinctive voice to American literature.

Quicksand Type of work: Novel First published: 1928 Quicksand, Larsen’s masterpiece, is the story of Helga Crane’s quest, through a series of excursions in black and white society, for racial identity and acceptance. Her rejection by her black father and by her white stepfather and her mother’s early death leave Helga an orphan subject to the charity of white relatives, who pay for her education. Helga’s search begins with her brief tenure at Naxos, a Southern black

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college, where she fails to assimilate the racial attitudes of middle-class educated blacks there who expound the philosophy of racial uplift. She escapes to Chicago and then New York. Despite associations with middleclass blacks there, she still feels detached from the culture. A monetary gift from her uncle and his advice to visit her mother’s sister in Denmark take Helga abroad. In Denmark, Helga rejects becoming her relatives’ social showpiece of primitivism and a marriage proposal from an artist who sees in Helga “the warm, impulsive nature of the women of Africa” and “the soul of a prostitute.” Hearing a Negro spiritual at a symphony concert, Helga can no longer resist returning to America. When she returns, she finds that Robert Anderson, her only love interest, has married her mentor. Anderson underscores Helga’s alienation when, despite his clandestine sexual advances, he rejects her. Devastated, Helga finds herself at a storefront revival, where she experiences a spiritual conversion. The intensity of emotion and her weak health occasion her meeting the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, a scurrilous “jackleg” preacher who takes advantage of this opportunity to gain a wife and sexual partner. Transplanted to the South and drowning in the domestic hell of babies and marriage, Helga bids an angry and bitter farewell to her dreams and resigns herself to “the quagmire in which she had engulfed herself.” She resolves to get out of her predicament, but she understands “that this wasn’t new. . . . something like it she had experienced before.” Life offers no healing balm for Helga, as her journey ends in the squalor of a filthy house, the revulsion she feels for her slovenly, lecherous husband, and her ultimate failure to find any redeeming purpose or value for her life. Larsen’s character is more than the archetypal tragic mulatto. Helga’s restlessness and predictable flights from her cultural surroundings portray a woman uncomfortable with and deeply confused about her identity. Larsen was among the first to render depth and dimension to the emotional and physical motivations for her mixed-race characters’ actions.

Suggested readings Bone, Robert A. The Negro Novel in America. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965. Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. Gayle, Addison, Jr. The Way of the World: The Black Novel in America. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1975. Larson, Charles, ed. An Intimation of Things Distant: The Collected Fiction of Nella Larsen. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Books, 1992. Miller, Ericka M. The Other Construction: Where Violence and Womanhood Meet in the Writings of Wells-Barnett, Grimke, and Larsen. New York: Garland, 2000.

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Thorton, Hortense. “Sexism as Quagmire: Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” CLA Journal 16, no. 3 (1973): 285-301. —Betty L. Hart

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Evelyn Lau

Evelyn Lau Born: Vancouver, Canada; July 2, 1971

Lau’s writing features young women, often entangled in prostitution, drug abuse, and bizarre sexual subcultures, who are in search of love and acceptance. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, 1989, 1995; You Are Not Who You Claim, 1990; Oedipal Dreams, 1992; Fresh Girls, 1993; In the House of Slaves, 1994; Other Women, 1996; Choose Me, 1999 Evelyn Lau started to write when she was six years old in 1977; at fourteen, her self-described obsession with writing led her to run away from her Chinese Canadian family, who did not permit her to pursue this passion. Keeping journals and penning poetry kept Lau’s spirit alive while she descended into a nightmare world of juvenile prostitution, rampant drug abuse, and homelessness. Lau left the streets at sixteen, and wrote Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989, 1995) about her experience. She also published her first collection of poetry, You Are Not Who You Claim, in which her harrowing ordeals find artistic expression. The persona of Lau’s poetry is often a woman who resembles Lau, and her voice hauntingly evokes the mostly futile search for human warmth and genuine affection in a nightmare adult world. In Lau’s poetry and fiction, lovemaking can end sadly. Thus, “Two Smokers” ends on a note of complete alienation: While the sleeping lover of the persona “gropes at the wall” and “finds flesh in his dreams,” the woman “watches the trail of smoke” from her cigarette “drift towards the ceiling,/ hesitate, fall apart.” The haunting lucidity, freshness of imagination, and stunning power of Lau’s writings have earned for her important literary prizes. Her first poetry collection won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry award, and her second collection, Oedipal Dreams, which contains many interrelated poems reflecting on a young woman’s relationship with her married psychiatrist and lover, was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary honor. Perhaps most important, Lau’s youth has given her writing a sharp awareness of the startling coexistence of mainstream and alternative lifestyles. Her poems and stories feature many a professional man who shows pictures of his children to the teenage sex worker whom he has hired to be his dominatrix. Similarly, the persona of In the House of Slaves watches a 304

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squirrel as a customer drips hot wax on her body. As has the author, the main character of In the House of Slaves has lived simultaneously in the world of pop culture adolescence and in hell.

Fresh Girls, and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1993 Fresh Girls, and Other Stories, Lau’s collection of short stories, centers around young women who seek love and human affection in a netherworld of prostitution and bizarre, alternative sexual lifestyles. Many of the stories’ protagonists live on two or more levels. They often wear a mask during the sex work they perform, but have retained a different identity in which they long for a more conventional life and for loving acceptance. Lau’s stories are told from the perspective of the young women, who chase after a dream which continues to elude them. The reader is made to share, for example, the sadness of the drug-addicted teenage narrator of the title story. Looking around the massage parlor where she works, she suddenly recognizes that, although many of her friends still look nice in regular clothes and outside their work, they have lost that special youthful freshness after which their clients lust with such depravity. The astonishing ease with which men and women cross from an arcane subculture of sadomasochism to a mainstream life that is officially unaware and innocent of the other world is described with brilliant sharpness in “The Session” and “Fetish Night.” Alternate identities are taken on quickly, and discarded just as easily, as young women agree to perform strange sexual acts on men who want to live out their secret fantasies and change from a position of power into that of helpless submission. A core of stories explores the unhappy relationships of young women in love with older, married men who refuse to commit to their new lovers. In these stories, a man’s wedding band takes on the identity of a weapon “branding” the narrator’s skin. Fiercely subjective in her view, the protagonist of “Mercy” feels that “we are victims of each other,” as she sexually tortures her lover on his wife’s birthday. The pain of the experience sometimes proves too much for the young women to bear. Out of a feeling of self-hatred and despair, “Glass” implies, a dejected girl cuts her wrists while she smashes her window, ready to follow the falling glass onto the street below. What gives artistic shape to Lau’s collection is her unflinching, sympathetic look at a world that is alien to most readers. Her young, often nameless narrators are allowed to speak for themselves and scrutinize their tortured identities. In Lau’s stories, the literary perspective is not that of a prurient voyeur who looks in but that of young souls who look out. Lau’s stories challenge readers to examine the abyss of their own lives.

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Runaway Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1989; 1995 (with a new epilogue) Based on the journals that Lau kept, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid chronicles her two-year experience as a young Chinese Canadian woman who left home because she could no longer stand her parents’ oppression of her desires to write poetry. She sought to be anything but an obsessively studious, meekly obedient model pupil. Runaway became Lau’s start in a successful career as a young writer. After telling of her terrible life at home in a prologue, Lau’s autobiography opens on the first day after she ran away from home: March 22, 1988. Staying with friends at first, she attempts suicide on the day she is turned in to the authorities. Recovering at a mental hospital, Lau falls into Canada’s well-developed social safety net designed to rescue troubled teenagers. For months, Lau tries to put distance between her old and new selves as she self-destructively experiments with drugs and sex. Twice she goes to the United States only to turn herself in to be shipped back home to Vancouver. She frustrates social workers and her two psychiatrists, who are unable to prevent her descent into teenage prostitution and drug abuse. Throughout the chronicle of Lau’s ordeal, the reader becomes aware of her extremely low self-esteem and her self-loathing, which her parents’ perfectionist behavior has instilled in her. The reader almost cries out in despair at Lau’s inability to value herself, even as her budding career as a writer begins with awards and letters of acceptance for her poetry. Despite her ability to keep up with her writing and her occasionally seeing her position with lucidity, Lau refuses to stop hurting herself. She becomes attached to unsuitable men such as Larry, a drug addict on a governmentsponsored recovery program, which he abuses with cunning. To keep Lau, Larry provides her the potent pharmaceuticals without which she could not abide his presence. In the end, Lau frees herself of Larry, lives on her own in a state-provided apartment, and readies herself for college. Her writing has sustained her through dark hours, and, at sixteen, she is only a short time away from turning the journals into a manuscript. Runaway does not have a real closure. The reader leaves Lau as she seems to have overcome the worst of her self-abusive behavior, yet her life is still a puzzle waiting to be sorted out completely. In the epilogue added in 1995, Lau provides a firm sense that she has found a way out of the crisis of her adolescent life.

Suggested readings Books in Canada. Review of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, by Evelyn Lau. January, 1990, 23.

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Canadian Literature. Review of Fresh Girls, by Evelyn Lau. Summer, 1995, 147. Dieckmann, Katherina. Review of In the House of Slaves, by Evelyn Lau. Village Voice Literary Supplement, April, 1994, 32. Halim, Nadia. Review of In the House of Slaves, by Evelyn Lau. The Canadian Forum 73 (October, 1994): 41. Hungry Mind Review. Review of Fresh Girls, by Evelyn Lau. Summer, 1995, 25. James, Darlene. Review of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, by Evelyn Lau. Maclean’s, November 13, 1989, 81. Kirkus Review. Review of Fresh Girls, by Evelyn Lau. 63 ( January 1, 1995): 13. Los Angeles Times Book Review. Review of Fresh Girls, by Evelyn Lau. September 3, 1995, 6. —R. C. Lutz

Wendy Law-Yone

Wendy Law-Yone Born: Mandalay, Burma (now Myanmar); April 1, 1947

Law-Yone’s novels describe the alienation caused by harsh upbringings, political turmoil, and immigration. Traditions: Asian American Principal works: The Coffin Tree, 1983; Irrawaddy Tango, 1993 Wendy Law-Yone’s novels reflect the events in her turbulent life. In 1962, while a teenager in Burma, she watched her country become a military dictatorship and imprison her father, a newspaper publisher and political activist. In 1967, attempting to leave the country, she was captured and held for two weeks before being released. After living in Southeast Asia, she immigrated to America in 1973. She was graduated from college two years later and worked as a writer, publishing in the Washington Post Magazine and researching and writing Company Information: A Model Investigation (1983). Her first novel, The Coffin Tree, portrays an Asian American immigrant in a different situation than that of many other novels. In many books, protagonists need to choose between, or reconcile, their native culture and American culture. Law-Yone’s heroine, however, lacks connections to both cultures. Growing up with no mother and a distant father, she develops no attachment to Burma and is never nostalgic. When she and her brother immigrate, however, she remains detached from and unenthusiastic about America. Unable to express or follow her own desires, she obeys her tyrannical father and grandmother in Burma and her deranged brother in America. When brother and father die, twisted logic leads her to attempt suicide to fulfill her newly “uncovered . . . identity.” Although she survives, institutional treatment engenders only a mild affirmation of life: “Living things prefer to go on living.” Irrawaddy Tango also describes a woman living more for others than herself: In a fictionalized Burma, a friend inspires her to love dancing. She marries an officer who becomes the country’s dictator; when kidnapped by rebels, she agrees to be their spokeswoman. After her rescue, she helps other refugees before drifting into homelessness in America; she then returns to publicly reconcile with the dictator. Despite her political activities, she evidences no commitment to any cause and also can express herself only by violence, finally murdering her husband. Law-Yone does not fully account for her heroines’ alienation and lack of self-esteem, though possible factors include unhappy childhoods—with cold 308

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fathers and absent mothers. Politics is also corrosive in Law-Yone’s fiction, leading parents and spouses to neglect personal relationships. Finally, fate forces some to lead unrewarding lives. The absence of easy answers in her fiction demonstrates her maturity as a writer.

The Coffin Tree Type of work: Novel First published: 1983 The Coffin Tree explores a young woman’s growth into adulthood from the perspective of two cultures: Burma and the United States. Against the backdrop of large-scale political instability and threat of war in Burma, Law-Yone depicts a subtle kind of brutality at work beneath the veneer of prosperity and efficiency in the United States. The narrator’s matter-of-fact description of the rebuffs and humiliation that she experiences in her attempt to adapt to a foreign culture is a powerful indictment of the United States’ insensitivity to its immigrant population. The narrator and her half brother Shan are educated and speak English, but this does not prevent them from being misunderstood and maligned by Americans who show no understanding that people from other cultures operate according to different codes of behavior. The Coffin Tree suggests that cruelty caused by a failure to empathize with one’s fellow human beings can take many guises. For example, the narrator’s employer in New York does not give her a chance to explain her absence from work because his thinking is controlled by negative stereotypes. He thoughtlessly fires her just when she has spent her last money on a doctor’s house call to the mentally ill Shan, who has malaria. Ultimately, however, the main focus of the novel is not on the narrator’s eventual cultural assimilation, which is glossed over in a few paragraphs, but on her inner emotional state. Her dreams are as important to her as waking reality. While not always as overtly symbolic as in her dream of the threatening half-man, half-horse whose energy, impatience, and violence is suggestive of her father, most of the dreams nevertheless disclose her anxieties and her longings. Yet, though the narrator’s explanation of her feelings and motives constitutes the novel’s reason for being, she never indulges in self-pity or self-justification. As she records events, memories, and emotions, the rapid pace and alternating settings drive the narrative forward without sentimentality. Incorporated stories and legends add a touch of the mythic to the realism of the novel. Law-Yone portrays a broad range of human experience in The Coffin Tree without straying from her central focus on the narrator’s search for meaning. The process of a young person’s developing individuality and the formation of gender roles are pervasive concerns in contemporary American society. Law-Yone shows that the narrator has the same basic psychological

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needs as young American women, even though Burmese culture dictates different practices and standards regarding communication, social interaction, and family ties. Law-Yone also reveals through her depiction of patients in a mental hospital that psychological disorders are not restricted to any one social or ethnic group but tend to be rooted in personal history and family relationships.

Suggested readings Forbes, Nancy. Review of The Coffin Tree, by Wendy Law-Yone. The Nation 236 (April 30, 1983): 551. Kim, Elaine H. “Asian American Writers: A Bibliographical Review.” American Studies International 22, no. 2 (1984): 41-78. Law-Yone, Wendy. “Life in the Hills.” The Atlantic Monthly 264, no. 6 (December, 1989): 24-36. Lee, Rachel, C. “The Erasure of Places and the Re-siting of Empire in Wendy Law-Yone’s The Coffin Tree.” Cultural Critique 35 (Winter, 1996-1997): 149178. Ling, Amy. “Wendy Law-Yone.” In The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States, edited by Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. —Gary Westfahl/Patricia L. Watson

Gus Lee

Gus Lee (Augustus Samuel Jian-Sun Lee) Born: San Francisco, California; August 8, 1946

Lee’s novels capture the dilemma of an Asian American youth who tries to please the demands of two opposing cultures. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: China Boy, 1991; Honor and Duty, 1994; No Physical Evidence, 1998 Gus Lee came to writing late in life, at age forty-five, after careers in the military and as a lawyer. In 1989, his daughter asked him a question about his mother, and that simple question led to his first book, China Boy, in 1991. Born in San Francisco in a tough black neighborhood, the Panhandle, Lee found his childhood full of danger on the streets. At home he felt divided. His father and mother had come from mainland China in the early 1940’s and were wealthy and educated. His father had a military background and had fought for the Nationalist army. His mother had been educated by Christian missionaries. Lee’s mother died when he was five years old, and his new stepmother had new ideas about the traditional Chinese ways. Lee had to fight in the streets, with the help of boxing courses he took at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). He also had to battle at home with his stepmother, who wanted him to become more American. His first novel, China Gus Lee (Asian Week) Boy, uses many autobio311

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graphical events to tell the story of a young boy, Kai Ting, who is growing up in San Francisco. Skinny, weak, and timid, Kai Ting finds a friend at the neighborhood YMCA, learns self-defense, and returns to the streets with more confidence. Lee describes the early days as being very stifled by rules at home. Lee rebelled against his controlling stepmother, reading his homework but refusing to concentrate. He got good grades but was not involved. Lee’s father also attempted to direct him, objecting to the Christianity that the stepmother taught her stepson and projecting an atheistic approach that Lee felt was not right. Lee kept his mind focused on one goal: He wanted to become a West Point cadet. When he was appointed, he felt great relief, even though his life away from home as a plebe would be hellish. Lee actually found the harassment as a plebe at West Point to be easier than living at home. His second novel, Honor and Duty, also uses Kai Ting as his fictional hero and takes this character through many tough days at West Point. Kai Ting must obey the older cadets, he must study mathematics, and he must obey the West Point honor code. Coming upon a group of cadets who are cheating, Kai Ting agonizes about reporting them to the authorities, knowing that they will be removed from West Point if he informs on them. In Lee’s life, after a long tenure as an Army Command Judge Advocate and later as senior Deputy District Attorney in Sacramento, Lee found himself unfulfilled. Then his daughter’s question provoked Lee to write about an Asian American adjusting to life in the United States.

China Boy Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 China Boy is the story of Kai Ting, the American-born son of a Shanghai refugee family. Ending an odyssey across both friendly and unfriendly terrain, the Ting family finally settles in San Francisco. China Boy is a Bildungsroman, or rite-of-passage story. Although the novel covers only approximately one year and a half of Kai’s life, it depicts a pivotal point in his growth, a time of great change and uncertainty out of which he will gather strength and survive or to which he will succumb. With the death of his mother, the physical and emotional distance of his father, the cruelty of his stepmother, and the everyday violence that he faces on his neighborhood streets, Kai is plunged into a seemingly inescapable dungeon. To escape, Kai has to draw on the very last dregs of a personal integrity—the somehow unquenchable resilience of a seven-year-old—in order to salvage a childhood gone awry. Facing violence both within and without his home, Kai nevertheless soldiers along, and despite incredible odds neutralizes a neighborhood bully in the defining battle of his short life. This culminating act signals a

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breakthrough for Kai, and the novel leaves the reader with the hope that with one battle won, Kai is set to win others and, ultimately, to win the long war of his childhood. The novel is also about displacement, about the suspension between two clearly defined, seemingly irreconcilable cultures. The culture represented by Kai’s mother (Mah-mee) and Uncle Shim seems, with Mah-mee’s death, to slip away with each day. Kai, speaking a five-year-old’s broken “Songhai,” is the flotsam from that culture. The reality of a relentlessly alien culture is all around him, but without its language, without recognizable points of reference to help him in his transition, Kai is in danger of becoming both a refugee from one culture and an unwanted stranger in another. Ultimately, though, the novel is about the possibility of reconciliations: between past and present, between ethnicity and nationality, between passivity and action. There is time for Kai to recollect the lost pieces of his past in order to give direction and purpose to his present. Confronted by racism both at home and on the streets, Kai is befriended and aided by individuals who recognize the inherent stranger in themselves and who see in Kai only the human quality of need. Physically and emotionally brutalized by both his stepmother and the neighborhood boys, Kai is unable to retaliate. His understanding of yuing chi, or karma, seems to feed his childish fatalism. With the bodybuilding and mind-building at the YMCA, however, Kai seems finally to be able both to assert himself and to preserve his integrity. In the novel’s epilogue, Kai confronts his stepmother at their doorway. He has just survived his fight with the bully, and his clothes are drenched with blood. Edna is concerned only that he has rung the doorbell too early and that she will once again have to bleach the blood—the Asiatic blood—out of his clothes. As a recognition of his past and present, of his ethnicity, of his action, of his new self, Kai tells her, “You are not my Mah-mee! . . . I ain’t fo’ yo’ pickin-on, no mo’!”

Suggested readings Olson, K. Review of China Boy, by Gus Lee. The New York Times Book Review, July 21, 1991. Simpson, Janice C., and Pico Iyer. “Fresh Voices Above the Noisy Din.” Time 137 ( June 3, 1991): 66-67. _______. “From Ghetto to West Point: Gus Lee’s China Boy Becomes a Man of Honor.” Time 143 (March 28, 1994): 66. So, Christine. “Delivering the Punch Line: Racial Combat as Comedy in Gus Lee’s China Boy.” MELUS 21 (Winter, 1996): 141-155. Stone, Judy. “Gus Lee: A China Boy’s Rites of Passage.” Publishers Weekly 243 (March 18, 1996): 47-48. —Larry Rochelle/Pat M Wong

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee Born: Jakarta, Indonesia; 1957

Lee’s writing is inspired by his relation to his father and his family. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: Rose, 1986; The City in Which I Love You, 1990; The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, 1995 When Li-Young Lee’s first collection of poetry, Rose, was published, its Chinese American author had lived in America for twenty-two of his twentynine years. The poet’s immigrant experience, his strong sense of family life, and his recollections of a boyhood spent in Asia have provided a background to his writing. Lee was born in Jakarta; his Chinese parents were exiles from Communist China. They traveled until their arrival in Pittsburgh in 1964. The sense of being an alien, not a native to the place where one lives, strongly permeates Lee’s poetry and gives an edge to his carefully crafted lines. There is also a touch of sadness to his poetry: The abyss lurks everywhere, and his personae have to be circumspect in their words and actions, since they, unlike a native, can take nothing for granted in their host culture. Looking at his sister, the speaker in “My Sleeping Loved Ones” warns “And don’t mistake my stillness/ for awe./ It’s just that I don’t want to waken her.” Faced with a new language after his arrival in America, Lee became fascinated with the sound of words, an experience related in “Persimmons.” Here, a teacher slaps the boy “for not knowing the difference/ between persimmon and precision.” After college work at three American universities, Lee focused on his writing. Before the publication of his second collection, The City in Which I Love You, he received numerous awards. Lee has always insisted that his writing searches for universal themes, and the close connection of his work to his life cannot be discounted. His father, for example, appears in many poems. Lee offers, in The Winged Seed, a factual yet poetic account of his young life. Lee’s poetry and his prose reveal a writer who appreciates his close family and strives to put into words the grief and the joy of a life always lived in an alien place.

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The Winged Seed Type of work: Memoir First published: 1995 To a large extent, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance is a lyrical and sometimes surrealistic memorializing of Lee’s father and the author’s relationship with him. This memoir is also, as its title indicates, the saga of the Lee family’s participation in the twentieth century diaspora of Asians fleeing from the political upheavals of Asia and seeking to take root in the promise of America. Thus the book is a complex fabric made up, on the one hand, of a highly subjective psychological history about the formation of dominant themes and images in a poetic imagination that is woven, on the other hand, with factual history of world events. By the time Lee was born, his father, Kuo Yuan, had already left China, which had been taken over by the Communist regime. He had migrated to Jakarta, Indonesia, and become a vice president at Gamaliel University in the late 1950’s, a time when President Sukarno was blaming his country’s economic woes on its Chinese inhabitants. Swept into the undertow of ethnic cleansing, Kuo Yuan was imprisoned in 1959. Physically abused, he bribed his way into less harsh incarceration in an insane asylum. There Kuo Yuan preached the gospel powerfully, first to inmates and then to their jailers. By bribery and luck, the Lee family escaped to Hong Kong, where Kuo Yuan preached to throngs numbering in the thousands. Thence they migrated in 1964 to the United States, where, at the age of forty, he attended theological school. A changed and subdued man, he was appointed a minister in a Pennsylvania town whose congregation called him their “heathen minister.” Kuo Yuan emerges as an intelligent, gifted, tenacious survivor with traits of integrity and spiritual power that did not flourish on American soil. Although Lee’s father is the dominant presence in the book, Lee also provides fascinating glimpses of his mother, Jiaying. There are brilliantly recollected vignettes of her life growing up in the privileged class of China. Jiaying was living in the French quarter of Tientsin when Lee’s father joined her destiny with his. In Lee’s memoir, Jiaying emerges as a capable mother and fiercely loyal wife. One gathers that Lee’s early childhood experiences in Indonesia played a formative role in shaping his imagination, even though there are few overt references to those experiences in his poetry. In Indonesia, Lee was largely cared for by his Javanese nanny, Lammi. Through her, he became aware of family conflicts and love affairs; more important, Lammi took Lee to her village home, where he watched performances of wayang (Indonesian folk theater) and imbibed the mythological tales they dramatized. Through Lammi and her friends, Lee was exposed to stories of spellbinding bomohs, medicine men and women whose power was confirmed by the Lee family’s experience of hailstorms bombarding their house until their mother agreed to sell it. Lee’s early childhood exposure to the folk art and shamanistic

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tradition of Southeast Asia may have contributed to the qualities of mythic resonance and paraordinary sensation that mark some of his writing. The Winged Seed is a finely wrought memoir affording fascinating insights into the formation of a literary imagination and the origins of the most powerful images and themes that stir it. The book also provides revealing glimpses of some decisive political moments in twentieth century China and Indonesia.

Suggested readings Berk, L. Review of The City in Which I Love You, by Li-Young Lee. Choice 28 ( June, 1991): 1640. Chicago Tribune. Review of The Winged Seed, by Li-Young Lee. 14 (April 23, 1995): 6. Greenbaum, Jessica. Review of Rose, by Li-Young Lee. The Nation, October 7, 1991, 416. Kirkus Reviews. Review of The Winged Seed, by Li-Young Lee. 62 (December 1, 1994): 1592. Los Angeles Times. Review of The Winged Seed, by Li-Young Lee. July 3, 1995, E6. Muske, Carol. Review of The City in Which I Love You, by Li-Young Lee. The New York Times Book Review, January 27, 1991, 20. Waniek, Marylin. Review of The City in Which I Love You, by Li-Young Lee. Kenyon Review 13 (Fall, 1991): 214. Wisner-Broyles, Laura A., ed. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 24. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999. —R. C. Lutz/C. L. Chua

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde Born: Harlem, New York; February 18, 1934 Died: Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands; November 17, 1992 Lorde’s poetry, essays, and autobiographical fiction are among the best American black lesbian feminist writings. Traditions: African American Principal works: Cables to Rage, 1970; New York Head Shop and Museum, 1974; Coal, 1976; The Black Unicorn, 1978; The Cancer Journals, 1980; Chosen Poems, Old and New, 1982 (revised edition, Undersong: Chosen Poems, Old and New, 1992); Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, 1982; Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984; The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems 1987-1992, 1993; The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, 1997 Audre Lorde began writing poems at an early age, as a child of West Indian heritage growing up in New York City’s Harlem. Her early work progressed from personal consciousness to encompass a radical critique of her society. Lorde was graduated from Hunter College in New York, then went on to study for a year at the National University of Mexico. She obtained a library science degree from Columbia University in 1961. Lorde married attorney Edwin Ashley Rollins in 1962, had two children with him, and was divorced in 1970. From 1970 onward, there was a lesbian focus in her life as well as in her work. In Zami, Lorde examines the powerful erotic journey of a young black woman who comes to terms with her lesbian sexual orientation. Powerful, deeply erotic scenes based in New York City’s gay-girl milieu of the 1950’s reflect Lorde’s efforts to grapple with her own personal, sexual, and racial identity. A teacher of writing at New York City area colleges, Lorde was keenly aware of racism—a condition she experienced as a child in New York City. This awareness was reflected in a radicalism in her work, including Coal and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.

The Cancer Journals Type of work: Memoir First published: 1980 The Cancer Journals, Lorde’s documentation and critique of her experience with breast cancer, is a painstaking examination of the journey Lorde takes 317

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to integrate this crisis into her identity. The book chronicles Lorde’s anger, pain, and fear about cancer and is as frank in its themes of “the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, and the function of cancer in a profit society,” as it is unflinching in its treatment of Lorde’s confrontation with mortality. Lorde speaks on her identity as a black, lesbian, feminist mother and poet with breast cancer. She illuminates the implications the disease has for her, recording the process of waking up in the recovery room after the biopsy that confirms her cancer, colder than she has ever been in her life. The following days, she prepares for the radical mastectomy through consultAudre Lorde (Inmar Schullz/W. W. Norton) ation with women friends, family, her lover, and her children. In the days that follow, Lorde attributes part of her healing process to “a ring of women like warm bubbles keeping me afloat” as she recovers from her mastectomy. She realizes that after facing death and having lived, she must accept the reality of dying as “a life process”; this hard-won realization baptizes Lorde into a new life. The journal entries for 1979 and 1980, written while Lorde recovered from the radical mastectomy she chose to forestall spread of the disease, show Lorde’s integration of this emergency into her life. She realizes that she must give the process a voice; she wants to be more than one of the “socially sanctioned prosthesis” women with breast cancer, who remain quiet and isolated. Instead, Lorde vows to teach, speak, and fight. At the journal’s end, Lorde chooses to turn down the prosthesis offered her, which she equates with an empty way to forestall a woman’s acceptance of her new body, and thus, her new identity. If, Lorde realizes, a woman claims her full identity as a cancer survivor and then opts to use a prosthesis, she has made the journey toward claiming her altered body, and life. Postmastectomy women, however, have to find their own internal sense of power. The Cancer Journals demonstrates a black, feminist, lesbian poet’s integration of cancer into her identity.

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Coal Type of work: Poetry First published: 1976 Coal explores Audre Lorde’s identities as a black woman, mother, wife, and lover of women. Several of her life issues are examined and refracted in the poems. Lorde’s lifelong journey toward claiming her West Indian, African American heritage is given voice in “Coal”; her motherhood is the subject of “Now That I Am Forever with Child”; and her women-centered existence is described in “On a Night of the Full Moon.” As a black woman of West Indian heritage, Audre Lorde knew the struggles of black Americans to claim their place and voice in American society. Raised in Harlem during the 1930’s and 1940’s, Lorde became aware of racism at an early age. The poem “Coal” claims a positive, strong voice for Lorde—a voice deeply embedded in her black heritage. In “Coal,” Lorde effectively transforms black speech into poetry: “I/ is the total black, being spoken/ from the earth’s inside.” Lorde defines poetic speech as a force that embraces blackness; then, she goes on to question how much a black woman can speak, and in what tone. Yet “Coal” defines Lorde as a black female poet who breaks the boundaries of silence and proclaims the sturdiness of power of her own words: “I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside/ now take my word for jewel in the open light.” Fire imagery suffuses the book. The fire that marks the edges of many poems defines the anger and hostility engendered by a patriarchal and racist society. Lorde learns to empower herself by using the fire of anger and despair to create her own vision of spiritual and sexual identity. Embarked on her own journey toward truth, Lorde proclaims in the poem “Summer Oracle” that fire—which she equates with a warming agent in a country “barren of symbols of love”—can also be a cleansing agent. Fire burns away falsehoods and lets truth arise. Lorde was widely praised by her contemporaries for her determination to see truth in everyday life. Coal could be called an uneven book, but her portraits of city life, love, anger, and sorrow make Coal a book of poetic transition from which Lorde would emerge into a life of more radical feminism and richer fulfillment.

Zami Type of work: Novel First published: 1982 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Lorde’s prose masterpiece, examines a young black woman’s coming to terms with her lesbian sexual orientation. An autobiographical novel, Zami has earned a reputation as much for its

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compelling writing as for its presentation of a coming-of-age story of a black lesbian feminist intent on claiming her identity. At the age of nineteen, Zami flees New York City, where she was raised by her West Indian parents, for Mexico. There, she falls in love with an older expatriate woman named Eudora, who opens up her sensual life to the younger woman. Through her relationship with Eudora, Zami realizes the paralyzing consequences of the “racist, patriarchal and anti-erotic society” that Eudora fled when she left the United States. Zami returns to live in the “gay girl” milieu of Greenwich Village in the 1950’s. She commits herself to a long-term relationship with Muriel, a white woman with whom she builds a home. Muriel completes the sexual awakening that Eudora began. Muriel is threatened, however, when Zami enters therapy and enrolls in college. As Zami forges an identity that integrates her sensual, intellectual, and artistic sides, Muriel moves out of the Greenwich Village apartment. Zami moves forward, even in grief, toward her new-found life. Erotic language and scenes pepper the story. Zami learns to accept her own erotic impulses toward women, and her acceptance leads her into a larger life where love for women is central. Her eroticism is about the acceptance of the stages of a woman’s physical life. Eros is also language that she uses to infuse her poems with life. As Zami goes to college, begins to send out her own poetry, and opens to life while Muriel declines, she meets a female erotic figure of mythic proportions: Afrekete. Years earlier, Zami met a black gay woman whom she named Kitty: a woman of pretty clothes and dainty style. The two women meet again at the novel’s end. Kitty has become a fully erotic woman, who has assumed the mythic name Afrekete. After her liaison with Afrekete, Zami finds that her own life has become a bendable, pliable entity that challenges myths and, in the end, makes a new myth of its own.

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold, ed. Black American Women Poets and Dramatists. New York: Chelsea House, 1996. Brown, Catherine M. “Reflections on a ‘Black, Militant, Lesbian Poet.’” Essence 29 (March, 1999): 68. Christian, Barbara, ed. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1985. Evans, Mari, ed. Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Keating, AnaLouise. Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press, 1984. Martin, Joan. “The Unicorn Is Black: Audre Lorde in Retrospect.” In Black

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Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum Press, 1983. —R. C. S.

Claude McKay

Claude McKay Born: Sunny Ville, Jamaica; September 15, 1889 Died: Chicago, Illinois; May 22, 1948 McKay’s writings capture the dialect of his native Jamaica, ushered in the Harlem Renaissance, and added a black voice to the early years of Soviet Communism. Traditions: African American, Caribbean Principal works: Constab Ballads, 1912; Songs of Jamaica, 1912; Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems, 1920; Harlem Shadows, 1922; Home to Harlem, 1928; Banjo, 1929; Gingertown, 1932; Banana Bottom, 1933; A Long Way from Home, 1937; Harlem: Negro Metropolis, 1940; Selected Poems of Claude McKay, 1953 Claude McKay was the youngest of eleven children in a rural Jamaican family. His parents instilled pride in an African heritage in their children. McKay’s brother Uriah Theophilus and the English folklorist and linguist Walter Jekyll introduced McKay to philosophy and literature, notably to English poetry. When he was nineteen McKay moved to Kingston and worked as a constable for almost a year. Encouraged by Jekyll, McKay published two volumes of poetry in Jamaican dialect in 1912, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads. The first collection echoes McKay’s love for the natural beauty of Jamaica while the second reflects his disenchantment with urban life in Kingston. In 1912 McKay left Jamaica for the United States and studied at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and at Kansas State College before moving to Harlem in 1914. His most famous poem, “If We Must Die,” was published in 1919 and proved to be a harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance. The poem depicts violence as a dignified response to racial oppression. Soon thereafter McKay published two other volumes of poetry, Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems and Harlem Shadows, which portray the homesickness and racism that troubled McKay in the United States. Some of McKay’s poems were anthologized in Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925), the bible of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay also spent time in Europe and North Africa. In the Soviet Union in 1922 and 1923, he was lauded as a champion of the Communist movement and published a poem in Pravda. While in France in the 1920’s, McKay preferred Marseilles over the white expatriate community in Paris. McKay wrote three sociological novels about the attempts of black people 322

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to assimilate as outsiders in various places around the world: Home to Harlem is set in Harlem, Banjo in Marseilles, and Banana Bottom in Britain and Jamaica. The seamy realism of black urban life depicted in the first novel did not appeal to African American thinkers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who preferred more uplifting and optimistic black art. McKay continued to examine the place of black people in Western culture in his autobiography, A Long Way from Home, and in some of his posthumously published Selected Poems of Claude McKay. His conversion to Catholicism in his final years was the last step in his search for aesthetic, racial, and spiritual identity.

Banana Bottom Type of work: Novel First published: 1933 Banana Bottom is the story of a young Jamaican woman’s discovery of her country, her people, and herself. The novel begins with the return to Jamaica of twenty-two-year-old Tabitha “Bita” Plant, who has been abroad for seven years. After a flashback in which he explains the reasons for her absence, McKay tells the story of Bita’s life from her homecoming to her marriage, concluding with a brief epilogue that shows her as a contented wife and mother. Banana Bottom is based on a less simplistic view of the black experience than some critics have assumed. A close look at the novel shows how far McKay’s underlying meaning is from the easy dichotomy between a white society of repression, which is evil, and a black culture of expression, which is good, with all the characters lined up on one side or the other. One of McKay’s major themes has little to do with that kind of dichotomy. His Jamaica is almost entirely black, and the social hierarchy that he finds so stultifying is maintained by blacks, not by whites. The reason that the highly educated, intelligent, charming Bita can aspire no higher than her seminarian is that, in the view of her own society, no one so dark in skin color can marry a professional man or a government official. Granted, the Jamaican system is based on the old white colonial belief in black inferiority; however, it is not whites who enforce this social stratification. By showing how this system traps people of unquestionable ability at an arbitrary level in society, McKay is arguing for a change of mind within the black community itself. An even more important theme of Banana Bottom is the issue of what lifestyle is most fulfilling for a black person, specifically for an intelligent, well-educated individual such as Bita. Again, it has been easy for critics to see the prudish and repressed Priscilla Craig as the representative of white society and Herald Newton Day as an example of a black man destroyed when he attempts, like his white sponsor, to repress his black sexual vitality. McKay,

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however, does not make arbitrary classifications of either his whites or his blacks. In Malcolm Craig’s dedication to black freedom and autonomy and in Squire Gensir’s passion for black culture, McKay shows that some whites are capable not only of kindness but also of selflessness. Similarly, he uses two of Bita’s suitors to show that black people are not necessarily noble. Certainly both Hopping Dick Delgado and Tack Tally are unworthy of McKay’s heroine. Unlike both Herald and Tack, the man whom Bita chooses is a truly free one who finds the meaning of life not in the supernatural but in nature itself, in his wife, in his family, in his own sexual vitality, and in the land to which he is devoting his life. Instead of denying Bita the expression of her own identity, Jubban encourages her even in those interests that are not his own. The life that Bita and Jubban build together, then, is not a rejection of one culture or another but a fusion of the best of two worlds.

Banjo Type of work: Novel First published: 1929 Banjo: A Story Without a Plot is an episodic narrative involving a small group of relatively permanent residents of the Vieux Port section of Marseilles, France, and a larger cast of incidental characters who are encountered briefly in the varied but fundamentally routine activities of unemployed black seamen trying to maintain a sense of camaraderie and well-being. It is, therefore, basically a picaresque fiction that offers a measure of social criticism. The novel reiterates McKay’s constant themes: that the folk rather than the black intelligentsia represent the best in the race; that blacks should have a high regard for their heritage and hence a racial self-esteem; that the ideal life is one of vagabondage, of natural gusto and emotional response, allowing one to “laugh and love and jazz and fight.” The breakup of the beachboys at the end of parts 2 and 3 suggests that cohesiveness is less powerful among McKay’s favorite people than individualism—the very characteristic of the materialistic, commercial class that Ray inveighs against in his numerous diatribes and asides. Ironically, this assertion of individuality plays into the arms of those classes and attitudes that Ray sees as inimical to racial betterment. Ray is the mouthpiece for an unrelenting indictment of white civilization. In his eyes, its chief shortcomings are crass commercialism; an unwarranted sense of racial superiority; hypocrisy (white Europeans assert that they make the best pornographic films, yet they condemn the uninhibited—even justifiable—sexuality of the blacks); nauseating patriotism, rather than internationalism; standardization; and Calvinist attitudes toward sex, alcohol, music,

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and entertainment. Yet the behavior of Banjo and the others is far from admirable—if one excepts Ray, who is moderate, literate, and emotional. When he arrives in port, Banjo has 12,525 francs—a considerable sum—but quickly spends it on a girl who leaves him as soon as he is broke. He is wholly improvident and far from admirable. Accordingly, it is difficult to maintain any sympathy for him and to feel that he is anything more than a wastrel, a womanizer, a loafer, and an impractical dreamer. If McKay means Banjo to be a paean to the free life, the life of the spirit and the emotions untrammeled by responsibilites, he seems to be suggesting that his motley sybarites are enviable models. They most certainly are not: They are irresponsible and without any admirable ambition. Their parallels are the Europeans who attend the “blue” cinema, who are rootless, affected, and suffering from ennui. (Their Satanism and sexual aberrations have cut them off from their cultural bearings.) It is hard to believe that the beachboys—and Banjo in particular—are to be admired for their instinctive, spontaneous, sensual behavior. Moreover, at the end most of them express their dissatisfaction with pointless drifting, with unemployment, with poverty, and with temporary liaisons dependent on money alone. It is little wonder, then, that Banjo has been criticized for not having a clearly defined and defensible theme. Similarly, one can see a weakness in Banjo’s saying that his instrument is his “buddy,” that it is more than a “gal, moh than a pal; it’s mahself.” The Jazz Age had not ended, but the banjo was a symbol of a past era, and its owner, who places a thing above persons, seems to be disoriented. Banjo has become an anachronism.

Home to Harlem Type of work: Novel First published: 1928 This novel is an account of life in Harlem as seen through the experiences of Jake, who has come to regard Harlem as his hometown and is constantly comparing it with other places in his experience. Though the brief sojourn of Jake gives a linear development to the plot, Home to Harlem is actually a cyclical novel, for it is apparent that Jake has opened and closed one episode of his life in Petersburg, Virginia, another in Europe (with the Army), and a third in Harlem, before entering on yet another in Chicago with Felice. Home to Harlem is essentially a story without a plot. Felice is lost for a time and then found by chance. Everything else in the novel is introduced to let the reader know what life is like in Harlem. Life in the Black Belt is depicted as serendipitous, often unfair, and dangerous. The participation of the Haitian immigrant Ray in the life of Jake is short-lived and fundamentally ineffective. In this way, McKay seems to suggest that there is no possibility of ameliora-

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tion from the outside and from would-be saviors who are transient and not from within the social structure. On the other hand, Jake, who is part of Harlem and who has become accustomed to its harshness and brutality, can see the possibility of finding love, affection, and even self-satisfaction and self-improvement by leaving it all behind. Prostitution, he seems to suggest, is nothing to hold against a woman if society has forced her into it for survival. McKay, a longtime resident of Harlem after migrating from Jamaica, thought of Harlem as dehumanizing in the extreme. His attitude is reflected in Ray’s comment that if he married Agatha he soon “would become one of the contented hogs in the pigpen of Harlem, getting ready to litter little black piggies.” It is this image that McKay presents throughout the novel: Where people are overcrowded and treated like animals, they become animals. It is the pervasive contrast between Jake and Ray that gives Home to Harlem its principal thematic development. Jake is forthright, versatile, optimistic, and persevering; he comes in contact with Ray, who is deliberate, cynical, pessimistic, and unpredictable. Jake is impressed by the intellect and interests of Ray, yet he discerns that a person made “impotent by thought” is irrelevant to the lives of Harlem’s masses. Jake is principled: He will be unemployed rather than be a strikebreaker; he will live with a woman, but he will not be a kept man; he sees that the white world is one of materialism and opportunism, but he does not want to participate in it; he sees that the lives of the black folk are difficult, but he does not succumb to the blandishments of purported prophets and saviors. Nevertheless, he feels that he can survive and perhaps even succeed in life. The dialectic permeates the novel. Only occasionally does McKay allow his own political and social views to intrude explicitly. The black-white issue that absorbed him in his journalism is never directly introduced, though it can be discerned by implication. The authorial voice is to be seen in Jake and Ray, for they represent the two sides of McKay himself: the body and the mind.

Poetry First published: Songs of Jamaica, 1912; Constab Ballads, 1912; Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems, 1920; Harlem Shadows, 1922; Selected Poems of Claude McKay, 1953 McKay has been posthumously proclaimed Jamaica’s national poet, and he has been the subject of an international conference of literary scholars. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countée Cullen, and Langston Hughes also helped in the development of modern African American poetry, but only Hughes could legitimately be proposed as a better and more important poet than McKay. Although there are some true gems of both concept and expression in McKay’s initial two volumes of poetry, it is unlikely that any except Jamai-

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cans and scholars will take any real pleasure in reading them. Even in 1912, McKay’s mentor Walter Jekyll thought it necessary to add extensive footnotes to Songs of Jamaica to explain the poems’ contractions, allusions, and pronunciation, and both a glossary and footnotes were added to Constab Ballads. There is no doubt that McKay’s use of dialect in his poems was an advance on the use of dialect by such predecessors as Dunbar, who used it largely for either comic or role-establishing purposes; McKay used dialect for social verisimilitude, to attempt to capture the Jamaican inflections and idiom, to differentiate the speech of the folk from that of the colonial classes. Upon quitting Jamaica for the United States, however, McKay discontinued his use of dialect, even when, in some of his American “protest” poems that make use of African American diction, dialect would be appropriate and even effective. Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems, McKay’s first volume of poetry in Standard English, which was published in London, and Harlem Shadows, which appeared two years later in New York, established him as a major poet in the black community and as a potentially important one in English literature. Harlem Shadows, with its brilliant evocation of life in the black ghetto of New York City, more than any other book heralded the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, from which developed the great florescence of African American culture in subsequent years. In his post-Jamaican poetry, McKay became attached almost exclusively to the sonnet form, eschewed dialect, and showed no strong inclination to experiment with rhyme, rhythm, and the other components of the sonnet. Further, he displayed the influence of his early reading of the English Romantics and in the words of Wayne Cooper, McKay’s biographer, “his forthright expression of the black man’s anger, alienation, and rebellion against white racism introduced into modern American Negro poetry an articulate militancy of theme and tone which grew increasingly important with time.” The sense of being a black man in a white man’s world pervades McKay’s poetry, as does the sense of being a visionary in the land of the sightless—if not also the sense of being an alien (an islander) in the heart of the metropolis. As John Dewey noted, “I feel it decidedly out of place to refer to him as the voice of the Negro people; he is that, but he is so much more than that.” McKay is the voice of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the discriminated against; he is one of the major poetic voices of the Harlem Renaissance; he is one of a select group of poets who have represented the colonized peoples of the world; and he is one of the voices for universal self-respect and brotherhood.

Suggested readings Cooper, Wayne F. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance, a Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

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Gayle, Addison, Jr. Claude McKay: The Black Poet at War. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1972. Giles, James R. Claude McKay. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Hathaway, Heather. Caribbean Waves: Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. McLeod, A. L., ed. Claude McKay: Centennial Studies. New Delhi, India: Sterling, 1992. Rahming, Melvin B. The Evolution of the West Indian’s Image in the Afro-American Novel. Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1986. Stoff, Michael B. “Claude McKay and the Cult of Primitivism.” In The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, edited by Arna Bontemps. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972. Tillery, Tyrone. Claude McKay: A Black Poet’s Struggle for Identity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. —Douglas Edward LaPrade/Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman/A. L. McLeod

Terry McMillan

Terry McMillan Born: Port Huron, Michigan; October 18, 1951

McMillan’s novels and short stories explore the complex relationships among urban black women of the late twentieth century, their families, and the men in their lives. Traditions: African American Principal works: Mama, 1987; Disappearing Acts, 1989; Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, 1990 (editor); Waiting to Exhale, 1992; How Stella Got Her Groove Back, 1996 Terry McMillan was reared near Detroit by working-class parents and later moved to Los Angeles, where she attended community college and read widely in the canon of African American literature. In 1979, at the age of twenty-eight, she received her bachelor of science degree from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1987, she began a three-year instructorship at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, and in 1988 received a coveted fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. After teaching in Tucson at the University of Arizona from 1990 to 1992, McMillan pursued writing as her full-time career. The environment in which McMillan’s views were formed prepared her for early marriage and a family, not the life of an intellectual and an artist. Her failure as an adult to meet the expectations of her culture and family created pressures that her work has consistently sought to address. Not surprisingly, her own struggle to adapt to cultural expectations resulted in an emphasis in her work on the tension in relationships between professional and blue-collar blacks, between women and men, and between members of the nuclear family. Mama depicts an acceptance by an intellectual daughter of her flawed mother. Disappearing Acts follows a love affair between a professional, responsible woman and an uneducated tradesman. Waiting to Exhale builds an ambitious collage of images from all three types of relationships. McMillan’s fiction addresses the archetypal dilemma of the disadvantaged—escaping the limitations imposed by one’s culture and family while trying to preserve the advantages they inevitably offer. This dilemma leads her characters into conflicts of ideology; their struggle is the struggle for truth, their quest the search for meaning. While some reviewers have attacked McMillan for her use of vulgar language, others have defended its realism and immediacy. The same is true 329

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of the explicit sexual references throughout her work, and indeed for her character portrayals themselves. Critics observe that MacMillan’s characters all seem at times to have been exaggerated to achieve a calculated effect. McMillan’s popularity, however, suggests that she understands her craft and that her audience approves her purpose.

Waiting to Exhale Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 Waiting to Exhale, McMillan’s third novel, was an instant popular success when it was first published in 1992. The book found wide acceptance, both critical and public, largely because of the honesty of its character portrayals and the timeliness of its themes. All four main characters in Waiting To Exhale are seeking the acceptance of culture and family but are also determined to escape their limiting influences. The conflicts that arise in the lives of the characters reflect the concerns of black feminist writers in general, and critics generally regard McMillan as having a finger on the pulse of 1990’s educated black women. The novel’s popularity is a reflection of the growing number of middle-class African Americans who wish to participate in black cultural life and preserve its heritage. The title of Waiting To Exhale is a metaphor for the tension in each of the novel’s four protagonists’s lives. All are waiting to find the right man, and each is figuratively holding her breath until he comes along. Each protagonist’s story delineates a different type of coping strategy for the alienation and anxiety each suffers. In the face of criticism from their families, their culture, and Terry McMillan (Marion Ettlinger) themselves, the four women

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develop a friendship that enables them to stand fast against the many temptations to “settle” for an unhealthy relationship. The novel’s setting, Phoenix, implies the possibility of glorious rebirth, but the symbolic implications are muted and ultimately unfulfilled; still, the characters achieve integration and a new sense of identity through their relationships with one another. Savannah takes a cut in pay to move to Phoenix, where her old roommate from college, Bernadine, is living the perfect life. By the time Savannah completes the move, Bernadine’s marriage is in shambles, her husband and the father of their two children having deserted her with his young blonde bookkeeper. Robin, a mutual friend, is frustrated, self-conscious, and anxious, looking for self-esteem through the eyes of the men she meets. Gloria, their hairdresser, is the single mother of a sixteen-year-old son, whose emerging sexuality creates fear in her and hostility in him. Savannah moves, Bernadine spends, Robin casts horoscopes, and Gloria eats; ultimately all their defense mechanisms crumble under one anothers’ affectionate but witheringly, relentlessly honest scrutiny.

Suggested readings Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Introduction to Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gates. New York: Meridian, 1990. Golden, Marita. “Walking in My Mother’s Footsteps to Love.” In Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on Love, Men, and Sex, edited by Marita Golden. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn. “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition.” In Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian, 1990. Hernton, Calvin C. The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Richards, Paulette. Terry McMillan: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Seller, Frances Stead. Review of Waiting To Exhale, by Terry McMillan. Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1992, 20. —Andrew B. Preslar

D’Arcy McNickle

D’Arcy McNickle Born: St. Ignatius, Montana; January 18, 1904 Died: Albuquerque, New Mexico; October 18, 1977 In novels, short stories, children’s books, and scholarly works, McNickle focuses on communication problems between Native Americans and the dominant culture.

Traditions: American Indian Principal works: The Surrounded, 1936; La Política de los Estados Unidos sobre los gobiernos tribales y las empresas comunales de los Indios, 1942 (with Joseph C. McCaskill); They Came Here First: The Epic of the American Indian, 1949, rev. 1975; Runner in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize, 1954; Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet, 1959, rev. ed. 1970 (with Harold E. Fey); Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge, 1971; Native American Tribalism: Indian Survivals and Renewals, 1973; Wind from an Enemy Sky, 1978; The Hawk Is Hungry and Other Stories, 1992 Born to a Scotch-Irish father and a French Canadian mother of Cree heritage, D’Arcy McNickle knew from an early age the problems of mixed identity that many Native Americans experience. Reared on a northwestern Montana ranch, McNickle, along with his family, was adopted into the Salish-Kootanai Indian tribe. Attending Oxford University and the University of Grenoble in France after completing his undergraduate education at the University of Montana, McNickle was as firmly grounded in Native American culture as he was in the white world. Completing his formal education when the United States was gripped by the Depression, McNickle was among the writers who joined the Federal Writer’s Project, with which he was associated from 1935 to 1936. His first novel, The Surrounded, was an outgrowth of this association. This book focuses on how an Indian tribe disintegrates as the United States government encroaches upon and ultimately grabs tribal lands and then sets out to educate the Native American children in such a way as to denigrate their culture and integrate them into the dominant society. Like McNickle, the protagonist of this novel, Archilde, has a mixed identity, being the offspring of a Spanish father and a Native American mother. In his children’s book, Runner in the Sun, McNickle deals with similar questions of identity centering on the inevitable conflicts between whites and Native Americans. The Native Americans strive in vain to preserve their culture and retain their grazing lands. Such also is the focus of McNickle’s posthumous novel, Wind from an Enemy 332

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Sky, in which tribal lands are condemned for the building of a dam and the sacred medicine bundle is given to a museum for display. McNickle also produced several works of nonfiction that grew out of his tenure with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and his directorship of the Bureau’s division of American Indian development.

The Surrounded Type of work: Novel First published: 1936 The Surrounded has strong autobiographical overtones. The novel focuses on Archilde, through whom the readers see the identity conflicts that trouble the racially mixed hero. Archilde is caught between the white and the Indian cultures, neither of which is unambiguously good or bad, making his position even more difficult. One of the ways that the novel emphasizes this cultural conflict is by describing many characters and events as opposing pairs. Catharine LaLoup Leon and Max Leon, for example, each present to Archilde some of the positive aspects of Indian and white culture, respectively. The Indian dancing on the Fourth of July, full of ancient meaning and beauty, is contrasted with the white people’s meaningless dance in a dark, bare hall. The novel expresses particular concern for the decline of Native American culture. McNickle describes in great detail the transformation of Mike and Narcisse as the older women prepare them for the dance, emphasizing the beauty of traditional culture. McNickle applies his expertise as an anthropologist to the detailed explanation of all the old dances, stressing each dance’s particular meaning. This is contrasted with the scene at the Fourth of July dance, where white people come to laugh disrespectfully at the old men as they move slowly through the only dances that they are still allowed to do. In addition, The Surrounded presents an interesting view of nature. Archilde goes into the wilderness to be alone, and nature is generally seen as an ally to the Indians, who can live in mountain caves and hunt for their food if they so choose. The scene in which Archilde sees the cloud-cross in the sky and ignores it because the bird ignores it, stresses the preeminence of nature. Archilde remembers this experience and teaches this same lesson to Mike and Narcisse: If the birds are not frightened by signs and demons, they should not be either. Nature is seen as a better source of encouragement and truth than are the priests. An interesting aspect of the novel is the presence of two especially strong female characters. Elise is reckless and determined to get what she wants. She can ride and hunt as well as any man. She takes the initiative, not only in her relationship with Archilde but also in their escape into the mountains. She, like Catharine, is not afraid to kill when Archilde is threatened. Catharine is

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held in high regard, not only among the Indians but also among the whites (which is one reason that Max married her in the first place). Even in her advanced age, she hunts for herself. Her death is described as a triumphant moment. She dies unafraid, surrounded by her Indian family and friends. The plot structure of The Surrounded demonstrates a certain circularity and reflects the work’s thematic concern for Archilde’s identity. Archilde left the reservation, trying to put some distance between himself and his people. When he returns, it is only for a short and final visit. Yet he continues to stay as he becomes increasingly entangled in events on the reservation. The apparent inaction—staying—is actually the action that helps him determine his identity as an Indian. He does not succeed in going to Portland to be a fiddler or even in running his father’s farm. Archilde succeeds in finding his identity at those times when he feels most connected to his tribal heritage: at the dance and at his mother’s death. His identity comes, not from breaking away and succeeding in isolation, but from living in his proper context, with his people and his land.

Wind from an Enemy Sky Type of work: Novel First published: 1978 In Wind from an Enemy Sky, McNickle writes of the difficult period in American history during which the United States government attempted to subdue Native Americans peacefully. McNickle, a government employee for most of his life, presents a balanced view of what occurred during this period in one small Native American enclave in the Flathead Lake-St. Ignatius area of Montana. On the surface, McNickle presents the story of a Native American extended family that includes Pock Face, who, carrying his grandfather’s rifle, steals furtively into a canyon where white developers have built a dam on tribal land. The Little Elk Indians equate the damming of their river with its murder. The dam has an immediate negative impact upon fishing and farming on their tribal lands. As Pock Face and Theobald, his cousin, approach the dam, they spy a white man walking across its surface. Pock Face fires one shot. Jim Cooke, ironically on his last day of work before going east to marry, dies instantly. The remainder of the story revolves around the government’s efforts to mete out justice to the murderer. This surface story, however, provides the justification for a compelling subtext that illustrates the difficulties involved when one well-established culture attempts to impose itself upon another. Wind from an Enemy Sky, maintaining throughout an objective view of two disparate cultures, proffers a poignant political and social statement about culture and values in multiethnic settings. Wind from an Enemy Sky is concerned largely with the inability of the Native

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American and dominant societies in the United States to communicate productively with each other. As McNickle presents it, Native American society is deeply suspicious of the dominant society that has, through the years, oppressed it. Promises made have seldom been promises kept. The suspicions that keep Indians from interacting productively with government agencies are spawned not by paranoia but rather by extensive bitter experience. The dam the government built has diverted a river on which the Indians depend. The waters that the dam captures will nourish the fields of white homesteaders, to whom the government has sold Indian lands at $1.25 an acre. The Native Americans look upon these land sales as forms of robbery. Added to this justifiable charge is the charge that white officials have kidnapped Indian children and sent them to distant government schools against their will. McNickle suggests the inevitability of tragedy in dealings between Native Americans and representatives of the dominant society. He also demonstrates how some Native Americans—Henry Jim and The Boy, for example—move into the white world or attempt to straddle the two worlds, placing them in impossible positions. For Henry Jim, it is impossible to shake the Native American heritage, which the dying man finally embraces again.

Suggested readings Bevis, William. “Native American Novels: Homing In.” In Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Oaks, Priscilla. “The First Generation of Native American Novelists.” MELUS 5 (1978): 57-65. Owens, Louis. “The ‘Map of the Mind’: D’Arcy McNickle and the American Indian Novel.” Western American Literature 19 (Winter, 1985): 275-283. _______. “The Red Road to Nowhere: D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded and ‘The Hungry Generations.’” American Indian Quarterly 13 (Summer, 1989): 239-248. Parker, Dorothy R. Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Purdy, John Lloyd. The Legacy of D’Arcy McNickle: Writer, Historian, Activist. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. _______. Word Ways: The Novels of D’Arcy McNickle. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990. Ruppert, James. D’Arcy McNickle. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1988. _______. “Textual Perspectives and the Reader in The Surrounded.” In Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, edited by Gerald Vizenor. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

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Vest, Jay Hansford C. “Feather Boy’s Promise: Sacred Geography and Environmental Ethics in D’Arcy McNickle’s Wind from an Enemy Sky.” American Indian Quarterly 17 (Winter, 1993): 45-68. —R. Baird Shuman/Kelly C. Walter

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud Born: Brooklyn, New York; April 26, 1914 Died: New York, New York; March 18, 1986 Malamud’s works present the outsider, usually a Jew, who epitomizes the individual who must make moral choices. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: The Natural, 1952; The Assistant, 1957; The Magic Barrel, 1958; A New Life, 1961; Idiots First, 1963; The Fixer, 1966; Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition, 1969; The Tenants, 1971; Rembrandt’s Hat, 1973; Dubin’s Lives, 1979; God’s Grace, 1982 Bernard Malamud’s youth was spent in a setting much like that in The Assistant. His father was the owner of a small, struggling grocery store. His mother died when he was an adolescent. As a youth he had the freedom to wander around Brooklyn becoming intimately acquainted with the neighborhood. It was not a Jewish neighborhood, but Malamud came to understand the Jewish experience through his hardworking parents, immigrants from Russia. Malamud began writing stories in high school, and his writing career reflects the discipline and determination of many of his characters. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he earned a bachelor’s degree from City College of New York. He then attended Columbia University and earned the master’s degree that enabled him to teach. He taught immigrants in evening school in Brooklyn, then in Harlem, for eight years, while writing short stories, before getting a job at Oregon State College in Cascadia, Oregon. There he wrote four novels and a collection of short stories. Malamud received the National Book Award for the short-story collection, The Magic Barrel, in 1959. He also received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and the National Book Award for The Fixer in 1967. He accepted a position at Bennington College in Vermont in 1961, where he spent the rest of his teaching career, except for two years as a visiting lecturer at Harvard. Malamud’s work has an allegorical quality like that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. His stories also reflect the Eastern European storytelling tradition. In this he is like such Yiddish writers as Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Leib Peretz. When Malamud describes, for example, a luckless character (called, in Jewish culture, a schlemiel) living in Brooklyn in the twentieth century, that person seems quite like someone living in the Jewish section of a Polish village. Malamud also captures in his works the sense of irony that pervades the folk stories of a people who recognize themselves as the chosen people and as the outcasts of society. 337

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Malamud saw this paradoxical position as being the plight of all humanity, and he found in the Jew the ideal metaphor for the struggling human being. Acceptance of Jewish identity becomes, for his characters, acceptance of the human condition. Fusing this theme with a style that utilizes irony and parable, realism and symbolism, he presents the flourishing of the human spirit in an everyday reality of pressure and pain.

The Assistant Type of work: Novel First published: 1957 In The Assistant, Malamud carefully structures his realistic second novel so that the story of the intertwined fates of Frank Alpine and the Bobers grows to symbolize self-discipline and suffering. The hero, Frank Alpine, unlike the hero of Malamud’s The Natural (1952), achieves self-integration and the subsequent identification with a group. Frank enters the life of the Bobers when he comes with Ward Minoque, who represents his worst self, to the struggling neighborhood store of Morris Bober to steal. Unlike Ward, Frank immediately recognizes Morris as a suffering human being. Indeed, Morris is the suffering Jew, an Everyman. Now old, he has achieved none of his dreams and must deprive his daughter, Helen, of her dream of attending college. To expiate his crime and to change his life, Frank returns to the store and, promising to work for nothing, persuades Morris to use him as an assistant. Unaware that Frank is the one who stole from him, Morris helps the hungry and homeless Frank with room and board and a small salary. Morris then becomes the moral guide Frank never had. Frank begins to change, but his progress is fitful, and he steals small sums from the register. His moral growth is accelerated by his falling in love with Helen, an idealistic young woman who will give Frank her love if he earns it. Bernard Malamud (Jerry Bauer) Motivated by this hope and a

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memory of the beauty of the selfless life of Saint Francis of Assisi, Frank tries to discipline himself. When Frank has nearly won the love of Helen, his hopes slip away when Morris, who suspects that Frank has been stealing, catches him with his hand in the register. Sent away from the store on the day he expects Helen to proclaim her love, Frank gives in to despair and frustration. First saving her from rape by Ward, he then forces himself on her against her will. Alienated from the Bobers, Frank’s redemption comes when he moves beyond himself. The opportunity arises when Morris is hospitalized and then dies. Frank takes over the store when Helen and her mother are too overwhelmed by their misfortunes to protest. To support them all, he works two jobs. Though he sometimes questions the dreary life to which he has submitted himself, he patiently endures, replacing Morris, whose example he has internalized. After a year, Frank even sends Helen to college. He then reflects his new attitudes by having himself circumcised, a symbolic act of his transformation.

The Fixer Type of work: Novel First published: 1966 Based on the story of a Russian Jew, Mendel Beiless, who was tried and acquitted in czarist Russia for the ritual murder of a Christian child, The Fixer artistically re-creates that history. It also represents, in its theme, persecution in general. Malamud creates in this novel a story like a parable, similar in theme and style to his other works, that recounts the protagonist’s spiritual growth and affirms personal dignity and moral integrity even in a world that seems incomprehensible. Yakov Bok, the hero, a Jew, comes to define himself, value suffering, and feel most free when most confined. Yakov, a fixer or handyman, has had bad luck. With little work in his Jewish village and a wife first disappointing him in being childless then deserting him, he feels himself a prisoner of his circumstances. He sets off for Kiev, a city known for its anti-Semitism, in hopes of changing his life. In Kiev, Yakov, finding no work in the Jewish sector, begins looking outside the ghetto, which is illegal. Coming upon a drunken man who is lying unconscious in the street, Yakov helps the drunk, although Yakov recognizes him as an anti-Semite. To reward Yakov, the man offers him a job, which Yakov accepts with misgivings because it is outside the ghetto. One day Yakov reads in the paper of the ritual murder of a Christian child. The next day he is accused of the murder and put in prison. He is held for thirty months before being brought to trial. The next three-quarters of the novel describes Yakov’s physical agonies and spiritual growth while imprisoned. This growth is presented in his

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actions, dreams, hallucinations, perceptions, and memories during the daily suffering he undergoes—from deprivation of basic necessities and the torture of poisoning and chaining to the humiliation of the daily physical searches. During this time, he learns. He discovers the strength of hate, political power, and historical events and sees that an individual is, by force, a political being. Secretly reading the Old then the New Testament, he feels connected with his people, yet fully appreciates the story of Christ. He develops compassion for the suffering of others. He acknowledges the suffering of the guard, who tells his story. Yakov forgives his wife and acknowledges his own part in their failed relationship. He accepts fatherhood, symbol of adulthood and personal identity, by declaring paternity to her illegitimate child, enabling her to return to life in her village without shame. At the same time he refuses to sign any documents that will free him by blaming other Jews. He also refuses to admit guilt. He finds, in identifying with his group and in willingly suffering for them that, despite what may happen to him, he is free.

Suggested readings Astro, Richard, and Jackson J. Benson, eds. The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1977. Field, Leslie, and Joyce Field, eds. Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Hershinow, Sheldon J. Bernard Malamud. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. Richman, Sydney. Bernard Malamud. New York: Twayne, 1966. Sio-Castiñeira, Begoña. The Short Stories of Bernard Malamud: In Search of Jewish Post-Immigrant Identity. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Solotaroff, Robert. Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Walden, Daniel, ed. The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth, and Ozick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. —Bernadette Flynn Low

Malcolm X

Malcolm X Born: Omaha, Nebraska; May 19, 1925 Died: New York, New York; February 21, 1965 Malcolm X went from being a street hustler to being a black leader and a symbol of fearless resistance against oppression. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965 (with Alex Haley); Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, 1965; By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter, 1970 Malcolm X’s (born Malcolm Little) early years were marked by unsettling events: His family, threatened by the Ku Klux Klan in Omaha, moved to Lansing, Michigan, only to have their house burned down by a white hate group. Malcolm’s father died in 1931 under mysterious circumstances, leaving his mother with the task of raising eight children. Malcolm eventually moved to Boston in 1941 and to New York in 1943, where he first experienced the street life of the African American urban poor. After becoming a burglar, he received a six-year prison term for armed robbery. In prison, he converted to the Nation of Islam and read voraciously on philosophy, theology, and history. The Nation of Islam helped him to acquire selfrespect and gave him a new worldview, one that celebrated African American history and culture and in which whites were seen as forces of evil. Two years after his release, Malcolm—who by then had changed his last name to “X” in order to shed any links to a past in which white slave masters gave African American slaves their last names— Malcolm X (Library of Congress) became minister of the New 341

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York Temple Number Seven and the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. He brought unprecedented attention to the Nation: At a time when much of the United States was still segregated, Malcolm X voiced fearlessly what others only thought and denounced white racist practices. Advocating strong moral codes and behaviors, Malcolm X became disenchanted with the Nation, suspecting the covert immorality of some leaders. After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where his warm reception by white Muslims (and his earlier contact in America with white students and journalists) led him to reject his earlier declarations that all whites were evil, and he accepted Orthodox Islam as his faith. He adopted the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Malcolm X traveled to Africa, meeting African leaders and recognizing the links between imperialist oppression of Africa and the situation of African Americans. Malcolm X was assassinated in New York after beginning to build Organization of AfroAmerican Unity, which featured cross-racial alliances and an international outlook.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X was hailed as a literary classic shortly after it appeared. Its description of Malcolm X’s discovery of an African American identity continues to inspire its readers. The two most memorable phases of Malcolm X’s life described in his autobiography, and quite possibly the two phases most formative of his identity, are his self-education and religious conversion while in prison and his last year of life, in which he set out to organize a multiracial coalition to end racism. The first of these phases followed a difficult childhood and life as a criminal. In prison, Malcolm X felt inspired by fellow inmates to improve his knowledge. He started on a rigorous program of reading books on history and philosophy. He also worked on his penmanship and vocabulary by copying an entire dictionary. His readings revealed to him that school had taught him nothing about African and African American history. School had also been silent on the crimes that Europeans and European Americans had committed against people of color. In prison, members of the Nation of Islam urged Malcolm X to reject the negative self-image he had unconsciously adopted and to replace it with black pride. Malcolm X taught the Nation’s doctrine of black self-reliance after his release from prison, and he married Betty Shabazz, eventually becoming the father of six children. Disappointed by the divergence between the practices of some of the leaders of the Nation of Islam and the rules of self-discipline and honor that the Nation taught, he left the Nation and, after traveling to

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Mecca, became an orthodox Muslim. Islam and his experiences in the Middle East and Africa also changed his outlook on racial relations. Before, he had seen an unbridgeable gulf between African Americans and European Americans. His positive experiences with white Muslims, white students, and white reporters caused him to reevaluate that position. Deciding that cooperation between whites and blacks was possible, he remained devoted to the liberation of people of African descent to the end of his life. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is important as an account of the life of a charismatic American intellectual. The book is also an important literary work in the African American tradition of the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois and in the American tradition of Benjamin Franklin. Like Douglass and Franklin, Malcolm X can be described as a self-made man.

Suggested readings Breitman, George. The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984. Carson, Clayborne. Malcolm X: The FBI File. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991. Clarke, John Henrik, ed. Malcolm X: The Man and His Times. New York: Collier Books, 1969. Cone, James H. Martin and Malcolm and America. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991. Dudley, David L. Intergenerational Conflict in African American Men’s Autobiography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Myers, Walter Dean. Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary. New York: Scholastic, 1993. Stull, Bradford T. Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipation. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. —Martin Japtok

Ved Mehta

Ved Mehta Born: Lahore, British India (now Pakistan); March 21, 1934

Mehta vividly describes the cultures in which he has lived and the experience of exile and blindness. Traditions: South Asian Principal works: Face to Face, 1957; Fly and the Fly Bottle, 1962; The New Theologian, 1966; Daddyji, 1972; Mahatma Ghandi and His Apostles, 1977; Mamaji, 1979; Vedi, 1982; The Ledge Between the Streams, 1984; Sound-Shadows of the New World, 1985; The Stolen Light, 1989; Up at Oxford, 1993; Remembering Mr. Shawn’s “New Yorker”: The Invisible Art of Editing, 1998 Ved Mehta has been telling the story of his own life for most of his career. This story includes the cultures in which he has lived. Mehta was born into a well-educated Hindu family in Lahore in 1934. At the age of three he lost his eyesight as a result of meningitis. Mehta’s education took him away from his close-knit family and sent him to places that must have seemed like different worlds: Arkansas in the era of segregation, a college campus in suburban Southern California, and Oxford University. As a staff writer for The New Yorker and in his many books, Mehta makes those different worlds, including the world of blindness, come alive to the reader. Mehta published his first book, Face to Face, when he was twenty-two. It is a highly readable account of his childhood, of his family’s sufferings during the partition of India (they had to flee their native city when it became part of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan), and of his experiences as a student in America. The central subject, however, is Mehta’s blindness and the ways in which he learns to be independent and successful despite his disability. For many years after the appearance of Face to Face, Mehta allowed no hint of his disability to appear in his work, which he filled with visual descriptions. He published a novel and became a master of nonfiction. He wrote books introducing Indian culture and politics to Western readers; Mehta has also written a series of books on the excitement of intellectual life. In books on history and philosophy, theology, and linguistics, Mehta makes clashes of ideas vivid by describing intellectuals not only as thinkers but as people. When Mehta returned to autobiography, beginning with Daddyji, he stopped suppressing the fact of his blindness. Instead, he tried to make the things that had formed his identity—his family, his disability, his experiences at schools for the blind, and the colleges and universities where he studied—as vivid as his other subjects. Beginning with biographies of his mother and 344

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father and working ahead through five more books to his graduation from Oxford, Mehta presents the story of his life, always as an exile seeking his place in the world, with eloquence and frankness.

Continents of Exile Type of work: Biography and autobiography First published: Daddyji, 1972; Mamaji, 1979; Vedi, 1982; The Ledge Between the Streams, 1984; Sound-Shadows of the New World, 1985; The Stolen Light, 1989; Up at Oxford, 1993 In the series Continents of Exile, Mehta has set himself the task of remembering and interpreting his life. In the seven volumes published before 1994, he examined his own development up to his graduation from the University of Oxford. Mehta’s quest for self-understanding is also an introduction to the several different cultures through which Mehta has passed. From childhood Mehta has been an outsider seeking to understand worlds of which he is not fully a part. The loss of his eyesight at age three made him an exile in the world of the sighted, and his almost heroic struggle to secure an education sent him into exile—to Bombay from his native Punjab, to the United States, and to England. In describing his experiences, Mehta also gives the reader the flavor of different worlds, including India before and after its partition into India and Pakistan in 1947, Arkansas during segregation, suburban California in the tranquil 1950’s, Oxford before the upheavals of the 1960’s, and the world of blindness. Continents of Exile is in some ways a sequel to Mehta’s first book, Face to Face (1957). That book, written while Mehta was still an undergraduate, tells the story of his life up to almost the point reached in the seven later volumes. It lacks, however, the breadth, frankness, and detachment of the later volumes. In Continents of Exile, Mehta explores the power of memory. He has discovered that, with the aid of some research, memory yields much more than one might think. He also can analyze his experience with more detachment than his younger self could. The series begins with biographies of Mehta’s father and mother, Daddyji and Mamaji. Mehta’s father’s family embraced Western influences, the English language, and an “unsuperstitious” form of Hinduism. Mehta’s mother’s family was more resistant to Western influences, and Mehta’s mother often sought cures through charms and native treatments. In telling the stories of his very different parents and their nevertheless successful marriage, Mehta recalls the world of a close-knit family. He left the family to seek an education. Vedi and The Ledge Between the Streams describe Mehta’s childhood, including his first experience of exile at a boarding school for the blind in Bombay and his family’s flight from their home during the chaos following partition. The next three volumes chronicle Mehta’s education in America and

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England. In Sound-Shadows of the New World (1985) Mehta recounts his years at the Arkansas School for the Blind. The Stolen Light takes Mehta to Pomona College in California, where he is a great success and an outsider. Up at Oxford describes Mehta’s years at Balliol College and sketches portraits of some promising minds he met there.

Suggested readings Allen, Brooke. Review of Remembering Mr. Shawn’s “New Yorker”: The Invisible Art of Editing, by Ved Mehta. New Criterion 17 (September, 1998): 56. Slatin, John M. “Blindness and Self-Perception: The Autobiographies of Ved Mehta.” Mosaic 19, no. 4 (Fall, 1986): 173-193. Sontag, Frederick. “The Self-Centered Author.” New Quest 79 ( July-August, 1989): 229-233. —Brian Abel Ragen

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller Born: New York, New York; October 17, 1915

Miller’s plays are widely regarded to be among the best plays ever written by an American. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: All My Sons, pr., pb. 1947; Death of a Salesman, pr., pb. 1949; The Crucible, pr., pb. 1953; A View from the Bridge, pr. 1956, pb. 1957; The Misfits, 1961; After the Fall, pr., pb. 1964; The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, 1978; Timebends: A Life, 1987; Broken Glass, pr., pb. 1994 Arthur Miller first achieved success as a dramatist with All My Sons. Death of a Salesman, widely regarded as Miller’s most important play, contains many of the themes of identity that give distinction to Miller’s plays: the tension between father and son, the dangerous material lure of the American Dream, the influence of memory on the formation of personality, and the common man in a tragic situation. Partly in response to the anticommunist hysteria that was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities that swept the nation in the early 1950’s, Miller wrote The Crucible. In 1955, Miller was denied a passport by the State Department, and in June, 1956, he was accused of left-wing activities and called before the committee. Unlike the girls in The Crucible, Miller refused to name others, and he was convicted of contempt of Congress in 1956, only to be fully exonerated by the United States Court of Appeals in 1958. During the turbulent summer Arthur Miller (Inge Morath/Magnum) of 1956 Miller also divorced 347

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his college sweetheart Mary Slattery and quickly married the famous actress Marilyn Monroe. Reflections of those two events recur throughout Miller’s works and give shape to the identity of many of his major characters. After completing the screenplay for The Misfits, which starred Monroe, Miller divorced the actress and married Inge Morath, events which may be reflected in After the Fall. Miller’s later years saw the publication of his influential The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, numerous revivals of his major plays, and his illuminating autobiography Timebends: A Life.

Death of a Salesman Type of work: Drama First produced: 1949; first published, 1949 Death of a Salesman, widely regarded as Miller’s best and most important play, chronicles the downfall and suicide of Willy Loman, a ceaselessly struggling New England salesman driven by dreams of success far greater than he can achieve. Almost a classical tragedy in its form, Death of a Salesman has provoked much controversy due to the unheroic nature of its protagonist. Although the play, like its Greek forebears, conveys a sense of the inevitability of fate, Willy himself possesses no greatness in either achievement or status. Willy’s sheer commonness, rather, gives the play its power. In Death of a Salesman, Miller shows that tragedy comes not only to the great but also to the small. On its most fundamental level, Death of a Salesman depicts the disintegration of Willy’s personality as he desperately searches for the moment in his memory when his world began to unravel. The play’s action is driven primarily by Willy’s volcanic relationship with grown son Biff, who is every inch the failure that his father is. Willy’s grandiose dreams of happiness and material success conflict with the reality of his failures as a salesman, as a husband to his wife Linda, and as a father to his two boys, Biff and Happy. The alternation between present action and presentations of Willy’s delusional “memories” forms the play’s thematic center. Willy’s memory is populated by figures who idealize success, most notably his brother Ben, who became rich, Dave Singleman, a fabulously successful and well-liked salesman, and the woman in Boston with whom Willy has had an affair. Countering those empty fantasies are the realities of Howard, Willy’s unsympathetic boss; Charley, Willy’s best friend and neighbor (who gives Willy the money he needs to pay his bills); Charley’s successful son Bernard; and of course Biff, who refuses to accept Willy’s delusions. “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!” Biff says at one point. Willy cannot accept the piercing truth of Biff’s description: “You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Rather, Willy commits suicide by crashing his car. The play’s final tragic irony comes out

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in the play’s last scene: Although Willy strove all his life to be well-liked and remembered, his funeral is attended only by his close family and friends. Neither he nor they are finally free, but only alone.

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Interpretations: Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” New York: Chelsea House, 1988. _______. Major Literary Characters: Willy Loman. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. Ferres, John H. Arthur Miller: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. Murphy, Brenda. Miller: “Death of a Salesman.” Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Nelson, Benjamin. Arthur Miller: Portrait of a Playwright. New York: David McKay, 1970. Schlueter, June, and James K. Flanagan. Arthur Miller. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1987. Siebold, Thomas, ed. Readings on Arthur Miller. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1997. —Gregory W. Lanier

Anchee Min

Anchee Min Born: Shanghai, China; 1957

Min’s powerful story of the Cultural Revolution is about rebellion against political and sexual repression. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: Red Azalea, 1994; Katherine, 1995; Becoming Madame Mao, 2000 Born in Shanghai, Anchee Min experienced political turmoil from an early age. During her childhood, Min’s family was forced to move into a series of shabby apartments while her parents were demoted from their teaching positions to become factory workers. Min joined the Red Guards in elementary school and underwent a wrenching introduction to political survival when she was forced to denounce her favorite teacher as a Western spy. Min’s major experience with the clash between personal and political needs came at seventeen when she was assigned to an enormous collective farm. Forced to become a peasant in order to become a “true” revolutionary, Min witnessed the destruction of a friend whose relationship with a man led to her madness and his death. Min therefore knew the danger she faced when she fell in love with the leader of her workforce, the charismatic Yan. The two eventually began a sexual relationship that violated the strictures against premarital sex and committed the “counterrevolutionary crime” of lesbianism. Fighting to maintain her relationship with Yan and to survive the brutal life on the farm, Min received an unexpected respite when she was chosen to audition for the lead in a propaganda film, by Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong, the Communist dictator of China. Min’s return to Shanghai thrust her into an even more ruthless environment than the collective farm—the Shanghai film industry. Min was rescued finally through her relationship with the enigmatic “Supervisor,” the film’s producer, who became Min’s lover and protector. Min’s deliverance, however, was short-lived. Qing’s fall from power in 1976 brought about the political destruction of those associated with her. The Supervisor was able to save Min from return to the collective farm, but he was unable to keep her from being demoted to a menial position within the film studio. Faced with an uncertain future and continued repression, Min accepted an offer from the actress Joan Chen, a fellow film student in Shanghai, to emigrate to the United States, arriving in 1984. While learning English, she 350

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worked at a variety of jobs and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. The great strength of Min’s autobiography, Red Azalea, is its combination of frank narrative and lyrical description. Linking the personal and the political, Min uses sexuality as a metaphor for the individual’s hunger for connection; sexual freedom thus indicates political freedom, and sexual expression becomes a revolutionary act.

Red Azalea Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1994 In strikingly effective prose, Min reveals her determination to retain her individuality against the force of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and its determination to submerge her into the role chosen by China’s Communist Party. Red Azalea is a coming-of-age story. Min writes of her struggles with issues of identity and sexuality within the repressive environment of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). With this focus she differs from other Chinese men and women writing about their lives in the same period in two ways: in the intensely personal journey she relates and in the simple but powerful prose she writes. Min is proud to be identified with the nation as a young Red Guard. Still, in her home life she is a Chinese daughter, until her name is blacked out in her family’s official residence papers as she leaves for Red Fire Farm. At the farm, she and her comrades work in rows, sleep in crowded, sex-segregated dorms, and study and recite Mao’s teachings. This new life is difficult, but in her commander, Yan Sheng Yan, Min finds a role model of heroic response to the Party and its decrees. At the same time Min is newly conscious of sexual yearnings, which she is supposed to repress until the Party allows them. Min and Yan listen to each other’s stories and experience the intimacy of a close friendship. Their joy becomes dangerous when the two women move to sexual intimacy. This great love falters when Min is selected to go to Shanghai and compete for the starring role in Madame Mao’s film/opera Red Azalea. In Shanghai, Min struggles between her need for Yan and her ambition to be a star. Despite her efforts, she loses the competition and is shunted to the lowly job of set-clerk. Finally, when Yan takes a male lover, Min feels as if she does not exist anymore. Min attracts the attention of the powerful Supervisor. He is a mysterious man, womanish in his demeanor and dress, a Party loyalist but attracted to Min’s individuality. She is excited by his attention, not because of any sexual attraction but because he is the key to fulfilling her heretofore thwarted ambitions to be a star. They become lovers, risking their lives by doing so.

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He arranges for a screen test, ousts Min’s competitor, and gives Min a new chance for the starring role. She cannot say the words as he wants, and in a powerful scene he convinces Min not to play the role of Red Azalea, the ultimate Chinese heroine, but to be Red Azalea. At this point, however, China changes: Mao dies, and Madam Mao and her cohorts, including the Supervisor, fall out of favor. Min is once again told to return to Red Fire Farm, but in a final act of generous love, the Supervisor arranges for her to be reassigned to her post as set-clerk—probably for the rest of her life. Thus Min’s story ends. She seems a Party-controlled menial laborer, luckily escaping punishment for her antirevolutionary actions. In the epilogue, Min states that after six years, in 1984, she left China for America. In Red Azalea she tells her story, her personal story of love affairs, of romance, the story that in the years of the Cultural Revolution was not to be told, not to be lived. She is Red Azalea, a Chinese heroine, because she narrates in her own voice the intimately human story she lived in China’s recent history. The true revolutionary, one concludes, was Min.

Suggested readings Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1992. Huntley, Kristine. Review of Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min. Booklist 96 (March 15, 2000): 1293. Liang, Heng, and Judith Shapiro. After the Nightmare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. _______. Son of the Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. The New York Times Book Review. Review of Red Azalea, by Anchee Min. 99 (February 27, 1994): 11. The New Yorker. Review of Red Azalea, by Anchee Min. 52 (February 21, 1994): 119. Viviano, Frank. Dispatches from the Pacific Century. Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1992. —Margaret W. Batschelet/Francine Dempsey

Nicholasa Mohr

Nicholasa Mohr Born: New York, New York; November 1, 1935

Mohr writes of Puerto Ricans in New York, and her work features feminist characters. Traditions: Puerto Rican Principal works: Nilda, 1973; El Bronx Remembered: A Novella and Stories, 1975; In Nueva York, 1977; A Matter of Pride and Other Stories, 1997 The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, Nicholasa Mohr documents life in New York City’s barrios. Mohr examines the Puerto Rican experience from the perspective of girls and young women. Her female characters face multiple social problems associated with the restrictions imposed upon women by Latino culture. The struggle for sexual equality makes Mohr’s literature central to Latina feminism. Mohr’s characters are an integral part of her realistic portrayal of life in a barrio. The parallels between her characters and her experience are evident. Nilda Ramírez, for example, is a nine-year-old Puerto Rican girl who comes of age during World War II. She also becomes an orphan and is separated from her immediate family. There are close parallels between these events and those of Mohr’s life. In other stories as well girls must face, alone, social adversity, racism, and chauvinistic attitudes. Gays also frequently appear in her work. Gays and girls or young women (especially those who have little or no family) have often been subjected to mistreatment in the male-dominated Puerto Rican culture. Mohr, a graphic artist and painter, studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1955 to 1959. Her advocacy to the social underclass is visible in her visual art, which includes elements of graffiti. Her use of graffiti in her art attracted the attention of a publisher who had acquired several of her paintings. Believing that Mohr had a story to tell, the publisher convinced her to write a short autobiographical piece on growing up Puerto Rican in New York. Many changes later, that piece became Nilda, her first novel, which has earned several prizes. Mohr has also drawn pictures for some of her literary work. New York City is as important to Mohr’s writing as her Puerto Rican characters. The city, with its many barrios, provides a lively background to her stories. Her short-story collections El Bronx Remembered and In Nueva York stress the characters’ relationship to New York. Mohr’s work can be described as cross-cultural, being a careful and artistic portrait of Puerto Rican culture in New York City. 353

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El Bronx Remembered Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1975 Mohr’s El Bronx Remembered is a collection of short stories depicting life in a Puerto Rican barrio in New York City during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Well known for her treatment of child, adolescent, and young adult characters, Mohr’s depiction of Puerto Rican urban life concentrates on subjects of particular importance to those age groups. Mohr’s narratives do not offer a denunciation of the troubled lives of these immigrants and children of immigrants. Instead, her stories bring forward voices that were often, in literature, considered unimportant. Female characters of several age groups and social backgrounds stand out for analysis. Mohr writes from autobiographical memories; she grew up in a barrio much like the one in her stories. In her hands, the barrio is a strong presence that affects the lives of her characters in myriad ways. City life and traditional Puerto Rican family values are set against each other, producing the so-called Nuyorican culture, or Puerto-Rican-in-New-York culture. The clashes within that hybrid culture are the thematic center of Mohr’s short stories. The introduction to the collection sets a strong historical context for the stories. The 1940’s saw an increase in Puerto Rican migration to New York. The arrival of thousands of immigrants changed the ethnic constitution of the city, especially of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the South Bronx. El Bronx, as it is called by the Puerto Ricans, became home to new generations of Puerto Rican immigrants. The center of Nuyorican culture, El Bronx challenges the Nuyorican characters in their struggle to survive in a world of rapid economic and technological changes. The short stories in El Bronx Remembered speak openly about the struggles of the first immigrants with linguistic and other cultural barriers and with racist attitudes within institutions. Mohr’s stories, however, attempt to go beyond social criticism. Puerto Rican characters challenge such obstacles. Some succeed in their attempts. Others are overwhelmed by city life, facing the barrio’s multiple problems, including drug abuse and gang-related troubles. The message, however, is not pessimistic. Although some characters succumb to tragedy because they are ill prepared to face adversity, others around them survive by learning from the plight of the weak. Mohr’s contribution to ethnic American literature is significant. She has made an important contribution to Latino literature by describing Puerto Rican life in New York City. Her writing has a twofold significance. One, it links the Puerto Rican experience to that of other groups, emphasizing women’s issues and those of other marginal characters, such as gays, within the Puerto Rican community. Two, Mohr’s work provides a link between the literature written in English about Puerto Rican life in the United States and the literature in Spanish on Puerto Rican issues.

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Suggested reading Barbato, Joseph. “Latino Writers in the American Market.” Publishers Weekly 238, no. 6 (February 1, 1991): 17-21. Marcus, Leonard S. “Talking with Authors.” Publishers Weekly 247 (February 14, 2000): 98. Mohr, Eugene V. The Nuyorican Experience: Literature of the Puerto Rican Minority. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. Mohr, Nicholasa. “An Interview with Author Nicholasa Mohr.” Interview by Nyra Zarnowski. The Reading Teacher 45, no. 2 (October, 1991): 106. Reed, Ishmael. Hispanic American Literature. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Zarnowski, Nyra. “An Interview with Author Nicholasa Mohr.” The Reading Teacher 45, no. 2 (October, 1991): 106. —Rafael Ocasio

N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday Born: Lawton, Oklahoma; February 27, 1934

Momaday’s works are poetically brilliant accounts of the landscape, the sacredness of language, and self-knowledge. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: House Made of Dawn, 1968; The Way to Rainy Mountain, 1969; The Names, 1976; The Ancient Child, 1989; The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages, 1997 Among the most widely read and studied Native American authors, N. Scott Momaday manifests, in his writings, a keen awareness of the importance of self-definition in literature and life. From 1936 onward, his family moved from place to place in the Southwest, eventually settling in Albuquerque, where Momaday attended high school. He entered the University of New Mexico in 1954 and later studied poetry at Stanford University. In 1963, he received his doctorate in English and since then has held teaching jobs at various Southwestern universities. In a semiautobiographical work, The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday writes that identity is “the history of an idea, man’s idea of himself, and it has old and essential being in language.” Momaday defines his characters in terms of their use or abuse of language; usually his characters find themselves relearning how to speak while they learn about themselves. Even the title of one of Momaday’s essays, “The Man Made of Words,” indicates his contention that identity is shaped by language. “Only when he is embodied in an idea,” Momaday writes, “and the idea is realized in language, can man take possession of himself.” The forces that shape language—culture and landscape—are also crucial in Momaday’s works. To Russell Martin, Western writing is concerned with the harsh realities of the frontier that “could carve lives that were as lean and straight as whittled sticks.” This harsh landscape is present in Momaday’s work also, but he has a heartfelt attachment to it. Having a spiritual investment in a place, in Momaday’s writing, helps a person gain self-knowledge. To an extent, issues of identity were important to Momaday as well. Son of a Kiowa father and a Cherokee mother, Momaday belonged fully to neither culture. Furthermore, much of his early childhood was spent on a Navajo reservation, where his father worked, and he grew up consciously alienated from the surrounding culture. To combat rootlessness, the imagination and its expression in language is 356

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essential. “What sustains” the artist, he writes in The Ancient Child “is the satisfaction . . . of having created a few incomparable things—landscapes, waters, birds, and beasts.” Writing about the efforts of various people to maintain traditional culture in the face of the modern world, Momaday occupies a central place in the American literary landscape.

The Ancient Child Type of work: Novel First published: 1989 A complex and richly evocative work, Momaday’s The Ancient Child is the story of two Native Americans—a middle-aged painter and a young woman— who come to a fuller understanding of themselves. Native American folklore and mythology are woven into their story, lending cultural and psychological depth to the two’s quests for, essentially, rebirth. Locke Setman, called “Set” throughout the novel, is in many ways a representative Momaday protagonist because he is cut off from his past and therefore lives an unexamined life. Brought up in an orphanage by an embittered academic, Set’s connection to the Kiowa culture of his ancestors is tenuous. Because Set does not know his past “it was in Set’s nature to wonder, until the wonder became pain, who he was.” His quest to achieve a more profound sense of self begins when he receives a telegram begging him to attend the funeral of one Kope’ mah. Mystified by a past he has never known, Set goes to the funeral and meets Grey, who is training to become a medicine woman because she “never had . . . to quest after visions.” Like Set, Grey has not achieved her true identity, largely because she rejects the modern world. After being raped by a white farmer, she goes to live in an abandoned sod house in a ghost town. She literally dwells in the past. She speaks Kiowan fluently, so she is befriended by Kope’ mah, and becomes the link between Set’s past and his future. When the two meet, Grey gives Set a medicine bag containing “the spirit of the bear.” The bear, Set’s unacknowledged totem animal, is as much a curse as a blessing, however, since the life that Set has lived must be stripped away before his true identity can be recognized. Set suffers a mental breakdown and his nightmares are dominated by “a dark, impending shape” that draws him into itself, into “the hot contamination of the beast.” Eventually, when he is completely stripped of illusions, Set is drawn back to Kiowan tribal lands, and back to Grey. Set is healed and the two forge a relationship, one tied to an awareness of themselves and their culture. Grey teaches Set to speak the language of her people, and by the novel’s end, Set is profoundly aware of his place in their culture: “he knew . . . its definition in his mind’s eye, its awful silence in the current of his blood.” He belongs.

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House Made of Dawn Type of work: Novel First published: 1968 House Made of Dawn, Momaday’s first novel, is the story of an outcast who learns that his being is bound up in his culture. The novel, which relates the experiences of a mixed-race World War II veteran, was a signal achievement, winning the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Momaday in 1969 and paving a way for other Native American novelists. It begins with Abel’s return to his ancestral village. Although he is so drunk that he does not recognize his grandfather, Abel’s troubles run much deeper. He feels cut off from the Tanoan tribe yet unwilling to live in white America. Even more disturbing to Abel is his inability to “say the things he wanted” to anyone. His inability to express himself hampers his achieving a true identity. Wrapped up in his own problems, Abel is jealous and violent toward those who do participate in Tanoan culture. While at Walatowa, Abel loses a competition to an albino Indian and murders him. After his release from prison, Abel tries to build a new life in California, where he comes in contact with a small community of Indians, who are also alienated from their cultures. The leader of this exile community is John Tosamah, a self-proclaimed priest of the sun, who sermonizes on the failure of white society to recognize the sacredness of the American landscape and of language. Tosamah victimizes Abel, however. Eventually, Abel is cast out of this group and is savagely beaten by a sadistic police officer, Martinez. After the beating, Abel is physically what he was once only psychologically: an invalid. He returns to Walatowa, where his grandfather is dying. Aware that he must embrace his Tanoan heritage, if only to perform the burial rites for his grandfather, Abel begins to heal psychologically. At the novel’s end, Abel participates in another ceremony, this time a race between the young men of the tribe, which his grandfather had won years before. Abel finds “a sort of peace of mind” through participation, but is certainly not healed by it. Unable to keep pace with the others, Abel keeps stumbling and falls behind. Abel’s position in the tribe likewise remains unsettled. On the threshold between the world of his grandfather and that of modern America, on the threshold between spiritual values and lack of faith, Abel can do little but keep running, which becomes a gesture of hope and healing.

Suggested readings Coltelli, Laura. Winged Words. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Isernhagen, Hartwig. Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Martin, Russell, and Marc Barasch, eds. Writers of the Purple Sage. New York: Viking, 1984.

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Momaday, N. Scott. “The Man Made of Words.” In The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, edited by Geary Hobson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980. Ramsey, Jerold. Reading the Fire. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Trimble, Martha Scott. “N. Scott Momaday.” Fifty Western Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Fred Erisman and Richard W. Etulain. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. Velie, Alan R. Four American Indian Literary Masters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. —Michael R. Meyers

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Born: Lorain, Ohio; February 18, 1931

Morrison is the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Bluest Eye, 1970; Sula, 1973; Song of Solomon, 1977; Tar Baby, 1981; Beloved, 1987; Jazz, 1992; Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992; Paradise, 1997 Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford; her family was blue-collar Midwestern. Her parents had migrated from the South in search of a better life. From her parents and grandparents, Morrison acquired a background in African American folklore; magic and the supernatural appear with frequency in her work. At Howard University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree, she changed her name to Toni. After receiving a master’s degree in English from Cornell University, she taught at Texas Southern University and then at Howard, where she met Jamaican architect Harold Morrison. Their marriage ended after seven years. A single mother, Toni Morrison supported herself and two sons as a senior editor at Random House, where she encouraged the publication of African American literature. She has continued to teach at various universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Originally, Morrison did not intend to be a writer. She has said she began to write because she could not find herself, a black woman, represented in American fiction. In a conversation with novelist Gloria Naylor, published in Southern Review, Morrison speaks of reclaiming herself as a woman and validating her life through the writing of her first book, The Bluest Eye, in which a young black girl prays for the blue eyes that will bring her acceptance. Morrison celebrates the culture of strong black women that she remembers from her childhood, especially in Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. She believes that being able to recognize the contribution and legacy of one’s ancestors is essential to self-knowledge. Her characters are forced to confront their personal and social histories and are often drawn back to their African heritage. Some black male critics have challenged Morrison on the grounds that her male characters are too negative, but the literary world has honored her. In 1988, Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1993, Morrison became the second American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. 360

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Beloved Type of work: Novel First published: 1987 Beloved’s dedication, “Sixty Million and more,” commemorates the number of slaves who died in the middle passage—from Africa to the New World. Morrison’s protagonist, Sethe, is modeled upon the historical figure of a fugitive Kentucky slave, who in 1851 murdered her baby rather than return it to slavery. A pregnant Sethe flees on foot to Cincinnati, Ohio, sending her children ahead by way of the Underground Railroad. Her overwhelming concern is to join her baby daughter, who needs her milk. On the bank of the Ohio River she goes into labor, her delivery aided by a white girl who is herself fleeing mistreatment. The new baby is named Denver. Although Sethe reaches her destination, slave-catchers soon follow to return her to Kentucky. Frantic, she tries to kill her children rather than submit them to slavery, but she succeeds only with the older baby. “Beloved” is carved on the child’s tombstone. Sethe accepts her identity of black woman, escaped slave, wife, mother. Her antagonist is life, which has taken so much from her. She and Paul D, the man who becomes her lover, are the last survivors of Sweet Home, the Kentucky farm that was neither sweet nor home to them. Their charge is to endure memory and accept the unforgivable past. A vengeful spirit, that of the dead baby, invades Sethe’s house. After Paul D drives it away, a strange young woman appears in the yard, and they take her in. Her name is Beloved. She is the ghost of Sethe’s dead child. She is also, less clearly, a ghost from the slave ships and an African river spirit. She alters relationships in the household, exerting control over the two adults and Denver. Denver hovers over Beloved; Beloved dotes on Sethe. Once Sethe recognizes Beloved as her daughter, she struggles to make amends while Beloved grows plump and cruel. Denver develops a new identity. At eighteen, she is selfToni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf) centered, jealous, and lonely.

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Beloved becomes her dear companion. Gradually, Denver grows aware that Beloved’s presence is destroying Sethe, who loses her job along with her meager income and begins to waste away. Denver, who has rarely ventured past her own yard because of the neighbors’ hostility, realizes that only she can save her mother. Terrified, she walks down the road to seek work from strangers and, by accepting this responsibility, becomes a woman. Morrison expected this painful, fiercely beautiful novel to be controversial. Instead, it was widely praised, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.

Song of Solomon Type of work: Novel First published: 1977 Song of Solomon, Morrison’s third novel, received the 1978 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In her first work to feature a male protagonist, she established the rich narrative voice for which she has become famous. Macon “Milkman” Dead, grandson of a slave, evolves from a selfcentered youth to a man of compassion and understanding. He completes this transition as he searches for his family origins, thus exemplifying Morrison’s belief in the importance of ancestors. Originally, Milkman desires to know as little as possible about his family. Torn by the ongoing conflict between his parents, he sets out to find his inheritance, which he believes to be gold in the possession of his father’s sister, Pilate. Instead, Milkman’s quest leads him out of the Midwest to discover his true heritage, his ancestors. He gains pride in his family when he encounters old men who remember his father and grandfather. Before long he is more interested in locating his people than in the gold. At the town of Shalimar, Virginia, after the symbolic initiation of a night hunt, Milkman recognizes his own selfishness. He learns that a child’s game, the town itself, and many of the people bear some version of his Great-grandfather Solomon’s name. The figure of Solomon is based upon a legend of the Flying African, who escaped slavery by leaping into the air and flying home to Africa. Milkman realizes that his great-grandfather has become a folk hero. Heritage is symbolized by the importance of names. The powerful and eccentric Pilate wears her name, laboriously copied from the Bible by her father, in her mother’s snuffbox, which has been made into an earring. She always carries her parents with her. Pilate, an imposing woman who has no navel, struggled with her identity in her teens, when she determined to live by her own rules. One of Morrison’s strong, independent women, she cuts her hair short like a man’s and becomes a bootlegger for practical reasons. She is also a mythic figure, birthing herself after the death of her mother. Pilate communicates comfortably with her father’s ghost, a friendly presence that appears and tells her what she needs to know. She carries his bones

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around with her in a tarp. He is her guide to maturity; in turn, she becomes Milkman’s. Through her, Milkman learns what she already accepts: “When you know your name, you should hang on to it.”

Suggested readings Bakerman, Jane S. “Failures of Love: Female Initiation in the Novels of Toni Morrison.” American Literature 52, no. 4 ( January, 1981): 541-563. Christian, Barbara T. “Layered Rhythms: Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.” Modern Fiction Studies 39, nos. 3, 4 (Fall/Winter, 1993): 483-500. Krumholz, Linda. “Dead Teachers: Rituals of Manhood and Rituals of Reading in Song of Solomon.” Modern Fiction Studies 39, nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter, 1993): 551-574. Kubitschek, Missy Dean. Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Morrison, Toni. “An Interview with Toni Morrison.” Interview by Nellie McKay. Contemporary Literature 24, no. 4 (Winter, 1983): 413-429. Naylor, Gloria, and Toni Morrison. “A Conversation.” Southern Review 21, no. 3 ( July, 1985): 567-593. Rand, Naomi R. Silko, Morrison, and Roth: Studies in Survival. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. “Daughters Signifyin(g) History: The Example of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” American Literature 64, no. 3 (September, 1992): 567597. Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson-Weems. Toni Morrison. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Schmudde, Carol E. “Knowing When to Stop: A Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” College Language Association Journal 37, no. 2 (December, 1993): 121-135. —Joanne McCarthy

Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee Born: Calcutta, India; July 27, 1940

Mukherjee is perhaps the foremost fiction writer describing the experience of Third World immigrants to North America. Traditions: South Asian Principal works: The Tiger’s Daughter, 1972; Wife, 1975; Darkness, 1985; The Middleman and Other Stories, 1988; Jasmine, 1989; The Holder of the World, 1993; Leave It to Me, 1997 Bharati Mukherjee was born to an upper-caste Bengali family and received an English education. The most important event of her life occurred in her early twenties, when she received a scholarship to attend the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. Her fiction reflects the experimental techniques fostered at such influential creative writing schools. At the University of Iowa, Mukherjee met Clark Blaise, a Canadian citizen and fellow student. When they moved to Canada she became painfully aware of her status as a nonwhite immigrant in a nation less tolerant of newcomers than the United States. The repeated humiliations she endured made her hypersensitive to the plight of immigrants from the Third World. She realized that immigrants may lose their old identities but not be able to find new identities as often unwelcome strangers. Mukherjee, relying on her experience growing up, sought her salvation in education. She obtained a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature and moved up the career ladder at various colleges and universities in the East and Midwest until she became a professor at Berkeley in 1989. Her first novel, The Tiger’s Daughter, was published in 1971. In common with all her fiction, it deals with the feelings of exile and identity confusion that are experienced by immigrants. Being female as well as an immigrant, Mukherjee noted that opportunities for women were so different in America that she was exhilarated and bewildered. Many of her best stories, dealing with women experiencing gender crises, have a strong autobiographical element. Darkness, her first collection of stories, was well reviewed, but not until the publication of The Middleman and Other Stories did she become internationally prominent. She is dealing with perhaps the most important contemporary phenomenon, the population explosion and flood of immigrants from havenot nations. Mukherjee makes these newcomers understandable to themselves and to native citizens, while shedding light on the identity problems of all the anonymous, inarticulate immigrants of America’s past. 364

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Her protagonists are not the “huddled masses” of yesteryear; they are talented, multilingual, enterprising, often affluent men and women who are transforming American culture. Mukherjee’s compassion for these newcomers has made her one of the most important writers of her time.

“The Management of Grief” Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1988, in The Middleman and Other Stories Based on an actual event—the Sikh terrorist bombing of an Air India plane on June 23, 1985, which killed all 329 passengers and crew—“The Management of Grief” is Mukherjee’s “tribute to all who forget enough of their roots to start over enthusiastically in a new land, but who also remember enough of their roots to survive fate’s knockout punches.” Mukherjee’s story focuses on Shaila Bhave in the hours, days, and months following the deaths of her husband and two young sons. The story focuses on her forms of grief and guilt, which are specific to her culture. As an Indian wife, she never spoke her husband’s name or told him she loved him—simple acts that Westerners take for granted. Her grief reveals who Shaila is, was, and will be. As do many of the characters in Mukherjee’s stories and novels, she finds herself caught between cultures, countries, and existences. “At thirty-six,” she considers, “I am too old to start over and too young to give up. Like my husband’s spirit, I flutter between two worlds.” One of the worlds is Indian, including the highly supportive Hindu community in Toronto, from which she feels strangely detached. The Hindu community in Toronto is itself part of a larger Indian immigrant community that includes Muslims, Parsis, atheists, and even the Sikhs, tied by religion if not necessarily by politics to those responsible for the bombing, which is part of a struggle for autonomy being waged by Sikh extremists in India. Even within Toronto’s Hindu community there are divided allegiances as parents “lose” their children to Western culture no less than to terrorist bombs. The other world, the “West,” or more specifically Canada, is equally problematic, especially for Indian immigrants such as Mrs. Bhave, who are made to feel at best marginalized, at worst excluded altogether. She experiences the insensitivity of police investigators, the inadequacy of news coverage (the implicit message is that the victims and their families are not really Canadian), and finally the well-intentioned but ineffectual efforts of a government social worker’s textbook approach to “grief management.” The social worker enlists Mrs. Bhave’s help in assisting those who have not been “coping so well.” The story’s complex identity theme is reflected in its spatial diversity. It follows Mrs. Bhave from Toronto to Ireland (to identify remains) and then to India, where she believes she hears her husband’s voice telling her: “You must finish alone what we started together.” This seemingly irrational link to

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tradition, including her thinking that her husband and sons “surround her like creatures in epics,” gives her the strength to leave India and return to Canada. Although she does not assume, as some of the older relatives do, that God will provide, she is provided for and in a way that precludes the reader’s seeing her as entirely representative. Thanks to her husband’s savings and the sale of their house, she is financially secure and so can afford to heed her dead husband’s final admonition: “Go, be brave.” Her future, including her future identity, may be uncertain, but in that uncertainty Shaila Bhave finds her freedom, one inextricably rooted in loss.

The Middleman and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1988 The Middleman and Other Stories deals with the clash between Western and Third World cultures as technology and overpopulation join diverse peoples in tragicomic relationships. “A Wife’s Story” is a good example of Mukherjee’s storytelling technique. It is told in the present tense, begins abruptly, and has an interest, characteristic of literary minimalism, in brand names and consumerism. The narrator sees her Indian husband through American eyes when he visits her in New York City, where she is attending college. He is captivated by the meretricious glamour and abundance of consumer goods. The narrator realizes how Americanized she has become and how comically provincial her husband appears. Alfred Judah in “The Middleman” is a man without a country, a Jew living in Central America and hoping to make his way to the United States. Some think he is an Arab and others think he is an Indian; he is despised by everyone. In “Orbiting,” an American woman is living with an Afghan lover who is another man without a country, unable to obtain legal entry into any of the developed countries being flooded with immigrants. In “Buried Lives,” an Indian who is prospering in Sri Lanka abandons his responsibilities for a new life in America. After leading a terrifying underground existence, he finds himself engaged to be married in Germany. “Danny’s Girls” is about immigrants who come to the United States for a better life and who become prostitutes. “Jasmine” has a similar theme. “The Management of Grief,” dealing with the 1985 bombing of an Air India jetliner, focuses on a specific incident but reveals a macrocosm. Through the eyes of one bereaved woman, the reader glimpses the diaspora that has scattered Indians across five continents, creating alienation and countless minor tragedies. Mukherjee’s experience as an upper-caste woman losing her traditionbound, privileged identity was the turning point in her life. As an immigrant she was sometimes mistaken for a prostitute, a shoplifter, or a domestic

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servant. Her stories reflect her sympathy for the psychological traumas suffered by the Third World immigrants who have lost their old identities and who are trying to create new ones. Mukherjee is an Old World intellectual who has adopted New World values. The blending of old and new is another striking characteristic of her fiction. She dramatizes the cataclysmic changes taking place in human consciousness as cultures collide.

Suggested readings Carter-Sanborn, Kristin. “‘We Murder Who We Were’: Jasmine and the Violence of Identity.” American Literature 66, no. 3 (September, 1994): 573-593. Chua, C. L. “Passages from India: Migrating to America in the Fiction of V. S. Naipaul and Bharati Mukherjee.” In Reworlding: The Literature of the Indian Diaspora, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Dlaska, Andrea. Ways of Belonging: The Making of New Americans in the Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee. Vienna, Austria: Braumüller, 1999. Fakrul, Alam. Bharati Mukherjee. New York: Twayne, 1996. Moyers, Bill. “An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee.” In Connections: A Multicultural Reader for Writers, edited by Judith A. Stanford. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 1993. Mukherjee, Bharati, and Clark Blaise. The Sorrow and the Pity: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy. Markham, Ontario: Viking, 1987. Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives. New York: Garland, 1993. —Bill Delaney/Robert A. Morace

Gloria Naylor

Gloria Naylor Born: New York, New York; January 25, 1950

Naylor’s exploration of black communities stresses the relationship between identity and place. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Women of Brewster Place, 1982; Linden Hills, 1985; Mama Day, 1988; Bailey’s Cafe, 1992; The Men of Brewster Place, 1998 When she gave her introverted daughter a journal from Woolworth’s, Gloria Naylor’s mother opened the door to writing. In high school, two experiences shaped Naylor’s emerging identity: Nineteenth century English literature taught her that language can be a powerful tool, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1968 assassination turned her to missionary work. Instead of going to college, for the next seven years she traveled as a Jehovah’s Witness, abandoning the work in 1975, when she began to feel constrained by the lifestyle. At Brooklyn College, her introduction to black history and the discovery of such literary foremothers as Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison gave her the inspiration to try writing herself. Completing her first novel, the best-seller The Women of Brewster Place, signified, she has indicated, her taking hold of herself and attempting to take her destiny into her own hands. After winning a scholarship to Yale University, Naylor discovered that, for her, graduate training was incompatible with writing fiction. She nevertheless completed a master’s degree in 1983, when the Afro-American Studies department allowed her second novel, Linden Hills, to fulfill the thesis requirement. Linden Hills illustrates the effects of materialism on an elite all-black community that lacks a spiritual center. The central feature of all of Naylor’s novels is an enclosed black community where characters learn to embrace their identities in the context of place. Naylor’s powerful settings combine elements of the ordinary with the otherworldly, allowing for magical events and mythic resolutions. For example, Mama Day takes place on the imaginary island of Willow Springs and weaves the history of the Day family from the point of view of the powerful matriarch Mama Day, a conjure woman. Naylor’s own family history provides her with a rich sense of community, but she paradoxically treasures solitude. Married briefly, she refuses to remarry or have children and teaches writing to keep from being too much of a recluse. Naylor’s strength is portraying convincing multigenerational characters in specific settings. 369

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Bailey’s Cafe Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 Set in 1948, Bailey’s Cafe, Naylor’s fourth novel, is her self-described “sexual novel.” Similar to The Women of Brewster Place, it tells the tragic histories of female characters who suffer simply because they are sexual. The underlying structure of blues music recasts these feminist rewritings of biblical stories. The characters’ own blues-influenced narrations provide the equivalent of melody, and the male narrator supplies the connecting texts linking one story to another. The proprietor of Bailey’s Cafe, who is the narrator, sets the pattern by telling how he was saved by Bailey’s Cafe, a magical place. It is a cafe that does not serve customers, and its magic is not the redemptive kind. The cafe provides “some space, some place, to take a breather for a while” by suspending time. Not fixed in any one city, it is “real real mobile,” so that anyone can get there. It features a back door that opens onto a void where patrons re-create scenes to help them sustain life, or, alternatively, to end it. The street on which Bailey’s Cafe may be found contains three refuges that form a “relay for broken dreams”: Bailey’s Cafe, Gabe’s Pawnshop, and Eve’s Boardinghouse and Garden. Eve transforms her suffering into a haven. She aids only those women who know what it means to “walk a thousand years.” Her boarders include Esther, who hates men because of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child bride; Peaches, a woman so beautiful she disfigures herself; Jesse, a spunky heroin addict; and Mariam, a fourteen-year-old Ethiopian Jew who is pregnant but still a virgin. The community also includes men. The unforgettable Miss Maple is a man who forges a strong identity despite the racism that threatens his manhood. The novel explores positive models of masculinity and steadily subverts the idea that sexual women are whores. Such a characterization oppresses all women, who must transcend the personal consequences of this destructive label. The arrival of the outcast and pregnant Mariam threatens to disrupt the characters’ safety because the birth could destroy their world: “For all we knew, when that baby gave its first cry, this whole street could have just faded away.” The women on the street fear they will find themselves back in “those same hopeless crossroads in our lives.” Instead, the baby is born in Mariam’s homeland, magically re-created in the void. All the characters gather to celebrate its arrival. Their participation in the Jewish birth ceremony brings hope for the future and shows the healing power of a diverse community.

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The Women of Brewster Place Type of work: Novel First published: 1982 Naylor’s first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, won the American Book Award for First Fiction in 1983 and was made into a film. Actually a novel in seven stories, it presents a series of interconnected tales about seven women who struggle to make peace with their pasts. The allegorical setting is Brewster Place, a dead-end ghetto street whose distinctive feature is the brick wall that bottles economic and racial frustration inside. Two interdependent themes bind the stories together: The violence that men enact on women is counteracted by the healing power of community. The novel’s innovative structure is key to Naylor’s purpose. Exploring the lives of different women on Brewster Place, Naylor attempts to create a microcosm of the black female experience in America. The microcosm consists of seven African American women representing a range of ages, backgrounds, and sexualities. The first character introduced is Mattie Michael, whose fierce love for her son twice costs her the security and pride of a happy home. Her hard-won strength becomes the force that helps other women, such as Mattie’s oldest friend, Etta Mae Johnson, and Lucielia Louise Turner (Ciel), whom Mattie helped raise. One of the most powerful scenes of the novel is the one in which Mattie saves Ciel, who loses her desire to live after the tragic deaths of her two children. Kiswana Browne is a would-be revolutionary who attempts to reclaim her African heritage and to improve Brewster Place by renouncing her parents’ elite Linden Hills lifestyle. Cora Lee, her opposite, is a single mother of seven who wants babies but not children. Last are Lorraine and Theresa, the couple whom Brewster Place cruelly rejects when they seek a haven that will tolerate their love for each other. Women’s dual identity as mother and daughter is a highlighted conflict throughout. The symbolism of Brewster Place’s brick wall contributes to the horrific climax when Lorraine is gang-raped in the alley formed by the wall, her blood spattering the bricks. Her effort to fight back, delayed by the trauma, causes her to attack Ben, the janitor who treats her like a daughter. She murders him with a brick. The novel appears to end triumphantly when the women tear down the wall, brick by brick, at a block party that celebrates the power of community. This is a deceptive resolution, however, because the block party has happened only in Mattie’s dream. The ambiguity of the ending gives the story a mythic quality by stressing the continual possibility of dreams and the results of their deferral.

Suggested readings Gates, Henry Louis, and K. A. Appiah, eds. Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, 1993.

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Montgomery, M. L. “Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Cafe.” African American Review 29, no. 1 (1995): 27-33. Naylor, Gloria. “Belles Lettres Interview: Gloria Naylor.” Interview by Angels Carabi. Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 7, no. 3 (1992): 36-42. _______. “Love and Sex in the Afro-American Novel.” The Yale Review 78, no. 1 (1989): 19-31. Puhr, Kathleen M. “Healers in Gloria Naylor’s Fiction.” Twentieth Century Literature 40, no. 4 (1994): 518-527. Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Gloria Naylor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Wilentz, Gay. “Healing the Wounds of Time.” The Women’s Review of Books 10, no. 5 (1993): 15-16. —Christine H. King

Fae Myenne Ng

Fae Myenne Ng Born: San Francisco, California; 1956

Ng brings the perspective of an Asian American to the American experience of immigration and assimilation. Traditions: Chinese American Principal work: Bone, 1993 Fae Myenne Ng’s writing depicts a cultural divide between her assimilated generation and that of her Chinese parents. Reared in San Francisco’s Chinatown by working-class parents who immigrated from China, Ng acquired an excellent education, receiving degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Bone, her first novel, took her ten years to write, during which time she supported herself as a waitress and temporary worker, as well as by a grant from the National Foundation for the Arts. As does Leila, the narrator of the novel, Ng is an educated woman who understood her parents’ working-class world. In the novel, the Chinese mother is a poorly paid, overworked garment worker. The father holds down a series of dead-end jobs that include janitor, dishwasher, houseboy, and laundry worker. The couple have worked their fingers to the bone to provide for their daughters. Bone is a tribute to the family’s father, who represents a generation of Chinese men who sacrificed their personal happiness for the sake of their families. Ng’s inspiration was the old Chinese men living alone and impoverished in single-room occupancy hotels in Chinatown. Chinese America’s bachelor society came to America to work the gold mines, to build the railroads, and to develop California agriculturally. These immigrants became men without roots. The novel also depicts the conflicts of the family’s three daughters with their old-fashioned parents. There is the middle daughter Ona, whose suicide suggests she could not adjust to American society and maintain her identity as a dutiful Chinese daughter. Nina, the youngest daughter, affirms a modern identity and escapes to New York City. Leila, the eldest daughter, is a complicated combination of the old Chinese ways and new American cultural patterns. As does Nina, the rebellious daughter, Ng moved to New York City. Leila, with her ability to assimilate the new while keeping faith with the past, is the daughter who most mirrors Ng’s identity as an Asian American. Ng’s work adds to the tradition of the immigrant novel.

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Bone Type of work: Novel First published: 1993 Ng’s Bone continues in a tradition of Asian American novels by women that mediate between the demands of addressing issues of gender and of ethnicity. As a woman writing from a strongly patriarchal cultural heritage, Ng has had to create new strategies in order to express the paradox of resistance to and affirmation of her cultural heritage. Bone relates the story of the Leong family, which has recently suffered the death by suicide of the Middle Girl, Ona. Ona committed suicide by jumping from one of Chinatown’s housing projects. She left no note, and although the police reported she was “on downers,” or depressants, there was no apparent cause for the suicide. The novel is narrated by the First Girl, Leila Fu Louie, Ona’s half sister and the eldest daughter in the Leong family. Leila’s attempts to come to terms with her sister’s death, and thereby her own life, lead her to muse about incidents from their childhood and the everyday circumstances of the present. The novel unfolds in a series of stories that move from the present into the past. The children of immigrants have often been called upon to translate for their parents. Their ability to switch from the language of their parents to the English of their birthplace makes them the bridge between the customs of the Old World and the expectations and demands of the New. This enormous responsibility can become an overwhelming burden. Although Leila must continually face the chasm between her parents’ expectations and her own reality, her ability to build a bridge of translation is grounded in her strong need and appreciation for the family. Her youngest sister, Nina, the End Girl, refuses to shoulder this burden of translation. Her rebellion has caused her to move to New York, far away from her parents in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She declares her independence by refusing to lie about her life in order to appease her parents. It is the selfimposed silence of Ona, however, that is at the center of the novel. Ona, the middle child, is caught in the middle; she learned too well how to keep secrets. Ng does not seek to solve the mystery of Ona’s death in this novel. It is a mystery that is unsolvable; rather, through the narrative voice of Leila, Ng explores the languages and silences of love, grief, assimilation, avoidance, anger, guilt, and, finally, acceptance. Ng, who grew up in San Francisco, is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and in an interview explained the title of her novel: “Bone is what lasts. And I wanted to honor the quality of endurance in the immigrant spirit.” Bone is a journey into a territory that is the common heritage of all second-generation immigrant Americans and the particular traditions of Chinese immigrants. The path to assimilation into American society is fraught with contradictions and ambivalence. Ng provides few answers; she simply reveals one family’s experience.

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Suggested readings Ho, Wendy. In Her Mother’s House: The Politics of Asian American Mother-Daughter Writing. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1999. Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. “Feminist and Ethnic Literary Theories in Asian American Literature.” Feminist Studies 19, no. 3 (Fall, 1993): 571-589. Miller, Heather Ross. “America the Big Lie, the Quintessential.” Southern Review 29, no. 2 (April, 1993): 420-430. Ng, Fae Myenne. “False Gold: My Father’s American Journey.” New Republic, July 19-26, 1993, 12-13. Stetson, Nancy. “Honoring Her Forebears.” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1993, C12. Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. Reading Asian-American Voices: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. —Margaret Boe Birns/Jane Anderson Jones

John Okada

John Okada Born: Seattle, Washington; September, 1923 Died: Seattle, Washington; February, 1971 Okada introduced Japanese American literature to the United States. Traditions: Japanese American Principal work: No-No Boy, 1957 John Okada was a Nisei, or second-generation Japanese American. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and witnessed the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Unlike the character Ichiro in No-No Boy, however, Okada was not a no-no boy (a person who answered no to two critical questions on the loyalty questionnaire—refusing to serve in the American armed forces and refusing to forswear allegiance to Japan and pledge loyalty to the United States). He volunteered for military service and was sent to Japanese-held islands to exhort Japanese soldiers to surrender. The experience helped him shape his perspective on the war. After he was discharged from the military in 1946, Okada went to the University of Washington and Columbia University. He earned two B.A. degrees and an M.A. degree studying, in his own words, “narrative and dramatic writing, history, sociology.” He started working on No-No Boy while he was an assistant in the Business Reference Department of the Seattle Public Library and at the Detroit Public Library. After a stint as a technical writer for Chrysler Missile Operations of Sterling Township, Michigan, he and his wife Dorothy moved back to Seattle. No-No Boy was completed in 1957. Okada had a hard time trying to find publishers who were interested in his work. No-No Boy was first published by Charles Tuttle of Tokyo. After Okada died, his wife offered all of his manuscripts, including the one of his second novel, to the Japanese American Research Project at the University of California at Los Angeles. They were rejected. Dorothy burned them shortly after, when she was preparing to move. Okada was proud to be a Japanese American. He examined the double consciousness of the Japanese American community. No-No Boy portrays the psychological confusion and distress experienced by many Japanese Americans, especially second-generation Japanese Americans (U.S. citizens by birth, culturally Japanese) during and after World War II. No-No Boy portrays the struggle of those who are caught between two worlds at war.

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No-No Boy Type of work: Novel First published: 1957 No-No Boy depicts a second-generation Japanese American’s struggle to balance his loyalty to the Japanese culture, to his parents, and to his country, the United States. Ichiro Yamada is interned during World War II. He is put in jail for answering no to the two critical questions on the allegiance questionnaire. His two negative answers are his refusal to serve in the American armed forces and his refusal to forswear allegiance to Japan and pledge loyalty to the United States. After he is released from prison, Ichiro moves back to Seattle and is caught between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds. On one side, there are his parents, who are very proud of being Japanese. On the other side, there is the United States, a country to which he still feels he belongs. During his search for his identity, Ichiro meets several people who help shape his perspective on himself and on his relationship with America. One of his close friends, Kenji, joins the military during the war. He loses a leg and has only two years to live. What Kenji physically goes through, Ichiro experiences emotionally. Being a no-no boy, Ichiro is looked down upon by his brother and other Japanese Americans who believe he has betrayed the country. During one of their conversations, Kenji and Ichiro jokingly discuss whether they want to trade places. The fact that both of them are willing to do it comments on the kind of social environment they have to deal with and on the choices they have made. Kenji also introduces Ichiro to Emi, a person who can empathize with Ichiro’s experience. Emi’s husband has left her because he is ashamed of his brother Mike and of Emi’s father, who elect to be repatriated back to Japan. Mike is a World War I veteran. He is incensed by how Japanese Americans are treated by their own government during World War II and eventually decides to go back to a country he does not know or love. Emi saves Ichiro from plunging into an emotional abyss. They find a friend and companion in each other. After witnessing the death of his friend, Freddie, who is also a no-no boy, Ichiro starts to think about his own future. In “the darkness of the alley of the community” that is “a tiny bit of America,” he starts to chase that faint and elusive insinuation of promise as it continues “to take shape in mind and in heart.”

Suggested readings Chin, Frank. Afterword to No-No Boy, by John Okada. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976. _______. “Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake.” In The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese American Literature, edited by Frank Chin et al. New York: Meridian, 1991.

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Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Wong, Sau-ling C., and Jeffrey J. Santa Ana. “Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature.” Signs 25, no. 1 (Autumn, 1999): 171-226. —Qun Wang

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Judith Ortiz Cofer Born: Hormigueros, Puerto Rico; February 24, 1952

Ortiz Cofer’s fiction, poems, and essays describe the strengths and conflicts of Puerto Ricans, especially women, on the island and on the mainland. Traditions: Caribbean, Puerto Rican Principal works: Reaching for the Mainland, 1987; Terms of Survival, 1987; The Line of the Sun, 1989; Silent Dancing, 1990; The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry, 1993; The Year of Our Revolution: New and Selected Stories and Poems, 1998; Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer, 2000 Judith Ortiz Cofer did not begin writing for publication until after she had been in the United States for more than twenty years. During those years, however, she frequently returned to Puerto Rico to visit her extended family. Her writing is informed by her bicultural experiences: one in the urban apartment buildings in English-speaking New Jersey, where her father stressed the importance of learning American language and customs to succeed, and the other in the traditional island community where her mother and other Spanishspeaking relatives taught her not to forget her heritage. Ortiz Cofer is bilingual, but she writes primarily but not exclusively in English. For example, her grandmother’s home, filled with the community of women who nurtured the writer as a child, is warmly referred to as la casa de Mamá or simply her casa. Neither solely Puerto Rican nor simply American, Ortiz Cofer straddles both cultures and intermingles them in her writing. Although most of her life has been spent in New Jersey— where her father was stationed Judith Ortiz Cofer (John Cofer) in the Navy—and later Florida 379

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and Georgia, she considers herself a Puerto Rican woman. She identifies this connection to the island not merely through geographical association but also by invoking and reclaiming her family, their stories, and her memories through her writing. As a Puerto Rican woman, Ortiz Cofer was expected to marry, bear children, and define herself through these relationships. She dreamed, however, of becoming a teacher and later a writer. Although she was married to Charles John Cofer in 1971 and later gave birth to a daughter, she did not follow the traditional Puerto Rican path of the married woman. After completing a bachelor’s degree in 1974 from Augusta College, she earned a master’s degree in English from Florida Atlantic University and received a fellowship to do graduate work at Oxford University in 1977. She taught English and creative writing at various schools in Florida before settling at the University of Georgia in 1984. In addition to her academic career, she also became a widely anthologized and acclaimed writer. Ortiz Cofer’s writing pays homage to the strictly defined and highly ritualized lives of Puerto Rican women, but her life and her act of writing break that mold; she redefines what it means to be a Puerto Rican woman.

Silent Dancing Type of work: Autobiography (essays and poetry) First published: 1990 Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood is Ortiz Cofer’s collection of fourteen essays and accompanying poems looking back on her childhood and adolescence in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, and Paterson, New Jersey. Her father joined the Navy before she was born, and two years later he moved them to Paterson, where he was stationed. When he went to sea for months at a time, he sent his wife and children back to Puerto Rico until he returned to New Jersey. While her father urged the family to assimilate into the American melting pot and even moved them outside the Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New Jersey, her mother remained loyal to her own mother’s home on the island. Her mother’s quiet sadness emerges throughout the book, such as the voice of the poem “El Olvido” that warns that to forget one’s heritage is to “die/ of loneliness and exposure.” The memoir chronicles significant moments, beginning with her birth (“They Say”). “Quinceañera” tells of the custom of a girl’s coming-of-age party (at age fifteen). Her grandmother prepares her for Puerto Rican womanhood. The adult narrator also explores her and her mother’s memories of the yearly trips to Puerto Rico in “Marina” and “The Last Word.” The central theme in the book is the traditional Puerto Rican “script of our lives,” which circumscribes “everyone in their places.” The narrator struggles

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with her family’s expectations for her to become a traditional Puerto Rican woman: domestic, married, and fertile. This script allows little room for individual identity, so the maturing narrator focuses on those characters who rewrite the script and extemporize their own lives (“Some of the Characters”). The embodiment of Puerto Rican tradition is Mamá, the grandmother who ironically gives Ortiz Cofer the tools that enable her to redefine her own role. In “More Room,” for instance, Ortiz Cofer tells the story about Mamá expelling her husband from her bedroom to avoid giving birth to even more children, thus liberating herself to enjoy her children, her grandchildren, and her own life. Similarly, “Tales Told Under the Mango Tree” portrays Mamá’s queenly role as the matriarchal storyteller surrounded by the young women and girls of the family as she passes on cuentos (stories) about being a Puerto Rican woman, such as the legend of the wise and courageous María Sabida who is not controlled by love and is “never a victim.” Silent Dancing is ultimately a Künstlerroman, the story of an artist’s apprenticeship. Ortiz Cofer has revised the script for her life as a Puerto Rican woman by inheriting Mamá’s role as storyteller; she redefines what it means to be a Puerto Rican woman and tells her stories to a wider audience.

Suggested readings Acosta-Belén, Edna. “A MELUS Interview: Judith Ortiz Cofer.” MELUS 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1993): 83-97. Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Rituals of Movement.” The Americas Review 19, nos. 3-4 (Winter, 1991): 88-99. Ortiz Cofer, Judith. “The Infinite Variety of Puerto Rican Reality: An Interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer.” Interview by Rafael Ocasio. Callaloo 17, no. 3 (Summer, 1994): 730-742. _______. Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. _______. “Puerto Rican Literature in Georgia? An Interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer.” Interview by Rafael Ocasio. The Kenyon Review 14, no. 4 (Fall, 1992): 43-50. —Nancy L. Chick

Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick Born: New York, New York; April 17, 1928

Ozick’s fiction describes the difficulty of observing Jewish traditions in America’s secular, assimilationist society. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Trust, 1966; The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, 1971; Bloodshed and Three Novellas, 1976; Levitation: Five Fictions, 1982; The Cannibal Galaxy, 1983; The Messiah of Stockholm, 1987; The Shawl: A Story and a Novella, 1989; Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Character: And Other Essays on Writing, 1996; The Puttermesser Papers, 1997; Quarrel and Quandary: Essays, 2000 Cynthia Ozick recalls her grandmother telling her stories, invariably conveying a lesson, about girlhood in a Russian Jewish village. From her drugstoreowning parents, she overhead “small but stirring adventures” confided by their Bronx neighbors. “Reading-lust” led her to fairy tales, to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in literature, and to a self-taught education in Judaism’s textual tradition. From these various influences, Ozick creates fiction noted for its range and inventiveness. Her reputation is based largely on her short fiction. Ozick has more than once won the O. Henry Award. Ozick’s first book, however, was a novel, Trust. It concerns a young woman’s search for identity. A predominant theme in Ozick’s work has been the difficulty of sustaining one’s Jewish identity in America’s secular, assimilationist society. Assimilated, rootless Jews are frequently objects of satire in her fiction. What Ozick proposes, in terms of language, is a New Yiddish, understandable to English speakers yet preserving the tone and inflections of Yiddish, a language that is facing extinction as a result of the Holocaust and assimilation. For Ozick, the Orthodox Jewish moral code remains the standard against which life and art are measured. America’s materialistic culture, she maintains, is essentially pagan, and therefore hostile to Judaism. This conflict is clearly evident in “The Pagan Rabbi,” a story in which attraction to nature drives the title character to suicide. The idea that the artist competes with God as creator also concerns Ozick. Particularly in “Usurpation (Other People’s Stories),” Ozick intimates that writers are congenital plagiarizers and, more seriously, usurpers of God. The hubris of a person attempting godlike creation is approached humorously in “Puttermesser and Xanthippe,” in which the female protagonist fashions a female golem, first to help with the house382

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work, then to reform New York City. So convinced is Ozick of the pervasiveness of idolatrous ambition that her heroines display an arrogant singlemindedness that is more often associated with men. In the story “The Shawl” and its sequel, the novella “Rosa,” Ozick, herself a mother, imagines a woman who idolizes the memory of a daughter murdered by the Nazis. Ozick’s vigilance against idolatry extends to her narrative style. Postmodernist, selfreferential techniques—asides, interruptions, and explanations—alert readers to the illusions of fiction. Ironic in effect, they also deflate authorial claims to being like God.

Cynthia Ozick (Julius Ozick)

The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1971 The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, Ozick’s first collection of short stories, was nominated for the National Book Award. Short fiction would subsequently form the basis of Ozick’s literary reputation. The collection’s seven stories—originally published in various periodicals—explore interrelated themes that mark Ozick’s work: Jewish identity, the lure of secularism, and the vocation of the artist. In Ozick’s view, Western civilization, rooted in Greek paganism, extols nature and physical existence and is therefore hostile to Judaism. The Western artistic tradition, moreover, dares usurp God’s role as creator. A prominent symbol in the title story, “The Pagan Rabbi,” is the tree on which the protagonist eventually hangs himself with his prayer shawl. The tree’s dryad and the heretical rabbi have coupled. In “The Dock-Witch,” the protagonist’s immersion in nature also leads to sexual union with a pagan goddess, yet because he is a Gentile, lacking Judaism’s horror of idolatry, his seduction is guilt-free.

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Lust for the world’s beauty undoes these characters; lust for the world’s acclaim corrupts others. In “Virility,” an immigrant Jewish poet, who anglicizes his name to Edmond Gates, becomes a literary sensation, until he confesses that an elderly aunt wrote his verses. When poems are published under her name after her poverty-induced death, the same gift that when considered his was declared “seminal and hard” is dismissed as “a spinster’s one-dimensional vision.” Along with satirizing associations between sexuality and artistry, Ozick condemns Gates for rejecting kin and heritage. He lives out the rest of his life in penitential drag and dies a suicide. The aging Yiddish poet Herschel Edelshtein of “Envy: Or, Yiddish in America” is in futile pursuit of a translator who would free him from the obscurity of writing in a dying language; meanwhile, he rails against popular American Jewish novelists, for whom history is a “vacuum.” In “The Suitcase,” a notable German architect and his son’s Jewish mistress engage in a paradigmic struggle, as Jew cannot allow Gentile to forget history, particularly its production of an Adolf Hitler. Some critics have questioned the accessibility of Ozick’s work, with its self-consciously Jewish style and content. Others find that its imaginative reach transcends its specifics of cultural origin.

Suggested readings Bloom, Harold, ed. Cynthia Ozick: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Cohen, Sarah Blacher. Cynthia Ozick’s Comic Art: From Levity to Liturgy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Finkelstein, Norman. The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Kauvar, Elaine M. Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction: Tradition and Invention. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Lowin, Joseph. Cynthia Ozick. Boston: Twayne, 1988. Pinsker, Sanford. The Uncompromising Fiction of Cynthia Ozick. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. Rosenberg, Ruth. “The Ghost Story as Aggada: Cynthia Ozick’s ‘The Pagan Rabbi’ and Sheindel’s Scar.” In Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, edited by Lynette Carpenter and Wendy K. Kolmar. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Walden, Daniel, ed. The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth, and Ozick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. _______. The World of Cynthia Ozick. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987. —Amy Allison

Grace Paley

Grace Paley Born: New York, New York; December 11, 1922

Paley’s short stories and poems are among the finest contemporary Jewish American and feminist fiction. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Men and Women in Love, 1959; Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, 1974; Later the Same Day, 1985; Leaning Forward, 1985; Long Walks and Intimate Talks, 1991 (with paintings by Vera B. Williams); New and Collected Poems, 1992; Just as I Thought, 1998 Grace Paley began writing short stories in the mid-1950’s, in her thirties, after having two children. She was born to Russian Jewish immigrants and was educated at Hunter College and New York University. She studied poetry with the famous British poet W. H. Auden. In 1942, she married Jess Paley, a veteran, freelance photographer, and cameraman. After the war, the couple moved to lower Manhattan, where Paley has resided since. Her early interest in poetry and her ability as a storyteller and listener led her to write about her family experiences. Growing up as the Depression waned, Paley was optimistic, and her choice to marry and have children was made with the same liveliness and independence as was her decision to write. One of her first stories, “Goodbye and Good Luck,” shows boldness in protagonist Rosie Lieber’s decision to live with a lover and marry late in life, despite the disapproval of her family. In the fifteen years after the publication of The Little Disturbances of Man, there was little separation between her identity as writer and her identities as mother, teacher at Sarah Lawrence College, and peace activist. Paley’s writings typically have a distinctive personal voice. Published in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, the stories that flowed from her experiences as a mother, family member, New Yorker, activist, and teacher include “A Subject of Childhood” and “Faith in a Tree,” which focus on the attachment between mother and child and on the lives of women trying to end war and protect the future through peaceful protests. Influenced by the sounds of New York neighborhoods, the identities of her characters also include many cultures and dialects—Yiddish, black, and Puerto Rican, for example. The themes of listening, voice, and telling one’s story occur throughout much of her work. Stories such as “A Conversation with My Father,” “The Story Hearer,” and “Zagrowsky Tells” echo the 385

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conversations of her Jewish parents, and feature one or more characters—most often women or Jewish Americans—who must shape narratives as a way of shaping their history and the world. In 1972, Paley and her husband were divorced, and Grace married her friend and co-activist Bob Nichols. Her reputation as a writer burgeoned after 1974, and her interest in women’s lives and identities was widely recognized as feminist. In her latest works, Paley continues to explore identity as a function of vocal expression.

Grace Paley (Dorothy Marder)

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Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1974 In Paley’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, identity is a personal and a social issue in the struggle for a peaceful world. Most of the characters in this short-story collection are middle-aged women, such as Faith Darwin, who resembles, but is not intended to be, Paley’s alter ego; others are simply those about whom stories are told—the children who have died or suffered from neglect, poverty, drug abuse, and the Vietnam War. The main characters in these stories act with defiance and hope. In “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” Alexandra is a middle-aged social worker who accidentally becomes pregnant through a liaison with Dennis, a cabdriver, poet, and commune member. Instead of joining the commune, Alexandra invites several of her pregnant clients to come live with her, a “precedent in social work which would not be followed or even mentioned in state journals for about five years.” In the story “Wants,” the woman narrator meets with her ex-husband, who criticizes her, telling her that she’ll “always want nothing.” In answer to herself and the reader, she recites the things she has wanted in her life, including ending the war before her children grew up. In “The Long-Distance Runner,” Faith Darwin takes a long run through her old neighborhood and ends up living with the black family who now occupies her childhood apartment. All three of these women examine themselves midway, finding, as Faith does, that a “woman inside the steamy energy of middle age” may learn “as though she was still a child what in the world is coming next.” The collection’s most acclaimed story, “A Conversation with My Father,” features Faith, who, in dialogue with her father (modeled after Paley’s father, I. Goodside, M.D.), invents the story of a middle-aged woman who becomes a junkie trying to identify with her son’s generation. Faith’s father laments the “end of a person,” but is more upset when Faith adds her characteristic openness: In the “after-story life,” the junkie becomes a “receptionist in a storefront community clinic.” On one hand, Faith’s response is emblematic of the way in which Paley’s characters will not, as Faith’s father exclaims, look tragedy “in the face.” On the other hand, other stories in the collection— namely, “The Little Girl,” “Gloomy Tune,” and “Samuel”—do precisely that. These stories study the identities of the victimized—the teenage girl who is raped and strangled by a drug addict, the neglected boy branded in violence and delinquency, the black boy dying in a freak subway accident. “Never again will a boy exactly like Samuel be known,” states the narrator. With the publication of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Paley’s reputation as a writer burgeoned. Her unique blend of poetic concision and concern for women’s contributions to the future makes her an important feminist voice in contemporary literature.

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Later the Same Day Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1985 Paley’s Later the Same Day contains the stories of people speaking in the varied dialects of New York City. In these stories, identity is formed through people’s acts and through their unique stories. As in Paley’s earlier collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Faith Darwin is a recurring character, but here she is the mature woman, looking back at her life. In “The Story Hearer,” for instance, Faith is asked to tell her lover, Jack, the story of her day. Despite her effort to “curb [her] cultivated individualism,” she ends up sidetracking, watering her “brains with time spent in order to grow smart private thoughts.” Jokingly, Faith comments on men’s love of beginnings, and thus suggests that women move through stories and time quite differently, tempted by the private, rather than the “public accounting” of life. Similarly, in “Zagrowsky Tells,” “Lavinia: An Old Story,” and “In This Country, but in Another Language, My Aunt Refuses to Marry the Men Everyone Wants Her To,” identity is a matter of individual stories told in first-person narratives and ethnic dialects. In “The Story Hearer,” Faith wants to rise above her time and name, but finds herself “always slipping and falling down into them, speaking their narrow language.” In “The Expensive Moment,” Faith’s friends and families respond to the aftereffects of China’s Cultural Revolution, relating their experiences to America’s “revolutions” of the 1960’s. A visiting Chinese woman quickly identifies herself as still a Communist, but later in the story, another Chinese woman asks about children and “how to raise them.” Like Faith and other mothers in Paley’s fiction, these women “don’t know the best way.” In a world and country divided by different voices, different genders, and different politics, there is still possibility for community and for common identities. “Friends” pays tribute to Faith’s dying friend Selena, and the circle of women who go to visit her. Dying sets her apart from the others, but Selena is a mother, as are they, of a child in a generation “murdered by cars, lost to war, to drugs, to madness.” Later the Same Day was highly acclaimed by critics for its sensitivity to human and ethnic identity and for its experiments with storytelling. It continues to be significant in light of feminist concern with world peace, relationships among women, theories of women’s language, and the importance of finding one’s own voice.

Suggested readings Arcana, Judith. Grace Paley’s Life Stories: A Literary Biography. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Baba, Minako. “Faith Darwin as Writer-Heroine: A Study of Grace Paley’s

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Short Stories.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 7 (Spring, 1988): 40-54. Bach, Gerhard, and Blaine H. Hall, eds. Conversations with Grace Paley. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women.” In Writing and Sexual Difference, edited by Elizabeth Abel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Isaacs, Neil. Grace Paley: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Taylor, Jacqueline. Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. —Andrea J. Ivanov

Ann Petry

Ann Petry Born: Old Saybrook, Connecticut; October 12, 1908 Died: Old Saybrook, Connecticut; April 28, 1997 Petry was the first African American woman to sell over a million copies of a novel and the first African American woman to publish a collection of short stories. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Street, 1946; Country Place, 1947; The Drugstore Cat, 1949; The Narrows, 1953; Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad, 1955; Tituba of Salem Village, 1964; Legends of the Saints, 1970; Miss Muriel and Other Stories, 1971 Ann Lane Petry was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, to one of the town’s two African American families. Her father owned the village drugstore. A 1931 graduate of the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy, for a time Petry operated the pharmacy in Old Lyme, one of two family-owned pharmacies. Petry grew up listening to stories of the African American experience told by family, visiting friends, and relatives. In 1938 Ann Lane was married to George Petry; they moved to New York City. Petry left the pharmacy to follow a family tradition of storytelling. She worked for two Harlem newspapers, the Amsterdam News and People’s Voice. Petry’s first published work, “Marie of the Cabin Club,” a tale of romance and suspense, appeared under the pseudonym Arnold Petri in a Baltimore weekly newspaper. In 1943, “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon,” appeared in Crisis, a magazine founded by W. E. B. Du Bois. This story brought her to the attention of a book editor, who encouraged Petry to apply for the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. In 1945, Petry entered and won the award. Her entry would become the first chapters of the novel The Street. Petry returned to Old Saybrook in 1947, the debut year of her second novel, Country Place. In 1949, Petry launched a career as a children’s and young adults’ writer with The Drugstore Cat. Other works for children and young adults include Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tituba of Salem Village, and Legends of the Saints. Petry continued to write short stories while she published novels and juvenile literature. Most of these stories were first published in African American journals. With one previously unpublished story, “Mother Africa,” these stories were collected in Miss Muriel and Other Stories. The core of Petry’s writing is racial identity, racism in America, and the 390

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experience of the African American woman. She is lauded by scholars and writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Calvin Hernton, and Maya Angelou as a great storyteller in the African American literary canon.

The Street Type of work: Novel First published: 1946 The Street portrays the economic plight of African Americans in Northern cities. Themes of the novel include the problem of latchkey children, single parenting, and sexual oppression. This novel is perhaps the first written by an African American woman that probes the triple threat to African American women of race, gender, and class. Much of the action of The Street takes place on 116th Street in Harlem in 1944. The central character, Lutie Johnson, leaves an unemployed womanizing husband and a nice frame house in Jamaica, New York. She moves to Harlem with her eight-year-old son, Bub. Lutie moves to the city to realize a comfortable life. Instead of an independent and prosperous life in New York City, Lutie finds herself living in a tenement. The janitor, William Jones, is a sociopath who lusts after Lutie. A major presence on the street is Mrs. Hedges, who runs a whorehouse. Qualified for clerical or secretarial employment, Lutie can find only menial work in a laundry. Instead of ownership of a piece of the American Dream, Lutie finds herself trapped in a nightmare. Lutie becomes fair game for males. William makes advances and tries to molest Lutie. Junto, the white business partner of Mrs. Hedges, tries to seduce Lutie. Boots Smith, a musician in a bar that Junto owns, charms Lutie with visions of a better life with him. Boots lures her to his apartment, where he attempts to rape her. In an effort to ward off Boots’s rape, Lutie kills him. Vowing revenge on Lutie, William tricks Bub into stealing and gets him in trouble with the law. Disillusioned and defeated, Lutie abandons Bub and runs away to Chicago. Sexual politics drive the novel and rest on a concept that African American women are sexual prey. Negative sexual imagery of Lutie and by extension of all African American women is held by black and white males and by white females. A mixture of race and gender politics pushes Lutie over the edge. Lutie represents all the walking wounded of 116th Street and all of Harlem’s downtrodden residents. The Street is not merely a graphic portrayal of what it means to be female and to be poor; it is also a story of protest and defeat. The Street presents the African American woman as the center of the family and the community. She shoulders the moral responsibilities of the race.

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“The Witness” Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1971, in Miss Muriel and Other Stories “The Witness” is a short story about a man who is a victim of and witness to a crime. He must flee and the crime must go unreported. This story is of one person and one incident but is also the story of American race relations. Wheeling, New York, is seeking an English teacher and needs an African American to demonstrate that the schools are integrated. Charles Woodruff, a retired English professor from Virginia College for Negroes and a recent widower, is hired. Looking to change his environment, Charles decides to integrate Wheeling after he hears the school board is looking for “one” African American. Charles accepts an invitation extended by the Congregational minister to help a group of delinquent boys. Charles is frustrated by his failure to reach the boys but is not surprised. He feels he is viewed differently from other blacks. Charles believes he is being assigned the role of the model, or exemplary, black man. Following a class with the boys, Charles tries to intervene when the boys assault a white girl but is himself assaulted. The boys kidnap Charles and the girl. When Charles refuses to “take his turn” with the girl, the boys throw Woodruff, his keys, glasses, and wallet from the car. As they drive off with the girl unconscious on the floor of the car, they taunt Charles that he is their only witness. The boys and Charles believe that because he is a black male he will be implicated in the crime. Charles realizes he is not the perfect “one” African American for Wheeling, New York. There is no perfect “one.” Charles must remain silent and flee Wheeling. As Charles drives away, he realizes that he is a “hot ho-daddy,” what the boys called him during the assault. Charles realizes that that is all he will ever be in the eyes of America. Woodruff is not the exception, not different, not the “one.”

Suggested readings Barrett, Lindon. Blackness and Value: Seeing Double. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Carby, Hazel. Reconstructuring Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Clark, Keith. “A Distaff of a Dream Deferred? Ann Petry and the Art of Subversion.” African American Review 26 (Fall, 1992): 495-505. Clarke, Cheryl. “Ann Petry and the Isolation of Being Other.” Belles Letters 5 (Fall, 1989): 36.

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Hernton, Calvin. The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987. Holladay, Hilary. Ann Petry. New York: Twayne, 1996. Madden, David. “Commentary.” The World of Fiction. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990. Park, You-me, and Gayle Wald. “Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres.” American Literature 70, no. 3 (September, 1998): 607. Petry, Ann. “A MELUS Interview: Ann Petry—The New England Connection.” Interview by Mark Wilson. MELUS 15, no. 2 (Summer, 1988): 71-84. Pryse, Marjorie, and Hortense Spillers, eds. Conjuring: Black Fiction and Literary Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. —Muriel W. Brailey

Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok Born: New York, New York; February 17, 1929

Potok has presented issues and concerns in Jewish (especially Hasidic) identity to a large reading audience. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: The Chosen, 1967; The Promise, 1969; My Name Is Asher Lev, 1972; In the Beginning, 1975; Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews, 1975; The Book of Lights, 1981; Davita’s Harp, 1985; The Gift of Asher Lev, 1990; I Am the Clay, 1992; The Tree of Here, 1993; The Sky of Now, 1995; Zebra and Other Stories, 1998 Chaim Potok was born and reared in New York City. His writings reveal a wealth of learning, due in part to his impressive academic credentials; he is a rabbi and holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. His eight novels, various plays, one nonfiction historical text, and two children’s books are concerned with Jewish (often Hasidic) characters who are challenged by the conflicting identities of their cultures as Americans, Jews, Hasids, family members, and post-World War II citizens of the world. The Chosen and its sequel, The Promise, confront issues of value and identity. The novels examine the tensions between Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. An injury in a baseball game initiates a friendship between Reuven Malter, pitcher on the Orthodox team whose father is a fervent Zionist, and Danny Saunders, batter on the Hasid team who is heir to the rebbe position of his father. The Chosen has an ironic conclusion; Reuven Malter decides to become an Orthodox rabbi, but Danny Saunders decides, after much family pain, to become a secular psychologist, a “tzaddik for the world,” as his father finally understands. Potok’s most critically acclaimed novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, details the struggle for personal identity of a young Hasidic boy who struggles between his love for family and religion and his obligation as an artist to study and create. The sequel to this novel, The Gift of Asher Lev, did not appear until nearly two decades later. It tells of an adult Asher Lev, married and with children, who must confront again his unresolved status in the Brooklyn Hasidic community when the death of a family member requires his return. In the early and mid-1990’s, Potok moved beyond the genre of the novel to write four plays, which were locally produced in Philadelphia, and two works of children’s literature (The Tree of Here and The Sky of Now), which enjoyed critical acclaim. 394

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Chaim Potok (Jerry Bauer)

My Name Is Asher Lev Type of work: Novel First published: 1972 My Name Is Asher Lev, perhaps Potok’s greatest novel, is an excellent example of the Künstlerroman, which is a novel about an artist’s development. It confronts issues of Jewish and family identity in the post-Holocaust world. Asher Lev is a child prodigy artist, the only child of a Hasidic Jewish couple

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that lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Aryeh Lev, Asher’s father, serves as a personal emissary for the rebbe or tzaddik, the “righteous one” or religious leader of the Hasidic community. The Orthodox Hasidic Jewish culture into which Asher is born approves of creativity only in the context of interpretation of Talmudic passages. Asher finds it difficult, and at times embarrassing, to follow his muse; he finds it natural to draw and to create pictures. Rivkeh Lev, Aryeh’s mother, initially supports Asher’s desire to draw, but she soon sides with her husband, who believes that drawing and the fine arts are products of a gentile culture. In the years during and immediately following World War II, Aryeh Lev travels the world to minister to Hasidic Jews who have been displaced by the Nazi Holocaust. Since Hasids believe that the Jewish state will be re-created in Israel only with the coming of the Messiah, who has not yet arrived, Hasidic Jews generally did not support the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Aryeh travels about the world for the tzaddik, defending himself and his spiritual leader from the arguments of Zionist Jews and gentiles and attempting to do good works. He returns to a household in Brooklyn where his son is neglecting study of the Talmud because of his personal obsession with art and aesthetics. The tzaddik, however, is wise enough to allow Asher to follow his destiny and to mediate between his conflicting identities. The tzaddik arranges for Jacob Kahn, an expatriate from the Hasidic community and a world-renowned sculptor, to serve as Asher’s artistic mentor. Asher’s apprenticeship as an artist culminates with a midtown New York showing of his work. Central to the showing is a pair of paintings, Brooklyn Crucifixion I and Brooklyn Crucifixion II, which show his mother, crucified in the venetian blinds of their apartment, her face split into “Picassoid” thirds, looking to the father, the son, and the street. The works assure Asher’s reputation as a great artist but also assure, because of their religious content, that he will have to leave his Hasidic community in Brooklyn, as he does at the end of the novel. With the tzaddik’s blessing, he goes to Paris to board with a Hasidic family and to continue to worship and define himself as a Hasidic Jew artist.

Suggested readings Abramson, Edward A. Chaim Potok. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Berenson, Bernard. Contemporary Jewish Fiction. New York: Gordon & Breach, 1976. Buber, Martin. Hasidism and Modern Man. New York: Humanities Press International, 1988. Davenport, Guy. “Collision with the Outside World.” The New York Times Book Review, April 16, 1972, 5, 18. Idel, Moshe. Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

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Nissenson, Hugh. “The Spark and the Shell.” The New York Times Book Review, May 7, 1967, 4-5, 34. Safran, Bezalel. Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Sternlicht, Sanford V. Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. —Richard Sax

John Rechy

John Rechy Born: El Paso, Texas; March 10, 1934

Rechy explores the intersection of Chicano, gay, and Roman Catholic identities in his autobiographical fiction. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: City of Night, 1963; Numbers, 1967; This Day’s Death, 1970; The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary, 1977; Bodies and Souls, 1983; The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez, 1991; The Coming of Night, 1999 With the publication of his first novel, City of Night, John Rechy commenced a lifelong process of self-analysis. “My life,” Rechy stated, “is so intertwined with my writing that I almost live it as if it were a novel.” In particular, Rechy examines the ways in which gay sexuality, Chicano and European American heritages, and the strictures of the Roman Catholic Church struggle and sometimes harmonize with one another despite incompatibilities. Rechy writes what he calls “autobiography as fiction” in order to construct parables of spiritual salvation and damnation. Alternately remote from or near to God, family, and human connection, Rechy’s protagonists struggle against self-absorption and the fear of death. Rechy’s parents immigrated to the southwestern United States during the Mexican Revolution. Rechy grew up torn between his father’s stern sense of defeat in the face of anti-Mexican discrimination and his mother’s intense protection of her son. The combination of his father’s Scottish heritage and his mother’s traditional Mexican background made Rechy intensely aware of his status as a person of mixed ancestry in the El Paso of his youth. Conflicts and pressures at home caused him to move into a narcissistic remoteness that found comfort in the emotional distance of purchased sex. Wandering the country after high school, Rechy worked as a male prostitute in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans. These experiences as a hustler became the material for City of Night. This first-person narrative of sexual and spiritual salvation combines an unapologetic depiction of the sexual underground. The work features a sympathetic protagonist’s search for ultimate connection and caring. Set against either the urban indifference of Los Angeles or the unforgiving landscape of the desert Southwest, Rechy’s novels explore the thematic connections between sex, soul, and self. In subsequent works—in particular, This Day’s Death and The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez—Rechy has extended his explorations of the spirit to the particulars of Chicano family and culture. 398

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Rechy’s autobiographical fictions chart the intersections of ethnic, sexual, regional, and religious identities. He journeys across the Southwestern landscape, through sex and spirit, along the night streets of Los Angeles, and through his own memories of growing up in El Paso.

City of Night Type of work: Novel First published: 1963 Based on the author’s experiences, City of Night explores sexuality and spirituality as they develop during the protagonist’s quest for salvation. Combining Chicano heritage, autobiographical material, and a poetic rendering of the restless loneliness of America’s sexual underground, City of Night— Rechy’s first and best-known novel—investigates difficulties and rewards of an individual’s search to claim the many identities that intersect in a single life. The unnamed protagonist’s “journey through nightcities and nightlives— looking for . . . some substitute for salvation” begins with his childhood in El Paso, Texas. Rechy draws on stark, lonely imagery (the fiercely unforgiving wind, the father’s inexplicable hatred of his son, the mother’s hungry love) to portray a childhood and adolescence denied any sense of connection and certainty. Disconnected and detached from his home, the protagonist stands before the mirror confusing identity with isolation. He asserts a narcissistic removal from the world (“I have only me!”) that his quest at first confirms, then refutes. The first-person narrative chronicles the protagonist’s wanderings through New York City, Los Angeles, Hollywood, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans. For Rechy, these various urban settings are “one vast City of Night” fused into the “unmistakable shape of loneliness.” Working as a male prostitute, the protagonist navigates this landscape, portraying the types of sexual and spiritual desperation he encounters along the way. His journey is a pilgrimage first away from home and then back to it, as he accepts the possibility that he might come to terms with his family, his childhood, and himself. City of Night interweaves chapters that describe the geographies of the cities the protagonist passes through with chapters that portray people condemned to these dark cities. Sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter, sometimes indifferent, these portraits of people trapped in the loneliness and cruelty of the cities mirror the protagonist’s quest. He is like and unlike the denizens of this world. In New Orleans during Mardi Gras, the protagonist encounters and rejects his first sincere invitation to love: the “undiscovered country which may not even exist and which I was too frightened even to attempt to discover.” This invitation nevertheless triggers the narrator’s search for redemption and

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salvation. The memory of his rejection of Jeremy’s love haunts him. Caught up in the festivity of the carnival, surrounded by masked revelers and cathedrals, the protagonist affirms the possibility for change. He returns to El Paso. Exposed to the West Texas wind, “an echo of angry childhood,” the protagonist acknowledges uncertainty, the need for hope, and renewal. Rechy leaves the culmination of this search unresolved, a matter of existential self-definition. Combining ethnic, sexual, and spiritual identities, City of Night establishes important themes that Rechy explores in greater depth in later works. City of Night represents a pioneering look at the interdependency of multiple identities in an individual’s search for meaning.

This Day’s Death Type of work: Novel First published: 1970 This Day’s Death, Rechy’s third novel, explores Chicano identity and gay sexuality. Unlike other novels by Rechy, however, This Day’s Death does not initially embody the two identities in one complex character. Instead, the novel shuttles—like its protagonist—between two identities (Chicano and gay) in two separate and yet interdependent situations (El Paso and Los Angeles). Known for acknowledging the autobiographical origins of his fiction, Rechy skillfully illustrates how identities develop, sometimes demanding a person’s attention despite that person’s effort of will to ignore or deny a given identity. West Texas and Los Angeles are two poles of identity for Rechy; the one is bound up with his Chicano upbringing and his family, the other with sexual freedom and discovery. As the novel opens, Jim Girard is not gay. He has a fiancée and a promising career in law. His arrest on a lewd conduct charge is a mistake. He keeps his ongoing prosecution on that charge a secret from his mother, who is ill in El Paso. In the course of the novel, Jim recalls his Chicano upbringing. Jim also acknowledges and acts on previously unacknowledged desires for other men. Thus, he gradually becomes gay and Chicano, an embodiment of a complex intersection of identities and an opportunity for Rechy to explore the intertwined roots of self. Bound up with guilt, pretense, and hypochondria, Girard’s “terrible love” for his mother ties him to a childhood and a life that he recognizes as familiar but loathes. He knows that “she will brand each such day with memories he will carry like deep cuts forever.” Like other mother-son relationships in Rechy’s fiction, the relationship between Girard and his mother is an intense, stifling entanglement of need and rejection. Rechy utilizes the West Texas landscape (the wind, the sky, the desert) to impart a sense of loneliness and austerity that surrounds and amplifies Girard’s life with his mother. This love-hate relationship becomes the foundation of the novel, ironically suggesting that identity is inextricably connected to relationship rather than to

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the isolation that Girard maintains at the beginning of the novel. This Day’s Death is an ironic coming-out story in which circumstances collude to reveal a gay man to himself. Found guilty of the crime, and therefore unable to pursue his career, Jim returns to the park where he was arrested and finds himself accepting, even celebrating desires he never before acknowledged. On one level, the novel advocates social reform, depicting an innocent man convicted of a crime that is not really criminal. On another level, This Day’s Death is an analysis of the personal and bittersweet complex of experiences from which identities arise. This Day’s Death acknowledges identities and their complexity. To be Chicano and gay is a burdensome and miraculous combination. Girard’s relationship with his mother and whatever relationships he develops from his newly accepted desires will be tinged with joy and sadness, liberation and obligation. “The terrible love left empty” once his mother dies will be a necessary, affirming fact of having cared for his mother.

Suggested reading Isherwood, Charles. “Beyond the Night.” The Advocate, no. 718 (October 15, 1996): 58-62. Moore, Harry T., ed. Contemporary American Novelists. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964. —Daniel M. Scott III

Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed Born: Chattanooga, Tennessee; February 22, 1938

Reed has created a rich, unique literary synthesis from such diverse elements as African folktales, Caribbean ritual, and European culture. Traditions: African American, American Indian Principal works: The Free-Lance Pallbearers, 1967; Yellow Back Radio BrokeDown, 1969; Mumbo Jumbo, 1972; The Last Days of Louisiana Red, 1974; Flight to Canada, 1976; The Terrible Twos, 1982; Reckless Eyeballing, 1986; Airing Dirty Laundry, 1993; Japanese by Spring, 1996; The Reed Reader, 2000 Ishmael Reed’s writing can be said to mirror his own multiethnic descent, which includes African American, Native American, and Irish. His stepfather, Bennie Stephen Reed (an autoworker), later adopted him. He married Priscilla Rose in 1960; they were divorced in 1970. Reed has two children—Timothy and Brett—from his first marriage and a daughter, Tennessee Maria, by his second. Early in his life his family moved to Buffalo, New York. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1956 to 1960 but was not graduated. He has published books of essays and poetry, but he is primarily known as a novelist. He has edited two multicultural anthologies: Nineteen Necromancers from Now (1970) and Calafia: The California Poetry (1979). He moved to Berkeley, California, where he taught at the University of California, and he served as a visiting professor or writer-in-residence at many other schools. Reed’s first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, shows most of the elements for which his writing is known. It is the wildly picaresque and often scatological tale of the adventures of an African American, Bukka Doopeyduk, in Harry Sam, a city that reflects and exaggerates the most repressive aspects of Christian, European culture. Reed’s best-known novel, Mumbo Jumbo, uses the conventions of the detective story. Papa LaBas—whose name, typically for Reed, refers to the Voodoo god Papa Legba and French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans’s decadent novel Là-Bas (1891; Down There, 1924)—investigates an alleged plague called Jes Grew, which turns out to be spontaneous joy, opposed to the grim power structure of monotheistic European culture. Reed is widely praised for his style, his imaginative story construction, and his masterly use of elements from many cultural backgrounds, but he is often attacked by African American and feminist critics. He has continually sati402

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rized other African Americans, most notably in The Last Days of Louisiana Red, in which he refers to many of them as “Moochers.” His criticisms of feminism, most notably in Reckless Eyeballing, are widely considered to be misogynist. Japanese by Spring satirizes the politics of the university.

Ishmael Reed (James Lerager)

God Made Alaska for the Indians Type of work: Essays First published: 1982 God Made Alaska for the Indians, a collection of essays, is a short book, but it manages to pack into its 130 pages many of the widely varied interests of one of the most interesting multicultural figures on the American literary scene. Reed is primarily thought of as an African American writer, but he is also much aware of his Native American ancestry. This dual viewpoint informs the title essay, a lengthy account of political and legal conflicts over the use of Alaskan lands. Reed sympathizes with the Sitka Tlingit Indians, but he realizes that the question is complicated, with other tribes opposing them. Reed is, as always, critical of the white establishment, and he demonstrates that supposedly benign conservationist forces such as the Sierra Club can be as uncaring of the interests and customs of the indigenous population as any

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profit-maddened capitalist corporation. An afterword informs the reader that the Sitka Tlingits finally won. “The Fourth Ali” covers the second fight between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, late in Ali’s career. There is little description of the actual fight, and one learns little more than that Ali won. Reed emphasizes the fight as spectacle, describing the followers, the hangers-on, and Ali’s near-mythic role. In the brief “How Not to Get the Infidel to Talk the King’s Talk,” Reed demolishes the theory that the supposed linguistic flaws of Black English keep African Americans from social advancement by pointing to the success of such verbally challenged European Americans as Gerald R. Ford and Nelson A. Rockefeller. “Black Macho, White Macho” attacks some of the male-supremacist views Reed has been accused of holding, pointing out that such views are particularly dangerous in those with access to atomic weapons. “Race War in America?” makes some strong points about racial attitudes in the United States, in the then-pressing context of worry about the minority government in South Africa. In “Black Irishman” Reed, who has always refused to consider himself anything but an African American, looks at his Irish ancestry. Perhaps the most interesting essay in the book is the last, “American Poetry: Is There a Center?” Reed recounts the controversies over a poetry center set up in Colorado by an Asian religious leader. The center’s supporters made claims that it represented a focal point of all that is good in American poetry. Reed replies with his uncompromising view that the genius of American art can be found in the works of all races and cultures.

New and Collected Poems Type of work: Poetry First published: 1988 Reed is primarily known as a novelist. Most critical works about him deal with his fiction, and the leading books about contemporary African American poetry mention him only in passing. His poetry, however, repays reading and study—for the light it casts on his novels, for its treatment of the Hoodoo religion, and for the same verbal facility and breadth of reference that is praised in his fiction. New and Collected Poems includes the earlier works Conjure (1972), Chattanooga (1973), and A Secretary to the Spirits (1977). Conjure, Reed’s first and longest book of poems, is a mixed bag. Filled with typographical tricks that Reed later all but abandoned, it also has moments of striking wit, like the comparison of the poet to a fading city in “Man or Butterfly” or the two views of “history” in “Dualism: In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Conjure largely deals with the Hoodoo religion, Reed’s idiosyncratic com-

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bination of ancient Egyptian and contemporary North American elements with the Caribbean religion of vodun, or Voodoo, itself a mix of Yoruba and Christian elements. In “The Neo-HooDoo Manifesto,” Reed invokes American musicians, from jazz and blues greats to white rock and rollers, as exemplars of a religious approach based on creativity and bodily pleasure. Hoodoo is polytheistic, excluding only those gods who claim hegemony over the others. Reed’s main disagreement with vodun springs from its acceptance of the “dangerous paranoid pain in the neck . . . cop-god from the git-go, Jeho-vah.” The history of Hoodoo is outlined in Reed’s novel Mumbo Jumbo (1972). Its view of all time as synchronous informs the setting of Flight to Canada (1976), in which airplanes coexist with plantation slavery, but the fullest expression of Hoodoo’s spirit and aesthetic is given in Conjure. Chattanooga is named for Reed’s hometown, and the title poem is a paean to the area where Reed grew up and its multicultural heritage. “Railroad Bill, a Conjure Man” is a charming account of how the hero of an old-fashioned trickster tale deals with Hollywood. A Secretary to the Spirits is a short book with a few impressive works in it, notably, the first poem, “Pocodonia,” expanding what seems to have been a traditional blues song into something far more complex and strange. The work since A Secretary to the Spirits appears in the last section of New and Collected Poems, “Points of View.” The quality is mixed, but the outrage and the wit that characterize so much of Reed’s work can be found in this last section, as in “I’m Running for the Office of Love.”

Suggested readings Clark, Tom. The Great Naropa Poetry Wars. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Cadmus, 1980. Dick, Bruce Allen, ed., with Pavel Zemliansky. The Critical Response to Ishmael Reed. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Elias, Amy. “Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and Robert Coover’s The Public Burning.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 41, no. 2 (Winter, 2000). Fox, Robert Eliot. Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. —Arthur D. Hlavaty

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Born: Baltimore, Maryland; May 16, 1929

Rich is an articulate, conscious, and critical explorer of such subjects as feminism and lesbianism. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: A Change of World, 1951; The Diamond Cutters, 1955; Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, 1963; Necessities of Life, 1966; Leaflets, 1969; The Will to Change, 1971; Diving into the Wreck, 1973; Of Woman Born, 1976; The Dream of a Common Language, 1978; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 1979; A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, 1981; Your Native Land, Your Life, 1986; Blood, Bread, and Poetry, 1986; Time’s Power, 1989; An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988-1991, 1991; What Is Found There, 1993; Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995, 1995; Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995-1998, 1999 As a child, Adrienne Rich was encouraged to write poetry by her father. At Radcliffe College, she continued to study the formal craft of poetry as practiced and taught by male teachers. In 1951, Rich’s first volume of poetry, A Change of World, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Rich was praised as a fine poet and as a modest young woman who respected her elders. The poems in her first two collections are traditional in form, modeled on the male poets Rich studied. At twenty-four, Rich married a Harvard professor. She had three children by the time she was thirty. The conflict between the traditional roles of mother and wife and her professional accomplishments left her frustrated. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law begins to express a woman’s point of view. Rich moved to New York City in 1966 and became involved in civil rights and antiwar campaigns. In 1969, she separated from her husband, who committed suicide in 1970. During the 1970’s, Rich became a radical feminist, active in the women’s rights movement. The collections published during these years express these political themes. Rich came out as a lesbian in 1976, and her collection The Dream of a Common Language includes explicitly lesbian poems. In the early 1980’s, she moved to western Massachusetts with her companion, Michelle Cliff. Her essays and poetry with political themes were sometimes criticized as more didactic than artful. Rich continued to evolve politically and artistically. She moved to California, writing and teaching at Stanford University. Her books published in the 1990’s confront the relationship of poetry and politics and issues of contemporary American life. Adrienne Rich’s life and work have 406

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sought to balance the conflicting demands of poetry, which is her vocation, with the ideology of engagement that her life has brought to her art.

Poetry First published: A Change of World, 1951; Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, 1963; Diving into the Wreck, 1973; The Dream of a Common Language, 1978; The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984, 1984; An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988-1991, 1991; Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995, 1995 Rich’s poetry traces the growth of a conscious woman in the second half of the twentieth century. Her first two books, A Change of World and The Diamond Cutters (1955), contain verses of finely crafted, imitative forms, strongly influenced by the modernist poets. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law is a transitional work in which Rich begins to express a woman’s concerns. Her form loosens as well; she begins to experiment with free verse. The collections Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971) openly reject patriarchal culture and language. Experiments with form continue as she juxtaposes poetry and prose and uses multiple voices. With Diving into the Wreck Rich’s poetry becomes clearly identified with radical feminism and lesbian separatism. A theme of the title poem is the need for women to define themselves in their own terms and create an alternative female language. The Dream of a Common Language was published after Rich came out as a lesbian and includes the explicitly sexual “Twenty-one Love Poems.” By the time of the publication of A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981), the influence of Rich’s poetry extended beyond art and into politics. As a woman in a patriarchal society, Rich expresses a fundamental conflict between poetry and politics, which occupies her poetic voice. The collections Your Adrienne Rich (Library of Congress) Native Land, Your Life (1986),

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Time’s Power (1989), and An Atlas of the Difficult World address new issues while continuing to develop Rich’s feminist concerns. The long poem “Sources” addresses Rich’s Jewish heritage and the Holocaust. “Living Memory” addresses issues of aging. In Dark Fields of the Republic, Rich continues to develop her preoccupations with the relationship of poetry and politics and grapples with issues of contemporary American society. Most critics have characterized Adrienne Rich’s work as an artistic expression of feminist politics. Some critics feel that the politics overwhelm the lyricism of her art. It is generally accepted that she is an important and innovative voice in evolving political and artistic issues, especially feminism.

Suggested readings Cooper, Jane Roberta, ed. Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-visions, 195181. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Keyes, Claire. The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Martin, Wendy. An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Werner, Craig Hansen. Adrienne Rich: The Poet and Her Critics. Chicago: American Library Association, 1988. Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1997. —Susan Butterworth

MordecaiRichler

Mordecai Richler Born: Montreal, Quebec, Canada; January 27, 1931

Challenging the myths of his culture, Richler exposes the rottenness at the heart of the human condition. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: The Acrobats, 1954; Son of a Smaller Hero, 1955; A Choice of Enemies, 1957; The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959; The Incomparable Atuk, 1963; Cocksure, 1968; St. Urbain’s Horseman, 1971; Joshua Then and Now, 1980; Solomon Gursky Was Here, 1989; Barney’s Version, 1997 Mordecai Richler was born in a Jewish section of Montreal. His education at Jewish parochial schools reinforced his Jewish identity, and the French language that he spoke identified him as French Canadian. Richler would embrace neither identity comfortably. He began writing seriously when he was fourteen. At about the same time, he rejected the family expectation that he become a rabbi and ceased his religious training. After high school, Richler attended Sir George Williams University in Montreal for two years, then grew restive and left for Paris in 1951 to join such other aspiring writers as Mavis Gallant and Terry Southern. The separation from his beginnings helped to sharpen the perspective on his heritage. He knew that escape from the past is impossible and even undesirable. After two years, an invitation to become writer-in-residence at his alma mater attracted him back to Montreal. The Acrobats introduced concerns that would recur in much of Richler’s later fiction: the place of Jews in contemporary society, the need for values, and the exercise of personal responsibility. Deciding that he would make his living solely by writing, Richler moved to England, where his next six novels were published. Most of these novels revealed their author as a severe, often shocking critic of the Jewish ghetto (Son of a Smaller Hero), of Jewish greed and ruthlessness (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz), of Canadian nationalism (The Incomparable Atuk), and of the North American entertainment industry (Cocksure). The writing often reflects a certain degree of ambivalence about the author’s ethnic identity, with the need to reject dominating the inclination to affirm. When Richler returned to Canada—to “the roots of his discontent”—in 1972, his many years of “exile” in Europe had heightened his own sense of self as a Jewish Canadian writer. Richler has not always seen himself as others saw him: abrasive, arrogant, and perverse. Richler has been described as an 409

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anti-Canadian Canadian and an anti-Semitic Jew. Richler sees himself as a moralist who writes out of a sense of “disgust with things as they are,” who debunks the bankrupt values that characterize his culture and his ethnic community. His most recent books establish him as a more evenhanded critic of Jewish and Canadian identity, one who affirms the need for the bonds of family and community in an unstable, corrupt world.

Son of a Smaller Hero Type of work: Novel First published: 1955 Son of a Smaller Hero is the story of an angry young man’s confused search for his identity. In what is generally regarded as an apprentice work, Richler presents a fairly realistic story of a rebellious and rather self-centered hero who struggles to escape the restrictive identity that his ethnic community and his society would place on him. Noah Adler is a second-generation Canadian, born and raised in the Montreal Jewish ghetto. His family’s strife and the religious and social strictures of his milieu, which he finds stifling, impel him to leave in search of freedom and selfhood in the gentile world. That world, too, fails to fulfill the hero’s quest. Through a literature class, Noah meets Professor Theo Hall, who befriends him and takes him into his home. Soon, Hall’s wife, Miriam, does more than befriend their boarder and eventually leaves her husband to live with Noah. The romance, so passionately pursued by Noah at first, fades rather quickly when he discovers that the possessive love of and responsibility for a woman can turn into its own kind of ghetto. In addition, the ghetto of his upbringing still has its hold on him. When his father dies in a fire, Noah abandons Mordecai Richler (Christopher Morris) Miriam and returns to his fam-

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ily, no longer the adolescent rebel that he was. Neither has he become a quiescent conformist. When the Jewish community attempts to raise his feckless father to sainthood, he demurs. When his rich Uncle Max greedily tries to exploit the dead father’s new status, Noah resists. When Noah discovers his grandfather’s secret, repressed, lifelong love for a gentile woman he met years before in Europe, this clarifies Noah’s own predicament. The ways of his family and of his ghetto community cannot be his. When Noah’s ambitious mother becomes increasingly emotionally demanding, Noah knows that he cannot stay. The story ends as it began: Noah leaves home, this time for Europe. He turns his back on his ailing, grasping mother and on his lonely, isolated grandfather. He turns his back on his restrictive ethnic community. The search for self continues, but it is a search permeated with ambivalence. Noah has found that he cannot affirm his identity apart from community, family, and place. His confusion and torment stem from his problem that he can neither embrace nor finally reject community, family, or place. He chooses to escape them for the time being, but his search for an independent identity leads finally to a sense of futility.

Suggested readings Coles Editorial Board. “The Appenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and Other Works: Notes. Toronto: Coles, 1997. Davidson, Arnold E. Mordecai Richler. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983. Ramraj, Victor J. Mordecai Richler. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Sheps, G. David, ed. Mordecai Richler. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Woodcock, George. Mordecai Richler. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. —Henry J. Baron

Tomás Rivera

Tomás Rivera Born: Crystal City, Texas; December 22, 1935 Died: Fontana, California; May 16, 1984 Rivera’s writings sparked an explosion of work about the Chicano identity and focused attention on the experiences of migrant workers. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: Always and Other Poems, 1973; . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra/and the earth did not part, 1971, rev. ed., 1977 (also translated as and the earth did not devour him, 1987); The Harvest: Short Stories, 1988; The Searchers: Collected Poetry, 1990 Tomás Rivera was the first winner of the Quinto Sol literary prize for the best Chicano work. His death cut short a life full of achievements and promise. Rivera was born to a family of migrant farmworkers in south Texas, and much of his writing is derived from his childhood experiences in a poor, Spanishspeaking, nomadic subculture. Rivera began college in 1954, with concerns for his people motivating him to become a teacher. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1958 and two master’s degrees, in 1964 and 1969, from Southwest Texas State University. He received his Doctorate in Romance Literatures in 1969 from the University of Oklahoma. His career as a college teacher and administrator included appointments in Texas at Sam Houston State University, Trinity University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio and at El Paso. In 1979, Rivera became the youngest person and the first member of a minority group to be appointed chancellor of a campus of the University of California. Rivera spent his last five years at the helm of the University of California at Riverside. Rivera’s poems and short stories are included in many anthologies of Chicano or Latino literature. He is recognized as one of the first to give voice to the silent Latino underclass of the American Southwest. His works explore the difficulties of growing up, of sorting truth from myth, and of finding one’s identity and self-esteem in the midst of oppressive poverty. The struggle to overcome internal and external difficulties is portrayed vividly in his novel and the earth did not part and in such stories as “Eva and Daniel,” “The Harvest,” and “Zoo Island.”

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and the earth did not part Type of work: Novel First published: . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra/and the earth did not part, 1971 (rev. ed. 1977; also translated as and the earth did not devour him) And the Earth Did Not Part, Rivera’s only published novel, exerted a great influence on the blossoming of Chicano literature. The book explores the psychological and external circumstances of a boy who is coming of age in a Mexican American migrant family. The novel is a collection of disjointed narratives, including twelve stories and thirteen vignettes, told with various voices. This unusual structure evokes impressions of a lifestyle in which the continuity of existence is repeatedly broken by forced migration, in which conflicting values tug at the emerging self, and in which poverty creates a deadening sameness that erases time. The story begins with “The Lost Year,” which indicates the boy has lost touch with his identity and with the reality of events. Several sections portray the dismal, oppressed condition of migrant farmworkers. “Hand in His Pocket” tells of a wicked couple—immigrants who prey on their own people. In “A Silvery Night,” the boy first calls the devil, then decides that the devil does not exist. Religious awakening continues in the title chapter, in which the boy curses God and is not punished—the earth remains solid. The nature of sin, the mystery of sex, and the injustices and tragedies visited upon his people are all confusing to the boy. Brief moments of beauty are eclipsed by injuries and horrible deaths. A mother struggles to buy a few Christmas presents for her children and is thwarted by the disturbing confusion and noise of the town. In a swindle, a family loses their only photograph of a son killed in the Korean War. Bouncing from place to place in rickety trucks, the workers lose all sense of continuity. The boy becomes a man, hiding under his house. The final scene offers a glimmer of hope, as he climbs a tree and imagines that someone in another tree can see him. The simple language and humble settings make the book accessible, but the novel’s unique structure and symbolism present challenges to the reader. and the earth did not part has been reprinted several times, and a retelling in English (This Migrant Earth, 1985) was published by Rolando Hinojosa. A film version, and the earth did not swallow him, was released in 1994.

Suggested readings Foster, David William. Handbook of Latin American Literature. New York: Garland, 1992. Lattin, Vernon E., Rolando Hinojosa, and Gary D. Keller, eds. Tomás Rivera, 1935-1984: The Man and His Work. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual Review Press, 1988. Olivares, Julian, ed. International Studies of Tomás Rivera. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1986.

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_______, ed. Tomás Rivera: The Complete Works. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1991. Rivera, Tomás. The Man and His Work. Edited by Vernon E. Lattin, Rolando Hinojosa, and Gary D. Keller. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual Review Press, 1988. —Laura L. Klure

Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez Born: San Francisco, California; July 31, 1944

Rodriguez’s autobiography explores the identity of one whose roots can be traced to two cultures. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, 1982; Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, 1992 Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory is a collection of essays tracing his alienation from his Mexican heritage. The son of Mexican American immigrants, Rodriguez was not able to speak English when he began school in Sacramento, California. The Catholic nuns who taught him asked that his parents speak English to him at home so that he could hear English spoken all the time. When his parents complied, Rodriguez experienced his first rupture between his original culture and his newly acquired culture. That initial experience compelled him to see the difference between “public” language—English—and “private” language—Spanish. To succeed in a world controlled by those who spoke English, to succeed in the public arena, Rodriguez learned that he had to choose public language over the private language spoken within his home. Hence he opted for alienation from his Mexican heritage and roots, a choice that he viewed with resignation and regret. His educational journey continued as he proceeded to earn a master’s degree and then to become a Fulbright scholar studying English Renaissance literature in London. At that time, he decided to leave academic life, believing that it provided an advantage to Mexican Americans at the expense of those who did not possess this hyphenated background. Rodriguez proceeded to become an opponent of affirmative action, and details his opposition to this policy in Hunger of Memory. Another policy to which he voices his opposition is bilingual education. Believing that “public educators in a public schoolroom have an obligation to teach a public language,” Rodriguez has used various opportunities—interviews, his autobiography, television appearances—to emphasize his view of the relationship between a person’s identity in a majority culture and his or her need to learn the language of that culture. Another component of Rodriguez’s identity that he has explored through various means is his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Having been raised in a traditional Catholic home, he was accustomed to the symbols 415

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and language of the Catholic Church as they were before the changes that resulted from the Second Vatican Council, which convened in 1962. After this council, the rituals of the Church were dramatically simplified and the liturgy was changed from Latin to vulgar tongues, such as English. According to Rodriguez, these changes in the Roman Catholic Church challenged the identity of people whose early sense of self was shaped by traditional Catholicism. A thoughtful and articulate writer regarding the tensions experienced by Mexican Americans growing up in America and by a Catholic struggling with the changes in the Catholic Church, Richard Rodriguez has given voice to the frequently unspoken difficulties of possessing a complex identity.

Hunger of Memory Type of work: Memoir First published: 1982 Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez is a memoir that explores Rodriguez’s coming-of-age in an America that challenges him to understand what it is to be a Mexican American and what it is to be a Catholic in America. At the heart of this autobiography is Rodriguez’s recognition that his is a position of alienation, a position that he accepts with resignation and regret. As the title of this collection of autobiographical pieces suggests, he remembers his early childhood with nostalgia, while acknowledging that his coming-of-age has resulted in his displacement from that simple, secure life. The most critical aspect of his education and his development of an adult self is language. He explores his first recollection of language in the opening essay, which describes his hearing his name spoken in English for the first time when he attends a Catholic elementary school in Sacramento, California. He is startled by the recognition that the impersonality and public quality of this announcement herald his own adoption of public language—English—at the expense of his private language—Spanish. Rodriguez has begun to be educated as a public person with a public language. This education, as he recalls it, occurred before the advent of bilingual education, an event that Rodriguez soundly criticizes. In his view bilingual education prevents children from learning the public language that will be their passport to success in the public world, and he uses his own experience—being a bilingual child who was educated without bilingual education as it was introduced into the American school system in the 1960’s—as an example. Rodriguez offers himself as another example in criticizing affirmative action programs. Turning down offers to teach at various postsecondary educational institutions that he believed wanted to hire him simply because he was Latino, Rodriguez began what has been his persistent criticism of affirmative action policies in America.

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Still another object of his criticism in Hunger of Memory is the Roman Catholic Church and its changed liturgy, language, and rituals. Recalling the religious institution that had shaped his identity, he regrets the changes that he believes have simplified and therefore diminished the mystery and majesty that he associates with the traditional Catholic Church. He is nostalgic about what has been lost while accepting the reality of the present. In providing an account of his education, Rodriguez also provides an account of his profession: writing. From his early choice of a public language to his later choice to write about this decision, he paints a self-portrait of a man whose love of words and ideas compels him to explore his past. Rodriguez accepts the adult who writes in English and who writes about the person whose identity is defined by his struggle to find his own voice.

Suggested readings Rodriguez, Richard. “Mexico’s Children.” The American Scholar 55, no. 2 (Spring, 1986): 161-177. Zwieg, Paul. “Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez.” The New York Times Book Review, February 28, 1982, 1. —Marjorie Smelstor

Ninotchka Rosca

Ninotchka Rosca Born: Manila, Philippines; 1946

Rosca was the first Filipina to publish a serious political novel in the United States. Traditions: Filipino American Principal works: Bitter Country and Other Stories, 1970; The Monsoon Collection, 1983; Endgame: The Fall of Marcos, 1987; State of War, 1988; Twice Blessed, 1992 Ninotchka Rosca accepted as her pen name that of the Russian radical played in an American film by Greta Garbo. Rosca thought of herself as a militant liberal among the students at the University of the Philippines. Her columns as associate editor of Graphic magazine after 1968 reinforced her image as a controversial figure. Her first fiction complained about the political passivity of the educated elite, and she remained a friend of those former classmates who joined the New People’s Army against the rule-by-decree of President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1973, shortly after Marcos declared martial law, she was arrested and placed for several months in Camp Crame Detention Center. She used her experience there to provide realistic detail for nine stories about parallels between military detention and a nation run under rules of “constitutional authoritarianism.” The Monsoon Collection was published in Australia in order to safeguard its author. Rosca found her role as a nationalist difficult when loyalty was defined as adhering to Marcos’s rule. By 1977, Rosca had gone into political self-exile among relatives connected with the University of Hawaii at Maona, where she taught. Later she moved to New York City to be closer to opportunities within the publishing industry, despite her misgivings that several American presidents had sponsored Marcos’s rise to power on the premise that he was anti-Communist. After his forced flight from the Philippines in February, 1986, she returned briefly to Manila and later, with Endgame, contributed to reportage on Marcos’s final days. Although Rosca remained in the United States, her focus on the Philippines did not falter. She became the U.S. representative of GABRIELA, an organization named after Gabriela Silang, an eighteenth century warrior who continued the revolt against Spain after her husband’s death. GABRIELA in America protects overseas workers from various kinds of abuse. She has also maintained a column of commentary in Filipinas, a popular magazine on the West Coast. Since the late 1980’s Rosca has written novels describing the militant role of youth organizations in the Philippines. 418

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State of War Type of work: Novel First published: 1988 State of War’s dominant story line portrays a failed attempt by young radicals to assassinate Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos (referred to only as The Commander). The book’s larger concern is with the effect of centuries of colonialism on the Filipino people’s search for national identity. Portions of the novel try to reconstruct the ancestry of the principal characters during centuries of Spanish rule and fifty years of American occupation. Even after independence is achieved in 1946, freedom still is withheld from the people by troops serving The Commander. “Internal colonialism,” controlled by the Filipinos’ own countryman, merely replaces the tyranny that formerly came from outside. Ninotchka Rosca describes a nation forever being betrayed and, therefore, forever in the process of only beginning to find itself. The seriousness of the assassination attempt is masked by the resplendent color and the joyful sounds of the festival that surround the attempt. Annually, in the Ati-Atihan celebration, Filipinos celebrate the clash between the Spanish and the native islanders. Anna Villaverde, who during martial law once was detained by military authorities because of her closeness to Manolo Montreal, a radical oppositionist who is assumed dead, becomes aware that Colonel Urbano Amor, her original torturer, is securing the area for The Commander’s visit. Anna is protected from exposure by Adrian, a young member of the elite class. Then he is captured, and under the influence of drugs he is forced to reveal parts of the plot. Trying to compensate for this betrayal by warning Anna, he becomes crippled when the bomb intended for The Commander explodes prematurely. As for Manolo Montreal, he is not dead after all but has joined forces with his previous captors. He is prepared to betray the plans of the young conspirators, but Anna manages to kill him. What begins as a festival of song and dance ends in a bloody melee with The Commander still alive and in charge. The only hope for social change, the novel suggests, lies in Anna and Adrian’s son, who will have to become a historian of the people and storyteller of collective memories and democratic ideals. He will be expected to serve as a reminder of the recurring frustration of Filipino hopes for self-definition during centuries of foreign rule. The novel’s storyline is filled with intrigue from all sides, continuously defeating the examples of reform and of resistance that, historically, only relatively few rebellious nationalists have courageously provided. A persistent “state of war,” Rosca implies, has long existed, and true independence has yet to be achieved. Anna’s dream of a different future among peasants, who want only a right to the land that they till, is a declaration of faith rather than of hope. Romantic as Anna’s expectations of democracy might seem to be under the circumstances, the only alternative is to surrender hope for a free society. It is not in her nature to give up the beliefs that make her life worth living; and in the author, she has found an ally.

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Twice Blessed Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 Twice Blessed is a comic parable. It shares with Rosca’s more dramatic State of War (1988) a lasting concern for “a nation struggling to be born.” Its method is less confrontational than Rosca’s earlier work, but it goes beyond mockery of President Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady Imelda Marcos who, on the novel’s publication date, were already in exile in Hawaii. The basic satire exposes a phenomenon in Filipino culture larger than the behavior of a single ruling couple: instincts of the wealthy to preserve their power through arranged marriages. This hoarding of power, Rosca has long argued as a journalist, is the source not only of vast class differences but also of elitist willingness to collaborate with foreign enemies in order to survive. Through comic irony and despite the novel’s farcical features, Rosca suggests that the greed responsible for putting dynastic wealth before the welfare of the people eventually can be self-destructive. The sibling rule of Katerina and Hector Basbas in a tropical Pacific country is reminiscent of what several commentators have called the “conjugal dictatorship” of the Marcoses. Katerina’s attempts to forget her humble beginnings resemble Imelda’s well-publicized delusions of grandeur, and the collapse of a heavy crane on the roof of the inaugural structure seems inspired by the fatal collapse of the Manila International Film Festival building in 1983 because of haste in its construction. In addition, Imelda not only was actually considered Ferdinand’s replacement if his health failed but also ran (unsuccessfully) as a presidential candidate in 1992. These are just a few of the historical parallels borrowed by Rosca to provide realistic dimensions to a tale that otherwise might seem farfetched. Reality can be much more outlandish than fiction. Rosca’s fictional account portrays what might have resulted had Hector crashed in his airplane, been lost, and been considered dead. His twin sister Katerina seems less to grieve his possible loss than suddenly to imagine herself as his replacement. Trying to forget her lowly origins, Katerina’s ambition has only been whetted by her marriage to aristocratic Armand Gloriosa. Once dreams of individual glory have been placed before the nation’s needs, corruption spreads even to such opponents to oppressive government as Teresa Tikloptihod. She is the headstrong daughter of a provincial governor who at first resisted strenuously collaboration with the tyranny of Basbas. Her independent thinking washes away like sand when she allies herself with Katerina. The military, in the person of Captain de Naval, also decides to grasp this unforeseen opportunity for its own advancement. Those events recall Marcos’s secretary of defense, Ponce Enrile, who, having fallen out with Marcos, tried to ensure Marcos’s defeat in the 1986 election. Enrile backed Corazon Aquino, although with the intent of establishing a government run by a military junta. Even with Hector’s return,

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coups, countercoups (such as those suffered by Aquino during her rule), and the fortification of the presidential palace follow. If this farce were to be taken at face value, the prospects for the Philippines would be grim. Rosca’s witty, colorful style, however, makes the novel seem closer to light opera. Its “music” is very different from the gongs and drums of her novel about the attempted assassination of Marcos, State of War. The source of Rosca’s implied hope in Twice Blessed seems to be that when greed becomes so deeply embedded in a small class of people, alliances among even the most powerful can turn to bitter rivalry, and the system of social oppression can self-destruct.

Suggested readings Casper, Leonard. “Four Filipina Writers.” Amerasia Journal, Winter, 1998, 143. _______. In Burning Ambush: Essays, 1985-1990. Metro Manila, Philippines: New Day, 1991. _______. Sunsurfers Seen from Afar: Critical Essays, 1991-1996. Metro Manila, Philippines: Anvil, 1996. —Leonard Casper

Philip Roth

Philip Roth Born: Newark, New Jersey; March 19, 1933

Roth’s comic fiction has consistently challenged definitions of Jewish identity in late twentieth century America. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories, 1959; Letting Go, 1962; When She Was Good, 1967; Portnoy’s Complaint, 1969; Our Gang, 1971; The Breast, 1972; The Great American Novel, 1973; My Life as a Man, 1974; Reading Myself and Others, 1975 (expanded, 1985); The Professor of Desire, 1977; Zuckerman Bound, 1985 (containing The Ghost Writer, 1979; Zuckerman Unbound, 1981; The Anatomy Lesson, 1983; and Epilogue: The Prague Orgy); The Counterlife, 1986; The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography, 1988; Deception, 1990; Patrimony: A True Story, 1991; Operation Shylock: A Confession, 1993; Sabbath’s Theater, 1995; American Pastoral, 1997; The Human Stain, 2000 Philip Roth’s youth in a largely Jewish neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, established his first subject: the ambivalence felt by American Jews on facing assimilation into American culture, which entails the loss of much, possibly all, of their distinctive Jewishness. Roth grew up in a middle-class home where, he writes, “the Jewish family was an inviolate haven against every form of menace, from personal isolation to gentile hostility.” Roth has been unwilling, however, simply to depict the Jewish family as a haven. His inclination to challenge Jewish American propriety and his extravagant comic imagination have won for him a controversial place in American letters. After an education at Bucknell University and the University of Chicago, Roth earned with the publication of Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories the National Book Award and condemnation as an anti-Semite by some Jewish leaders. Roth’s tendency to use details from his life in his fiction has invited misinterpretations of his work as autobiography. An unhappy and short-lived marriage to Margaret Martinson, for example, was translated by Roth into My Life as a Man, in which Margaret’s fictional surrogate attracts and devastates the protagonist in part because she is not Jewish. Roth’s second wife, the Jewish actress Claire Bloom, may have provided in her English background a context for Roth’s alter ego, the writer Nathan Zuckerman, to explore his identity as a Jew in The Counterlife, in which Zuckerman becomes involved with a Christian Englishwoman. A suicidal breakdown in 1987, caused by medication prescribed for Roth after minor surgery, appears undisguised in 422

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Operation Shylock: A Confession, a probing quest for cultural and personal identity. Roth’s writing can be seen in stages, from the early realist fiction, to the discovery of his comic voice in Portnoy’s Complaint, to the mid-career novels featuring Jewish writer-protagonists, to the works of the late 1980’s and 1990’s that either overtly recount Roth’s past or collapse the distinction between fiction and reality. Throughout, however, the thread that weaves the work together is Roth’s interest in exploring and exposing the Jewish American self.

Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories Type of work: Novella and short fiction First published: 1959 Roth’s first published volume, Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories, won for the young writer not only the National Book Award in 1960 but also accusations, as a result of the book’s comically piercing portraits of middleclass American Jews, of Roth’s harboring self-hatred. The ambivalent exploration of Jewish American life in Goodbye, Columbus, and its mixed reception among Jewish readers who were sensitive to the public image of Jews established two of the central themes of Roth’s fiction: a frank and often ironic look at Jewish American identity, and an intense but playful examination of the relationship between art and life. In the novella Goodbye, Columbus, Neil Klugman’s confrontation with his Jewish American identity is represented by his love affair with Brenda Patimkin. Brenda signifies the American Dream, her parents’ suburban prosperity symbolized by a refrigerator in the basement overflowing with fresh fruit. Neil’s ambivalence toward the Patimkins’ conspicuous consumpPhilip Roth (Nancy Crampton) tion and their eager assimila-

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tion into American culture is expressed by the guilt he feels when he helps himself to fruit from the refrigerator. Although Neil finally rejects Brenda, the novella closes without offering Neil a clear sense of where he might belong. Roth poses other choices in the book’s subsequent stories. Ozzie Freedman in “The Conversion of the Jews” believes he must choose between Jewish authority and the American notion of personal freedom. In outrage at his rabbi’s denial that an omnipotent God could indeed have caused Mary to conceive without intercourse, Ozzie threatens to leap from the roof of the synagogue, and demands that the rabbi, his mother, and the assembled crowd kneel and affirm belief that God can do anything he wants, with the clear implication that God could have created Jesus in the manner that Christians believe. When Ozzie experiences the power of self-definition at this ironic climax, Roth suggests that Judaism, personified by the rabbi, must confront the shaping forces of the American context if it is not to lose its adherents. In “Defender of the Faith,” Sergeant Nathan Marx questions whether Jews are obligated to define themselves in relation to other Jews. After a Jewish recruit repeatedly manipulates Nathan for favors during basic training, he realizes that his greater responsibility to his fellow Jews lies in refusing to let them be different, despite the dangers that assimilation poses. As if Roth is in dialogue with himself, however, the final story in the collection reverses Nathan’s decision. Eli of “Eli, the Fanatic” dons, as a challenge to his “progressive suburban community,” the stale black clothes of a recent Jewish immigrant, and, with them, an identity that refuses assimilation into American life. Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories, then, represents Roth’s first and notable attempt to explore the problem of Jewish American identity from a variety of angles and without resolution.

Portnoy’s Complaint Type of work: Novel First published: 1969 Philip Roth’s third novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, takes the form of an outrageous, comic rant by Alexander Portnoy to his psychoanalyst, whose help Portnoy seeks because he feels that his life has come to be a “Jewish joke.” Portnoy’s impassioned, self-absorbed monologues explore his childhood and his erotic relationships. He wishes to locate the source of his pain, composed of guilt, shame, desire, and emotional paralysis, and to free himself from his past. The best-selling novel shocked readers with its obscenity, graphic sexual descriptions, and exaggerations of Jewish stereotypes. Portnoy’s early memories include his mother’s intense overprotectiveness and warnings against pleasure, his father’s emasculation by the gentile firm for which he works, and his own efforts to loosen the chains that bind him by breaking taboos, especially by frequent, ill-timed sexual escapades. His furi-

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ous attempts at “self-loving” can be seen as symbolic expressions of self-loathing, intricately related to his position as a Jew in America. The satiric presentation of Portnoy as a figure of excess who wants to put the “id back in Yid” and the “oy back in goy,” provided Roth with a way to inquire into the complacency and neuroses of assimilated Jews in gentile America. In the postwar years, the Holocaust—the “saga of the suffering Jews”—defined Jewish American identity and encouraged Jews to assimilate inconspicuously. Portnoy’s ambivalence toward this Jewish response is represented in his adolescence and adulthood by his relationships with a series of gentile women. Portnoy desires simultaneously to flaunt and to reject himself as a Jew. In each case, he uses women to transgress religious and sexual taboos, imagining that his wild and occasionally abusive relationships with them will allow him to “discover America. Conquer America.” Yet each of these relationships results for him in intense guilt. His acknowledgement that his self-hatred makes him unable to love causes him to flail against his guilt with further transgressions, ending in more guilt, trapping him in a vicious circle. The novel ends with Portnoy’s primal scream, expressing his recognition that he cannot spring himself “from the settling of scores! the pursuit of dreams! from this hopeless, senseless loyalty to the long ago!” Portnoy, Roth’s Jewish American Everyman, cannot escape his past. He struggles to discover who he is, as a Jew and as a human being.

Suggested readings Baumgarten, Murray, and Barbara Gottfried. Understanding Philip Roth. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. Bloom, Harold, ed. Philip Roth: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Halio, Jay L. Philip Roth Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1992. Milbauer, Asher Z., and Donald G. Watson, eds. Reading Philip Roth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Pinsker, Sanford. The Comedy That “Hoits”: An Essay on the Fiction of Philip Roth. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975. Rand, Naomi R. Silko, Morrison, and Roth: Studies in Survival. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Roth, Philip. The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988. Searles, George J., ed. Conversations with Philip Roth. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Walden, Daniel, ed. The Changing Mosaic: From Cahan to Malamud, Roth, and Ozick. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. —Debra Shostak

MurielR ukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser Born: New York, New York; December 15, 1913 Died: New York, New York; February 12, 1980 Rukeyser’s poems gave voice to social consciousness, embracing all ethnic identities that she saw being treated unjustly.

Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Theory of Flight, 1935; Mediterranean, 1938; U.S. One, 1938; A Turning Wind: Poems, 1939; The Soul and Body of John Brown, 1940; Wake Island, 1942; Beast in View, 1944; The Green Wave, 1948; Orpheus, 1949; Elegies, 1949; Selected Poems, 1951; Body of Waking, 1958; Waterlily Fire: Poems 1935-1962, 1962; The Outer Banks, 1967; The Speed of Darkness, 1968; Mazes, 1970; Twenty-nine Poems, 1972; Breaking Open: New Poems, 1973; The Gates: Poems, 1976; The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, 1978; Out of Silence: Selected Poems, 1992 Muriel Rukeyser’s poetic career began early with the publication of Theory of Flight in the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1935. Her poetry reflected her intense personal passion, her call to freedom, and her search for justice. Readers may detect the influence of Walt Whitman in her sense of American identity as something all-embracing. Rukeyser’s sense of personal responsibility and social protest may have been forged by her political experience. Two years before her first book of poetry was published, while covering the Scottsboro trials for Vassar College’s leftist Student Review, Rukeyser was arrested—and caught typhoid fever while in jail. This event ignited her social awareness as evidenced in her writing and subsequent actions. This particular event is recalled as “The Trial” in Theory of Flight. Wherever Rukeyser saw oppression, she became involved. To an extent, the social and political history of the United States, as distilled through the reactions of a female Jewish intellectual activist, may be read through Rukeyser’s poems. She supported the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. Later, she was jailed while protesting the Vietnam War. She rallied in South Korea against the death sentence of the poet Kim Chi-ha. The event then became the focus of her poem, “The Gates.” Bringing the perspective of her Jewish upbringing to her poetry, Rukeyser wrote about the horrors of World War II. Though her concern about the oppression of the Jews may have stemmed personally from her religion, she had already demonstrated her global concern about fascism. Rukeyser’s early marriage did not last; later she became the single parent 426

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of a son. Although motherhood became a subject in her poetry and she wrote about women from a feminist perspective, Rukeyser was never as singly feminist in her poetry as others of her generation. Still, her influence as a woman writer on those who followed her was acknowledged by Anne Sexton, who named her “Muriel, mother of everyone,” and who kept Rukeyser’s The Speed of Darkness on her desk.

Muriel Rukeyser (Library of Congress)

“Ajanta” Type of work: Poetry First published: 1944, in Beast in View “Ajanta” is a long poem written in five subtitled parts: “The Journey,” “The Cave,” “Les Tendresses Bestiales,” “Black Blood,” and “The Broken World.” The poem, written in free verse, is given form by the progression of the journey it describes, in which the poet goes into herself in search of a sense of the unity of life. It is an exploration of her spirit, mind, and body. “Ajanta” is named for the great painted caves in India, famous for their magnificent religious frescoes painted by Buddhist monks. Rukeyser uses this setting in her poem to suggest the sacredness of her own interior places, her

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Ajanta, both psychic and physical. The figures of gods, men, and animals in the poem are accurate descriptions of the caves’ artwork. “Ajanta” opens Beast in View, Rukeyser’s fourth book of poems. The “beast” she hunts on her spiritual voyage is not always in view—in “Ajanta” it remains hidden from her until her final reconciliation in the cave to which it has led her. The beast is her innermost self, what makes her who she is, what is vital to her being. The thematic energy of “Ajanta” is devoted to capturing the beast—herself in her own myth of herself—so that she can be a whole person again. Because the poem is about transformation, and adapting to changes in life and the world, the beast in “Ajanta” often appears in disguises. All these masks are part of the poet’s personality and her changes. She seeks to unify them and accept them all. The search for self-identity in “Ajanta,” however, is not an end in itself. Beginning with descriptions of war atrocities, the poem reminds readers that to know oneself is vital also for the sake of the world in which one lives. The poet seeks the strong armor of self-knowledge, rather than the armor of rage, in order to know better how to aid the struggles of those who have been betrayed or who are suffering loss. The “world of the shadowed and alone” is a place in which the conscientious must fight for those in need and confront “the struggles of the moon.” In “Letter to the Front” (also from Beast in View), Rukeyser praises the healing power that women can offer the world, especially in time of war. She envisioned female sensibilities transforming traditional man, or the traditional masculine ideal. This vision laid a path for later women poets, such as Adrienne Rich, who continue to explore similar themes. The cave is a symbol for female sensibility, mystery, and strength. It is a dark interior, a place of hiding or hibernation, a place of meditation, a vault from which one emerges reborn, as did Jesus. It is also a source of life: Its watery, quiet space nurtures, like a womb. Its interior can be mysterious yet comforting, black, and frightening, or cool and beckoning. “Ajanta,” said Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), is “an exploration . . . of her own interior—in every sense.” That is, as a poet and a woman, Rukeyser is interested in her mind and in her body’s flesh and form and how they shape her quest for fulfillment. The beauty, complexity, and energy of “Ajanta” has made it one of her most famous and powerful poems.

“Eyes of Night-Time” Type of work: Poetry First published: 1948, in The Green Wave “Eyes of Night-Time” is a full-throated song about the beauty of night and darkness. This short poem in free verse expresses the poet’s awe over nature’s beauty at night. The first stanza describes with passionate wonder the creatures that see in the dark. In the second stanza, the poet considers what

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human beings may see in the darkness, or what the darkness may reveal to them. For Rukeyser, “night-time” has strong metaphorical connections to the human spirit’s darkness or hidden truths. The poem, while offering minute observations on nature at night, also deals with self-examination and attempts to comment on human nature in general. In many of her poems, Rukeyser relies on a fabric woven of imagery and rhythm to provide formal unity. The Green Wave (1948), in which “Eyes of Night-Time” first appeared, contains other poems in which she experimented with her powers of observation and concentrated on new rhythms. Rukeyser preferred not to use traditional forms or patterns of fixed rhyme and meter. She wanted a poetry in which the material would generate its own form. Therefore, rhythm—the cadence, pace, and momentum of the line—was important to her. The music of the poem ought to allow it to echo and suggest—perhaps reproduce—the natural rhythms of the world she was attempting to describe. In the poem, images of light and dark intertwine; points of light continually pierce the darkness. These emerging lights represent, as images of light often do in poetry, possible revelations of truth. The play between dark and light, shadow and eye shine, gives the poem both tension and balance. Dark things bear light: “the illumined shadow sea” and “the light of wood” are two examples. Images of darkness inhabit every corner of “Eyes of Night-Time.” The poet has studied night, and nighttime is this poem’s territory. The earth’s night and the human spirit’s darkness, metaphorical counterparts in the poem, are fertile places the poet considers with full respect. The soul’s darkest, most threatening realizations, she knows, will reveal the light (self-knowledge) that is needed to free the “prisoners in the forest . . . in the almost total dark.” Rukeyser’s poem offers her ecstatic awareness of the healing power of darkness: If one goes deeply enough into one’s own darkness, one finds, paradoxically, the light of truth that heals dark sufferings and misgivings. This light is the “glitter” she recognizes in the last line as “gifts” given, really, by all those people who have gone before her and all those who are alive now. The poem is about examining oneself and one’s spirit. It is also a statement on the need for human unity. “And in our bodies the eyes of the dead and the living” is a powerful way of saying that human beings inhabit not only the earth, but also one another. Like the creatures of nighttime—the cat, moth, fly, beetle, and toad—humans are interdependent and must rely on one another to survive.

Suggested readings Bernikow, Louise. “Muriel at Sixty-five: Still Ahead of Her Time.” MS, January, 1979, 14-16.

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Gould, Jean. Modern American Woman Poets. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985. Herzog, Anne F., and Janet E. Kaufman, eds. How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet? The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Kertesz, Louise. The Poetic Vision of Muriel Rukeyser. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. —Holly Dworken Cooley/JoAnn Balingit

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez (Wilsonia Benita Driver) Born: Birmingham, Alabama; September 9, 1934

Among the black poets who emerged during the 1960’s, Sanchez has stood out for her activism. Traditions: African American Principal works: Homecoming, 1969; We a BaddDDD People, 1970; A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, 1973; Love Poems, 1973; I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, 1978; homegirls & handgrenades, 1984; Under a Soprano Sky, 1987; Wounded in the House of a Friend, 1995; Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, 1999 Sonia Sanchez’s emergence as a writer and political activist in the 1960’s marked the beginning of the career of a poet, playwright, and cultural worker. Sanchez is noted as a poet and as a black activist committed to the belief that the role of the artist is functional. Sanchez’s political interpretation of the situation of African Americans informs the creative forms she produces. The activist spirit has remained a constant in her work. Sonia Sanchez’s mother died when Sanchez was one year old. Her father, Wilson Driver, Jr., a jazz musician, moved the family to New York when Sanchez was nine years old; she was thrust into the jazz world of her father. She entered Hunter College and received her bachelor’s degree in political science in 1955. As a graduate student, Sanchez studied with Louise Bogan at New York University. Bogan, a poet and literary critic, wrote restrained, concise, and deeply intellectual poetry, often compared to that of the English metaphysical poets. Bogan’s influence upon Sanchez is most evident in the conciseness of her lyrical poetry; Bogan’s encouragement caused Sanchez to pursue the life of a poet. Sanchez formed a writers’ workshop and soon began reading poetry around New York City. Sanchez’s early works were published in little magazines; later they were published in black journals. Homecoming, Sanchez’s first anthology of poetry, placed her among poets who espoused a philosophy of functional art. Functional art is characterized by a sense of social purpose, information, instruction, and inspiration. Sanchez’s improvisational style combines strategies common to black speech. This is particularly evident in her early poetry. Indirection, or signifying, is a key element of this poetic style. Another key element of Sanchez’s 431

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style is her oral delivery, reminiscent of improvisation in jazz. Her creative vision is also expressed in her inventive poetic forms. Sanchez’s speechlike, versatile style is evident in all of her poetry.

I’ve Been a Woman Type of work: Poetry First published: 1978 I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems is a compilation of selections from Sanchez’s major works up to 1978. This collection offers a cross section of the themes that characterize Sonia Sanchez’s poetic vision. Sanchez’s work balances the private and the public. The private, or introspective poems, are intensely personal. The public poems cover a number of concerns. Selections from Homecoming (1969), We a BaddDDD People (1970), Love Poems (1973), A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973), and Generations: Selected Poetry 1969-1985 (1986) make up I’ve Been a Woman. Themes include issues of identity among African Americans. Sanchez’s work is characterized by her ability to offer clear-eyed commentary on African American conditions while offering poetry of destiny and self-determination. For example, one of Sanchez’s ongoing concerns is drug addiction among African Americans. In works such as Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995), she focuses this concern on the devastating effects of addiction to crack cocaine. This intermingling of themes is found in poems such as “Summary.” This poem represents an example of Sanchez’s technique. She combines personal and public concerns. Within this poem, Sanchez does not allow the narrator to move inward and remain there. She seems to assume an introspective position as a momentary restful pose. In this energizing space, the narrator is renewed and arrives at a political solution to problems noted in the poems. The poems included in these sections are examples of Sanchez’s virtuosity as a poet. Section 5 is devoted exclusively to Sanchez’s “Haikus/Tankas & Other Love Syllables.” Use of forms offers an example of the poet’s technique. This collection offers an excellent example of Sanchez’s range as an artist. In the various sections of I’ve Been a Woman, the speaker of Sanchez’s poetry is revealed as a quester for identity and resolution. Distinguished from male quest epics, Sanchez’s quest focuses on the desire to embark on a quest not only for herself but also for other women as well. The knowledge that the quester seeks is assumed to be available in the person of an Earth Mother who can help the quester understand the relationship between past and present. Such a figure can also help the quester learn to have faith in the future.

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Suggested readings Gabbin, Joanne Veal. “The Southern Imagination of Sonia Sanchez.” In Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, edited by Tonnette Bond Inge. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990. Jennings, Regina B. “The Blue/Black Poetics of Sonia Sanchez.” In Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, edited by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Joyce, Joyce Ann. “The Development of Sonia Sanchez: A Continuing Journey.” Indian Journal of American Studies 13 ( July, 1983): 37-71. _______. Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition. Chicago: Third World Press, 1996. Lynch, Doris. Review of Wounded in the House of a Friend, by Sonia Sanchez. Library Journal, March 15, 1995, 74. Saunders, James Robert. “Sonia Sanchez’s homegirls & handgrenades: Recalling Toomer’s Cane.” MELUS 15, no. 1 (Spring, 1988): 73-83. —Frenzella Elaine De Lancey

Thomas Sanchez

Thomas Sanchez Born: Oakland, California; February 26, 1944

Sanchez’s novels portray the diverse, multiethnic experience of twentieth century American life. Traditions: Latino Principal works: Rabbit Boss, 1973; Zoot-Suit Murders, 1978; Native Notes from the Land of Earthquake and Fire, 1979; Mile Zero, 1989; Day of the Bees, 2000 Growing up in a poor family, Thomas Sanchez was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Northern California after his mother became ill. There he developed his interest in Native American subjects, which informs his fiction. An outspoken advocate for human rights, Sanchez was a member of the Congress for Racial Equality, the United Farm Workers, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960’s. Sanchez participated in the Sacramento Valley grape strikes and the Vietnam antiwar movement. As a radio correspondent in 1973, he reported on the American Indian Movement’s takeover of the Wounded Knee Reservation in South Dakota—a protest that prompted a Senate investigation into the conditions of Indian life. In 1969, Sanchez left the United States to visit Spain, where he wrote his first novel. Rabbit Boss chronicles four generations of the Washo Indian tribe. The tribe’s leader, the Rabbit Boss, encounters the Donner Party, a group of white settlers who became snowbound in the mountains and resorted to cannibalism. A Washo legend that whites are cannibals originates from this 1846 encounter. The cannibalism overturns the civilized white man-savage Indian dichotomy. Cultures clash again in Sanchez’s next novel, Zoot-Suit Murders, a mystery set in a Los Angeles barrio of the 1940’s. The story concerns the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in a rioting neighborhood where the local zoot-suiters are regularly terrorized by sailors. A Guggenheim Fellowship and the proceeds from the sale of his house allowed Sanchez to move to Key West, Florida, where he wrote Mile Zero. Rabbit Boss describes the beginning of an American campaign against indigenous people that culminated in the destructive logic of the Vietnam War. Mile Zero is Sanchez’s attempt to connect with the post-Vietnam generation. For Sanchez, the tide of refugees fleeing Haiti and the increasing cocaine traffic through Florida stem from the same folly that fueled the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. The novel’s brilliant evocation of Key West and its political vision elicited favorable comparisons with the work of John Steinbeck and Robert Stone. 434

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Sanchez writes novels infused with the richness of America’s cultural heritage, so his work is difficult to categorize. His fiction has received laudatory reviews and other critical accolades, but it has yet to attract the scholarly attention it deserves. Nevertheless, Sanchez is an important contemporary critic of the United States’ destructive desire for “progress” at the expense of others.

Mile Zero Type of work: Novel First published: 1989 Mile Zero, Sanchez’s sweeping vision of Key West, Florida, brilliantly evokes the rich history and lyrical passion of the island. Key West is the southernmost point of the continental United States, where “Mile Zero,” the last highway sign before the Atlantic Ocean, symbolizes the end of the American road. While Key West represents the end for the downtrodden Americans who gravitate there, the island promises hope for refugees fleeing Haiti’s poverty across shark-ridden waters. Sanchez traces the island’s shifting economy from a hub of the cigar industry to “a marijuana republic,” then to “a mere cocaine principality.” Sanchez laments how the drug trade has corrupted the American Dream. Mile Zero’s main character, St. Cloud, a former antiwar activist, drowns his self-doubt in Haitian rum and ponders his inability to sacrifice himself for his beliefs. He feels a strange kinship with MK, once a soldier in Vietnam and now a dangerous smuggler who has fled Key West for South America. MK’s mysterious presence and the shadow of Vietnam permeate the book. St. Cloud imagines that his pacificism and MK’s violence are two sides of the same coin. After Vietnam, returning soldiers and protesters both found themselves cast out of society. When a Coast Guard cutter tows a refugee boat from Haiti into the harbor, Justo Tamarindo, a Cuban American police officer, drafts St. Cloud to help him prevent the deportation of the sole survivor, a boy named Voltaire. Voltaire’s sad story reveals how America thrives at the expense of the Third World. Late in the novel, Voltaire escapes from the detention center where he is waiting to be deported. The young, malnourished boy dreams he has reached a heavenly land of plenty at a garish shopping mall before he dies a tragic death. Meanwhile, Justo pursues Zobop, an enigmatic killer, who is roaming the island and leaving Voodoo-inspired clues everywhere. After Zobop is killed, Justo learns that the murderer sought purification by destruction. Like El Finito, a powerful, apocalyptic hurricane that threatens to destroy the island, Zobop believes everything must be wiped out before it can be renewed. In Mile Zero, Sanchez signals the necessity of cultural change. Vietnam is

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over, Justo thinks, but the bodies of the dead refugees augur the arrival of a new devil. America is doomed if it does not change. The novel’s ambiguous ending, in which Justo, who may have contracted AIDS, pulls St. Cloud out of the ocean, brings its readers to mile zero, a place that can be either an ending or a beginning.

Suggested readings Abeel, Erica. “A Winning Sort of Loser.” The New York Times Book Review, October 1, 1989, 7. Bonetti, Kay. “An Interview with Thomas Sanchez.” Missouri Review 14, no. 2 (1991): 76-95. Quinn, Mary Ellen. Review of Day of the Bees, by Thomas Sanchez. Booklist 96 (April 15, 2000): 1525. Rieff, David. “The Affirmative Action Novel.” The New Republic, April, 1990, 31-34. —Trey Strecker

George S. Schuyler

George S. Schuyler Born: Providence, Rhode Island; February 25, 1895 Died: New York, New York; August 31, 1977 Schuyler, whose specialty was ridiculing bigotry, was one of the leading satirists of the Harlem Renaissance era. Traditions: African American Principal works: Black No More, 1931; Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, 1931; Black and Conservative: The Autobiography of George S. Schuyler, 1966 Born in Rhode Island and raised in Syracuse, New York, George S. Schuyler dropped out of high school to join the Army. There, as a member of the famous Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry regiment, he served seven years before being discharged as a first lieutenant in 1919. After several odd jobs in New York City, Schuyler returned home and joined the Socialist Party, for which he held several offices. Schuyler was later involved with Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, but became disillusioned with Garvey’s plan to return to Africa. Schuyler often spoke publicly on political and cultural issues, and by the 1920’s, he had joined a black socialist group, Friends of Negro Freedom, and had accepted a job on the staff of the organization’s official magazine, The Messenger. He also wrote as the New York correspondent for an African American weekly newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. He continued to live in New York and write for The Pittsburgh Courier until 1966. Schuyler’s literary identity evolves from his career as a George S. Schuyler on the cover of his autobiography . (Arkent Archives) journalist and from his deep 437

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respect for his mother’s ideas and values. The product of a middle-class family, Schuyler comments in his autobiography, Black and Conservative, that his mother taught him to consider all sides of a question and to establish and stand by principles of personal conduct whether others agreed or not. True to his mother’s teaching, Schuyler seldom opted for the popular road. His public actions and political views were often regarded as extremely conservative and iconoclastic. His cynical view of race in America led to razor-sharp attacks upon racial patriots (black leaders he perceived as self-interested and bigoted) and upon white supremacists, who, he believed, exploited racism for economic reasons. In his autobiography he asserts that blacks never thought themselves inferior to whites; rather, blacks “are simply aware that their socio-economic position is inferior, which is a different thing.” In chiding race organizations as perpetuating the problems of racism, Schuyler contended that ridding the country of racial hatred would absolutely disrupt the national economy. His irreverent attacks on the traditional values and cherished beliefs of black and white society earned him much notoriety during his forty-year career, which spanned from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960’s.

Black No More Type of work: Novel First published: 1931 Schuyler’s Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free offers a bitingly satirical attack upon America’s color phobia. His targets included bigoted whites who see the perpetuation of racism as a matter of economic and political interest, black leaders who waffle between appealing to white financial backers and appeasing their black constituents, and all who cloak their ignorance and hatred with racial rhetoric. The plot of Black No More centers upon Schuyler’s speculation of what might happen if America were to find a means to rid itself of the “Negro problem.” In an effort to uplift his race, Dr. Junius Crookman, a respected black physician, invents a process by which black people can inexpensively turn themselves permanently white. The success of his process leads him to open up numerous Black No More clinics across America to handle the throngs of hopeful clients. His first and most eager customer is Max Disher, who sees “chromatic enhancement” initially as a chance to get a white woman and eventually to run various fund-raising shams under the auspices of the Knights of Nordica, led by the Imperial Grand Wizard, Reverend Givens. As a white man, Max takes a new name, Matthew Fisher. He soon is proving his talents as a brilliant organizer, political manipulator, and white supremacist working for “the

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cause.” Ironically, the woman of his Harlem dreams and eventual wife, Helen, turns out to be the daughter of Reverend Givens. Matthew’s schemes initially are simply quick-money ploys that amusingly take advantage of the Knights of Nordica’s ignorance and obsession for racial supremacy. As the plot moves along, however, Matthew begins to sound too sincere in his racist rhetoric and becomes obsessed with earning money and political power. An old friend, Bunny Brown, arrives to keep Matthew in line. With the numbers of blacks steadily dwindling, thanks to Crookman’s clinics, Matthew and Bunny plot to expose and destroy the institution of racism in America, along with its vested leaders. The novel concludes in a calamity as the national presidential race becomes a matter of reciprocated political tricks. The former blacks are whiter than whites, the two most notorious bigots in the book go up in flames, and Matthew’s wife gives birth to a mulatto child. Schuyler, through frequent barbs and sarcastic commentaries, exposes the hypocrisy of both white and black leaders. There are numerous thinly disguised caricatures of the black leaders of the time of the novel: W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, C. J. Walker, James Weldon Johnson, and many others. Schuyler’s satire contends that blacks are motivated by the same economic and political interests as whites, and once given the opportunity, will resort to the same means to preserve those interests.

Suggested readings Davis, Arthur P. “George Schuyler.” In From the Dark Tower. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974. Gayle, Addison, Jr. The Way of the World: The Black Novel in America. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1975. Goode, Stephen. “Color Bind.” Insight on the News 16 (February 7, 2000): 26. Schuyler, George. Black and Conservative: The Autobiography of George S. Schuyler. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1966. —Betty L. Hart

Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz Born: Brooklyn, New York; December 8, 1913 Died: New York, New York; July 11, 1966 Schwartz’s work affirms the power of the independent mind against materialism.

Traditions: Jewish Principal works: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, 1938; Genesis, Book I, 1943; The World Is a Wedding, 1948; Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems, 1950; Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1959; Successful Love and Other Stories, 1961 The saga of Delmore Schwartz’s life reflects the Jewish American experience of the 1930’s. Schwartz was the son of Romanian immigrants, and his career unfolded against the backdrop of political and social tensions of the Depression. Thus, much of his writing articulates the drama of alienation; poetic realism and psychological intensity are common characteristics. The shadow of Fyodor Dostoevski looms over Schwartz’s literary figures—human archetypes of internalized chaos and ritualistic narcissism. Schwartz is often associated with the confessional school of his generation; the school includes John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. He fits squarely into the Jewish intellectual milieu of the post-World War I era, which produced many luminaries. Schwartz grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and completed his education at New York University. In 1935, he entered Harvard University to study philosophy and, despite impressive achievements, left after two years, without receiving an advanced degree. Throughout his life he held numerous university and college teaching positions but was reluctant to commit himself to an academic career. His writings suggest a bohemian strain in his personality that drove him toward self-discovery instead of the regularity of a permanent job. The publication of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities galvanized Schwartz’s career. Within several years, he was recognized as a seminal figure. In 1943, he became an editor of the Partisan Review. The publication of The World Is a Wedding, a collection of semiautobiographical stories, and Summer Knowledge led to numerous awards and several distinguished lectureships. Schwartz’s volatile personality is apparent in the disenchanted loneliness of his artistic imagery, vividly depicted by Saul Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift (1975), in which Von Humboldt Fleisher’s self-destruction is modeled after Schwartz’s pathetic decline. He often hurt those who loved him best, and this 440

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led to the dissolution of two marriages, insomnia, acute paranoia, heavy drinking, drug abuse, and failing health. From 1962 to 1965, he was a visiting professor of English at Syracuse University. He was popular with students, but his poetic talents had clearly deteriorated. Many of his later works seem like old pictures reframed, although he retained the brilliant flashes of a virtuoso. He died isolated and alone.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities Type of work: Poetry, short fiction, and drama First published: 1938 The short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” which lends its title to this collection of prose, poetry, and drama, was apparently written over a weekend in July, 1935. Vladimir Nabokov recognized its merit and recommended it as the lead piece in the Partisan Review. Schwartz’s literary career was launched. The enigmatic title suggests that destiny is located in dreams, what Schwartz would later call in his fictional autobiography Genesis (1943) “a fixed hallucination.” The attempt to realize dreams in poetry and to acknowledge the past as prologue to the future draws its inspiration from the artistic context established by William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot—perhaps the most powerful forces to influence Schwartz’s writing. The narrator witnesses the events leading up to his father’s marriage proposal. The narrator watches a series of six film episodes depicting Sunday afternoon, June 12, 1909, in Coney Island, New York. The climactic moment when his mother accepts proves unbearable to the eventual offspring of this union and, in the darkened, womblike theater, he screams in protest against his future birth. An authoritative usher, representing the narrator’s superego, reminds him that he has no control over his birth, and hence the outburst is futile. The scene closes when a fortune-teller predicts an unhappy marriage, ending in divorce. The theme of the anguished child continues in the five-act-long poem “Coriolanus and His Mother,” in which the protagonist shifts his allegiance from Rome to a barbarian cause. Based on William Shakespeare’s play, the drama unfolds before a boy, the poet’s alter ego, and five ghosts: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig van Beethoven, Aristotle, and a small anonymous presence, perhaps Franz Kafka, chronicler of the absurd. This “dream of knowledge” play is a parable about self-destructive tendencies—anger, insolence, pride. The management of identity is a theme carried through many of the thirty-five poems collected under the heading “Experimentation and Imitation.” For example, rebel spirits such as Hart Crane, Robinson Crusoe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Charlie Chaplin inhabit the vaudevillian circus atmosphere of the poetry, captured in the phrases “the octopus in love

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with God” (“Prothalamion”), “Now I float will-less in despair’s dead sea (“Faust in Old Age”), and “the radiant soda of the seashore fashions” (“Far Rockaway”). “Dr. Bergen’s Belief,” a short play, is a lamentation on the death by suicide of the doctor’s daughter. After meditating on the promise of an afterlife and God’s providence—“the dream behind the dream, the Santa Claus of the obsessed obscene heart,” the doctor and a second daughter leap to their deaths. Schwartz’s lurid inventiveness and capricious style conjure a world of comic shame and imminent dread. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities represents an attempt to mold commonplace happenings into mystical shapes.

Suggested readings Ashbery, John. The Heavy Bear: Delmore Schwartz’s Life Versus His Poetry, a Lecture Delivered at the Sixty-seventh General Meeting of the English Literary Society of Japan. Tokyo: English Literary Society of Japan, 1996. Atlas, James. Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977. Breslin, Paul. “Delmore Schwartz.” In American Writers, edited by A. Walton Litz. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981. Kloss, Robert J. “An Ancient and Famous Capital: Delmore Schwartz’s Dream.” Psychoanalytic Review 65, no. 3 (1978): 475-490. McDougall, Richard. Delmore Schwartz. New York: Twayne, 1974. Philips, William. “Delmore.” Partisan Review 61, no. 2 (Spring, 1994): 199-201. Schwartz, Delmore. Delmore Schwartz and James Laughlin: Selected Letters. Edited by Robert Phillips. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. —Robert Frail

Ntozake Shange

Ntozake Shange (Paulette Williams) Born: Trenton, New Jersey; October 18, 1948

Shange’s novels, plays, and poems speak for African American girls and women. Traditions: African American Principal works: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem, pr., pb. 1976; Nappy Edges, 1978; Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, 1982; See No Evil: Prefaces, Essays, and Accounts, 1976-1983, 1984; Betsey Brown, 1985; Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter, 1994 Ntozake Shange, born Paulette Williams, was raised in an African American middle-class family in Trenton, New Jersey. Her mother was a social worker, and her father was a surgeon—the same occupations held by the parents in Shange’s novel Betsey Brown. Also like Betsey, young Paulette was encouraged to get an education and was introduced to leading figures of African American music and literature. Unlike Betsey, however, the writer remembers herself as always obedient and “nice.” Not until she was in her thirties did she allow herself to express the anger always lurking beneath her polite surface. Depressed over a failed marriage, and frustrated over the roadblocks of racism and sexism she encountered as she attempted to establish a career, she began to explore anew her own identity as an African American woman. She took the African name Ntozake Shange, which means “she who comes with her own things” and “she who walks like a lion.” Her first major piece of writing remains her most important. The play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf won international acclaim for its innovative combining of poetry, drama, and dance to tell the stories of seven women. Still performed, the play was one of the earliest writings in any genre to deal with the anger of black women. The success of the play gave Shange the financial freedom to explore less financially profitable outlets of expression. She began writing and publishing poetry, and collaborating with musicians and choreographers on improvisational pieces performed in bars and small theaters. She also has taught creative writing and women’s studies courses at various colleges across the United States, and has occasionally turned her pen to writing prose fiction, especially for and about adolescent girls. 443

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Shange has often spoken of the responsibilities that inform her writing. As an adolescent she could not find fiction about people like her. As a young woman she did not know how to understand her own pain. She writes many of her works to pass on to younger black women the insights she has gained through her experiences.

Betsey Brown Type of work: Novel First published: 1985 Betsey Brown tells the story of its thirteen-year-old title character’s struggles with adolescence, with discovering who she is and who she might become. Shange wrote the novel specifically to provide reading matter for adolescent African American girls. In her own youth, Shange could find no books to help her sort out her life: Books about young women were written by whites for whites, and most books by blacks were by and about men. Betsey Brown is the oldest of five unruly children in a middle-class family. Like most adolescent girls, she feels separated from the rest of her family: They do not understand her; they do not appreciate her. Betsey’s father wants her to grow up to lead her people to freedom. He wakes the children every morning with a conga drum and chanting and then leads them through a quiz on black history. All of the children can recite poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Countée Cullen; they know the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry, and Duke Ellington. Betsey herself was once rocked to sleep by W. E. B. Du Bois. Betsey’s mother fears that this exposure will limit her children instead of expanding them. She would like the children to grow up with nice middle-class manners and tastes. In many ways, she has denied her own heritage, her own identity. Eventually, she leaves the family for a time. The story is firmly rooted in its specific time and place. In 1959, St. Ntozake Shange (Jules Allen) Louis took its first steps

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toward integrating its public schools, and the Brown children are among the first black children bussed to formerly all-white schools. The father has tried to prepare the children by giving them a firm sense of self and heritage. He is eager for them to enter the struggle for civil rights, even as the mother fears that they will be in danger if they become too involved. A central issue of the novel is the importance of passing down one’s cultural heritage. It is not until the mother decisively embraces her heritage that she can again join the family. While she is absent, the housekeeper assumes her role as mother and guide and teaches Betsey and the other children how to follow the dreams of both parents. They learn to stand up for themselves and honor their culture and history and also to be well-mannered and self-sufficient. When Jane returns, it is to a new Betsey, one who has taken the first steps in forging her adult identity.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf Type of work: Drama First produced: 1976; first published, 1976 For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem, Shange’s first work, tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society. The choreopoem is an innovative combination of poetry, drama, music, and dance. For Shange, the combination is important. She learned about her identity as a woman through words, songs, and literature; she learned about her identity as an African through dance. The seven women are not named; they are meant to stand for the women who make up the rainbow. They are called “lady in brown,” “lady in red,” and so on. Each tells her own story. The stories are interwoven together. As the women tell their stories, they reflect on what it means to be a woman of color, what chances and choices they have. These women are in pain; they are angry. They have been abused by their lovers, their rapists, their abortionists, and they have been driven to the brink of despair. What strength they have left they find in music and in each other. Many have criticized the play for being too negative toward black men, but Shange has always attempted to direct the focus of the discussion back on the women. The play is about the women, about who they are and what they have experienced. To insist on a “balanced” view of the men in their lives is to deny these women’s experiences. These women deserve a voice. The play, she insists, does not accuse all black men of being abusive. These women are not rejecting men or seeking a life without men. The women desire men and love them, and ache for that love to be returned.

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Although the stories these women tell are tales of struggle, the play is ultimately uplifting. The seven women grieve, but they also celebrate their lives, their vitality, their colorfulness. As the play ends, the women recite, one at a time and then together: “i found god in myself/ & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely.” These women are not entirely powerless; they have the power of their own voices. They find the courage to tell their stories and thus triumph.

Suggested readings Lester, Neal A. Ntozake Shange: A Critical Study of the Plays. New York: Garland, 1995. Lyons, Brenda. “Interview with Ntozake Shange.” Massachusetts Review 28 (Winter, 1987): 687-96. Olaniyan, Tejumola. Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Shange, Ntozake. “An Interview with Ntozake Shange.” Interview by Neal A. Lester. Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 5, no. 1 (1990): 42-66. _______. “At the Heart of Shange’s Feminism: An Interview.” Interview by Neal A. Lester. Black American Literature Forum 24 (Winter, 1990): 717-730. _______. See No Evil: Prefaces, Essays, and Accounts 1976-1983. San Francisco: Momo Press, 1984. Sharadha, Y. S. Black Women’s Writing: Quest for Identity in the Plays of Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange. New Delhi, India: Prestige Books, 1998. Tate, Claudia, ed. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum Press, 1983. —Cynthia A. Bily

Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko Born: Albuquerque, New Mexico; March 5, 1948

Silko’s short stories and novels represent some of the finest writing of what has been called the Native American Renaissance. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: Ceremony, 1977; Storyteller, 1981; Almanac of the Dead: A Novel, 1991; Sacred Water, 1993; Gardens in the Dunes, 1999 The tensions and cultural conflicts affecting many of Leslie Marmon Silko’s characters can be seen as fictional renderings of Silko’s experience. Born of mixed European American and Navajo blood, Silko spent her formative years learning the stories of her white ancestors and their relationship with the native population into which they married. Her great-grandfather, Robert Marmon, had come to the Laguna pueblo, New Mexico, in the early 1870’s as a surveyor and eventually married a Laguna woman. Even more important to Silko’s development as a writer was the later generation of Marmons—half European American and half Native American—who continued to transmit the oral traditions of the Laguna pueblo people. One such source was the Aunt Susie of Silko’s autobiographical writings. The wife of Silko’s grandfather’s brother, she was a schoolteacher in the Laguna pueblo during the 1920’s and years afterward passed on to the young Silko the oral heritage of her race. So intimate was Silko’s imagination with the elements of Laguna culture that her father’s family photographs serve as visual commentary on the sketches and stories of Storyteller. Like the Inuit woman in Storyteller, Silko attended the local school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but she remained there only a short time, moving on to Catholic schools in Albuquerque, eventually receiving a B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico in 1969. Like her ancestors, she taught school at Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona, where she wrote Ceremony, her first novel. One of the most well-known of her works and one of the best novels written by a Native American, the book tells the story of Tayo, a World War II veteran, who tries to cope with the conflicts of his mixed-blood heritage. Her short stories were beginning to appear in the early 1970’s, and she quickly gained a reputation as one of the leading writers in the Native American Renaissance. The term is applied to the literary movement beginning in the 1960’s that features works by Native American writers using tribal customs and traditions as literary material. Stories such as “Yellow Woman,” 447

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in which a mortal is seemingly abducted by spiritual beings, and “Uncle Tony’s Goat,” which retells an old Laguna beast fable, are typical of Silko’s handling of traditional indigenous material. One of her best stories, “Lullaby,” treats the conflict of an elderly Navajo couple as they seek to come to terms with the dominant culture and how that conflict strengthens their traditional values.

Storyteller Type of work: Autobiography, poetry, short fiction First published: 1981 A collection of autobiographical sketches, poems, family photographs, and short stories, Storyteller fuses literary and extraliterary material into a mosaic portrait of cultural heritage and of conflict between the two ethnic groups composing her heritage, the European American and the Native American. The title story, “Storyteller,” presents that conflict from the point of view of a young Inuit woman who is fascinated with and repulsed by white civilization. Set in Alaska—the only major work of the author not in a Southwestern setting—the story follows her thoughts and observations as she spends her days amid these contrasting cultures. The old man with whom she lives and who has used her sexually—“she knew what he wanted”—is the storyteller. Now bedridden with age and the cold, subsisting on dried fish, which he keeps under his pillow, the old man narrates a tale, carefully, insistently, about a hunter on the ice facing a challenge from a bear. Between the beginning and end of his own tale, the Inuit woman’s story unfolds. She went to the government school, but largely out of curiosity, and although she remembers being whipped by one of the teachers, her fascination with whites—the “Gussucks,” as she calls them—only deepened when she observed their oil rigs, their large yellow machines, and their metal buildings. Gradually she learns that the Gussucks are not so much to be respected or feared but rather scorned because of their insensitivity and greed. The old man calls them thieves, and she herself laughs at the smug confidence they place in their machines, which are almost useless in the Alaskan cold. Her physical curiosity about the Gussucks leads to her being sexually exploited by one of them, and the turning point of the story occurs when the Inuit woman learns that a Gussuck storekeeper was responsible for the death of her parents by giving them nonpotable alcohol in exchange for their rifles. In revenge, she lures the storekeeper onto the ice, where he falls through and drowns. At the conclusion, the old man, now on his deathbed, finishes his tale of the hunter and the bear. The two stories, the old man’s and the Inuit woman’s, thus comment on each other. The woman’s vengeance bears a double victory, one the triumph of her people, the other a vindication of her sexuality over

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its abuses by whites. Yet the old man’s story ends menacingly for the hunter, suggesting that the Native American’s fate is—like the hunter—perilous amid the alien culture that both attracts and repels.

Suggested readings Antel, Judith A. “Momaday, Welch, and Silko: Expressing the Feminine Principle Through Male Alienation.” American Indian Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1988): 212-220. Barnett, Louise K., and James L. Thorson, eds. Leslie Marmon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Danielson, Linda. “Storyteller: Grandmother’s Spider Web.” Journal of the Southwest 30, no. 3 (1988): 325-355. Hoilman, Dennis. “‘A World Made of Stories’: An Interpretation of Leslie Silko’s Ceremony.” South Dakota Review 17, no. 4 (1979): 54-66. Jaskoski, Helen. Leslie Marmon Silko: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1998. Larson, Charles. American Indian Fiction. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978. Lincoln, Kenneth. Native American Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Rand, Naomi R. Silko, Morrison, and Roth: Studies in Survival. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. —Edward A. Fiorelli

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer Born: Leoncin, Poland; July 14 or November 21, 1904 Died: Surfside, Florida; July 24, 1991 Singer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, is perhaps the most influential, prolific, and admired Jewish American author of the twentieth century.

Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Der Sotn in Gorey, 1935 (Satan in Goray, 1955); Di Familie Muskat, 1950 (The Family Moskat, 1950); Mayn Tatn’s Besdin Shtub, 1956 (In My Father’s Court, 1966); Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, 1957; Shotns baym Hodson, 1957-1958 (Shadows on the Hudson, 1998); Der Kunstnmakher fun Lublin, 1958-1959 (The Magician of Lublin, 1960); Der Knekht, 1961 (The Slave, 1962); Short Friday and Other Stories, 1964; Sonim, de Geshichte fun a Liebe, 1966 (Enemies: A Love Story, 1972); A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, 1973; Passions and Other Stories, 1975; Old Love, 1979; The Death of Methuselah and Other Stories, 1988; Meshugah, 1994 The son and grandson of rabbis, Isaac Bashevis Singer was born into a pious Hasidic household in Poland, which he would imaginatively portray in his memoir In My Father’s Court. He began his literary career writing for a Hebrew newspaper and proofreading for a journal that his brother, novelist Israel Joshua Singer, coedited. In 1925, Singer made his fiction debut with a prize-winning short story, “In Old Age.” In 1932, he began co-editing Globus, which serialized Satan in Goray, his novel of messianic heresy. In 1935, Singer emigrated to New York, where he wrote for the Jewish Daily Forward. Several years went by before Singer found the full strength of his writer’s voice. He believed that an author needed roots, but he had lost his. Never easily placed within any tradition, Singer wrote first in Yiddish and then translated his work into English. His decision to write in Yiddish, which he knew was a dying language, was linked to his identification with a world that was destroyed by the Nazis. Singer’s work not only recalls that lost world, but his questions about the meaning of life reflect modern existential concerns. In Enemies: A Love Story, Herman Broder protests against suffering and the anguish of abandonment. Harry Bendiner of the story “Old Love” dreams of meditating in a solitary tent with the daughter of a dead love on why people are born and why people must die. Neshome Ekspeditsyes (1974; Shosha, 1978) concludes as two friends, reunited after the Holocaust, sit in a darkening room, waiting, as one says 450

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with a laugh, for an answer. It seems that Singer’s characters all await a moment of revelation that will be more than a faint glimmer in a darkened room.

“A Crown of Feathers” Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1973, in A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories “A Crown of Feathers” is the title story of a collection which won the National Book Award for 1973. Like many of Singer’s stories, it depicts an individual pulled between belief and disbelief, between the religious and the secular, and between self and others. The story concerns an orphan, Akhsa, whose own emerging identity becomes entangled with the conflicting values of her wealthy grandparents. Her grandfather is a traditionally religious man, a community leader in the Polish village of Krasnobród, while her grandmother, from the sophisticated city of Prague, is more worldly and possibly, it is learned after her death, a follower of false messiahs. These differences, presented very subtly at first, become more pronounced when, after her grandparents’ deaths, Akhsa internalizes their warring voices. Each voice accuses the other of being a demon, while both battle over Akhsa’s soul. Her grandmother assures her that Jesus is the Messiah and encourages Akhsa to convert. As a sign, she has Akhsa rip open her pillowcase, where she finds an intricate crown of feathers topped by a tiny cross. Akhsa converts, makes an unhappy marriage with an alcoholic Polish squire, and sinks into melancholy. Her despair is not mere unhappiness, but a continuing crisis of faith. A demon tells her, “The truth Isaac Bashevis Singer (©The Nobel Foundation) is there is no truth,” but her

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saintly grandfather appears and tells her to repent. Her grandfather’s advice leads Akhsa to return to Judaism and to seek out and marry the man her grandfather had chosen for her years before. This embittered man, however, humiliates her mercilessly. On her deathbed, Akhsa tears open her pillowcase and finds another crown of feathers, this one with the Hebrew letters for God in place of the cross. “But, she wondered, in what way was this crown more a revelation of truth than the other?” Akhsa never grasps with certainty the truth she has sought, nor is she ever able, like Singer’s Gimpel the Fool, to accept the ambiguity of uncertainty. Akhsa’s conversion and subsequent exile, her repentance and journey back to her grandfather’s faith—her entire life—have constituted an agonized quest for truth. Torn between two voices of authority, Akhsa has never been certain of her own voice, has never understood her own wants, needs, or beliefs. While Gimpel, when finding his vocation as wandering storyteller, ultimately finds a faith to which he can firmly adhere, Akhsa finds neither self nor truth. Moving from one pole of certain faith to its opposite, and back again, Akhsa never accepts Singer’s own truth, which is that “if there is such a thing as truth it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers.”

“Gimpel the Fool” Type of work: Short fiction First published: “Gimpel Tam,” 1945 (English translation, 1953) The publication of “Gimpel the Fool,” in a translation from the Yiddish by Saul Bellow, launched Singer’s career. During the 1950’s and thereafter, his work appeared widely in English, and throughout the history of Singer studies, “Gimpel the Fool” has held a place of honor. Gimpel belongs to a brotherhood of literary characters—that of the schlemiels. In this work, Singer explores the nature of belief, which, in the modern, secular world, is often considered foolish. Gimpel believes whatever he is told: that his parents have risen from the dead, that his pregnant fiancée is a virgin, that her children are his children, that the man jumping out of her bed is a figment of his imagination. Gimpel extends his willingness to believe to every aspect of his life, because, he explains: “Everything is possible, as it is written in the Wisdom of the Fathers, I’ve forgotten just how.” When, on her deathbed, his wife of twenty years confesses that none of her six children are his, Gimpel is tempted to disbelieve all that he has been told and to enact revenge against those who have participated in his humiliation. His temptation is a central crisis of faith. His faith in others, who have betrayed him, is challenged, as is his faith in himself and in God, because among the stories he has believed are those pertaining to the existence of God. Gimpel’s belief has always been riddled with doubt; only after he

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concretizes his spiritual exile by becoming a wanderer does he resolve his faith. In Singer’s fictional worlds, God is the first storyteller who, through words, spoke or wrote the world into being. Belief in God is linked to belief in stories. Thus, when Gimpel is tempted to disbelieve in God, he responds by becoming a wandering storyteller. In so doing Gimpel links himself with the great storyteller and transforms what was once simple gullibility into an act of the greatest faith. As a storyteller, Gimpel opens himself fully to the infinite possibilities of the divine word as it is transformed into the world. At the end, Gimpel still yearns for a world where even he cannot be deceived. He never finds this world. Despite the void he may face, he chooses to believe, and he finds, in his final great act of suspending disbelief, a faith to which he can firmly adhere.

Suggested readings Alexander, Edward. Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Farrell, Grace. “Suspending Disbelief: Faith and Fiction in I. B. Singer.” Boulevard 9, no. 3 (Fall, 1994): 111-117. Farrell Lee, Grace. From Exile to Redemption: The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Fiedler, Leslie. “Isaac Bashevis Singer: Or, The American-ness of the American Jewish Writer.” In Fiedler on the Roof: Essays on Literature and Jewish Identity. Boston: David R. Godine, 1991. Friedman, Lawrence S. Understanding Isaac Bashevis Singer. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Hadda, Janet. Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pinsker, Sanford. The Schlemiel as Metaphor. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Siegel, Ben. Isaac Bashevis Singer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969. Wisse, Ruth R. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Wood, Michael. “Victims of Survival.” The New York Review of Books, February 7, 1974, 10-12. —Grace Farrell

Cathy Song

Cathy Song Born: Honolulu, Hawaii; August 20, 1955

Song, who was the first Asian American writer to win, in 1982, a Yale Younger Poets Award, has established a formidable reputation as a chronicler of personal experience in multiplicity. Traditions: Chinese American, Korean American Principal works: Picture Bride, 1983; Frameless Windows, Squares of Light, 1988; School Figures, 1994 Having grown up in the culturally and ethnically diverse society of Hawaii in a family that had been there for at least two generations, Cathy Song does not write about racial or ethnic anxieties or the pains of being an outsider in an Anglo world. Her poems reflect a family that has been close and nurturing. The title of her first book, Picture Bride, refers to her Korean grandmother, who immigrated to Hawaii to marry a man who knew her only from a photograph. Song’s paternal grandfather was also Korean; her mother is Chinese. Song’s original title for the book, “From the White Place,” refers to the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, which she encountered while at Wellesley College, from which she was graduated in 1977. She went on to receive a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University in 1981. Her vivid imagery and interest in the subject of perspective indicate her fascination with visual art. The dominant strain in Picture Bride is the connection between the first-person speaker and her relatives. Song’s poems show little interest in political or social issues per se. Song’s appreciation of her Asian heritage, however, appears powerfully in poems such as “Girl Powdering Her Neck,” which concerns a painting by the eighteenth century Japanese artist, Kitagawa Utamaro, and ends with a haiku: “Two chrysanthemums/ touch in the middle of the lake/ and drift apart.” Song appears as a somewhat distant narrator in poems such as “Chinatown” and “Magic Island,” which are found in Frameless Windows, Squares of Light. These poems concern the immigrant experience, which she knows only secondhand. The deft beauty of a poem such as “Magic Island” does not compare with the personally felt experience of “Living Near the Water,” in which the poet watches her father give his dying father a drink of water. Her own children appear in these poems: Her blond son in “Heaven,” for example, thinks, “when we die we’ll go to China.” The blended worlds of Cathy Song are celebrated in her third book, School Figures, which opens with a poem on Ludwig Bemelmans’s Madeline series of 454

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children’s books. “Mother on River Street” depicts the poet’s mother and aunts eating at a Vietnamese restaurant and recalling Sei Mui, who, as a girl, fell out of Mrs. Chow’s car. In the title poem, Western painters such as Piet Mondrian and Pieter Bruegel merge with Katsushika Hokusai. Song’s poems portray not a simple multiculturalism but rather—as in “Square Mile,” in which she sees her son sitting in the same classroom she once sat in and herself on the same hill her father once was on—a profound and affectionate personal unity.

Picture Bride Type of work: Poetry First published: 1983 The content and form of Picture Bride, Song’s first book of poems, reflect intimately the personal background and interests of its author. Therefore, many of these poems have their locations in Hawaii, where she was born and reared, and the continental United States, where she attended university and married. Song’s poems are valuable repositories of an Asian American woman’s sensibilities as they experience the intricate varieties of familial and personal relationships—as daughter, wife, mother, lover, and friend. Art, too, is an informing interest of Song’s, especially that of the Japanese ukiyo-e master Utamaro and that of the American feminist painter Georgia O’Keeffe, whose life and works lend inspiration and shape to this book of poems. Picture Bride is organized into five sections, each deriving its title from a painting by O’Keeffe. The book begins with an initial statement of themes and an imagistic setting of scenes in “Black Iris” (familial relationships and home); continues with the development of these themes and scenes in “Sunflower”; moves into a contemplation of the effort and achievement of art in the central “Orchids”; renders scenes suggesting a darker, perhaps Dionysian, side to art and life in “Red Poppy”; and proceeds to a final affirmation of the validity and variety of human creativity and productivity in “The White Trumpet Flower.” The central section of the book also contains the key poem “Blue and White Lines After O’Keeffe,” whose speaker is Song’s imaginative re-creation of Georgia O’Keeffe and which is itself divided into five subsections with subtitles that replicate the titles of the sections of the book itself. The title poem, “Picture Bride,” is a young Korean American woman’s meditation on the feelings, experience, and thoughts of her immigrant grandmother, who came to Hawaii to be married to a worker in the sugarcane fields. This piece strikes a chord present in many of the book’s poems: a woman’s (and especially an ethnic woman’s) experience of family. Because Song’s feminism is so imbued with ethnicity, some readers may prefer to call her work “womanist,” the term coined by African American author Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983). That Song should choose

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to meditate on her grandmother in “Picture Bride” may seem natural enough to contemporary American readers, but in terms of traditional Confucian and Asian hierarchy, Song should have memorialized and venerated her male ancestor. Instead, the grandfather is devalorized into a mere “stranger.” Therefore, Song’s choice of subject in this poem is itself a break from traditional Asian patriarchy and a declaration of allegiance to a feminist hierarchy of family history. Many of Song’s poems elude a rigid thematic categorization that would separate, for example, poems of women’s experience from those about ethnicity or from those about art. In fact, these themes are sometimes organically and inextricably intertwined. For example, one will happen on poems about ethnic women’s experience and about women artists/artisans, such as “The Seamstress,” whose speaker is a Japanese American woman who makes dolls and creates wedding gowns but who seems condemned to remain in the background, a silent spinster (and spinner), or “For A. J.: On Finding That She’s on Her Boat to China,” which addresses an Asian ballerina manquee returning to Asia to become a materfamilias. Women’s experience, ethnicity, and art are therefore the main spheres of interest in Picture Bride, while the works of feminist artist O’Keeffe provide it with an encompassing structure and indwelling spirit.

Suggested readings Fujita-Sato, Gayle K. “‘Third World’ as Place and Paradigm in Cathy Song’s Picture Bride.” MELUS 15 (Spring, 1988): 49-72. Gaffke, Carol T., and Anna J. Sheets, eds. Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Lim, Shirley. “Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics.” MELUS 14, no. 2 (Summer, 1987): 51-63. _______. Review of Picture Bride, by Cathy Song. MELUS 10, no. 3 (Fall, 1983): 95-99. Sumida, Stephen H. “Pictures of Art and Life.” Contact II 7, nos. 38-40 (1986): 52-55. Wallace, Patricia. “Divided Loyalties: Literal and Literary in the Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes, Cathy Song, and Rita Dove.” MELUS 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1993): 3-19. —Ron McFarland/Laura Mitchell and C. L. Chua

Gary Soto

Gary Soto Born: Fresno, California; April 12, 1952

Soto’s poems, short stories, memoirs, young adult novels, and children’s stories bring to life the joys and pains of growing up in the barrio. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: The Elements of San Joaquin, 1977; Where Sparrows Work Hard, 1981; Black Hair, 1985; Living up the Street: Narrative Recollections, 1985; Small Faces, 1986; Who Will Know Us, 1990; Baseball in April, and Other Stories, 1990; A Summer Life, 1990; Home Course in Religion, 1991; Pacific Crossing, 1992; The Pool Party, 1993; Too Many Tamales, 1993; New and Selected Poems, 1995; Nickel and Dime, 2000 Gary Soto was born to American parents of Mexican heritage and grew up in the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in and around Fresno, California. Soto’s father died when Soto was five years old; he and his siblings were reared by his mother and grandparents. After being graduated from high school in 1970, Soto attended the University of California at Irvine, where he later earned an M.F.A. Soto’s life provides much of the material for his writing. He uses his cultural heritage and neighborhood traditions as the setting for stories and poems about growing up poor and Chicano. In The Elements of San Joaquin, his first book, he focuses on Fresno of the 1950’s. He chronicles the lives of migrant workers, of oppressed people caught in cycles of poverty and violence. In the later poetry collection, Who Will Know Us, Soto draws again on his life. In “That Girl,” for example, he is the young “Catholic boy” at the public library, while in “Another Time,” he is an adult reconsidering the death of his father. Soto turns to prose with Living up the Street: Narrative Recollections, a volume of twenty-one autobiographical stories. His talent in this work is in the minute: Soto is concerned with the small event, with the everyday. In this book he explores racism through vignettes from his own life. Rather than tackle racism in the abstract, he instead offers the concrete: the fight after being called a “dirty Mexican,” the anger after an Anglo child wins a beauty contest. Soto also writes books for children and young adults. His matter-offact use of Spanish expressions as well as his references to the sights and sounds of the Latino community provide young readers with a sense of cultural identity. Perhaps Soto’s greatest success is his ability to assert his ethnicity while 457

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demonstrating that the experiences of growing up are universal. His bittersweet stories remind his readers of their passages from childhood to adulthood, of their search for identities that began up the street.

A Summer Life Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1990 A Summer Life is a collection of thirty-nine short vignettes based on Soto’s life that chronicle his coming-of-age in California. The book is arranged in three sections covering Soto’s early childhood, preadolescence, and the time prior to adulthood. Soto is the writer of the everyday. In the first section, his world is bounded by his neighborhood and his eyes see this world in the sharp, concrete images of childhood. In “The Hand Brake,” for example, he writes, “One afternoon in July, I invented a brake for a child’s running legs. It was an old bicycle hand brake. I found it in the alley that ran alongside our house, among the rain-swollen magazines, pencils, a gutted clock and sun-baked rubber bands that cracked when I bunched them around my fingers.” Soto’s Latino heritage forms the background. Soto identifies himself with this community in the descriptions he chooses for the everyday realities: his grandfather’s wallet is “machine tooled with ‘MEXICO’ and a campesino and donkey climbing a hill”; his mother pounds “a round steak into carne asada” and crushes “a heap of beans into refritos.” Soto’s experiences include the sounds of Spanish and the objects of the barrio, but they seem universal. At heart, the book is a child’s movement toward self-awareness. Through A Summer Life, Soto paints his growing self-consciousness and increasing awareness of life and of death. “I was four and already at night thinking of the past,” he writes, “The cat with a sliver in his eye came Gary Soto (M. L. Martinelle) and went. . . . the three sick

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pups shivered and blinked twilight in their eyes . . . the next day they rolled over into their leaf-padded graves.” In the last story in A Summer Life, “The River,” Soto is seventeen. He and his friend Scott have traveled to Los Angeles to find themselves amid the “mobs of young people in leather vests, bell-bottoms, beads, Jesus thongs, tied-dyed shirts, and crowns of flowers.” As the two of them bed down that night in an uncle’s house, Soto seems to find that instant between childhood and adulthood, between the past and the present: “I thought of Braley Street and family, some of whom were now dead, and how when Uncle returned from the Korean War, he slept on a cot on the sunporch. . . . We had yet to go and come back from our war and find ourselves a life other than the one we were losing.” In this moment, Soto speaks for all readers who recall that thin edge between yesterday and today.

Suggested readings Augenbraum, Harold, and Ilan Stavans, eds. Growing Up Latino: Memoirs and Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Bruce-Novoa, Juan. Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. _______. Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Lattin, Vernon, ed. Contemporary Chicano Fiction: A Critical Survey. Binghamton, N.Y.: Bilingual Press, 1986. Martinez, Julio A., and Francisco A. Lomelí. Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. Ponce, Mary Helen. Review of Nickel and Dime, by Gary Soto. Hispanic 13 (March, 2000): 68. Soto, Gary, ed. Pieces of the Heart: New Chicano Fiction. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993. Tatum, Charles. Chicano Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1982. —Diane Andrews Henningfeld

Shelby Steele

Shelby Steele Born: Chicago, Illinois; January 1, 1946

Steele’s writings and lectures forced public debate on new ways to view radical discrimination and civil rights matters. Traditions: African American Principal works: The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, 1990; A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America, 1998 Shelby Steele grew up in Chicago under the guidance of strong parents who provided a stable family relationship for him, his twin brother, and his two sisters. Having interracial parents, Steele was influenced by two races, although he more strongly identified with his black heritage. As a college student, he became involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, following, at different times, the leads of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Steele led civil rights marches at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and protested that African Americans were victimized by white society. After the completion of his education, his marriage to a white woman, and the birth of their two children, Steele developed new thoughts about African Americans in America. He came to the conclusion that opportunities are widely available to all citizens if they have personal initiative and a strong work ethic. Upon reaching this conclusion, which ran counter to his earlier ideas, Steele began to publish his ideas in major magazines and journals. His philosophy was often harshly dismissed by leaders in the Civil Rights movement, but it also garnered much praise, especially from African American political conservatives. Steele was one of a few African Americans willing to challenge what was called the civil rights orthodoxy. When his work was published, he quickly became the subject of magazine and journal articles and was interviewed widely on radio and television, all the while drawing fire from numerous civil rights leaders. In 1990, his first book, The Content of Our Character, was published. With this collection of his essays on race relations in America, Steele became recognized as a leading spokesman for political conservatives of all races. The main thesis of his book is that individual initiative, self-sufficiency, and strong families are what black America needs. Although labeled conservative by many, Steele refuses the label and calls himself a “classical Jeffersonian liberal.” 460

Shelby Steele (Hoover Institution, Stanford University)

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The Content of Our Character Type of work: Essays First published: 1990 With The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, Steele created a debate on the merits of affirmative action, the direction of the Civil Rights movement, and the growing ranks of African American political conservatives. Although certainly not the first to challenge views held by African American leaders, Steele pushed his challenge onto center stage more forcefully than others had before. Coming at a time when the United States was awash in conservative radio and television talk shows, the book quickly became a source of contention among political groups of all races and philosophies. Steele, through his television appearances, became a familiar figure throughout America as he explained and defended his ideas on race problems in America. The book, titled after a line in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech, is a collection of essays, most of which appeared earlier in various periodicals. Central to Steele’s book is a call for the African American community to examine itself and look to itself for opportunities. He calls for African Americans to look not to government or white society but to itself for the solutions to its problems. Steele contends that African Americans enjoy unparalleled freedom; they have only to seize their freedom and make it work for them. He suggests that such programs as affirmative action contribute to the demoralization or demeaning of African Americans because preferential treatment denies them the opportunity to “make it on their own.” Steele, calling for a return to the original purpose of the Civil Rights movement, says that affirmative action should go back to enforcing equal opportunity rather than demanding preferences. The promised land is, he writes, an opportunity, not a deliverance. Steele’s ideas were strongly challenged by African Americans who believe that affirmative action and other civil rights measures are necessary for minority groups to retain the advancements that have been forged and to assure an open path for further progress. Opposition to Steele and other African American conservatives has led to charges that traditional African American civil rights leaders’ intolerance of different voices within the black community is itself a form of racism.

Suggested readings Anderson, Michael. Review of A Dream Deferred, by Shelby Steele. The New York Times Book Review 103 (November 22, 1998): 34. Drake, William Avon, and Robert D. Holsworth. Affirmative Action and the Stalled Quest for Black Progress. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Little, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine, 1965.

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Lokos, Lionel. The New Racism: Reverse Discrimination in America. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1971. Oates, Stephen B. Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. —Kay Hively

Amy Tan

Amy Tan Born: Oakland, California; February 19, 1952

Tan’s novels are among the first to bring literary accounts of Asian American women to a broad audience. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: The Joy Luck Club, 1989; The Kitchen God’s Wife, 1991; The Hundred Secret Senses, 1995 Amy Tan was born to parents who immigrated from China to California two years before she was born, and her work is influenced by the Asian American people and community she knew in her childhood. Each of her novels features characters who have either immigrated from China or who, like Tan, are the children of those immigrants. Like many immigrants to the United States, Tan’s parents had high expectations for their daughter. Tan writes: “I was led to believe from the age of six that I would grow up to be a neurosurgeon by trade and a concert pianist by hobby.” In her first two novels, especially, Tan writes of the pressures her young Chinese American characters feel as they try to meet high parental expectations while also craving a normal carefree childhood. Tan did not initially plan to be a writer of fiction. She was working long hours as a technical writer, and sought psychological therapy to help her with her workaholic tendencies. When she became dissatisfied with her therapist, who sometimes fell asleep during her sessions, she decided to use fiction writing as her therapy instead. Tan struggled with her Chinese heritage; as a girl, she contemplated cosmetic surgery to make her look less Asian. She was ashamed of her cultural identity until she moved with her mother and brother to Switzerland, where Tan attended high school. There, Asians were a rarity, and Tan was asked out on dates because she was suddenly exotic. Experiences from her life find their way into her novels, especially The Joy Luck Club. As do the characters Rose Hsu and Waverly Jong, Tan experienced the death of a brother. Waverly, like Tan, is married to a tax attorney of European descent. Tan and her husband, Lou DeMattei, married in 1974. In fact, several of Tan’s Chinese American women characters are married to European American husbands. Amy Tan’s novels have all been acclaimed by critics as well-crafted works of fiction and as keyholes through which the reader can peer into a culture that has seldom been explored in American literature. 464

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The Hundred Secret Senses Type of work: Novel First published: 1995 The Hundred Secret Senses, Tan’s third novel, continues her interest in Chinese and Chinese American culture, especially the strife between family members who are traditionally Chinese and those who are more Americanized. Half-

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Caucasian, half-Chinese Olivia meets, at age six, her eighteen-year-old Chinese half sister, Kwan, the daughter of her father’s first marriage. Kwan instigates Olivia’s struggle with her Chinese identity. Olivia is alternately embarrassed, annoyed, and mystified by this sister who claims that she has daily communication with “yin people”—helpful ghosts—many of whom are the spirits of friends from Kwan’s past lives. Despite her ambivalence, however, Olivia gains most of her awareness about her Chinese background from Kwan. The sisters’ Chinese father has died, and Olivia is being raised in the United States by a Caucasian mother and an Italian American stepfather. After Kwan’s arrival from China, the older girl is largely responsible for her sister’s care. Thus, Olivia resentfully learns Chinese and learns about her Chinese heritage, including knowledge about the ghosts who populate her sister’s world. Olivia is understandably skeptical about the presence of these yin people. In Olivia’s culture, such ghosts are the stuff of scary films, while for Kwan, they are a part of everyday life. The title, then, refers to the hundred secret senses that, Kwan asserts, enable one to perceive the yin people. Kwan’s stories about a past life are the fairy tales with which Olivia grows up. Later, Olivia marries a half-Hawaiian, half-Caucasian man, Simon, and as the novel opens, they are beginning divorce proceedings after a long marriage. Olivia begins these proceedings in part because she believes that Simon is still in love with a former girlfriend, who died shortly before Simon and Olivia met. Olivia must develop her own sense of personal and ethnic identity in order to release this ghost from her past. She must begin to believe that she is worthy of Simon’s love, and in order to discover her self-worth, she must travel to the tiny Chinese village where her sister grew up. Although Olivia believes herself to be very American, once she, Simon, and Kwan arrive in China, she begins to feel much closer to her Chinese heritage, and in the storytelling tradition of all Tan’s novels, Olivia learns about her family’s past while talking to residents of the village in which Kwan grew up. Olivia also is able to confront her difficulties with Simon as a result of the trip.

The Joy Luck Club Type of work: Novel First published: 1989 The Joy Luck Club, Tan’s first novel, debuted to critical acclaim. It takes its place alongside Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) as a chronicle of a Chinese American woman’s search for and exploration of her ethnic identity. The Joy Luck Club is the best-selling, accessible account of four Chinese-born mothers and their four American-born daughters. One of the women, Suyuan Woo, has died before the story opens, but the other seven

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women tell their own stories from their individual points of view. Critics have noted that this approach is an unusually ambitious one. Nevertheless, the novel has reached a wide audience, especially since it was made into a feature film in 1992. At the center of the story is Jing-mei “June” Woo, who has been asked to replace her dead mother as a member of the Joy Luck Club, a group of four women who meet for food and mah-jongg. Although Americanized and non-Chinese-speaking June is initially uncertain whether she wishes to join her mother’s friends, she discovers that these women know things about her mother’s past that she had never imagined. Her decision to become part of the Joy Luck Club culminates in a visit to China, where she meets the half sisters whom her mother was forced to abandon before she fled to the United States. The other Chinese-born women have similarly tragic stories, involving abandonment, renunciation, and sorrow in their native country. June says of her mother’s decision to begin the club: “My mother could sense that the women of these families also had unspeakable tragedies they had left behind in China and hopes they couldn’t begin to express in their fragile English.” Each of these women’s hopes includes hopes for her daughter. Each American daughter feels that she has in some way disappointed her mother. Waverly Jong fulfills her mother’s ambitions by becoming a chess prodigy, then quits suddenly, to her mother’s sorrow. June can never live up to her mother’s expectations, and she rebels by refusing to learn the piano. Rose Hsu turns away for a moment, and her youngest brother drowns. Lena St. Clair makes a marriage based on false ideals of equality, and only her mother understands its basic injustice. These American-born daughters insist that they are not Chinese; as June says, she has no “Chinese whatsoever below my skin.” By the end of the novel, they find themselves realizing how truly Chinese they are.

The Kitchen God’s Wife Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 The Kitchen God’s Wife, Tan’s second novel, is concerned with a young, Americanized Chinese American woman’s quest to accept her heritage, and in so doing accept her family, especially her mother. The first section of the novel, told from the daughter Pearl’s point of view, concerns Pearl’s difficult relationship with her mother, Winnie. Pearl perceives Winnie only as an old, unfashionable woman with trivial concerns. Pearl is troubled by a secret that she believes she cannot tell her mother. Pearl has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis but dreads her mother’s reaction, her reproaches, her list of ways Pearl could have prevented her disease. Pearl comes to recognize that her mother has secrets of her own, which

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Winnie finally decides to share with her daughter. Most of the novel, which is also the part that has received the most critical praise, is Winnie’s first-person account of her childhood. The reader discovers along with Pearl that her mother has not always been the penny-pinching part-owner of a dingy, outdated florist’s shop. Instead, Winnie has had a life of tragedy and adventure before immigrating to the United States. She lived another life in China, complete with another husband and three long-dead children. Winnie’s mother disappeared when Winnie was a child, leaving her with her father and his other wives, who promptly sent her to live with an uncle. That uncle married her to Wen Fu, a sadistic, adulterous pilot, and Winnie soon began the nomadic life of a soldier’s wife during wartime. By the end of the war, Winnie found love with the man Pearl knows as her father, the Chinese American serviceman Jimmie Louie. Wen Fu had Winnie imprisoned for adultery when she tried to divorce him, then raped her upon her release. Pearl learns the secret her mother has been hiding—Jimmie Louie, who died when Pearl was fourteen, is not her biological father after all. When Pearl learns these secrets about her mother’s past, she is finally able to reveal the secret of her illness. The title refers to an altar that Pearl inherits from a woman Winnie had known in China, and it symbolizes the growing closeness that Winnie and Pearl develop after sharing their secrets. The final scene shows Winnie buying her daughter a deity for the altar. This statue, whom Winnie names Lady Sorrowfree, the kitchen god’s wife, represents Winnie and her care for her daughter. By the end of the novel, Pearl achieves a greater understanding of her mother and of their often-trying relationship.

Suggested readings Dew, Robb Forman. Review of The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan. The New York Times Book Review, June 16, 1991, 9. Ho, Wendy. In Her Mother’s House: The Politics of Asian American Mother-Daughter Writing. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1999. Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Kakutani, Michiko. Review of The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan. The New York Times, November 17, 1995, p. C29. Messud, Claire. Review of The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan. The New York Times Book Review, October 29, 1995, 11. Pearlman, Mickey, and Katherine Usher Henderson. Inter/View: Talks with America’s Writing Women. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. Schell, Orville. Review of The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. The New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1989, 3. Shapiro, Laura. Review of The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan. Newsweek, November 6, 1995, 91-92.

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_______. Review of The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan. Newsweek, June 24, 1991, 63-64. Watnabe, Sylvia, and Carol Bruchac, eds. Home to Stay: Asian American Women’s Fiction. Greenfield Center, N.Y.: The Greenfield Review Press, 1990. —J. Robin Coffelt

José AntonioVillarreal

José Antonio Villarreal Born: Los Angeles, California; July 30, 1924

Villarreal is recognized as one of the first American writers of Mexican descent to portray the experiences of Mexican families who immigrated to the United States. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: Pocho, 1959; The Fifth Horseman, 1974; Clemente Chacón, 1984 José Antonio Villarreal’s early life strongly resembles that of Richard Rubio, the hero of his first novel. Both had fathers who fought in the Mexican Revolution; both were born and raised in California. Villarreal also enjoyed, in childhood innocence, the few pleasures of the nomadic life of the migrant farmworker: living in tents, listening to Spanish stories around a campfire, absorbing Mexican lore and culture that was invisible in the white world. Like Richard, Villarreal learned English quickly but retained his fluency in Spanish. Love of language and books led him to early discovery of his desire to become a writer. Circumstances took both into the Navy in World War II. Although Pocho appears autobiographical in many ways, it is sometimes criticized as unrealistic in its portrayal of Richard’s conscious intention to be a writer and as inattentive to the racism and injustice of American society. Villarreal rejects such pronouncements by declaring himself an American writer, not a Chicano writer. To the creator of Pocho, Richard’s ethnic and ideological identities are only part of a greater quest for his identity as a man, an artist, and a human being. Villarreal was graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, and since 1950 he has continued to write while supporting a family with a variety of jobs, including technical writer, magazine publisher, and teacher at a number of universities in California, Texas, and Mexico. During the Chicano movement of the 1970’s, Villarreal published The Fifth Horseman, a novel that explores the Mexican Revolution sympathetically, suggesting its ideals are worthy of preservation in Mexican identity, although its excesses ought to be condemned. Professional recognition and financial success have come hard to Villarreal, and perhaps as a result, the themes of work, money, and social mobility have become more dominant in his examination of the processes of acculturation. For example, Clemente Chacón, set in 1972, contrasts the life of the young insurance man Clemente, who hustles desperately to succeed in 470

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American business and society, with the life of the adolescent Mario Carbajal, who hustles desperately simply to survive another day in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Exploitation of the poor and amoral ambition are qualities of both these characters and of their societies. Villarreal’s creative focus on individual lives rather than on social institutions suggests that ultimately each person’s choice is the origin of good or the origin of evil.

Pocho Type of work: Novel First published: 1959 Pocho is generally regarded as the first novel by an American of Mexican descent to represent the experiences of emigration from Mexico and acculturation to the United States. Although this pioneering work went out of print shortly after publication, a second edition appeared in 1970 during the Chicano Renaissance, and it has since become part of many multicultural literature classes. Set in the years between 1923 and 1942, the novel recounts the quest for personal and cultural identity by Richard Rubio, son of a soldier exiled after the Mexican Revolution and now a migrant farmworker in Santa Clara, California. As a pocho, a member of the first generation born in the United States, Richard grows up deeply attached to the traditions of his family and very attracted to the values and lifestyles of his American peers. In addition to trials faced by every young person while growing up, such as the struggle with authority, the search for independence, the thirst for knowledge, and the hunger for sexual experience, Richard faces special challenges in self-definition. He confronts poverty, family instability, a blighted education system, racial prejudice, a society torn by economic crises, and world war. Richard’s passage from childhood into adulthood is given unique shape not only by the circumstances of the Depression but also by the turmoil of life as an itinerant farmworker and the powerful tensions between Mexican and American cultures. Poverty inspires his dreams of success. A life of physical labor belies his intellectual nature. He identifies intensely with his macho father but cannot abide his violence, coldness, and self-destructiveness. Drawn to the beauties of the church, he nonetheless rejects faith. He is deeply attached to his mother but finds her helplessness repugnant. Obliged to become the man of the family as a teenager, he finds that his responsibilities clash with his solitary nature, his love of books, and his emerging personal identity as a writer. His choice to join the Navy is more personal than patriotic. To resolve his conflicts he chooses exile from his shattered family, escapes from his poverty without prospects, and seeks release from the fragments of the two cultures he has not yet pieced together. He leaves to face what he knows will be a struggle for a new identity as a man, as an artist, and as an American.

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Suggested readings Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Canonical and Noncanonical Texts: A Chicano Case Study.” In Redefining American Literary History, edited by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward, Jr. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990. _______. Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Hinojosa, Rolando. “Mexican-American Literature: Toward an Identification.” Books Abroad 49, no. 3 (Summer, 1975): 422-430. Paredes, Raymund A. “The Evolution of Chicano Literature.” In Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian-American Literature for Teachers of American Literature, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982. Rocard, Marcienne. The Children of the Sun: Mexican-Americans in the Literature of the United States. Translated by Edward G. Brown, Jr. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989. Ruiz, Ramón. Introduction to Pocho, by José Antonio Villarreal. Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press, 1970. Saldívar, Ramón. Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. —Virginia M. Crane

Helena María Viramontes

Helena María Viramontes Born: East Los Angeles, California; February 26, 1954

Viramontes’s feminist portrayals of Latinas struggling against patriarchy and poverty condemn classism, racism, and sexism. Traditions: Mexican American Principal works: The Moths and Other Stories, 1985; Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature, 1987 (coeditor with María Herrera-Sobek); Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film, 1995 (coeditor with María Herrera-Sobek); Under the Feet of Jesus, 1995; Their Dogs Came with Them, 2000 Helena María Viramontes’s work is shaped by her feminist and Chicano identities. Viramontes presents realistic portrayals of the struggles that women, particularly Chicanas, face as they attempt to grow up, raise families, and discover their identities. As a child, Viramontes attended schools in East Los Angeles with Chicano student bodies. Her parents were hardworking people—her father was a construction worker and her mother raised nine children. Viramontes attended Immaculate Heart College with a scholarship for underprivileged girls and was graduated in 1975. After graduating she began to send her short stories out for publication, and in 1977 one of her first stories, “Requiem for the Poor,” won first prize for fiction in a literary contest sponsored by Statement magazine of California State University, Los Angeles. Viramontes’s work continued winning awards, and in 1981 she enrolled in the creative writing program at the University of California at Irvine. Her first collection of short stories, The Moths and Other Stories, was published in 1985. Perhaps one of Viramontes’s greatest personal achievements was receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1989 to attend a workshop given by Gabriel García Márquez at the Sundance Institute. Viramontes’s work has been highly influenced by García Márquez, by Chicana feminist writers Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros, and by such black writers as Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison. In The Moths and Other Stories, Viramontes offers her reader portrayals of women at various stages in their lives. These women face complex issues such as adolescence, sexuality, politics, family, aging, and religion and must attempt to navigate their way through problems that are often caused by the patriarchal constructs of their cultures. 473

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The Moths and Other Stories Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1985 The Moths and Other Stories focuses on the lives of Chicana women of various ages and backgrounds. The women in Viramontes’s stories often face identity crises—they struggle with religion, adolescence, sexuality, family, and aging. “The Moths” narrates the growth of a fourteen-year-old girl who cares for her grandmother. The grandmother’s home is a refuge for the young woman, whose home is ruled by her father. When her grandmother dies, the girl laments the loss of a strong female figure who has helped shape her identity. “Growing” also focuses on a young Chicana woman who struggles with adolescence. Fifteen-year-old Naomi looks forward to her first date until her parents make her take along her little sister Lucia as a chaperone. Naomi insists that dating is “different” in America, but her parents insist on their own customs and Naomi wonders about the difficulties of growing up in a new country. In the stories focusing on young women Viramontes raises the issues of religion, reproduction, and marriage. In “Birthday” a young, unmarried woman struggles over her decision to abort a child. “The Broken Web” focuses on a young woman and her struggles with repressed family memories. Martita learns that her father, Tomas, beat and cheated on her mother, and that her mother finally snapped and killed Tomas. “The Broken Web” shows a young woman dealing with the violence of her childhood. In “The Long Reconciliation” Amanda and Chato’s marriage falls apart when Amanda refuses to bring children into their meager existence. After Amanda aborts their first child, Chato refuses all sexual contact with her and their marriage ends. “The Cariboo Cafe” focuses on the struggles of a young mother. Two children are kidnapped by a woman who has lost her own child in the political problems in Central America. Eventually the woman is discovered, and the children are taken away from her. She screams for her own son, Geraldo. The final two stories focus on older women. In “Snapshots” Olga Ruiz, a middle-aged divorcée, attempts to come to terms with her past identities. As she sifts through family photographs, she realizes how little she has left of herself—she was too busy being a good wife and mother. “Neighbors” focuses on a lonely, elderly woman. Aura has nothing but her beautiful garden and her neighbor, Fierro. When a strange woman visits Fierro, Aura is upset by the change in their relationship. In her struggles with loneliness, Aura becomes fearful, and “Neighbors” examines the loneliness, isolation, and fear of being an old, solitary woman. Women’s issues are Viramontes’s focus throughout The Moths and Other Stories, and her narratives focusing on the struggles of primarily Chicana women are tinged with the complexities of adolescence, sexuality, marriage, poverty, and family.

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Under the Feet of Jesus Type of work: Novel First published: 1995 Under the Feet of Jesus traces the day-to-day lives of a group of Chicano migrant farmworkers, revealing the struggles they must endure as they attempt to survive on low wages and in poor living conditions. Helena María Viramontes is connected to this group of people in that her parents were migrant workers, and the book is dedicated to them and to the memory of César Chávez, a man who fought for the rights of farmworkers. The narrative focuses on a large family headed by Perfecto Flores, a man in his seventies, and Petra, a woman who is thirty-seven years younger. Perfecto and Petra travel together with Petra’s children, finding fieldwork wherever they can. Estrella is Petra’s eldest daughter; she is thirteen, and her voice controls much of the narrative. There are two brothers, Ricky and Arnulfo, and twin girls, Perla and Cookie. Estrella works in the fields, as do her brothers and Perfecto. The story becomes complicated by a young man named Alejo. Alejo and his cousin Gumecindo are also migratory workers employed by the same farms as Estrella and her family. The boys earn extra money by stealing fruit from the orchards at night. One night when they are raiding the orchard, biplanes fly overhead, spraying pesticides. Although Alejo and Gumecindo attempt to run from the orchards to avoid the poisoning pesticides, Alejo is sprayed and eventually becomes very sick. Since Alejo has become friends with Estrella and her family, Petra feels obliged to care for him. She tries all her healing methods, but nothing seems to work. Alejo gets sicker each day. As he grows weaker, love between Alejo and Estrella grows. Finally Estrella and her family have no choice but to take Alejo to the clinic. The nurse tells Estrella that Alejo must go to the hospital, and charges them ten dollars for the clinic visit. Unfortunately Perfecto only has eight dollars and some change, and their gas tank is empty. He attempts to barter with the nurse, telling her he can do chores for the clinic, but she insists that she cannot give him work. Perfecto reluctantly hands over their last nine dollars, and they leave the clinic, wondering what they are going to do. Finally Estrella goes to the car, takes out the tire iron, and walks back into the clinic. She smashes the tire iron against the nurse’s desk and demands the nine dollars back. With the last of their money Perfecto fills the gas tank, and they drive to the hospital. Estrella takes Alejo into the emergency room and is forced to leave him there, knowing they cannot pay the bill but that the doctors will help him.

Suggested readings Garza-Falcón, Leticia Magda. Gente Decente: A Borderlands Response to the Rhetoric of Dominance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

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Sobek, María, and Helena María Viramontes, eds. Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1988. Yarbo-Bejarano, Yvonne. Introduction to The Moths and Other Stories, by Helena María Viramontes. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1985. —Angela Athy

Gerald Vizenor

Gerald Vizenor Born: Minneapolis, Minnesota; October 22, 1934

Tribal people and tribal identity are the foci of Vizenor’s life and literary work. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: Raising the Moon Vines, 1964; Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart, 1978 (revised as Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles, 1990); Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade, 1978; Matsushima: Pine Islands, 1984; Griever: An American Monkey King in China, 1987; The Trickster of Liberty, 1988; Interior Landscapes: Autobiographical Myths and Metaphors, 1990; The Heirs of Columbus, 1991; Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance, 1994; Hotline Healers: An Almost Browne Novel, 1997; Chancers, 2000 An original voice in postmodern literature, Native American author Gerald Vizenor is a brilliant novelist, poet, and essayist, as well as an influential critic. He has received the Josephine Miles PEN award for Interior Landscapes, 1990, the Illinois State University/Fiction Collective Prize, 1986, and the American Book Award in 1988 for Griever: An American Monkey King in China. Vizenor believes that Native American imagination foreshadows many common postmodern literary strategies regarding identity. He uses the concept of “survivance” to denote the trickster’s playful attitude that undercuts domination-victimization oppositions and produces new worldviews. The trickster uses stories and humor to tease out contradictions between good and evil in the world. The Heirs of Columbus announces, “I am not a victim of Columbus,” and uses trickster storytelling to revise the history of relations between whites and tribal peoples. Always on the move, the trickster destabilizes “pure” identities. Tribal identities pass through tribal stories. Vizenor, who claims a mixed Native American and European American heritage, belongs to the first generation of his family born off the reservation. When he was a child, his father was murdered, and his mother left him with foster families. At eighteen, he enlisted in the Army and went to Japan. In Interior Landscapes, Vizenor describes his discovery of Japanese haiku as a liberating, eye-opening experience important to his development as a writer. Besides being a writer, Vizenor worked as a social worker, a mental hospital orderly, a camp counselor, and a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, where he was a staunch advocate for human rights. He established the American Indian Employment Center in Minneapolis and directed the first Native American studies program at Bemidji State University. 477

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The Heirs of Columbus Type of work: Novel First published: 1991 Published shortly before the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage, Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus proclaims: “I am not a victim of Columbus!” The novel tells of the nine tribal descendants of Christopher Columbus, including Stone Columbus, a late-night talk radio personality, and Felipa Flowers, a liberator of cultural artifacts. For the heirs, tribal identity rests in tribal stories, and they are consummate storytellers. “We are created in stories,” the heirs say, and “language is our trick of discovery.” Their trickster storytelling rewrites and renews the history of white and tribal peoples. Stone tells a story, central to the novel, asserting Columbus’s Mayan, not Italian, ancestry. The Mayans brought their civilization to the Old World savages long ago, Stone argues. Columbus escaped Europe’s “culture of death” and brought his “tribal genes” back to his homeland in the New World. Columbus did not discover the New World; he returned to it.

Gerald Vizenor

For some readers, The Heirs of Columbus might recall African American novelist Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972). Both works have a fragmented style and are concerned with the theft and repatriation of tribal property. Felipa Flowers undertakes a mission to recapture sacred medicine pouches and the remains of her ancestor Christopher Columbus from the Brotherhood of American Explorers. After Felipa’s successful raid, the heirs are taken

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to court to tell their story. They win their court case, but Felipa is later kidnapped and murdered in London when she tries to recapture the remains of Pocahontas. After Felipa’s death, the heirs create a sovereign nation at Point Assinika, “the wild estate of tribal memories and the genes of survivance in the New World.” Theirs is a natural nation, where tricksters heal with their stories and where humor rules. Stone plans “to make the world tribal, a universal identity” dedicated to healing, not stealing, tribal cultures. To this end, the heirs gather genetic material from their tribal ancestors. They devise genetic therapies that use these healing genes to combat the destructive war herbs, which have the power to erase people from memory and history. Soon, Point Assinika becomes a place to heal abandoned and abused children with the humor of their ancestors. Stories and genes in The Heirs of Columbus operate according to trickster logic, which subverts the “terminal creeds” of cultural domination and signals the reinvention of the world.

Interior Landscapes Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1990 Mixed-blood Native American novelist, poet, essayist, and critic Vizenor’s imaginative autobiography Interior Landscapes: Autobiographical Myths and Metaphors, winner of the 1990 Josephine Miles PEN Award, recounts the author’s triumphs, tragedies, and confrontations with racism. Throughout his autobiography, Vizenor adopts the mythic identity of the Native American trickster, who uses humor and stories to reinvent his world. “My stories are interior landscapes,” Vizenor writes, and, as trickster autobiography, these stories about Vizenor’s life enable him to mold his experience of his own life. Vizenor had a rough childhood by any standard. After his father was stabbed to death, his mother left him with foster families while she vanished for years at a time. Later, she returned and married an alcoholic who beat him. When he was eighteen, Vizenor escaped into the Army. In the Army, Vizenor traveled to Japan, one of the most important experiences of his life. Views of Mount Fuji, a romance with a Japanese woman, and his first visit to a brothel inspired him to write haiku. After his discharge from the Army, Vizenor stayed in Japan. He later returned to the United States to study at New York University and the University of Minnesota, where he discovered writers such as Lafcadio Hearn, Jack London, and Thomas Wolfe. He also studied haiku in translation. Vizenor calls his discovery of Japanese literature his “second liberation.” His haikus won for him his first college teaching job, and his continuing fascination with the haiku form is demonstrated in the collections Two Wings the Butterfly (1962), Raising the Moon Vines (1964),

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Seventeen Chirps (1964), Empty Swings (1967), and Matsushima: Pine Islands (1984). Vizenor relates his experience as a community activist. As a Minneapolis Tribune reporter Vizenor organized civil rights protests and exposed illegal domestic operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. He wrote key articles about the funeral of Dane Michael White and the trial of Thomas James White Hawk. As a founding director of the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center, he combated the “new urban fur traders” and worked to get services for urban Indians who chose to leave the reservation. Interior Landscapes ends in a haunted house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Vizenor’s dreams are invaded by skinwalkers, lost souls from the world of the dead. This dream begins a meditation on the rights of remains that informs Vizenor’s writing of his autobiography, a “crossblood remembrance,” motivated by a trickster’s desire to weave the myths and metaphors of his own life.

Wordarrows Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1978 Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade is Vizenor’s collection of autobiographical short stories. It stems from Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday’s belief that storytelling is a means of situating oneself in a particular context in order to better understand individual and collective experiences. Vizenor’s stories recount cultural “word wars” in which Native Americans cannot afford to be victims in “one-act terminal scenarios,” but must become survivors, relying on their own words to preserve their sacred memories and represent the bitter facts. In Wordarrows, the trickster, a figure from Native American oral traditions, who appears in most of Vizenor’s writing, uses stories and humor to balance the forces of good and evil in the world. Wordarrows describes the reality of urban Indians, who are denied services and shuttled between various government programs. Vizenor’s persona, Clement Beaulieu, directs the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, where he is caught between politicians who want to restrict his radical activities and desperate Indians who need his help. At the center, Beaulieu encounters Marleen American Horse, who has been stereotyped as a drunken Indian. He helps her free herself from “the language of white people” so that she can create her own identity. He also meets Laurel Hole In The Day, a woman who struggles to move her family to a white neighborhood in the city. Ultimately, loneliness makes the parents turn to drink, lose their jobs, and return to the reservation. In another story, Beaulieu and a friend visit an Indian boarding school, where the superintendent makes a boy perform a simulated tribal dance to

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the music of the Lord’s Prayer. Outraged by the administrator’s idiotic attempt to teach the child racial pride, Beaulieu fumes that white corruption of this dance makes the Indian a spectacle and erases his tribal identity. The last section of Wordarrows contains four stories centering on the case of Thomas James White Hawk, a death-row inmate in South Dakota. As a staff writer for the Minneapolis Tribune, Vizenor covered White Hawk’s hearing to commute his death sentence to life in prison. Beaulieu blames society for creating the conditions which drove White Hawk to commit his crime and argues that “a man cannot be condemned by an institution of that dominant culture which has actually led to the problems he has to live with.” The “cultural schizophrenia” experienced by Beaulieu and other characters in Wordarrows represents the dilemma of many contemporary Native Americans.

Suggested readings Blaeser, Kimberly M. Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Coltelli, Laura, ed. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Isernhagen, Hartwig. Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Laga, Barry E. “Gerald Vizenor and His Heirs of Columbus: A Postmodern Quest for More Discourse.” American Indian Quarterly 18, no. 1 (Winter, 1994): 71-86. McCaffery, Larry, and Tom Marshall. “Head Water: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Chicago Review 39, nos. 3-4 (Summer/Fall, 1993): 50-54. Velie, Alan. Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Vizenor, Gerald. “Head Water: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Interview by Larry McCaffery and Tom Marshall. Chicago Review 39, nos. 3-4 (Summer-Fall, 1993): 50-54. _______, ed. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourses on Native American Indian Literatures. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. —Trey Strecker

Alice Walker

Alice Walker Born: Eatonton, Georgia; February 9, 1944

Walker’s poetry, short stories, essays, and novels protest racism, sexism, and mistreatment of the earth while offering affirmation and hope. Traditions: African American, American Indian Principal works: The Third Life of Grange Copeland, 1970; In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, 1973; Meridian, 1976; You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, 1981; The Color Purple, 1982; In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983; Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973-1987, 1988; The Temple of My Familiar, 1989; Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems, 1965-1990, 1991; Possessing the Secret of Joy, 1992; By the Light of My Father’s Smile, 1998 Alice Walker wrote her first book of poetry and published her first short story in her final year at Sarah Lawrence College in 1968. Her works have come from her own experience and accomplishment. She grew up in poverty, in which seven brothers and sisters and her sharecropping parents shared impossibly cramped quarters and worked for profit that was never their own. She experienced the inspiration of Martin Luther King, Jr. She was asked to sit in the back of the bus on her way to Spelman College. She saw the failure of her college to offer courses in African American authors. This experience prompted her to write and to teach courses on black women writers whose works both African Americans and other Americans need to read. Walker, like the character Meridian in her second novel, considered physical violence a solution to the inequities with which she and other Americans were expected to live. She studied the Cuban Revolution and its effects. She, like Meridian, found herself unable, however, to perpetuate the violence she loathed. In The Third Life of Grange Copeland, The Color Purple, and The Temple of My Familiar she dramatizes the conditions that occasion violence and the horrors that result from violence. In Possessing the Secret of Joy she graphically describes the life-crippling effects of the ritualized and continued violence of female genital mutilation. Meridian chooses, as Walker has chosen, a political activism that is peaceful and positive. Meridian goes to the South to educate, enlist, and assist prospective but fearful African American voters. Walker returned to the South with a similar purpose in the mid-1960’s. Walker’s writing, her study of world cultures, and her speaking engagements around the world show her continued peaceful political activism. Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple has proven itself, thanks 482

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partly to its film adaptation, the most popular presentation of her life-affirming philosophy. It draws upon African and Native American ideas of celebration and nurturance of the earth. The novel opposes the ideas too common to the European and the European American cultures: denigration and destruction of self, others, and the earth.

The Color Purple Type of work: Novel First published: 1982 The Color Purple, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1983 and made into a successful film, is ultimately a novel of celebration. Initially, however, it is the tragic history of an extended African American family in the early and middle years of the twentieth century. Its tragedy is reflective of the country’s and its characters’ illness, and its celebration is of the characters’ and the country’s cure. The story is written as a series of letters by two sisters, Celie and Nettie. The first letters reveal the fourteen-year-old Celie’s miserable existence as caretaker of her parents’ household. She bears two children to the man she believes to be her father (he is her stepfather), who immediately takes the children from her. Celie is given into the same situation in marriage: She is made caretaker for the children of a deceased woman and a stand-in sexual partner for yet another woman. When Celie and Nettie’s father seeks to make Nettie his next victim, Nettie follows Celie to her new home, only to be victimized there by Celie’s husband. Nettie finds a home with the minister and his wife, who have become parents to Celie’s children, Adam and Olivia. The five move to Africa to bring their Christian message to the Olinka. When Shug, the woman for whom Celie is stand-in partner, enters her home, the note of harmony which will swell to the final Alice Walker (Jeff Reinking/Picture Group) chorus of celebration is

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sounded. Celie comes to love and to learn from Shug. She learns that she must enter Creation as loved creature of her Creator, who, neither white nor male, creates out of love and a desire to please “Its” creatures. Reverence for all of Creation—trees, the color purple, humanity—is the cure, finally, to her and the novel’s ills. Nettie’s letters show Celie that she and her minister husband have come independently, in Africa, to know the same loving Creator who loves all and repudiates no part of Creation. Celie leaves her abuser, Albert, who is slow to learn and sing the novel’s song. He finally helps to bring Nettie, Samuel, Adam, Olivia, and Tashi, Adam’s wife, back to Celie. He tells Celie, as they, finally, establish a friendship, that the more he wonders at and about Creation the more he loves. Celie, now lover of self and Creation, is reunited in middle age with her sister and grown children.

Possessing the Secret of Joy Type of work: Novel First published: 1992 Possessing the Secret of Joy expresses, in fictional and direct statements, its author’s resistance to the practice of female circumcision. According to Walker, in 1991 ninety to a hundred million women and girls living in African, Far Eastern, and Middle Eastern countries were genitally mutilated, and the practice of “female circumcision” in the United States and Europe was growing among immigrants from countries where it was a part of the culture. Three characters from Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and The Temple of My Familiar (1989) assume major roles in Possessing the Secret of Joy. The ritual mutilation of Tashi, childhood African friend to Celie’s children Adam and Olivia and later wife to Adam, is graphically described, and its physical and emotional effects are explored in this novel. Olivia speaks first, as others speak later, of her own, Adam’s, and her missionary parents’ introduction to the six-year-old Tashi. Tashi was inconsolable, having just witnessed the death of her sister Dura, victim of genital mutilation. The novel’s action moves back and forth between Dura’s death and the trial of Tashi for the murder of M’Lissa, Dura’s killer and her own mutilator. It ends with the roar of rifle fire as Tashi is punished for her crime. The aged Carl Jung is introduced to the novel’s list of characters. While he appears only briefly, his psychological and mythological probing of Tashi’s and the world’s problem is carried on by his female and male successors, Raye and Pierre. The recurrent imagery of Tashi’s subconscious is finally interpreted by Pierre (son of Adam, Tashi’s husband) and Lisette, Jung’s niece. Pierre, having grown up with his parents’ accounts of Tashi’s physical and emotional suffer-

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ing (continual pain, impeded motion, difficult and aborted childbirth; recurrent nightmares, truncated relationships, frequent confinement to mental institutions), studies anthropology and continues his great uncle’s intellectual pursuits. In Pierre’s account, the myth is simple, and it is full of Walker’s condemnation of the mutilation and subjugation of women. It is a story the aging Tashi remembers overhearing in bits from covert conversations among the male African elders. The male god descends from the sky to overcome, enjoy, and rape the female earth. Challenged by the earth’s response to his advance, he cuts down the source (the mound or hill) of her pleasure. “RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY!” is the novel’s final statement. Adam, Olivia, Benny (mildly retarded son to Tashi and Adam), Pierre, Raye, and Mbate (servant to M’Lissa and friend to Tashi) hold it up as a banner for Tashi’s viewing as she is killed for the murder of M’Lissa. The novel is Walker’s act of resistance to male domination and the physical and emotional disabling of women.

Suggested readings Banks, Erma Davis, and Keith Eldon Byerman. Alice Walker: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1989. Bass, Margaret Kent. “Alice’s Secret.” CLA Journal 38, no. 1 (September, 1994): 1-11. Bloom, Harold, ed. Alice Walker: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Christophe, Marc-A. “The Color Purple: An Existential Novel.” CLA Journal 36, no. 3 (March, 1993): 280-291. Dieke, Ikenna, ed. Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Marvin, Thomas F. “Preachin’ the Blues: Bessie Smith’s Secular Religion and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” African American Review 28, no. 3 (Fall, 1994): 411-422. Taylor, Carole Anne. “Humor, Subjectivity, Resistance: The Case of Laughter in The Color Purple.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 36, no. 4 (Winter, 1994): 462-483. Walker, Alice, and Parmar, Pratibha. Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1993. Winchell, Donna Haisty. Alice Walker. New York: Twayne, 1992. —Judith K. Taylor

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington Born: Near Hale’s Ford, Virginia; April 5, 1856 Died: Tuskegee, Alabama; November 14, 1915 Washington’s autobiography brought national attention to the need for education for African Americans at a time when most schools were segregated.

Traditions: African American Principal works: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, 1901; My Larger Education, 1911; The Man Farthest Down, 1912 Booker T. Washington rose to national prominence early in the twentieth century for promoting mutual interests as the foundation for better race relations. His views were rejected as limited and harmful by African American activists in the 1960’s because he concentrated on economic rather than social equality. His achievements have been given renewed consideration in light of historical perspective. Washington was born on a Virginia plantation, the son of a white plantation owner and a slave woman. At the end of the Civil War, he moved with his mother and his stepfather to Malden, West Virginia, where he worked in the salt mines and grew up in poverty. Determined to get an education, he made a five-hundred-mile journey, mostly by foot, to Virginia’s Hampton Institute, a school set up to educate poor African Americans. These early experiences influenced Washington’s dedication to an ethic of self-help and self-discipline as the means of achievement, principles that became the foundation for his educational philosophy. In 1881, he became the first principal of a fledgling school in Tuskegee, Alabama, established to give industrial training to African Americans. At Tuskegee, Washington took a pragmatic approach to education, stressing personal cleanliness, correct behavior, and industrial education to improve students’ economic condition. In a Deep South state where legal restrictions relegated African Americans to second-class citizenship and where injustice and lynching were common, Washington successfully recruited students, promoted education, and raised funds. As Tuskegee prospered, Washington emerged as a national spokesman for race relations. His circle of influence widened after his 1895 address at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Later called the Atlanta Compromise by his critics, the speech argued in favor of economic gains, while ignoring the white community’s denial of black political rights. As a man who understood his times, Washington believed that a materialistic society even486

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Booker T. Washington (Library of Congress)

tually would respond to economic equality, that social equality would follow. After his address, his fame increased; he was invited to the White House, was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard University, and won the financial support of leading industrial figures for Tuskegee Institute. In the last years of his career, however, he was sharply criticized by younger, intellectual African Americans who rejected his policies. Washington’s contributions are nevertheless remarkable. His autobiography, Up from

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Slavery, is an inspiring record of achievements in the face of overwhelming social handicaps, and even his sharpest critics pay tribute to Washington’s singleness of vision.

Up from Slavery Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1901 Up from Slavery: An Autobiography is an account of Washington’s life, which began in slavery and ended with his being a renowned educator. It is written in a simple style with an optimistic tone that suggests to African Americans that they can succeed through self-improvement and hard work. Although Up from Slavery has been ranked along with Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) as a classic story of personal achievement, critics disagree about its central theme. Some scholars complain of its conciliatory stance, while others see the work as a justification for black pride. The book opens with Washington’s boyhood hardships, beginning with his life as a slave on a Virginia plantation where the lack of a family name and a history that would give identity to his existence was painful and difficult to understand. He mentions the slaves’ fidelity and loyalty to the master, but he stresses the brutality of the institution: A lack of refinement in living, a poor diet, bad clothing, and ignorance were the slave’s lot. A struggle for literacy is the focus in the intermediate chapters. Leaving the plantation with his mother and stepfather after the Civil War, Washington moved to West Virginia to work in salt and coal mines, where he learned letters while doing manual labor and used trickery to escape work and get to school on time. His situation improved after he was employed as a house servant by a Mrs. Ruffner, who taught him the value of cleanliness and work, lessons he put to good use when he sought admission to Hampton Institute, a Virginia school for poor African Americans. There Washington received an education that led to a teaching job. Throughout these chapters, he gives the impression that his early hardships were a challenge that gave impetus to his later success. He stresses the dignity of labor and the importance of helping others as the means of getting ahead. Beginning with chapter seven, Washington discusses his work at Tuskegee Institute, where classes were first taught in a stable and a hen house, and he takes pride in the growth of the school from an original enrollment of thirty students to a large body of students from twenty-seven states and several foreign countries. His educational theories conform to his belief in manual labor rather than intellectual pursuit, and he stresses economic growth as the important goal. The later portion of the book is primarily a chronicle of fund-raising and an account of grants and gifts. His image as a national leader is firmly

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established, and he includes newspaper comments on his speeches as well as answers to the critics regarding his Atlanta address. In “Last Words,” Washington expresses his hope for an end to racial prejudice.

Suggested readings Adeleke, Tunde, ed. Booker T. Washington—Interpretative Essays. Black Studies 4. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. Harlan, Louis T. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. _______. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Hawkins, Hugh, ed. Booker T. Washington and His Critics. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974. Mansfield, Stephen. Then Darkness Fled: The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington. Nashville: Cumberland House, 1999. Mathews, Basil. Booker T. Washington. College Park, Md.: McGrath, 1969. Riley, D. D. The Life and Times of Booker T. Washington. London: Fleming H. Revell, 1916. Spencer, Samuel. Booker T. Washington and the Negro’s Place in American Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955. —Joyce Chandler Davis

Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein Born: Brooklyn, New York; October 18, 1950

Wasserstein’s plays have helped define the feminist experience of the baby boom generation. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Any Woman Can’t, pr. 1973; Uncommon Women and Others, pr. 1975; Isn’t It Romantic, pr. 1981, pr. 1983 (revised version), pb. 1984; The Heidi Chronicles, pr., pb. 1988; The Sisters Rosensweig, pr. 1992, pb. 1993; An American Daughter, pr., pb. 1998 Wendy Wasserstein attended college at Mount Holyoke. Her first play to gain critical attention, Uncommon Women and Others, relates the experiences six alumni from that all-female college have upon being graduated from their supportive environment and entering the “real world,” where their abilities and identities as intelligent women were often denigrated or denied. Wasserstein was raised by an extraordinary and flamboyant mother, Lola, and a quieter, though no less supportive, father, Morris. She used them as models for the pushy Jewish parents in Isn’t It Romantic, which is about a woman who chooses to remain single rather than marry the Jewish doctor of her mother’s dreams. This play entertainingly dramatizes how liberated women hoped to attain equality and fulfillment. The Heidi Chronicles won the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1989. This play explores the life of a feminist art historian from grade school dances, through woman’s consciousness-raising, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) crisis, her problems with men, and her eventual decision to adopt a child. Wasserstein, who considered herself a “professional malcontent,” was suddenly inundated with flowers and awards. The play was hailed as a milestone in feminist playwriting, documenting a generation’s sadness after the disappointing outcome of the women’s movement. Along with Wendy, Lola and Morris reared three other children, all of whom have been exceptionally successful in the high-pressure fields of business and banking. Wasserstein uses the worlds her siblings inhabit, and the bondings they formed as adults, to good effect in The Sisters Rosensweig. The play shows how Jews still perceive themselves as outsiders in modern society. Wasserstein, having enjoyed the success of The Heidi Chronicles, specifically set out to create a hopeful, romantic ending to this crowd-pleasing work, the most highly structured of her plays. While critics have occasionally been less than kind to Wasserstein, seeing 490

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her scripts as period pieces, she deserves attention as a feminist pioneer. Her plays dramatize a unique perspective on the women’s movement; they also describe the search for religious identity.

The Heidi Chronicles Type of work: Drama First produced: 1988; first published, 1988 The Heidi Chronicles, which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1989, focuses on the women’s movement of the late twentieth century from the point of view of Heidi Holland, feminist art historian. The two acts each open with a prologue about overlooked women painters. The action of the play begins at a dance in 1965 where Heidi meets Peter Patrone, who charms her with his wit. They promise to know each other all their lives. Several years later during a Eugene McCarthy rally, Heidi encounters Scoop Rosenbaum. Scoop is obnoxious and extremely arrogant, and he has a tendency to grade everything, yet Heidi leaves the party to go to bed with him. At a consciousness-raising session a lesbian explains to Heidi that in feminism, “you either shave your legs or you don’t.” Heidi considers body hair in the range of the personal, but she participates in the group, detailing her pathetic attachment to Scoop. Distraught, she begs the women to tell her that all their daughters will feel more worthwhile than they do. Next, Heidi attends a rally at the Chicago Art Institute, protesting the opening of a major retrospective containing no women artists. Peter arrives and confesses his homosexuality. Act 1 closes with Scoop’s wedding to another woman. Although he claims to love Heidi, Scoop does not promise her equality. At the wedding he knowingly marries a woman he considers his lesser. By act 2 Heidi has written her book, And the Light Floods in from the Left. She attends a baby shower for Scoop’s wife held on the same day as the memorial service for John Lennon. In 1982, Heidi appears on a talk show with Peter, now a popular pediatrician, and Scoop, owner of Boomer magazine. The men continually interrupt her. Later, when Heidi tries to tell an old friend how unhappy she is, the woman is too involved with her own career to care. In 1986, Heidi gives an address to the alumni of her alma mater, divulging how sad she is. She feels stranded, and she thought the whole point of the feminist movement was that they were all in it together. In 1987, Peter explains that her kind of sadness is a luxury after all the memorial services for those who have died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The play’s final scene occurs in 1989, when Scoop comes to meet Heidi’s adopted child. He has sold Boomer and is planning to run for Congress. Heidi hopes that Scoop’s son and her daughter will someday find a truer equality. The final image of the play is Heidi and child in front of a banner displaying a major Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective.

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By turns heartwrenching and hilarious, the play captures the angst, admittedly sometimes whiny, of a generation of women who could not understand why the world would not accept them as they were and as they wanted to be.

The Sisters Rosensweig Type of work: Drama First produced: 1992; first published, 1993 The Sisters Rosensweig, a play intended to echo Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s Tri sestry (1901, revised, 1904; The Three Sisters, 1920), is set in August of 1991 as the Soviet Union is dissolving. To celebrate Sara Goode’s birthday, her two sisters, Pfeni Rosensweig and “Dr.” Gorgeous Teitelbaum, come to England. Also invited are Sara’s teenage daughter, Tessie; Pfeni’s lover, the bisexual play director, Geoffrey Duncan; Sara’s aristocratic lover, Nicholas Pymn; and Tessie’s working-class Catholic boyfriend, Tom. As the play opens, Tessie is listening to recordings of Sara’s college chorus for a school project. Pfeni, a globe-trotting feminist journalist, arrives and embraces Geoffrey, whose friend, Mervyn Kant, “world leader in synthetic animal protective covering”—a fake furrier—meets them at Sara’s house. Mervyn becomes smitten with Sara and invites himself to dinner. Dr. Gorgeous, a radio personality who funded her trip from Newton, Massachusetts, by leading a tour for the Temple Beth El sisterhood, enters, her feet aching from cheap shoes. Before dinner Nicholas baits Mervyn about his Jewishness, and Tom and Tessie, who want to go to the celebration in Lithuania, are entranced by Mervyn’s political views. After dinner Sara and Mervyn discuss their similar American pasts until he charms her into bed. When Mervyn asks for a song, however, Sara refuses. In act 2 Gorgeous arranges for Geoffrey to entertain her sisterhood. Then everyone questions Sara about Mervyn until she gets annoyed, offends Gorgeous, and sends Mervyn away. When Geoffrey returns he tells Pfeni he misses men. Pfeni replies, “So do I” and allows him to depart. Pfeni turns to Sara for comfort. Gorgeous enters wearing new, expensive, accidentally broken, shoes. Pfeni suggests Gorgeous’s husband should buy her replacements and Gorgeous reveals she now supports her family. The sisters share revelations and finally relax together. Mervyn, responding to a call from Sara, returns. He delivers a designer suit to Gorgeous, a gift from her sisterhood. Gorgeous is ecstatic, but will return it and use the money for her children’s tuition. Pfeni decides to return to work, and leaves. Sara and Mervyn agree to continue their relationship. Tessie avoids the Lithuanian celebration, realizing she would be an outsider, and cajoles her mother into joining her in song. While Wasserstein’s play was a Broadway success, reviews were frequently lukewarm. Although blessed with witty dialogue, the sisters often seem like

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caricatures. Yet this is less a character drama than an exploration of issues, specifically those relating to identity, the fears common to middle-aged women, and the self-loathing, self-loving attitudes Jews have toward their culture. Not a classic like Chekhov’s masterpiece, Wasserstein’s play is nevertheless a triumph of substance and style over structure.

Suggested readings Arthur, Helen. “Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles.” Review of The Heidi Chronicles, by Wendy Wasserstein. The Nation 261, no. 12 (October 16, 1995): 443-445. Barnett, Claudia. Wendy Wasserstein: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1999. Ciociola, Gail. Wendy Wasserstein: Dramatizing Women, Their Choices and Their Boundaries. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998. Finn, William. “Sister Act.” Vogue 182, no. 9 (September, 1992): 360. Hoban, Phoebe. “The Family Wasserstein.” New York 26 ( January 4, 1993): 32-37. Shapiro, Walter. “Chronicler of Frayed Feminism.” Time, March 27, 1989, 90-92. —Shira Daemon

James Welch

James Welch Born: Browning, Montana; November 18, 1940

Welch’s poems, novels, films, and nonfiction present the viewpoint of Native Americans. Traditions: American Indian Principal works: Winter in the Blood, 1974; The Death of Jim Loney, 1979; Fools Crow, 1986; The Indian Lawyer, 1990; Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians, 1994 (with Paul Stekler); The Heartsong of Charging Elk, 2000 James Welch received his Indian bloodline from his mother, of the Gros Ventre tribe, and from his father, of the Blackfeet tribe. Although his parents had as much Irish as Indian ancestry, for the most part he grew up in Indian territory. He attended Indian high schools in Browning and in Fort Belknap, Montana. In 1965, while Welch was a student at the University of Montana, his mother, a stenographer at the reservation agency, brought home copies of annual reports from the Fort Belknap Indian agents for 1880, 1887, and 1897. These documents excited Welch, for they offered statistics on the numerical decline of Indians and showed agents’ purposeful efforts to control Indians. Of greater interest was evidence that an agent had reported communication with Chief Sitting Bull who had been for a time within a few miles of the house where Welch lived. This revelation ignited Welch’s interest in the history of his people. “I wanted to write about that Highline Country in an extended way,” says Welch in describing the impetus for Winter in the Blood. Welch captures the feeling of vast openness of Northeastern Montana’s rolling plains. The novel is about a young Indian who lacks purpose in life until he discovers how Yellow Calf saved and protected an Indian maiden, an intriguing, heroic tale of his Indian grandparents. The novel’s locale is Welch’s parents’ ranch, and it suggests Welch’s own discovery of Indian forebears. In The Death of Jim Loney, Welch portrays a young Indian tied by heritage to his reservation, unable to find opportunity there, endlessly drinking at lonely bars. Welch says that he writes only of situations that he has witnessed on Indian reservations. Lack of opportunity on the reservation, asserts Welch, leads Indians whom he has known to alcoholic despair. In Killing Custer, Welch portrays his people not as savages but as people justly defending their land, livelihood, and lives from military massacre. Welch re-creates nine494

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teenth and twentieth century Indians living on the Western plains; he engages the reader in their viewpoint.

Fools Crow Type of work: Novel First published: 1986 Fools Crow dramatizes Native American life on the plains of eastern Montana toward the end of the era of the free, nonreservation tribe. This novel follows an Indian coming to manhood, his free life, his romantic marriage, his daring attack on an enemy, his struggle with the dilemma of whether to fight the white man and be slain or to submit to humiliating poverty and confinement on a reservation. Welch inherited sympathy for Native Americans from his Gros Ventre mother and from his Blackfoot father. His mother showed Welch documents from the Indian agency where she worked. The tales of his paternal grandmother concerning the awful massacre at Marias River, Montana, provided basic material and a viewpoint from which to write. Welch’s grandmother, a girl at the time of the massacre, was wounded but escaped with a few survivors. She spoke only her tribal language. In Fools Crow, White Man’s Dog yearns to find respect. At eighteen he has three puny horses, a musket without powder, and no wife. He joins in a raid, in which he proves himself. He woos beautiful Red Paint. His young wife fears he may be killed yet yearns for his honor as a warrior; in a war raid, he outwits and kills the renowned Crow chief, thereby winning the mature name of Fools Crow. Names such as that of his father, Rides-atthe-door, and of the mediJames Welch (Marc Hefty) cine man, Mik-Api, suggest

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an Indian culture. The people pray to The Above Ones—the gods—and to Cold Maker, winter personified. These gods sometimes instruct warriors such as Fools Crow in dreams. Fools Crow follows Raven—a sacred messenger—to free his animal helper, a wolverine, from a white man’s steel trap. Later the Raven requires that Fools Crow lure to death a white man who shoots animals and leaves the flesh to rot. Smallpox ravages the teepees. Settlers push into the treaty territory, reducing buffalo, essential for food, shelter, and livelihood. Fools Crow finds a few of his people running in the northern winter away from the army slaughter of an entire village. In a vision experience, he sees his people living submissively with the powerful whites. Hope for his people resides in such children as his infant son Butterfly.

Suggested readings Barry, Nora. “A Myth to Be Alive: James Welch’s Fools Crow.” MELUS 17 (Spring, 1991): 3-20. Bevis, William. “Dialogue with James Welch.” Northwest Review 20 (1982): 163-185. Gish, Robert F. “Word Medicine: Storytelling and Magic Realism in James Welch’s Fools Crow.” American Indian Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Fall, 1990): 349354. McFarland, Ronald E. “‘The End’ in James Welch’s Novels.” American Indian Quarterly 17, no. 3 (Summer, 1995): 319-327. _______, ed. James Welch. Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1986. _______. Understanding James Welch. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Murphree, Bruce. “Welch’s Fools Crow.” The Explicator 52, no. 3 (Spring, 1994): 186-187. O’Connell, Nicholas. At the Field’s End: Interviews with Twenty Pacific Northwest Writers. Seattle: Madrona, 1987. —Emmett H. Carroll

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Ida B. Wells-Barnett Born: Holly Springs, Mississippi; July 16, 1862 Died: Chicago, Illinois; March 25, 1931 Wells-Barnett’s work in civil rights and in feminism was central to the struggle for African Americans’ participation in American life. Traditions: African American Principal works: On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans, 1969; Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, 1970 Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prolific author whose work covered a wide range of subjects: civil rights, suffrage, social justice, feminism, race riots, social settlements, women’s organizations, travel, and voluntary associations. Many of these works were published in newspapers, pamphlets, and journals. From 1889 to 1892 she was the editor of a newspaper, Free Speech, in Memphis, Tennessee. When she wrote an editorial criticizing a white mob who lynched three men who were her friends, her newspaper was destroyed and she had to flee for her life. She continued to protest against lynching for the rest of her life. She documented the horrors of the practice in a series of writings, especially in pamphlets, and three of these pamphlets were reprinted in the book On Lynchings. Wells-Barnett witnessed injustice toward African Americans in a wide range of other settings and institutions, for example, in employment, housing, voting, and politics. Many of her writings on these subjects were pubIda B. Wells-Barnett honored on a United States postage stamp. (Arkent Archives) lished in African American news497

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papers that have been lost, so the full range of her thought remains to be documented. She was active in founding many civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Equal Rights League, and the Negro Fellowship League. Two important allies on numerous issues were Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams. Wells-Barnett opposed the gradual approach to changing race relations advocated by Booker T. Washington, and this stand was courageous during the height of Washington’s influence. Wells-Barnett was a leader in women’s clubs, although she fought with many white and African American women about the pace and direction of their protests. She was active for several years in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and founded the Ida B. Wells Clubs and the Alpha Suffrage Club, among others. Although Wells-Barnett was born into slavery, she conquered racism, sexism, and poverty to become an articulate and forceful leader. Her autobiography documents not only these public struggles but also her personal decisions to help rear her orphaned siblings, marry, and rear five children.

Crusade for Justice Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1970 Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells is the inspiring story of an African American feminist and civil rights leader. Wells-Barnett documents her individual struggles, her accomplishments, and her major activities to promote equality for women and African Americans. Born into slavery in 1862, she lived through the Reconstruction era after the U. S. Civil War, the battle for suffrage, World War I, and its aftermath. Wells-Barnett’s reflections provide a critical review of American racial and sexual relations. She did not simply observe the American scene; she also altered it as a leader in the women’s movement and the African American Civil Rights movement. The autobiography is especially important in documenting the widespread patterns of lynchings of African American men by white mobs. In protests and writings about these horrors, Wells-Barnett fought against any acceptance of these illegal and violent acts. She struggled with many people to have her radical and unflinching stands represented. Her struggles included arguments with other leaders such as the suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, and the African American leader Booker T. Washington. She presents her side of these differences in the autobiography, which reflects her occasional unwillingness to compromise and her hot temper. Wells-Barnett published in formats such as small-circulation newspapers, pamphlets, and journals, so the autobiography is vital in providing obscure

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information about her life and ideas. She did not complete the autobiography, however, and her daughter Alfreda Duster helped fill in many missing pieces for the publication of the manuscript almost four decades after her mother’s death. In addition, Wells-Barnett lost many of her writings in two different fires, so her daughter did not have access to the full range of her mother’s publications and thoughts. As a result, major areas of Wells-Barnett’s life and ideas are not covered or explained. Wells-Barnett’s life is remarkable in its courage and influence. She refused to be limited by her battles with personal poverty, sexism, and racism, and her valiant spirit is apparent in her life story.

Suggested readings Aptheker, Bettina. Introduction to Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, by Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Occasional Papers Series 25. San Jose, Calif.: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1977. Broschart, Kay. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” In Women in Sociology, edited by Mary Jo Deegan. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. McMurry, Linda O. To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Miller, Ericka M. The Other Construction: Where Violence and Womanhood Meet in the Writings of Wells-Barnett, Grimke, and Larsen. New York: Garland, 2000. Tucker, David M. “Miss Ida B. Wells and Memphis Lynching.” Phylon 32 (Summer, 1971): 112-22. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells. Edited by Miriam DeCosta-Willis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. —Mary Jo Deegan

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman Born: Washington, D.C.; June 14, 1941

John Edgar Wideman is the author of twelve books of highly acclaimed fiction. Traditions: African American Principal works: Damballah, 1981; Hiding Place, 1981; Sent for You Yesterday, 1983; Brothers and Keepers, 1984; The Homewood Trilogy, 1985; Fatheralong, 1994; The Cattle Killing, 1996; Two Cities, 1998 Growing up in Homewood (the African American section of Pittsburgh) and attending public school, Wideman was every parent’s dream. Delivering newspapers after school, he learned to manage finances. He was careful to avoid getting in trouble. He cared about school, did his homework, and he was smart, but his first love was basketball. These were all winning characteristics, and Wideman was successful on and off the court. In his senior year of high school, Wideman was the captain of the basketball team and the class valedictorian. He earned a fouryear scholarship from the University of Pennsylvania. The university gave Wideman choices that would change his life dramatically. In 1963, Wideman was named a Rhodes Scholar, the second black American to receive that honor. Wideman also became a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Wideman went on to teach at various universities. In many ways, Wideman has left Homewood physiJohn Edgar Wideman (University of Wyoming) cally, emotionally, and 500

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spiritually behind. In his writing, however, Wideman never strays far from Homewood. The Homewood Trilogy (comprising Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday), perhaps his most widely read fiction, may be read as Wideman’s return to Homewood and his determination to find his identity. The trilogy is the story, from the times of slavery onward, of Wideman’s family. The trilogy is also about how creativity and imagination are important means of transcending despair. Brothers and Keepers is a nonfiction work about Wideman’s brother, who was incarcerated for murder, and how the two brothers’ lives diverged from common beginnings. The work has deep implications for the lives and living conditions of African Americans.

Brothers and Keepers Type of work: Novel First published: 1984 Brothers and Keepers, Wideman’s most popular novel, is a psychologically realistic portrait of two brothers. Although they grow up in the same environment, Homewood, these brothers travel diverse paths. Wideman is a black star pulsing brilliantly in a white universe; his brother, Robby, sinks into a life of crime and drug addiction. Robby’s path leads to his serving a life sentence without parole for taking part in a robbery in which a man was killed. Brothers and Keepers is a novel of tragic dimensions, grave despair, and spiritual survival. This novel had to be written as much for Wideman as for Robby. It is a homecoming for Wideman—a return to the community of brotherhood, concern, and understanding. In part 1, “Visits,” readers learn that although Wideman never sees his color as an obstacle to his own success, he views Robby as a black victim of society’s ills: “A brother behind bars, my own flesh and blood, raised in the same house by the same mother and father; a brother confined in prison has to be a mistake, a malfunctioning of the system.” In the second part of the novel, “Our Time,” Wideman describes his growth and maturation while he spends time with his brother on visits to the prison. Wideman is seen as searching for his own identity while he searches for reasons for Robby’s fall from grace. Learning that he needs as much help as Robby does, Wideman gains respect for Robby’s intelligence. Wideman also learns the truth about the foiled robbery attempt. In the final section, “Doing Time,” a spirituality operates to bring harmony to the two brothers. Especially moving is Robby’s graduation speech as he receives his associate degree, and his promise to Wideman that he will “forever pray.” From a sociological point of view, it is interesting that prison can rehabilitate someone like Robby and motivate him to work on his education. It is an equally moving experience to see Wideman connect with

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his own identity and return to his roots. Wideman learns that he cannot escape genetics or the ghetto. Until Robby is free, Wideman is not free.

The Homewood Trilogy Type of work: Novels and short fiction First published: Damballah, 1981; Hiding Place, 1981; Sent for You Yesterday, 1983; The Homewood Trilogy, 1985 In The Homewood Trilogy, which comprises the short-story collection Damballah and the novels Hiding Place and Sent for You Yesterday, Wideman re-creates Homewood, the black section of Pittsburgh, and describes the myriad relationships among ancestors and a living African American family in the hundred years since slavery. Damballah is an African Voodoo god, “the good serpent of the sky.” The hero of the trilogy is John French, who specializes in a kind of benevolent fatherhood. Wideman’s return to Homewood through these novels convinces readers of his determination to find and understand his identity through tracing his roots as deep as he can. In Damballah and Hiding Place, Wideman furnishes a family tree. Readers are told of his greatgreat-great grandmother, who fled through the Underground Railroad with a white man to safety in Pittsburgh. Biological roots traced, the job of understanding begins. One sour apple on the family tree is Tommy. The character Tommy is actually Robby, Wideman’s brother. Tommy and Wideman are complex dimensions in finding the identity that Wideman seeks. The main character in Hiding Place, Tommy, is a fugitive from history as well as the law. He is taken in by Mama Bess, who is family and who represents what family does. Family tries to put together the “scars” and the “stories” that give young people their identities. Essentially, Hiding Place is the story of two lost souls, Mama Bess and Tommy. Mama Bess is lost because she has lost her husband and her son; she becomes a recluse, a fugitive living on a hill overlooking Pittsburgh, away from the family. Tommy is lost because he is too headstrong to listen and finds himself on the run after a scheme to rob a ghetto hoodlum ends in murder. Tommy does not want to hear the stories and learn about the scars; he is too absorbed in preservation. Sent for You Yesterday, through the characters of Doot and Albert Wilkes, the outspoken blues pianist, suggests that creativity and imagination are important means of transcending despair. Creativity also strengthens the common bonds of race, culture, and class. Homewood Trilogy is a monumental work of investigating and understanding the origins of self and identity.

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Suggested readings Bennetts, Leslie. “Seeds of Violence.” Vanity Fair, March, 1989, 156-161, 210-214. Bertley, Christopher. “Brothers and Keepers.” Review of Brothers and Keepers, by John Edgar Wideman. Black Enterprise 15 (May, 1985): 15. Byerman, Keith Eldon. John Edgar Wideman: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1998. Coleman, J. W. “Going Back Home: The Literary Development of John Edgar Wideman.” College Language Association 28 (March, 1985): 326-343. Fraser, C. Gerald. “Brothers and Keepers.” Review of Brothers and Keepers, by John Edgar Wideman. The New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1985, 56. Marcus, James. “The Pain of Being Two.” The Nation, October 4, 1986, 321-322. Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. “Fraternal Blues: John Edgar Wideman’s Homewood Trilogy.” Contemporary Literature 32 (Fall, 1991): 312-343. TuSmith, Bonnie, ed. Conversations with John Edgar Wideman. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Wideman, John Edgar. “Language of Home.” The New York Times Book Review, January 13, 1985, 1-3. Wilson, Matthew. “The Circles of History in John Edgar Wideman’s The Homewood Trilogy.” College Language Association 33 (March, 1990): 239-259. —Barbara Cecelia Rhodes

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel Born: Sighet, Transylvania (now Romania); September 30, 1928

Wiesel, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, is an important writer on the Holocaust. Traditions: Jewish Principal works: Un di Velt hot geshvign, 1956 (La Nuit, 1958; Night, 1960); Le Mendiant de Jérusalem, 1968 (A Beggar in Jerusalem, 1970); L’Oublié , 1989 (The Forgotten, 1992); Tous les fleuves vont à la mer: Mémoires, 1994 (All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoir, 1995); . . . et la mer n’est pas remplie, 1996 (And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969, 1999) Elie Wiesel’s sheltered, bookish adolescence was forever shattered in 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary and rounded up all its Jews, including the Wiesel family. The fifteen-year-old Elie was deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, from which he was liberated in April, 1945. The horrors he saw there, the despair he felt, the anger he directed at God were later themes in his literary and nonfiction writings. Shortly after the war, Elie went to France, where he learned the language and developed a lifelong passion for philosophy and literature. When, in 1955, French novelist François Mauriac urged him to bear witness to the six million Jews murdered in Europe’s concentration camps, Wiesel wrote the acclaimed Night. First published in Yiddish, then French, then English, the book began as an eight-hundred-page manuscript but was cut to about one hundred pages of terrifyingly bald description of what happened to Wiesel. Night is a wrenching account of evil and a terrifying indictment of God. He next published novels presenting the anguished guilt of those who survived the mass slaughter. Central to the protagonists’ conduct and outlook is the belief that every act is ambiguous and implies a loss of innocence. By rejoining the religious community, however, the survivor may finally transform despair into joy. A Beggar in Jerusalem shows how a tormented people came of age. Celebrating Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, the novel is a memorial to the dead and an appeal for the world’s beggars. Although still haunted by the Holocaust, Wiesel could thereafter address other problems confronting the next generation—from madness as an escape from persecution to silence as a means of overcoming horror. Wiesel returns to the Holocaust and its aftermath in The Forgotten. The original French title refers to what is forgotten as well as to one who is 504

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forgotten; memory, remembrance, forgetting are all important leitmotifs. Through legends, stories, and eyewitness accounts, one triumphs over oblivion and, ultimately, over death. The spinner of tales survives, along with his message, however incomplete and lost in the fog of memory. Wiesel encompasses Jewish lore, tradition, and memory, and by relating the Jews’ unique experience to the universal legacy of humanity he succeeds in creating an Everyman. In recognition of his humanism and activism he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

All Rivers Run to the Sea Type of work: Autobiography First published: Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, 1994 (English translation, 1995) Taking the title of his autobiography from Ecclesiastes, Wiesel presents the important people and events of his life, beginning with his childhood in Sighet, Romania, and culminating in his 1969 marriage in Jerusalem. Wiesel, through stories and remembrances, tells of a family full of piety, moral courage, and selfless devotion to Judaism. From his mother and grandmother, Elie learned goodness and love; from his grandfather, the Jewish legends he would later use in fiction and essays; from his father, rectitude and altruism. His teachers, at various times of his life, inculcated in him a reverence for learning, an exactness in biblical or philosophical discourse, and above all the joy, sadness, and truth of the old masters. World War II and the persecution of the Jews destroyed Wiesel’s idyllic world forever. He and his family were taken to Auschwitz. He later was transferred to Buchenwald. Unable to understand German cruelty, angry at those who did not intervene on the victims’ behalf, angry too at Elie Wiesel (©The Nobel Foundation)

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God for letting it happen, Wiesel emerged alive after terrible trials. At age seventeen he was endowed with a special knowledge of life and death. Shortly after his liberation from Buchenwald he went to France, where he eventually enrolled at the university, enduring hardship and contemplating suicide. Saved by Zionist fervor, he worked as a journalist for an Israeli newspaper in Paris. A crucial meeting with novelist François Mauriac in 1955 was to decide his literary career: Mauriac encouraged him to break his self-imposed silence about his experience in concentration camps and found a publisher for Wiesel’s first novel, La Nuit (1958; Night, 1960), to which he contributed the foreword. After Wiesel moved to New York to become his newspaper’s American correspondent, he soon applied for U.S. citizenship. In a series of amusing anecdotes he describes his life in a Jewish American milieu. He also tells of his relations with his French publishers and of his meeting with Marion, his future wife and translator. More moving and bittersweet are his return to his native town, where relatives and friends have disappeared and only the ghosts of his youth remain; his personal and literary campaign for Russian Jewry; the fear caused by the Six-Day War of 1967, since it could have meant the end of Israel and the Jewish dream; and his prayer of thanksgiving at the newly liberated Wailing Wall. Throughout, a celebration of life and of the great Hasidic teachers and thinkers as well as a moral and ethical strength permeates Wiesel’s conduct and writings over his first forty years. In memorializing his relatives and friends and in bearing witness to their passing, he leaves his own mark behind.

A Beggar in Jerusalem Type of work: Novel First published: Le Mendiant de Jérusalem, 1968 (English translation, 1970) A Beggar in Jerusalem is told in the first person by David, heir to a bloody history of anti-Semitic persecutions. It is a novel in which Jewish survivors of destruction must confront their miraculous escape. In the process, although they suffer from guilt and anger, they ultimately forge an identity based on hope. In June, 1967, the forty-year-old David goes to fight against the united Arab armies. He wishes to die in order to finally overcome the despair caused by God’s abandonment of the Jews during World War II and by his own pointless survival. At the front, he meets Katriel, and both soon agree that whoever comes back will tell the other’s story. Israel wins a resounding victory in what comes to be called the Six-Day War, and as the narrative opens, there are celebrations all over the land, especially in Jerusalem. Katriel, however, does not come back.

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David not only tells his comrade’s story—much as King David told of Absalom—but also wonders whether he ought to live it as well. This he does, at the end, by marrying Katriel’s widow, not out of love, which would imply a total gift of self and of which he does not feel himself capable, but rather out of affection and sympathy, perhaps out of friendship. The hero has realized that, beyond suffering and bitterness, he can arrive at self-discovery. Whereas Albert Camus favored revolt in the face of the absurd, Wiesel advocates laughter. By laughing one succeeds in conquering oneself, and by dominating one’s fear one learns to laugh: “Let our laughter drown all the noises of the earth, all the regrets of mankind.” There is no longer a need to search for an antidote against distress, but simply to abandon oneself to the joy of an event without precedent—the reunion of Israel with Jerusalem, uniting those absent and present, the fighters and mad beggars, in similar euphoria and similar ecstasy: “I want to laugh and it is my laughter I wish to offer to Jerusalem, my laughter and not my tears.” In his tireless attempt to understand the awesome and terrifying mystery of Jewish suffering, the once-tormented David is resolutely optimistic, for the recaptured Jerusalem means the end of despair for Jews in Israel and abroad. The victory celebrations are a memorial to the dead, a song to and of life, and an appeal in behalf of history’s wandering outcasts—the allegorical beggars who, after the annihilation of European Jewry, have come to Jerusalem to give God the last chance to save his people.

Night Type of work: Memoir First published: Un di Velt hot geshvign, 1956; La Nuit, 1958 (English translation, 1960) Night, Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust, tells of his concentration camp experience. Encompassing events from the end of 1941 to 1945, the book ponders a series of questions, whose answers, Moché the Beadle, who was miraculously saved from an early German massacre, reminds the boy, lie “only within yourself.” Moché, who teaches the boy the beauty of biblical studies, is a strange character with a clownish awkwardness, more God’s madman than mentally ill; he is also a recurring figure in later Wiesel works. After Moché returns to town to describe the horrible scenes he has witnessed, no one listens to this apparently insane rambler who, like Cassandra, repeats his warnings in vain. The clown, a moving and tragic fool, is unable to convince the Jewish community of its impending doom. Despite arrests, ghettoizations, and mass deportations, the Jews still cannot believe him, even as they embark for Auschwitz. In 1944, the young narrator is initiated into the horrors of the archipelago

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of Nazi death camps. There he becomes A-7713, deprived of name, self-esteem, identity. He observes and undergoes hunger, exhaustion, cold, suffering, brutality, executions, cruelty, breakdown in personal relationships, and flames and smoke coming from crematories in the German death factories. In the barracks of terror, where he sees the death of his mother and sevenyear-old sister, his religious faith is corroded. The world no longer represents God’s mind. Comparing himself to Job, he bitterly asks God for an explanation of such evil. The boy violently rejects God’s presence and God’s justice, love, and mercy: “I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man.” After a death march and brutally cruel train ride, young Wiesel and his father arrive at Buchenwald, where his father soon dies of malnutrition and dysentery. As in a daze, the son waits to be killed by fleeing German soldiers. Instead, he coolly notes, on April 11, 1945, “at about six o’clock in the evening, the first American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald.” In addition to wanting to elucidate the unfathomable secret of death and theodicy, the narrator lived a monstrous, stunted, and isolated existence as an adult. He saw himself as victim, executioner, and spectator. By affirming that he was not divided among the three but was in fact all of them at once, he was able to resolve his identity problem. The autobiography’s last image shows Wiesel looking at himself in a mirror: The body and soul are wounded, but the night and its nightmares are finally over.

Suggested readings Berenbaum, Michael. The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1979. Estess, Ted L. Elie Wiesel. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. Patterson, David. In Dialogue with Elie Wiesel. Wakefield, N.H.: Longwood Academic, 1991. Rittner, Carol, ed. Elie Wiesel: Between Memory and Hope. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Rosen, Alan, ed. Celebrating Elie Wiesel: Stories, Essays, Reflections. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. Rosenfeld, Alvin H., and Irving Greenberg, eds. Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Roth, John K. A Consuming Fire: Encounters with Elie Wiesel and the Holocaust. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979. Sibelman, Simon P. “The Mystical Union: A Re-Examination of Elie Wiesel’s Le Mendiant de Jérusalem.” Literature and Theology 7, no. 2 ( June, 1993): 186-197. _______. Silence in the Novels of Elie Wiesel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Stern, Ellen N. Elie Wiesel: Witness for Life. New York: Ktav, 1982. —Pierre L. Horn

August Wilson

August Wilson Born: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; April 27, 1945

Wilson has made an ambitious effort to create a cycle of ten plays examining African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. Traditions: African American Principal works: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, pr. 1984, pb. 1985; Fences, pr., pb. 1985; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, pr. 1986, pb. 1988; The Piano Lesson, pr. 1987, pb. 1990; Two Trains Running, pr. 1990, pb. 1992; Seven Guitars, pr. 1995, pb. 1996 August Wilson considers contact with one’s roots to be a crucial source of strength, and his plays have explored and celebrated African American culture. Wilson’s plays also acknowledge the white racism that has marked African American history. Black experience in America contains, Wilson has noted, “all the universalities.” His work has received wide acclaim, winning Pulitzers and numerous other awards. Wilson’s father was a white baker from Germany, and his mother was a black cleaning (Photo not available) woman who had moved to Pittsburgh from rural North Carolina. His father “wasn’t around much,” according to Wilson, and he and his brothers and sisters grew up in a financially strapped singleparent household “in a cultural environment which was black.” At age twelve Wilson discovered and read through the small “Negro section” of the public library. 509

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In 1965, he decided to become a writer and adopted his mother’s maiden name, becoming August Wilson (which he legally formalized in the early 1970’s) instead of Frederick August Kittel. He began living on his own in a rooming house in the black area of Pittsburgh, known as the Hill, while writing poetry and supporting himself in a series of menial jobs. In 1965, he also discovered the blues, which he acknowledges as “the greatest source of my inspiration.” Wilson identifies three other B’s as influences: Amiri Baraka, some of whose plays Wilson directed in the 1960’s at the Black Horizons Theater Company that Wilson cofounded; the art of Romare Bearden, noted for his collages of black life; and the stories of Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges. In addition, he claims that most of the plays he has seen have been by South African playwright Athol Fugard. In 1978, Wilson moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where, surrounded by white voices, he began to create characters who spoke a poeticized version of the black English he had heard on the Hill. Lloyd Richards—then dean of the Yale School of Drama—directed Wilson’s first major dramatic success, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and began a long-term working relationship with Wilson, who sees Richards as a father figure and professional mentor, with insight into Wilson’s plays because of his own roots in black culture. After Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Wilson realized he had written three plays set in different decades and decided to complete a historical cycle, with a play for each decade of the twentieth century. He has used Pittsburgh as a setting for his plays after Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which is set in Chicago), causing him to be compared to fiction writers James Joyce (who used Dublin) and William Faulkner (who used the area around Oxford, Mississippi).

Fences Type of work: Drama First produced: 1985; first published, 1985 Troy Maxson, the protagonist of Wilson’s Fences, is the son of a frustrated sharecropper whose harshness drove off his wives and Troy. Troy has made his way north to a world where African Americans live in shacks and are unable to find work. Troy takes to stealing, kills a man, and is sent to prison, where he learns how to play baseball, which he loves and at which he excels. Segregation confines Troy, after prison, to the Negro Leagues. He is angry at the racism that frustrates his attempt at achieving the American Dream in the most American of sports, but he remains resilient. Fences celebrates his indomitable spirit, while acknowledging his flaws. The play opens in 1957, when Troy is fifty-three years old. He is appealing in the zest with which he dramatizes his life. A battle with pneumonia becomes a time when he wrestles with a white-robed and hooded Death, and buying furniture on credit from a white man becomes making a deal with the

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devil. His friend Bono seems to acknowledge the African American tradition of these tall tales when he comments: “You got some Uncle Remus in your blood.” The audience learns of Troy’s admirable defiance at work in questioning the sanitation department’s policy of having all the whites drive while the blacks do the lifting. Troy also has an affectionate teasing relationship with Bono and his wife Rose. As the play continues, however, Troy erects fences between himself and those he loves. He refuses to allow his son to accept a football fellowship to college and then forces him to leave home. Troy loses contact with Bono after being promoted at work. Troy hurts his wife through an extramarital affair, and he commits his brain-damaged brother, Gabe, to a mental institution so he can collect part of Gabe’s government checks. Although Troy has tragic flaws, the ending of Fences is not tragic. A spirit of reconciliation is brought by Gabe, who has been allowed to leave the mental hospital to attend his brother’s funeral. Gabe thinks that, when he blows his trumpet, Saint Peter will open the pearly gates and allow Troy into Heaven. Gabe’s horn lacks a mouthpiece, however, and, distraught, he performs a dance, connected, presumably, to pre-Christian African ancestors. In performance, the stage is then flooded with light, indicating that the gates have opened.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Type of work: Drama First produced: 1984; first published, 1985 Set in 1927 in a Chicago recording studio, Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom explores the values and attitudes toward life and music of the classic blues singer Ma Rainey. Their economic exploitation as African American musicians in a white-controlled recording industry, as well as their inferior social status in the majority white culture, become evident in the play’s dialogue and action. As Ma Rainey puts it: “If you colored and can make them some money, then you all right with them. Otherwise, you just a dog in the alley.” For Rainey, the blues is “a way of understanding life” that gives folks a sense they are not alone: “This be an empty world without the blues.” As such, the blues has been a source of strength for African Americans, and performers like Ma Rainey have been bearers of cultural identity. A major theme of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and of other plays by Wilson is the necessity of acknowledging one’s past and connecting with one’s culture. African American identity, however, with its roots in Africa and the rural South, is at times rejected by the members of Ma Rainey’s band. The pianist, Toledo, for example, points out the “ancestral retention” involved in the bass player’s trying to get some marijuana from another band member by naming

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things they have done together—in effect, an African appeal to a bond of kinship. Toledo’s observation is immediately rejected by the bass player, who replies: “I ain’t no African!” and by Levee, the trumpet player, who remarks: “You don’t see me running around in no jungle with no bone between my nose.” Levee also has a loathing for the South, which he associates with sharecropping and general backwardness. Levee’s disregard for African American heritage extends to Ma Rainey’s style of blues, which he calls “old jug-band st.” He resents her refusal to use his jazzed-up arrangements and, at the tragic end of the play, when his hopes for a recording contract of his own are dashed, his rage is misdirected at Toledo, who happens to step on his shoe, and whom he stabs with his knife.

Two Trains Running Type of work: Drama First produced: 1990; first published, 1992 Memphis Lee’s small restaurant is the setting of Wilson’s Two Trains Running. Risa, a young woman who has scarred her legs with a razor to deflect the sexual interest of men, is the restaurant’s cook and waitress. The rest of the African American cast are male and include, among others, Sterling, an unemployed young man recently released from prison; Holloway, a retired house painter; and Hambone, who is mentally retarded. The gossip, debates, philosophizing, and storytelling that take place in Memphis’s restaurant reflect the oral tradition of African American culture. Some critics note that the characters engaged in the talk seem detached from the racial riots, assassinations, and antiwar protests that marked the late 1960s, when the play takes place. Wilson responds by saying that he was not interested in writing “what white folks think of as American history for the 1960’s.” He was interested in making the point that “by 1969 nothing has changed for the black man.” One thing not changed by 1969 was economic injustice. Holloway notes that for centuries blacks worked hard for free, enriching white slaveholders. Once blacks have to be paid whites deny them work and call them lazy. The characters in Two Trains Running are directly affected by the whites’ ability to make and interpret rules, to the disadvantage of blacks. When Hambone painted a fence, the white butcher who hired him offered a chicken in payment instead of the promised ham. When Sterling wins at the numbers, the whites who run the game cut his winnings in half. When Memphis’s restaurant is scheduled to be taken over by the city, the whites in charge invoke a clause saying they do not have to pay his price. Hambone dies without getting his ham, but his persistence in demanding it for more than nine years moves Memphis to donate fifty dollars for flowers for his funeral and moves Sterling to break into the butcher shop and steal a

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ham for his casket. By the end of the play Sterling has been transformed from a man unwilling to pay the price for love (he is reluctant to accept responsibility for others) to one who is willing to make a commitment to Risa, who seems willing to have a relationship with him. In this he has the blessing of Aunt Ester, reputedly 322 years old and an important offstage character. She symbolizes the wisdom of black experience in America, the wisdom of a people who survived against the odds. Memphis, too, has been transformed. He was run off his land in Mississippi years before, and he vowed one day to return seeking justice. “They got two trains running every day.” By the play’s end he wins his fight with the city, which agrees to pay more than his price for his restaurant, and he declares he will now follow through on his vow because, as he understands Aunt Ester to have told him: “If you drop the ball, you got to go back and pick it up.”

Suggested readings Birdwell, Christine. “Death as a Fastball on the Outside Corner: Fences’ Troy Maxson and the American Dream.” Aethlon 8 (Fall, 1990): 16-25. Elkins, Marilyn, ed. August Wilson: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1994. Nadel, Alan, ed. May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Pereira, Kim. August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Shannon, Sandra G. The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1995. Wilde, Lisa. “Reclaiming the Past: Narrative and Memory in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running.” Theater 22 (Fall-Winter, 1990-1991): 36-41. Wolfe, Peter. August Wilson. New York: Twayne, 1999. —Jack Vincent Barbera

Jade Snow Wong

Jade Snow Wong Born: San Francisco, California; January 21, 1922

Wong’s accounts of Chinese life in America break down prejudice and create understanding among cultures. Traditions: Chinese American Principal works: Fifth Chinese Daughter, 1950; The Immigrant Experience, 1971; No Chinese Stranger, 1975 Jade Snow Wong was introduced to writing by her father, who gave her a diary when she was young and encouraged her to record the important events of her life. She continued this habit into her adult life. She also received formal training in college, where she wrote many papers about her life in Chinatown. Wong began work on her first book, Fifth Chinese Daughter, in 1946, at the age of twenty-four. Her goal was to create a “better understanding of the Chinese culture on the part of Americans.” She wanted to show non-Chinese Americans the beauty and traditions of her culture and dispel prevalent stereotypes. Although Wong has produced two other major works, writing is not her primary occupation. Instead, she sees it as a method for exposing other Americans to her cultural heritage. As a result of her first book, the U.S. State Department sent her on a four-month tour to speak to various audiences and to relate her experiences of breaking through race and gender barriers in America. Wong and her husband also acted as tour guides and escorted many Americans to China before her husband’s death in 1985. Wong has continued this practice, leading one group a year since then. Her third book, No Chinese Stranger, was written in reaction to her first visit to China, in 1972, only one month after Richard M. Nixon’s trip. During that trip, she learned what it is like to be part of a homogenous society, and not a minority. Wong’s works also show that each person must establish an identity regardless of race. Her wish is to share her struggles in order to encourage others who may face similar obstacles. She continues to fight prejudice and to encourage individuals to make a place for themselves in the world where they can express themselves and be recognized for who they are. In addition to writing, Wong has expressed herself through the creation of pottery, which is sold in her shop. She also takes care of her children, which she says is the most important duty in her life. She claims, “Our basic and greatest value is family cohesiveness.” She sees the nurturing of her family as an additional way to foster individuality and self-expression. 514

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Fifth Chinese Daughter Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1950 Fifth Chinese Daughter, Wong’s autobiography, directly and honestly relates the struggles and accomplishments of an American-born Chinese girl. Although it is an autobiography, it is written in the third person, which reflects the Chinese custom of humility. This use of the third person also reminds the reader of how difficult it is for the author to express her individual identity. The book explains Wong’s desire to prove to her parents that she was “a person, besides being a female.” Even as a toddler, she was taught to obey her parents and her older brother and sisters without question. She was not allowed to express her opinions; rather, she was forced to comply with the demands of the rest of her family. When she began school, her parents expected her to earn good grades, yet they refused to praise or even encourage her when she was recognized for her school achievements. In fact, they refused to fund her college education, although they paid her brothers’ expenses, because it was not considered wise to educate a girl, who would leave the family when she married. As a result, Wong was forced to work full time throughout her teenage years in order to save the money to go to college. During this time, she was exposed to the “foreign” culture of the whites living in San Francisco, and she was surprised to learn that parents in many Anglo families listened to children and respected their opinions. Further, she learned in a college sociology class that in many families, children were afforded the right to discuss with their parents what they saw as unfair. Learning about the practices of other families caused Wong to question her parents’ practices for the first time. As a result, Wong began a slow and painful struggle to earn her parents’ respect while developing her own identity. Unfortunately, her parents were not the only people who would discourage her. She also had to face prejudice and stereotyping in the white world. She refused to be discouraged by this and accepted the challenges that it brought. Eventually, Jade Snow was able to win her parents’ respect. She established her own identity and her independence by beginning a business selling handmade pottery. Although her Chinatown shop was patronized only by white customers, her ability to attract many customers was recognized by her family and by members of Wong’s community. The pottery shop venture finally allowed her to find “that niche which would be hers alone.”

Suggested readings Hong, Maria, ed. Growing Up Asian American: An Anthology, Morrow, 1993. Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. “Twelve Asian American Writers: In Search of Self-

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Definition.” In Redefining American Literary History. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990. Ling, Amy. Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry, Pergamon Press, 1990. _______. “Chinese American Women Writers: The Tradition Behind Maxine Hong Kingston.” In Redefining American Literary History. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990. —Amy Beth Shollenberger

Jay Wright

Jay Wright Born: Albuquerque, New Mexico; May 25, 1935

Wright’s intellectually demanding poetry illuminates the African American experience by exploring the philosophies and religious cosmologies that underlie historical events and personal spiritual development. Traditions: African American Principal works: Death as History, 1967; The Homecoming Singer, 1971; Soothsayers and Omens, 1976; Dimensions of History, 1976; The Double Invention of Komo, 1980; Explications/Interpretations, 1984; Elaine’s Book, 1986; Selected Poems of Jay Wright, 1987; Boleros, 1991 Jay Wright was reared in New Mexico and Southern California. Wright became fluent in English and Spanish and knowledgeable regarding African American, Hispanic, and Native American ways of looking at the world. Extended travels in Mexico and Europe in later years also expanded his cultural literacy and empathy. His poetry expresses his interest in understanding all of the many different cultures that have contributed to modern global identity. After high school in San Pedro, California, Wright played minor league baseball and served in the U.S. Army. He earned a degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 1961, studied briefly at Union Theological Seminary, and received a master’s degree from Rutgers University in 1966. Though he taught at Tougaloo College, Talladega College, and Yale University in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Wright did not pursue a regular academic career. Married in 1971 to Lois Silber, Wright settled in New Hampshire to continue his research and writing. Wright’s serious devotion to poetry and his prolific production brought him numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1968, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974, and the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1986. These awards allowed Wright time to study and to write. The study of comparative religion, philosophy, and anthropology is central to Wright’s poetic work, which explores the history of slavery in the New World by investigating the mythologies and cosmologies of the African, European, and Native American peoples.

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Poetry First published: Death as History, 1967; The Homecoming Singer, 1971; Soothsayers and Omens, 1976; Dimensions of History, 1976; The Double Invention of Komo, 1980; Explications/Interpretations, 1984; Elaine’s Book, 1986; Selected Poems of Jay Wright, 1987; Boleros, 1991 In the early 1970’s, when many African Americans adopted such aspects of traditional African culture as wardrobe and hairstyle, Jay Wright chose to explore the complex mythologies of the West African Dogon and Bambara peoples. Early poems in The Homecoming Singer are often biographical, but later poetry, drawing upon Wright’s study of anthropological works, approaches these African cosmologies with the gravity that English-language poets previously have accorded to biblical and ancient classical sources. A full appreciation of The Double Invention of Komo depends upon the reader’s willingness to investigate these sources, but many of Wright’s shorter poems in Explications/Interpretations and other books are accessible to more casual attention. In every case, Wright views poetry as a personal means of learning about spiritual and communal realities. “My speech is a plumb line/ to the echo of the earth” he writes in “Inscrutability.” Raised in New Mexico and Southern California, Wright was directly influenced by African American, Hispanic, and Native American culture and his literary search for identity avoids the binary black-white focus of much African American literature. In his notes to The Double Invention of Komo, Wright asserts that “history and poetry have the same creative ground” and are tools for individual discovery that “permit a man to know himself.” As a result, Wright’s poetry is an ambitious and demanding intellectual exercise, demonstrating his belief that traditional African cosmologies and rituals effectively define the relationship of the individual to society and the natural world in ways that are unavailable through European philosophy. Well-read in religion and modern science, Western and non-Western philosophy, Wright requires his readers to see each of these as equally complex and valid approaches to understanding reality. The Double Invention of Komo is a crosscultural epic that dramatizes a Bambara initiation ritual, recording Wright’s intellectual quest and introducing his readers to a syncretic view of the world. Wright is primarily a religious poet—in the sense that his works seek to engage the spiritual dimension of human life—and even his scintillating love poems seek “the gift of being transformed.” What there is of social commentary in his work may be found in his suggestion that actively pursuing an understanding of spirituality may be the most effective way to deal with social problems. He writes in “Journey to the Place of Ghosts,” “It is time for the snail’s pace/ of coming again into life,/ with the world swept clean,/ the crying done.” In Wright’s poetry, even the most minute achievement of personal intelligence counts more than Western notions of material progress.

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Suggested readings Barrax, Gerald. “The Early Poetry of Jay Wright.” Callaloo 6 (Fall, 1983): 85-101. Kutzinski, Vera M. Against the American Grain: Myth and History in William Carlos Williams, Jay Wright, and Nicolas Guillén. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Okpewho, Isidore. “From a Goat Path in Africa: An Approach to the Poetry of Jay Wright.” Callaloo 14 (1991): 692-726. Stepto, Robert B. “After Modernism, After Hibernation: Michael Harper, Robert Hayden, and Jay Wright.” In Chant of Saints: A Gathering of AfroAmerican Art, Literature, and Scholarship, edited by Michael S. Harper and Robert B. Stepto. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979. Welburn, Ron. “Jay Wright’s Poetics: An Appreciation.” MELUS 18 (1994): 51-70. —Lorenzo Thomas

Richard Wright

Richard Wright Born: Natchez, Mississippi; September 4, 1908 Died: Paris, France; November 28, 1960 Wright portrays African Americans entrapped in forms of neo-slavery; he earned national and international acclaim. Traditions: African American Principal works: Uncle Tom’s Children, 1938; Native Son, 1940; Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States, 1941; Native Son: The Biography of a Young American, a Play in Ten Scenes, pr. 1941; Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, 1945; The Outsider, 1953; Black Power: A Record of Reaction in a Land of Pathos, 1954; The Color Curtain: A Report of the Bandung Conference, 1956; White Man, Listen!, 1957; The Long Dream, 1958; American Hunger, 1977; Rite of Passage, 1994 Richard Wright rose from abject poverty to become one of America’s foremost writers. His topics consistently focus on the freedom and self-governance of African Americans in texts before 1950. He chronicled his Southern experiences from 1908 to 1927 in Black Boy, and his Northern experiences from 1927 to 1937 in American Hunger. Wright met with success once he moved to New York City in 1937. He won a literary prize in 1938 that earned him a contract with a major publisher, which published Uncle Tom’s Children. A Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939 enabled Wright to complete Native Son; with that work alone, he earned acclaim as the leading African American writer of his time. The novel is Wright’s moral indictment of America for perpetrating neo-slavery among African Americans. In Native Son, the ghetto produces Bigger Thomas, who dies as a result of his accidentally killing a white woman. The 1940’s brought personal crises to Wright. He faced America’s continuous racial discrimination toward him and toward interracial couples once he married Ellen Poplar in 1941. Ongoing rifts with the Communist Party also added to Wright’s tensions. In 1946, he renounced America for France, as did other expatriates who sought freedom abroad. The 1950’s marked the emergence of Wright’s global consciousness and his writings concerning Western imperialism. His immersion in French existentialism provided the means to assess the effects of Western imperialism on Asian, African, and Spanish cultures. The Outsider became the seminal existentialist novel in African American letters. Wright became an existentialist humanist, transformed from what he identified as an “American Negro” to a “Western man of color” and freedom activist. Wright was prolific as well as a writer of high quality; his writings continued to be published after his death in 1960. 520

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American Hunger Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1977 American Hunger, the second part of Wright’s autobiography, focuses on his life in Chicago, Illinois, from 1927 to 1937. The book was written in 1944. The northern experience recurs as a new slave narrative. It demonstrates how modern African Americans were deceived. Wright opens the text in 1927, when nineteen-year-old Richard, his alter ego, arrives in Chicago with his Aunt Maggie. Wright juxtaposes the terms “strange” and “familiar” to express Richard’s dismay at seeing African Americans openly consort with whites in public facilities. He learns quickly that appearances are deceptive. Wright employs literary naturalism to illustrate racial and environmental barriers erected by whites to imprison African Americans in modern slavery. Richard discovers that migrants have traded Southern plantations for urban ghettos. They live in the black belt of Chicago and remain racially and economically disfranchised. Richard’s economic status soon imitates that of his impoverished southern experience. Richard earns low wages at menial jobs during the following six years. The intermittent checks from his postal service job or the relief agency barely sustain Richard’s family. Consistent with Black Boy, Richard becomes the outsider, in conflict with his family, community, and professional affiliations. A major source of conflict is his independent thinking. His attempts at writing cause alarm to his Aunt Maggie, who believes that fiction writing and book reading serve no value unless Richard is studying law. Richard’s white employer cannot understand why an African American dishwasher would read newspapers. Once Richard joins professional writing groups, between 1933 and 1935, he discovers that his intelligence poses a threat to members of the John Reed Club of the Communist Party, the Southside Writers’ Group, and the Federal Theatre Project. They attack him for being an “intellectual” just as SouthRichard Wright (Library of Congress) erners attacked the “smart Ne-

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gro.” The Communists even label Richard a Trotskyite or traitor, and physically assault him at the May Day parade of 1936. His freedom from slavery culminates with Richard’s resignation from the Communist Party. He takes physical flight to New York in 1937. In his ongoing quest for freedom, his psychological emancipation is the real moral to his narrative. It coincides with the successful publication of fiction, which frees Richard to write “art for art’s sake,” not propaganda, and to accelerate his “war with words.”

Black Boy Type of work: Autobiography First published: 1945 Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth stands as a classic African American autobiography. It tells of Wright’s escape from figurative slavery in the South to freedom in the North. The text opens in 1912 on Wright’s earliest memory at age four. Richard is living in Jackson, Mississippi, in the crowded home of his grandparents. The household includes Richard, his mother, father, brother, and his uncle, and it replicates the subhuman living conditions of slaves. Richard’s father is illiterate and an unskilled laborer; in search of work, he moves his family to another state, which initiates Richard’s life of emotional and physical instability. These disruptions occur in three cycles. From age four to age twelve, Richard moves frequently from Mississippi to Tennessee to Arkansas and back again. From age twelve to age seventeen, he remains in Jackson. From age seventeen to age nineteen, he escapes, first to Tennessee and then to Illinois. Before age twelve, Richard suffers abandonment by his father, life in an orphanage, street life, heavy drinking, and the illness of his mother. Wright employs the literary technique of naturalism to portray the racial and environmental factors that create a hostile world for Richard. Whites consider African Americans to be inferior because of their skin color, and Richard hears of violent acts against African Americans in the form of murders, lynchings, and beatings. He personally experiences verbal threats, physical assaults, and animal attacks. Whites pay African Americans low wages to keep them economically enslaved and unable to escape the mandated segregated housing, which is substandard. Richard consistently suffers from hunger, poor housing, insufficient clothing, and erratic schooling. Richard grows up an isolated figure because he does not fit the servile demeanor required of African Americans to live in the South. He rejects religion since he cannot understand how a white God allows his mother, family, and community to suffer. In turn, they assail his reading and writing of fiction, which his grandmother charges is “Devil’s work.” The school

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principal even denounces Richard when he refuses to deliver the stock valedictory speech of humility at his graduation ceremony from ninth grade. Whites, too, attack Richard for being a “smart Negro” when he undertakes menial jobs in private homes or at businesses during his stay in the South. Richard resists these oppressive forces in his quest for knowledge and for freedom. At nineteen, he discovers the writer H. L. Mencken, and decides that he, too, wants to become a writer to “wage war with words.” Black Boy concludes in 1927, with Richard’s flight to the North in the tradition of former slaves before him.

Suggested readings Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 18401980. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991. _______. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York: William Morrow, 1973. _______. The World of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985. Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995. Stepto, Robert T. Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. 2d ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979. Weiss, M. Lynn. Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright: The Poetics and Politics of Modernism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Wright, Richard. Conversations with Richard Wright. Edited by Keneth Kinnamon and Michel Fabre. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. —Virginia Whatley Smith

Mitsuye YasutakeYamada

Mitsuye Yasutake Yamada Born: Kyushu, Japan; July 5, 1923

Yamada’s contribution to American women’s writing is in her furthering of the cause of human rights. Traditions: Japanese American Principal works: Camp Notes and Other Poems, 1976; Desert Run: Poems and Stories, 1988 Mitsuye Yasutake Yamada spent most of her formative years in Seattle, Washington, until a few months after the outbreak of World War II, when her family was removed to a concentration camp at Minidoka, Idaho. Her poems in Camp Notes and Other Poems recount this experience. Her need to integrate her art, her beliefs, and her commitment to human rights stems largely from the impact this event had on her. Yamada earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Art at New York University and a master’s degree in literature at the University of Chicago. She had a distinguished career as a teacher, working for many years at a community college in Cypress, California, and serving as writer-in-residence at Pitzer College and San Diego State University. In her writings, Yamada has characteristically focused on her bicultural heritage, women, and human rights. During the early 1960’s she began working as a volunteer with Amnesty International, and her continuing commitment to human rights through that organization eventually led to her service on the national board of Amnesty International USA and participation in international committees seeking increased Asian involvement in human rights work. She made several trips to South Korea, Japan, and other countries in Asia on behalf of Amnesty International. Commitment to diversity in all areas of life has led Yamada to multidisciplinary as well as multicultural commitments. While a community college professor she team-taught an interdisciplinary course in biology and poetry which involved field trips to research and experience the wilderness areas of California. Out of this experience came many of the poems in Yamada’s second collection, Desert Run. This book returns to the themes of alienation, human rights, and protest against injustice that reverberate through the earlier collection. In Desert Run, seeing the desert from a new perspective enables a healing process to take place. The title poem, “Desert Run,” makes the comparison explicitly as the speaker returns in memory to an earlier, enforced encampment on the desert, where armed guards stood watch over 524

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American men, women, and children, and contrasts it with the silence, agelessness, and demanding beauty of the desert as seen on a class camping trip. Other poems celebrate the beauty of seemingly insignificant flowers and, especially, the strength and endurance of desert plants such as cacti and lichens. Another avenue of Yamada’s activism is her formation of a writers’ group, MultiCultural Women Writers. This loosely formed association works to raise support and awareness of diversity in the arts and has published an anthology, Sowing Ti Leaves: Writings by Multi-Cultural Women (1992), coedited by Yamada, which has gone through several editions.

Camp Notes and Other Poems Type of work: Poetry First published: 1976 The poems in Camp Notes and Other Poems originated in the experience of a concentration camp. Yamada and her family were interned with other Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. Yamada spent April, 1942, through September, 1943, at the internment camp near Minidoka, Idaho. Inmates could have few possessions; Yamada brought a tablet of paper on which she recorded her reflections on life in the camp. To the poems from this period she later added others concerning the time preceding and the time following the camp experience. At the beginning of the book are poems about ancestors and parents: great-grandmother’s box of treasured souvenirs, a young bride in a new and precarious environment, a folktale related by a sophisticated father. Following the poems about internment are poems related to the poet’s later life. These poems frequently have themes that are a feature of the center section about the internment: justice, equity, and generosity. These themes are continuing threads in these poems, which occasionally have a feminist perspective. The middle, or “Camp Notes,” section contains the angriest poems. With irony, the speaker in the poems expresses and conquers the rage, humiliation, and despair of unjust captivity. A photographer’s instruction to “smile” as internees are collected at staging points, the bus ride to the camps, a guard tower seen through the eyes of a child, makeshift furniture of packing crates and straw mattresses, stuffing rags into cracks in the shacklike barracks during a dust storm—each of these moments is crystallized. The poem titled “Curfew” ends in a particularly vivid commentary: After quoting the “block head” giving orders for lights out, the speaker simply remarks, “There must be no light.” One of the briefest poems, “In the Outhouse,” is also one of the most powerful. The stench of the outhouse becomes a metaphor for the entire camp and the mentality that created it; fear and racism relegate a whole group

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of people to the domain of “refuse” and “outsider.” Many of the poems focus on the absurdity and duplicity of the language and thinking used to justify the camps. In “Desert Storm” the speaker notes the euphemisms that attempted to disguise injustice, noting how the reality of imprisonment was “sanitized” by the term “relocation.” The speaker notes in “The Trick Was” that the “mind was not fooled.” Camp Notes and Other Poems is actually a cooperative and family project. Yamada’s husband, Yoshikazu Yamada, contributed the calligraphs that translate titles and text for some of the poems. Her daughters, Jeni and Hedi, produced illustrations for some pages. Yamada also includes a translation of one of her father’s poems, written while he was interned apart from his family in a different camp.

Suggested readings Jaskoski, Helen. “A MELUS Interview: Mitsuye Yamada.” MELUS 15, no. 1 (1988): 97-108. Schweik, Susan. “A Needle with Mama’s Voice: Mitsuye Yamada’s Camp Notes and the American Canon of War Poetry.” In Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary Representation, edited by Helen M. Cooper, Susan Merrill Squier, and Adrienne Auslander Munich. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Yamada, Mitsuye. “A MELUS Interview: Mitsuye Yamada.” Interview by Helen Jaskoski. MELUS 15, no. 1 (1988): 97-108. Yamada, Mitsuye, and Sarie Sachie Hylkema, eds. Sowing Ti Leaves: Writings by Multi-Cultural Women. Irvine, Calif.: MultiCultural Women Writers, 1991. —Helen Jaskoski

Hisaye Yamamoto

Hisaye Yamamoto Born: Redondo Beach, California; 1921

Yamamoto, an accomplished short-story writer, was one of the first Japanese American writers to gain recognition after World War II. Traditions: Japanese American Principal works: Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, 1988 Born of Japanese immigrant parents, Hisaye Yamamoto began writing in her teens. As a second-generation Japanese American, she was especially interested in the interaction between the Japanese traditions passed on to her and the American experience she encountered. She once cited that her main reason for writing was a desire “to reaffirm certain basic truths which seem to get lost in the shuffle from generation to generation, so that we seem destined to go on making the same mistakes over and over again.” Interest in literary subjects was strong among the generation born in Japan, many of whom wrote traditional Japanese poetry, which appeared in Japanese-language periodicals. The second generation tended to express its literary leanings in English. Yamamoto contributed regularly to Kashu Mainichi in Los Angeles and associated herself with the League of Nisei Writers and Artists. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that all people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast be evacuated to internment camps. Interned at Poston, Arizona until 1945, Yamamoto became a columnist and sometime editor for the camp newsletter. She published her first mystery, “Death Rides the Rails to Poston.” The experience of internment looms large in postwar Japanese American writing. In “I Still Carry It Around,” Yamamoto describes internment as a painful collective wound. From 1945 to 1948, she worked for the Los Angeles Tribune, a black weekly, thus extending her experience of multiculturalism, before deciding to turn to writing full time. In 1950, she received a John Hay Whitney Foundation Opportunity Fellowship. Three of her short stories received critical attention: “High-Heeled Shoes,” dealing with sexual harassment; “The Brown House,” dealing with interethnic and interracial encounters; and “Epithalamium,” dealing with romance. Yamamoto’s themes are multiple, but she is especially sensitive to the life allotted to Japanese American women. Marriage in 1955 and four subsequent children (added to one she had already adopted) curtailed her literary output, but she did not cease to write and to influence other writers. In 1988, Kitchen Table Press published Seven527

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teen Syllables and Other Stories, a collection of fifteen of her short stories, making her work easily available.

“Seventeen Syllables” Type of work: Short fiction First published: 1949 “Seventeen Syllables,” Yamamoto’s most acclaimed short story, combines a number of themes that appear frequently in her fiction. These themes include the difficulties faced by Japanese immigrants to the United States, the cultural separation between these immigrants and their children, and the restrictions experienced by Japanese American women within traditional Japanese culture. Important for an understanding of the story are some facts about the Japanese immigrant experience in America. Although the United States welcomed Japanese immigrants after 1885, immigration was stopped with the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924. Many of the first Japanese immigrants were unmarried men, who saved their earnings and sent back to Japan for brides they knew only through letters and photographs. Many of these married couples proved incompatible and were forced to make the best of an unsuitable marriage, keeping their problems concealed from the children. The Alien Land Act of 1913 prohibited Japanese immigrants from buying or leasing land for a period of more than three years. Since one-half of the immigrants lived in rural areas, the law forced families to move constantly and dispersed them often. A Japanese woman frequently had no other woman in whom to confide. In spite of these hardships, literature flourished and many immigrants wrote traditional Japanese poetry. Yamamoto’s story deals with these concerns through a device used often by Yamamoto, the double plot. On one level the plot concerns the adolescent Rosie Hayashi and her secret plan to meet Jesus Carrasco, a member of a Mexican family hired for the harvest. Rosie’s inability to speak much Japanese and her failure to understand the interest her mother, Tome, takes in writing haiku, which she submits weekly to a Japanese-language paper in San Francisco, highlight the cultural and intergenerational differences between them. In the midst of the tomato harvest, when all workers are desperately needed, the editor arrives with a prize for Tome’s poetry, a print by Hiroshige. Angry, her husband burns the picture. Tome reveals to Rosie that she has married her husband as an alternative to suicide. Rejected by a well-to-do lover, she had given birth to a stillborn son. An aunt in the United States arranged the marriage. Disappointed and disillusioned, Tome asks Rosie to promise never to marry at a time Rosie is experiencing the blissful promise of young romance. The story is a carefully nuanced and technically sophisticated combination of ethnic, feminist, and intergenerational concerns.

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Suggested readings Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. _______. “Double-Telling: Intertextual Silence in Hisaye Yamamoto’s Fiction.” American Literary History 3, no. 2 (1991): 277-293. _______, ed. Seventeen Syllables. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Nesbitt, Anna Sheets. Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers. Vol. 34. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Yogi, Stan. “Legacies Revealed: Uncovering Buried Plots in the Stories of Hisaye Yamamoto.” Studies in American Fiction 17, no. 2 (1989): 169-181. —Christine R. Catron


Indexes


Author Index Ai, 1-4 Alexander, Meena, 5-7 Alexie, Sherman, 8-12 Allen, Paula Gunn, 13-17 Allende, Isabel, 18-21 Alvarez, Julia, 22-25 Anaya, Rudolfo A., 26-30 Angelou, Maya, 31-35 Anthony, Florence. See Ai Antin, Mary, 36-38 Arenas, Reinaldo, 39-42 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43-47 Bailey, Frederick Augustus Washington. See Douglass, Frederick Baldwin, James, 48-51 Bambara, Toni Cade, 52-56 Baraka, Amiri, 57-62 Bellow, Saul, 63-65 Bontemps, Arna Wendell, 66-70 Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra, 71-73 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 74-77 Brown, Claude, 78-80 Brown, William Wells, 81-84 Bulosan, Carlos, 85-87 Cahan, Abraham, 88-90 Campbell, Bebe Moore, 91-93 Chávez, Denise Elia, 94-97 Chin, Frank, 98-102 Chu, Louis H., 103-105 Cisneros, Sandra, 106-109 Cleaver, Eldridge, 110-112 Clifton, Lucille, 113-115 Cullen, Countée, 116-118 Davis, Angela Y., 119-122 Delany, Samuel R., 123-126 Dorris, Michael, 127-129 Douglass, Frederick, 130-133 Dove, Rita, 134-137 Driver, Wilsonia Benita. See Sanchez, Sonia

Du Bois, W. E. B., 138-142 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 143-145 Dworkin, Andrea, 146-148 Elkin, Stanley, 149-153 Ellison, Ralph, 154-157 Erdrich, Louise, 158-162 Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 163-165 Fierstein, Harvey, 166-168 Fisher, Rudolph, 169-171 Fuller, Charles, 172-174 Gaines, Ernest J., 175-178 Ginsberg, Allen, 179-182 Giovanni, Nikki, 183-186 Giovanni, Yolande Cornelia, Jr.. See Giovanni, Nikki Goichi, Joy Nozomi. See Kogawa, Joy Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata, 187-189 Hansberry, Lorraine, 190-194 Harjo, Joy, 195-198 Harper, Michael S., 199-201 Harris, Wilson, 202-205 Hayden, Robert, 206-208 Hayslip, Le Ly, 209-211 Hijuelos, Oscar, 212-215 Himes, Chester, 216-218 Hinojosa, Rolando, 219-221 Hongo, Garrett Kaoru, 222-224 Hughes, Langston, 225-231 Hurston, Zora Neale, 232-235 Hwang, David Henry, 236-241 Johnson, Charles, 242-244 Johnson, James Weldon, 245-249 Johnson, Marguerite. See Angelou, Maya Jones, Gayl, 250-252 Jones, LeRoi. See Baraka, Amiri

533

American Ethnic Writers Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn, 253-256 Kennedy, Adrienne, 257-261 Kincaid, Jamaica, 273-276 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 277-280 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 281-282, 284-285 Kogawa, Joy, 286-288 Kosinski, Jerzy, 289-292 Kunitz, Stanley, 293-296 Kushner, Tony, 297-299 Larsen, Nella, 300-303 Lau, Evelyn, 304-307 Law-Yone, Wendy, 308-310 Lee, Augustus Samuel Jian-Sun. See Lee, Gus Lee, Gus, 311-313 Lee, Li-Young, 314-316 Lorde, Audre, 317-321 McKay, Claude, 322-328 McMillan, Terry, 329-331 McNickle, D’Arcy, 332-336 Malamud, Bernard, 337-340 Malcolm X, 341-343 Mehta, Ved, 344-346 Miller, Arthur, 347-349 Min, Anchee, 350-352 Mohr, Nicholasa, 353-355 Momaday, N. Scott, 356-359 Morrison, Toni, 360-363 Mukherjee, Bharati, 364, 366-368 Naylor, Gloria, 369-372 Ng, Fae Myenne, 373-375 Okada, John, 376-378 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 379-381 Ozick, Cynthia, 382-384 Paley, Grace, 385-389 Petry, Ann, 390-393 Phung Thi Le Ly. See Hayslip, Le Ly Potok, Chaim, 394-397

Rechy, John, 398-401 Reed, Ishmael, 402-405 Rich, Adrienne, 406-408 Richardson, Elaine Potter. See Kincaid, Jamaica Richler, Mordecai, 409-411 Rivera, Tomás, 412-414 Rodriguez, Richard, 415-417 Rosca, Ninotchka, 418-421 Roth, Philip, 422-425 Rukeyser, Muriel, 426-430 Sanchez, Sonia, 431-433 Sanchez, Thomas, 434-436 Schuyler, George S., 437-439 Schwartz, Delmore, 440-442 Shange, Ntozake, 443-446 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 447-449 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 450-453 Song, Cathy, 454-456 Soto, Gary, 457-459 Steele, Shelby, 460, 462-463 Tan, Amy, 464-469 Villarreal, José Antonio, 470-472 Viramontes, Helena María, 473-476 Vizenor, Gerald, 477-481 Walker, Alice, 482-485 Washington, Booker T., 486-489 Wasserstein, Wendy, 490-493 Welch, James, 494-496 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 497-499 Wideman, John Edgar, 500-503 Wiesel, Elie, 504-508 Williams, Paulette. See Shange, Ntozake Wilson, August, 509-513 Wong, Jade Snow, 514-516 Wright, Jay, 517-519 Wright, Richard, 520-523 Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake, 524-526 Yamamoto, Hisaye, 527-529

534

Title Index Adventures of Augie March, The (Bellow, Saul), 64 “Ajanta” (Rukeyser, Muriel), 427 All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (Angelou, Maya), 32 All Rivers Run to the Sea (Wiesel, Elie), 505 Along This Way ( Johnson, James Weldon), 246 America Is in the Heart (Bulosan, Carlos), 86 American Hunger (Wright, Richard), 521 Ancient Child, The (Momaday, N. Scott), 357 and the earth did not part (Rivera, Tomás), 413 Angela Davis (Davis, Angela Y.), 121 Angels in America (Kushner, Tony), 298 Annie John (Kincaid, Jamaica), 274 Arturo, the Most Brilliant Star (Arenas, Reinaldo), 40 Assistant, The (Malamud, Bernard), 338 At the Bottom of the River (Kincaid, Jamaica), 275 Autobiographies (Himes, Chester), 217 Autobiographies (Hughes, Langston), 227 Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, The ( Johnson, James Weldon), 247 Autobiography of Malcolm X, The (Malcolm X), 342 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The (Gaines, Ernest J.), 177 Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, The (Du Bois, W. E. B.), 140 Bailey’s Cafe (Naylor, Gloria), 370 Banana Bottom (McKay, Claude), 323 Banjo (McKay, Claude), 324 Beet Queen, The (Erdrich, Louise), 159 Beggar in Jerusalem, A (Wiesel, Elie), 506 Beloved (Morrison, Toni), 361 Betsey Brown (Shange, Ntozake), 444

Black Boy (Wright, Richard), 522 Black Feeling, Black Talk (Giovanni, Nikki), 184 Black Mesa Poems (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 44 Black No More (Schuyler, George S.), 438 Black Thunder (Bontemps, Arna Wendell), 67 Bless Me, Ultima (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 27 Blues People (Baraka, Amiri), 58 Bondage (Hwang, David Henry), 237 Bone (Ng, Fae Myenne), 374 Brothers and Keepers (Wideman, John Edgar), 501 Camp Notes and Other Poems (Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake), 525 Cancer Journals, The (Lorde, Audre), 317 Chickencoop Chinaman, The (Chin, Frank), 99 China Boy (Lee, Gus), 312 China Men (Kingston, Maxine Hong), 282 Chinaberry Tree, The (Fauset, Jessie Redmon), 164 City of Night (Rechy, John), 399 Coal (Lorde, Audre), 319 Coffin Tree, The (Law-Yone, Wendy), 309 Color Purple, The (Walker, Alice), 483 Conjure-Man Dies, The (Fisher, Rudolph), 170 Content of Our Character, The (Steele, Shelby), 462 Continents of Exile (Mehta, Ved), 345 “Crown of Feathers, A” (Singer, Isaac Bashevis), 451 Cruelty (Ai), 2 Crusade for Justice (Wells-Barnett, Ida B.), 498 Daggers and Javelins (Baraka, Amiri), 59 Dance and the Railroad, The (Hwang, David Henry), 238 535

American Ethnic Writers Dangerous Music (Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata), 188 Death of a Salesman (Miller, Arthur), 348 Donald Duk (Chin, Frank), 100 Dust Tracks on a Road (Hurston, Zora Neale), 233 Dutchman (Baraka, Amiri), 60 Eat a Bowl of Tea (Chu, Louis H.), 104 El Bronx Remembered (Mohr, Nicholasa), 354 Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Paley, Grace), 387 Eva’s Man ( Jones, Gayl), 251 “Eyes of Night-Time” (Rukeyser, Muriel), 428 Face of an Angel (Chávez, Denise Elia), 95 Family Devotions (Hwang, David Henry), 239 “Father and Son” (Kunitz, Stanley), 294 Fences (Wilson, August), 510 Fifth Chinese Daughter (Wong, Jade Snow), 515 Fixer, The (Malamud, Bernard), 339 Floating World, The (Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn), 254 Fools Crow (Welch, James), 495 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (Shange, Ntozake), 445 Fossil and Psyche (Harris, Wilson), 203 Franchiser, The (Elkin, Stanley), 150 Fresh Girls, and Other Stories (Lau, Evelyn), 305 Funnyhouse of a Negro (Kennedy, Adrienne), 258 Gemini (Giovanni, Nikki), 185 “Gimpel the Fool” (Singer, Isaac Bashevis), 452 Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin, James), 49 God Made Alaska for the Indians (Reed, Ishmael), 403 Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories (Roth, Philip), 423 Gorilla, My Love (Bambara, Toni Cade), 54

Grace Notes (Dove, Rita), 136 Great Slave Narratives (Bontemps, Arna Wendell), 68 Greed (Ai), 3 Heart of Aztlán (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 28 Heidi Chronicles, The (Wasserstein, Wendy), 491 Heirs of Columbus, The (Vizenor, Gerald), 478 Home to Harlem (McKay, Claude), 325 Homewood Trilogy, The (Wideman, John Edgar), 502 House Made of Dawn (Momaday, N. Scott), 358 House of a Thousand Doors (Alexander, Meena), 6 House of the Spirits, The (Allende, Isabel), 19 House on Mango Street, The (Cisneros, Sandra), 107 How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (Alvarez, Julia), 24 Howl (Ginsberg, Allen), 180 Hundred Secret Senses, The (Tan, Amy), 465 Hunger of Memory (Rodriguez, Richard), 416 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou, Maya), 32 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (Schwartz, Delmore), 441 In Mad Love and War (Harjo, Joy), 196 In the Heart of the Valley of Love (Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn), 255 Infinite Plan, The (Allende, Isabel), 20 Intercourse (Dworkin, Andrea), 147 Interior Landscapes (Vizenor, Gerald), 479 Invisible Man (Ellison, Ralph), 155 I’ve Been a Woman (Sanchez, Sonia), 432 Joy Luck Club, The (Tan, Amy), 466 Kaddish (Ginsberg, Allen), 181 Kitchen God’s Wife, The (Tan, Amy), 467 Klail City (Hinojosa, Rolando), 220

536

Title Index Last of the Menu Girls, The (Chávez, Denise Elia), 96 Later the Same Day (Paley, Grace), 388 Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The (Alexie, Sherman), 10 Love Medicine (Erdrich, Louise), 160 M. Butterfly (Hwang, David Henry), 240 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Wilson, August), 511 MacGuffin, The (Elkin, Stanley), 151 Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The (Hijuelos, Oscar), 213 “Management of Grief, The” (Mukherjee, Bharati), 366 Manchild in the Promised Land (Brown, Claude), 79 Martín; &, Meditations on the South Valley (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 45 Middle Passage ( Johnson, Charles), 243 Middleman and Other Stories, The (Mukherjee, Bharati), 367 Mile Zero (Sanchez, Thomas), 435 Moths and Other Stories, The (Viramontes, Helena María), 474 Motion of Light in Water, The (Delany, Samuel R.), 124 Mr. Ives’ Christmas (Hijuelos, Oscar), 214 My Name Is Asher Lev (Potok, Chaim), 395 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass, Frederick), 132 Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, The (Brown, William Wells), 83 New and Collected Poems (Reed, Ishmael), 404 Night (Wiesel, Elie), 507 No-No Boy (Okada, John), 377 Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin, James), 50 Obasan (Kogawa, Joy), 287 On These I Stand (Cullen, Countée), 117 Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, The (Ozick, Cynthia), 383 Painted Bird, The (Kosinski, Jerzy), 290 Pentagonía, The (Arenas, Reinaldo), 41 Picture Bride (Song, Cathy), 455

Pocho (Villarreal, José Antonio), 471 Poetry (Angelou, Maya), 34 Poetry (Brooks, Gwendolyn), 75 Poetry (Clifton, Lucille), 114 Poetry (Dunbar, Paul Laurence), 144 Poetry (Harper, Michael S.), 200 Poetry (Hayden, Robert), 207 Poetry (McKay, Claude), 326 Poetry (Rich, Adrienne), 407 Poetry (Wright, Jay), 518 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth, Philip), 424 Possessing the Secret of Joy (Walker, Alice), 484 Promised Land, The (Antin, Mary), 37 Quicksand (Larsen, Nella), 301 Raisin in the Sun, A (Hansberry, Lorraine), 191 Rat’s Mass, A (Kennedy, Adrienne), 259 Red Azalea (Min, Anchee), 351 Reservation Blues (Alexie, Sherman), 11 Rise of David Levinsky, The (Cahan, Abraham), 89 Runaway (Lau, Evelyn), 306 Sacred Hoop, The (Allen, Paula Gunn), 14 Saint Peter Relates an Incident ( Johnson, James Weldon), 248 Salt Eaters, The (Bambara, Toni Cade), 55 Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (Hughes, Langston), 228 Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (Baraka, Amiri), 61 “Seventeen Syllables” (Yamamoto, Hisaye), 528 Silent Dancing (Ortiz Cofer, Judith), 380 Sisters Rosensweig, The (Wasserstein, Wendy), 492 Soldier’s Play, A (Fuller, Charles), 173 Son of a Smaller Hero (Richler, Mordecai), 410 Song of Solomon (Morrison, Toni), 362 Soul on Ice (Cleaver, Eldridge), 111 Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois, W. E. B.), 141 Spider Woman’s Granddaughters (Allen, Paula Gunn), 15 537

American Ethnic Writers State of War (Rosca, Ninotchka), 419 Steps (Kosinski, Jerzy), 291 Storyteller (Silko, Leslie Marmon), 448 Street, The (Petry, Ann), 391 Street in Bronzeville, A (Brooks, Gwendolyn), 76 Summer Life, A (Soto, Gary), 458 Surrounded, The (McNickle, D’Arcy), 333 Testament of Hope, A (King, Martin Luther, Jr.), 279 Their Eyes Were Watching God, The (Hurston, Zora Neale), 234 This Day’s Death (Rechy, John), 400 “Three Floors” (Kunitz, Stanley), 295 To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (Hansberry, Lorraine), 192 Torch Song Trilogy (Fierstein, Harvey), 167 Tortuga (Anaya, Rudolfo A.), 29 Triton (Delany, Samuel R.), 125 Twice Blessed (Rosca, Ninotchka), 420 Two Trains Running (Wilson, August), 512 Under the Feet of Jesus (Viramontes, Helena María), 475 Up from Slavery (Washington, Booker T.), 488

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Hayslip, Le Ly), 210 Where I Ought to Be (Erdrich, Louise), 161 Wind from an Enemy Sky (McNickle, D’Arcy), 334 Winged Seed, The (Lee, Li-Young), 315 “Witness, The” (Petry, Ann), 392 Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Cisneros, Sandra), 108 Woman Warrior, The (Kingston, Maxine Hong), 283 Woman Who Fell from the Sky, The (Harjo, Joy), 197 Woman with Horns and Other Stories (Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra), 72 Womb of Space, The (Harris, Wilson), 204 Women of Brewster Place, The (Naylor, Gloria), 371 Wordarrows (Vizenor, Gerald), 480 Working in the Dark (Baca, Jimmy Santiago), 46 Year of the Dragon, The (Chin, Frank), 101 Yellow Raft in Blue Water, a (Dorris, Michael), 128 Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine (Campbell, Bebe Moore), 92

Volcano (Hongo, Garrett Kaoru), 223 Zami (Lorde, Audre), 319 Waiting to Exhale (McMillan, Terry), 330 Ways of White Folks, The (Hughes, Langston), 229

538

Ethnic Identity List AFRICAN AMERICAN Ai, 1 Angelou, Maya, 31 Baldwin, James, 48 Bambara, Toni Cade, 52 Baraka, Amiri, 57 Bontemps, Arna Wendell, 66 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 74 Brown, Claude, 78 Brown, William Wells, 81 Campbell, Bebe Moore, 91 Cleaver, Eldridge, 110 Clifton, Lucille, 113 Cullen, Countée, 116 Davis, Angela Y., 119 Delany, Samuel R., 123 Dorris, Michael, 127 Douglass, Frederick, 130 Dove, Rita, 134 Du Bois, W. E. B., 138 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 143 Ellison, Ralph, 154 Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 163 Fisher, Rudolph, 169 Fuller, Charles, 172 Gaines, Ernest J., 175 Giovanni, Nikki, 183 Hansberry, Lorraine, 190 Harper, Michael S., 199 Harris, Wilson, 202 Hayden, Robert, 206 Himes, Chester, 216 Hughes, Langston, 225 Hurston, Zora Neale, 232 Johnson, Charles, 242 Johnson, James Weldon, 245 Jones, Gayl, 250 Kennedy, Adrienne, 257 Kincaid, Jamaica, 273 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 277 Larsen, Nella, 300 Lorde, Audre, 317

McKay, Claude, 322 McMillan, Terry, 329 Malcolm X, 341 Morrison, Toni, 360 Naylor, Gloria, 369 Petry, Ann, 390 Reed, Ishmael, 402 Sanchez, Sonia, 431 Schuyler, George S., 437 Shange, Ntozake, 443 Steele, Shelby, 460 Walker, Alice, 482 Washington, Booker T., 486 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 497 Wideman, John Edgar, 500 Wilson, August, 509 Wright, Jay, 517 Wright, Richard, 520 AMERICAN INDIAN Ai, 1 Alexie, Sherman, 8 Allen, Paula Gunn, 13 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43 Dorris, Michael, 127 Erdrich, Louise, 158 Harjo, Joy, 195 Harris, Wilson, 202 McNickle, D’Arcy, 332 Momaday, N. Scott, 356 Reed, Ishmael, 402 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 447 Vizenor, Gerald, 477 Walker, Alice, 482 Welch, James, 494 ASIAN AMERICAN Ai, 1 Alexander, Meena, 5 Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra, 71 Bulosan, Carlos, 85 Chin, Frank, 98 539

American Ethnic Writers Chu, Louis H., 103 Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata, 187 Hayslip, Le Ly, 209 Hongo, Garrett Kaoru, 222 Hwang, David Henry, 236 Kadohata, Cynthia Lynn, 253 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 281 Kogawa, Joy, 286 Lau, Evelyn, 304 Law-Yone, Wendy, 308 Lee, Gus, 311 Lee, Li-Young, 314 Mehta, Ved, 344 Min, Anchee, 350 Mukherjee, Bharati, 364 Ng, Fae Myenne, 373 Okada, John, 376 Rosca, Ninotchka, 418 Song, Cathy, 454 Tan, Amy, 464 Wong, Jade Snow, 514 Yamada, Mitsuye Yasutake, 524 Yamamoto, Hisaye, 527 JEWISH Antin, Mary, 36 Bellow, Saul, 63 Cahan, Abraham, 88 Dworkin, Andrea, 146 Elkin, Stanley, 149 Fierstein, Harvey, 166 Ginsberg, Allen, 179 Kosinski, Jerzy, 289 Kunitz, Stanley, 293

Malamud, Bernard, 337 Miller, Arthur, 347 Ozick, Cynthia, 382 Paley, Grace, 385 Potok, Chaim, 394 Rich, Adrienne, 406 Richler, Mordecai, 409 Roth, Philip, 422 Rukeyser, Muriel, 426 Schwartz, Delmore, 440 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 450 Wasserstein, Wendy, 490 Wiesel, Elie, 504 LATINO Allende, Isabel, 18 Alvarez, Julia, 22 Anaya, Rudolfo A., 26 Arenas, Reinaldo, 39 Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 43 Chávez, Denise Elia, 94 Cisneros, Sandra, 106 Hijuelos, Oscar, 212 Hinojosa, Rolando, 219 Mohr, Nicholasa, 353 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 379 Rechy, John, 398 Rivera, Tomás, 412 Rodriguez, Richard, 415 Sanchez, Thomas, 434 Soto, Gary, 457 Villarreal, José Antonio, 470 Viramontes, Helena María, 473

540

American Ethnic Writers (Magill's Choice)

American Ethnic Writers (Magill's Choice)

American Writers (American Biographies)

American Ethnic Writers, Revised ed (Great Events from History)

Short Story Writers (Magill's Choice)

American Writers, Supplement XIX

American Writers, Supplement XX

American Writers, Supplement XVI

American Writers, Volume 2

American Writers, Supplement X

American Writers: Supplement VIII

American Writers, Supplement VI

American Writers: Supplement XII

AMERICAN WRITERS, Supplement VII

American Writers, Supplement XVIII

American Writers, Supplement IV

AMERICAN WRITERS, Volume 4

American Writers: Supplement

American Writers, Supplement XIII

American Writers, Supplement V

American Writers, Volume 1

American Writers, Volume III

American Writers, Supplement 2

American Writers, Supplement XV

American Writers, Supplement III

American Writers, Supplement IX

Encounters with American ethnic cultures

Magill's Choice: Notable Latino Writers, 3 Volume Set (Magill's Choice)

AMERICAN WRITERS, Retrospective Supplement I

Hispanic-American Writers (Multicultural Voices)

American Ethnic Writers (Magill's Choice)