My Tribe:
Three Books by Black Southern Men
Black Southern men, my own demographic, tend to be among the least likely readers of literary fiction. The legacy of our peculiar history may explain some of that. But in spite of that history, we have been strong contributors to the form. Among the first black novelists to gain national reputation, at the end of the Reconstruction, were black Southern men, Charles Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson. Later Richard Wright, Frank Yerby, John Oliver Killens, and Alex Haley became well known. And today, there are Edward P. Jones, Percival Everett and Ishmael Reed to name just some of the black male literary novelists who were born or raised south of the Mason Dixon line.
I have been interested in how we black Southern men portray ourselves in fiction, and certainly a survey yields a wide variety of characters from victims of racism, to deniers of black identity, to heroes of social change. Among the most interesting of these portrayals are the ordinary men who wrestle with themselves about their commitments to other black people. This is the case in Ravi Howard’s 2007 debut novel Like Trees Walking. On the surface, it is about the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, but it is also the story of two of his friends, the brothers Paul and Roy Deacon, and their reckoning with the unexpected violence against their community. To my mind, it is hard to think of a more powerful scene written in past decade than the one in which Roy, an apprentice undertaker, must prepare his friend’s mutilated body. Howard’s writing is exacting in its description and subtly provocative in its lyricism.
Howard won the Ernest Gaines Award for this novel, and I think very appropriately so. Howard’s writing seems to be very much in the tradition of Gaines and especially relates to Gaines’ 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying. This novel is also ostensibly about a crime as it focuses on Jefferson, a mentally slow man who has been sentenced to the electric chair for murdering a white store keeper in Jim Crow Louisiana. But the focus of the novel is on Grant Wiggins, a school teacher who is called upon to teach Jefferson self esteem before the execution. Grant’s own lack of self value is challenged as he is forced to confront Jefferson. The novel is a richly rendered and complex work, and I think it is Gaines’ best. So I’m upset to hear that it might also be his last. In a recent interview, Gaines said that he had given up writing, having said all he has to say.
The third of my recommendations is John Holman’s Luminous Mysteries, published in 1998. It is different from the aforementioned books because it focuses as much the language the characters use and how they use it as it does on their situations. On the surface Holman’s work is humorous, stylish, and full of observational ironies. This loosely constructed novel, as much a story cycle as a novel, features the siblings Rita and Grim Power, a high school teacher and her teenage brother in rural North Carolina in the years after the Civil Rights Movement. The chapters, which, like beads on a rosary, are to be contemplated separately as well as a whole, tell how this family copes and reaches out, sometimes with absurdity, for one another and for community.
These three novels of black American experience are good books—well-crafted and engaging—and they deserve the attention of all readers.
www.ybmmag.com/2010/08/the-awesome-value-of-reading.html
An Optimist After All
March 16, 2011
An Optimist, After All:
Q & A with Anthony Grooms
Interviewed by Andrew Plattner
With the publication of his novel Bombingham, Virginia-born Anthony Grooms offered a distinct and humane perspective on the controversial topic of race relations in America. Grooms’ novel takes place in the early 1960s in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that would be forever marked by the violence that threatened the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Prior to Bombingham, Grooms had published collections of poetry and short stories; his story collection Trouble No More, won the Lillian Smith Award, a literary prize that would also be bestowed upon Bombingham. Bombingham was also a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and has been adopted by many colleges and common book programs.
Grooms’ recently completed manuscript, “The Vain Conversation,” is a 20th century journey of one man attempting to find his own identity in a world that prefers categorization through race, not individuality. The themes here are perhaps familiar ones to Grooms’ readers, though the study here is not necessarily about the American character, it is more about human nature itself.
Grooms, currently a professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University, north of Atlanta, recently traveled to lecture at Hassan II University in Casablanca. Previously he has taught in Ghana and Sweden.
Q: Tony, as you worked on “The Vain Conversation,” did it bring to mind any works you have read or admired? Did your influences surprise you in any way?
The novels of Raymond Andrews figure in somehow, since the setting in northeast Georgia is his fictional territory. Ray and I sometimes talked about Jim Crow as we rode back and forth between Atlanta and Athens, driving through Monroe, the town where the 1946 lynching that is the impetus for my novel took place. He lived in Athens and I taught there, and he often visited me in Atlanta. I also recall John Oliver Killens, whose novel Young Blood is set in Macon, and whom I had the pleasure of knowing in the years just before he died. Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying has also been influential.
But the main literary inspiration has been the written and oral histories about the Jim Crow era, especially Donald L. Grant’s The Way It Was in the South. It was from Grant that I first learned of the story of Roland Hayes’ beating, which is referenced in my novel. Hayes was an internationally famous singer when he was beaten in Rome, Georgia for protesting the treatment of his wife in a department store.
Q. Can I get you to expand on this? Can you discuss Young Blood and A Lesson Before Dying in greater detail as far as being influential (voice, themes, etc.)
At my core, I suppose I am an old-fashioned social realist. I am also old-fashioned in that I am attracted to a straight forward narrative with a strong story-telling voice. I appreciate linguistic and structural experimentation, but I think novels which in some way are exposes of social wrong are best delivered in a straight forward, though not necessarily chronological, way that best exploits the emotional power of the stories. When I think about the novels that are most meaningful to me, they are, like these, fairly traditional—and much can be wrought from the traditional form. In another way, the situations that the characters face in these novels are ones that I can understand and even identify with. Bigger Thomas of Wright’s Native Son is a bit too marginal for me—even Ellison’s narrator in Invisible Man is hard to identify with. But the characters of Young Blood and A Lesson are the kind of Southern people I know well and their situations are familiar to me. These novels appeal less to the intellect and more to the heart, reminding me that Jim Crow was not an abstraction and it oppressed real people.
Q: Most writers, it seems, are fueled in part by the unknown; this is to say, of course, we find out things by writing. What did you find out when writing “The Vain Conversation?” Are you angry about anything? Did your protagonist offer dimensions that you had not anticipated? What about other characters in the book?
I suppose a clever psychologist could expose my anger, but I do not think of myself as an angry person. Once, standing on the seawall of a so-called slave castle in West Africa, a German friend asked if I were angry about slavery. Yes, I said, as we all should be—however, I had no personal emotional connection to slavery, only an historical and abstract one. Even when my father pointed out to me the slave cabins near our home in Virginia, where possibly an enslaved ancestor had lived, I did not feel emotionally connected. But, if you ask about Jim Crow, then I have an array of strong emotions, including anger. This is because I know the stories of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents. They are the people who nurtured me and it does anger me to think how they were mistreated. But I am also saddened by their experiences—and gladdened by their perseverance and determination. Reading Huston Diehl’s Dream Not of Other Worlds, an account of segregated schools in the county I grew up in, upset me a good deal because she put names to the people who worked day and night to deprive my parents and me of an education.
One of the things that writing “The Vain Conversation” gave me was a stronger sense of how recent Jim Crow is, and how strong its legacy is within all of us, not just we who were born in the South. Oppressive systems have a way of trapping everyone, psychologically as well as socially. They frame the way people view and live in the world and it requires extraordinary fortitude and risk to move beyond those boundaries. My white characters, in this sense, are victims of Jim Crow, too, but of course, not in the same way that the black characters are.
Q. A follow-up. Referencing your response from the above question—are you suggesting that time plays a critical element in what can anger the human mind and soul? Or, does it have to do with the aging of the individual himself? Do we become numbed by the wickedness of mankind?
I can speak only for myself. For me, time does play a role, but secondary to personal or shared experiences. I feel most strongly about the Jim Crow era because I have a shared experience with great grandparents and grandparents who grew up in the worst of it. Their stories, many told to me directly, have shaped my point of view. Further, I am old enough to have first-hand experience of Jim Crow and to have witnessed the events of the Civil Rights Movement. Having had these direct experiences does not mean I am disconnected to historical experiences like American slavery—the legacy of which is still evident—or with experiences in other parts of the world. Like most people, I am sympathetic to the suffering of other people, and the callousness, the greed, the hubris—as you say, the wickedness—of people to other people never ceases to score deeply on me. But, I can’t respond to every breech of civility to the same degree. It’s impossible. I can only comprehend a limited amount of what is perpetual human grief. On the other hand, I seek balance and remind myself that there is also joy in the vale of tears. There are people who prevail over wickedness. There are those who challenge wickedness and those who sacrifice for the good of the whole. In spite of my reputation, I am an optimist, after all. I believe that most people want to be good, but understanding what good is, and negotiating our differing views of good is challenging and risky. It can be done though, and there is hope in trying. If anything comes out of my stories, I hope it is just that—that, though it is challenging, we can create more and better common good.
Q. Can you discuss your favorite literary characters?
Oh gosh, there are many. I like Goodman Brown for his naiveté and I love it when the Devil in that story welcomes him to the “communion of his kind.” I often welcome my students that way. I like the unhappy Paul in Cather’s “Paul’s Case,” and Whitman’s persona in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” and Tarzan and even HAL in 2001. If I had to name just one, perhaps it would be Huckleberry Finn. He engages me on a number of levels. He is the naïve country boy, the adventurer, the social shape-shifter, the poor kid who sees his friend Buck murdered. But, I don’t believe what the critics say about him. I think he has no epiphany about race—that’s the point of the novel—he connects with Jim (who is also a likeable character) but he has no understanding of race beyond that connection.
Q: Are you comfortable writing white characters? Is there a difference to your approach when writing a white character?
At a convention of Georgia writers held in 1985, I witnessed John O. Killens and James Dickey arguing about whether white people could honestly portray black characters. Mr. Killens argued that whites had never observed blacks closely enough to write about us realistically, whereas, as a matter of survival, blacks had well observed whites. In his day, Mr. Killens might have been right, but I believe that we must try, nonetheless, to travel imaginatively, if not actually, in each other’s shoes. To do so requires, as it does for writing any character, an honest, imaginative engagement based on respect for the character’s perspective and historical context.
Black Americans of my generation have long engaged with white characters since there was little else, whether in childhood literature, television or the classics. In our imaginations we have a full array of types and characterizations associated with white people. This offers some advantage to me as a writer portraying white characters. But the fundamental skill of character development comes from careful and sympathetic observation and the application of the imagination in a way that tries to shape a unique human being. Because I don’t make assumptions about my characters and because I try to see them as unique people in the great struggle of life, I do feel as comfortable writing white characters as I do writing black characters—which is to say, I am a little uncomfortable writing any of my characters!
I remember in particular the struggle I had writing the character of the guard in Bombingham. He is a white man who is guarding the cattle pens where the Birmingham child demonstrators are locked up. I didn’t want him to fall into the pot-bellied stereotype of the Southern policeman, even though physically he looked the part. I kept thinking about what his home life was like—whether or not he was happy? What was his relationship with his wife and children? What was his standing in his community?—these questions, as I brought him into conflict with a black man who had come to take his daughter home. At one point the character surprised me by declaring he didn’t care if blacks ate in whites-only restaurants. And surely he didn’t, for he was beset with more pressing personal problems. Yet, of course, he was also trapped by the social system and was unable to act on his, albeit, inarticulate, conviction.
Likewise in “The Vain Conversation,” I am trying to complicate the portrayals of my characters. I don’t want them to sink into stereotypes, and yet they are also shaped by what I know to be true about history.
And, of course, we must get beyond the black / white dynamic and become more inclusive, recognizing that there are many communities that have a right to portrayals in our national literature. That’s why I admire stories like Mira Nair’s film "Mississippi Masala" for its complex view of race relations in the South.
Q: What has changed for you over the years as far as your own writerly interests are concerned? In what way have your career turns been a surprise to you?
My interests are pretty much the same as they have been since the beginning, though how I view my career has evolved. I have always had broad interests. Though I have established a career as a writer of the black American civil rights experience, I am also interested in science fiction, and international settings for example. I have one more civil rights novel to write, then I want to move into another area, perhaps one for which there is less resistance in the market place.
Even when I was in graduate school, in the 1980s, it was common to hear that good writing always found a publisher. I recall this discussion in regard to Toole’s The Confederacy of Dunces which having been rejected by main presses, was published to great acclaim by LSU Press. Over the years, I have soured on this view. Even at the small press level, the economics of publishing means that much writing that is important and artful is overlooked. So, I have adjusted my view of my career. It is important to nurture readers in whatever ways possible—because having a voice is paramount—but it might mean finding alternatives to the usual publishing outlets.
Q. The science fiction remark is a surprise. Can I ask you to elaborate on this? Are there certain sci-fi writers of particular interest to you?
I haven’t really kept up with science fiction literature since I was a teenager. For me, popular science fiction was a gateway into literary reading. As a teen I admired André Norton, Arthur C. Clarke, Huxley, Orwell and the like. I still do. The ideas of science fiction still strongly attract me. My very first attempt at a novel at age fourteen was a science fiction, or perhaps a post-apocalyptic. I didn’t get very far with it, and the script burned with my family’s home when I was in college. But I still have the story in mind, and maybe, one day, I’ll write it.
Q: Do you still like to write? Or is it now out of an obligation, a promise you made to yourself a long time ago?
There are few things in life that give me more pleasure than writing. Over the decades, I’ve learned to prioritize family and friends, for they are more important than literary success, and it is always a struggle to balance the priority and the pleasure. Interestingly, I do not ever remember making writing an obligation—it is simply something I’ve always done. Even in graduate school, I was thinking, “I’ll give this a try, if it works out fine, if not I’ll do something else.”
Q: What did your family think when you told them you wanted to be a writer?
From my earliest years, my parents encouraged my education—perhaps, in part, because they felt deprived of theirs. Writing was a part of the overall picture, so I was encouraged to read and write. After college, however, my father, though he never articulated it, would have preferred a more standard profession. He was quite happy when I started teaching because it fit better his idea of having a job. Mom, on the other hand was a dreamer—she even wanted me to stay in Los Angeles, when I lived there briefly, and to become a movie star. She went about at my sister’s wedding, showing the guests copies of my book Trouble No More and telling them, “This is my copy. You’ll have to buy your own.” One brother used my book to pick up a woman. It’s probably the only time, “My brother wrote this book,” was ever used as pick-up line.
Q: How much does economic background influence one’s desire to be a writer of literature? When you work with a classroom full of creative writing students, do you invariably find a room full of diverse backgrounds? Or, do you see more or less a group of restless middle class students looking for attention or a pat on the back?
It is no surprise that economic background is a strong determinant of whether a person goes to college, much more, probably, as to whether he goes to a writing program. But there are many writers who were born poor but were encouraged by other circumstances. I, for example, was a Southern, rural black kid who grew up in de facto segregation. The outlook for a writing career was bleak, except that my parents and teachers encouraged me and the civil rights movement provided an opportunity.
At Kennesaw State, the undergraduate program is comprised mostly of white middle-class, suburban students, whom I would describe as searching or exploring. It is fun to work with them, to broaden their horizons about forms and literary history. Our graduate program tends to be more diverse in that the students are older and have more life experiences, some having raised families, others having traveled or served in the military. Few minorities are in these classes, though over the years I have seen more black women joining the program, but in 15 years, we have not graduated a black man who was a creative writer. In my classes, everyone gets a pat on the back for accepting the challenge of the writer’s discipline—but some also get a rap on the knuckles, when I think they are squandering their talents. Flannery O’Connor, the goddess of Georgia writers, famously quipped that writing programs ought to discourage writers, but this was never my view. Imagine what would have happened if she had been discouraged. I am grateful to my mentors at George Mason—Dick Bausch, Susan Shreve and Steve Godwin, among others—for their encouragement.
Q: In an article published in the New York Times in 2007, novelist Martha Southgate, quoting Malaika Adero, a senior editor at Atria Books, said: “Literary African-American writers have difficulty getting publicity. The retailers then don’t order great quantities of the books. Readers don’t know what books are available and therefore don’t ask for them. It’s a vicious cycle.” Has this been your experience, if so, why do you think it is so?
I do feel a resistance to my work in some quarters and I think there are several factors to consider about black representation in our national literature. For sure, is difficult for any writer, especially a literary writer to get published in a publishing climate driven by corporate interests. But we black writers also have to consider that overwhelmingly American readers are white and, speaking generally, readers want most to connect with and understand their own or similar experiences.
Unfortunately for me, the least likely American reader is a black Southern man, my own demographic.
Then, too, we must consider the demographic of those who manage the publishing institutions, which is nearly all white and middle class. Though their tastes and interests vary, these gate-keepers of the national literature tend to promote literature that is filtered through their sometimes limited sensibilities--which are Northeastern and Manhattan- focused. Blacks aren’t the only ones who complain. White Southerners have long complained that New York-based editors do not connect with them except through clichés.
The greater of the concerns is that the national literature is filtered through the perspective of one region. I do not fault the Northeastern intelligentsia, such as it is, for this situation, but rather the other regions, which have not invested in building literary institutions that can vie for national influence. This is especially true of the South, which in spite of The Georgia Review and Oxford American Magazine, is a region with a lack-luster readership. It is the most populous region and has produced many of the most celebrated writers. It is also a region with enormous political clout. Yet it has no publishing houses, excepting Algonquin Books, and no review publications of national influence.
Q: A follow-up. Is the remark from Adero listed above a comment on the overall literary interests of black Americans? In other words, do you think black Americans simply do not identify strongly with our current black American writers?
Like other readers, black readers are not a homogenous group. Most readers in any group are popular readers, and I think that blacks who read popular literature identify strongly with black popular works, though they aren’t necessary limited to only works by black writers. I take for example my sister-in-law who reads widely in popular genres and enjoys the works of black writers as much as any other. Some popular writers, E. Lynn Harris for example, have such a strong following among blacks that they have little need for crossover to white readers. Black literary readers also read widely and many are strongly supportive of black authors. If you ever visit Spelman College, an historically black college, you might encounter students wearing purple who are fans of Alice Walker. However, what Adero notes is that black literary writers do not get promoted by the publishing establishment because of its expectation of a poor readership for their works. Since blacks are about 12% of the American population, and not all of us are literary readers, we depend more strongly on crossover. But then, my intention always has been to write for a broad literary audience, and many white readers have responded very well to my work, which has largely been promoted by word of mouth.
Q: Speaking of Oxford American Review, its publisher Warwick Sabin, in a recent article, took to task a critique of To Kill a Mockingbird written by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. Gladwell writes that Atticus Finch, the novel’s hero, is an accomodationist not a reformer on the issue of African American equality and Sabine responds, “What we can easily infer is that Gladwell believes that the best Southerners aren’t really any good at all.” Do you have an opinion about the hero status of Atticus Finch?
I am glad that this cross regional discussion about race and literature is taking place. I wish that we could see more of it in the pages of our literary magazines, especially those based in the South. In this argument, I land somewhere in the middle. I think that Sabin’s tone is defensive as he makes the comments about Finch into an indictment of all Southerners, by which he means all white Southerners. It is important to accept that criticism of the region is not the same a condemnation of it. It is important to see subtleties and gradations. Without seeing those, we can not negotiate the gray areas between the black and the white. On the other hand, Gladwell’s assertion that, “If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict and that his “quiet walk” out of the courtroom is a sign of accommodation lacks historical perspective. At the distance of nearly 80 years, it is easy to imagine outrage, but in fact, much civil rights activism was quiet, even stealthy. I do take to heart Gladwell’s point that there is a difference between actual reform and what he calls Folsomism, a populist position on race that was ultimately in line with the accommodation of Washingtonianism.
But Gladwell goes on to say, much to Sabin’s chagrin, that what he calls the “Jim Crow liberals” exchange one kind of prejudice for another, that is, they exchange prejudice against “good” blacks—the blacks they accept—for prejudice against “bad” whites, those whose morals they disapprove. I am not convinced that this is always the case, as I know of times when some very good blacks were humiliated in spite of the slack morals of the whites who injured them. What Gladwell describes is a literary pattern that is a part of the so called “white redemption race narrative.” In this narrative there have to be good whites and bad whites on the issue of black civil rights. Often the bad whites are poor whites, though not always. Perhaps the most extreme use of the pattern is in John Grisham’s A Time To Kill, which, in its most troublesome interpretation, suggests that the outcome of the civil rights movement was to give “good” black men the privilege of lynching “bad” white men. This pattern is prevalent in many novels, films and memoirs about the South, both by white authors as well as by black authors. In some small way, I hope that my writing offers a counter to this pattern by complicating it. I do not wish to undermine the contributions of the many white Southern activists, some who were active during Finch’s time, but the truth is if there had been a predominance of good whites on issue of black constitutional equality, there never would have been a Jim Crow.
Q: Is the South still producing a roster of elite, world-class writers? Or, has the South become more of a part of a whole? How do writing programs factor into your assessment here?
I think writing programs have given encouragement and training to many artists who might otherwise have been discouraged from pursuing writing careers, and this is true in the South as well as in other regions. All regions, I think, have their distinctive voices, and Southern stories—historic or contemporary—have not yet been fully explored. The regional literatures are no more in a melting pot than regional cuisines. There is no more a New England style of barbecue as there is a Southern clam chowder. These various regional experiences come together to weave a national literature that a multi-colored tapestry of the national experience. Only in this way is there an American literature, one made of many American literatures. The South is home to many first class writers, established and up and coming. Whether or not they reach a “world-class” status depends as much on promotion as it does talent, and the route to world-class status, unfortunately for us, runs through extra-regional literary institutions.
Q: As far as writing programs are concerned in general, do you think we are more or less heading in the right direction?
I am beginning to think that the MFA degree gets a bum rap, not so much because of how we teach, but how it is treated by academic administrations. We don’t offer an MFA at KSU, but I caution my students that if their goal is university teaching, the MFA, in spite of lip service, will be looked upon as a second class degree. This is ironic, since the standards for hiring a MFA in places like KSU are higher than those for critical PhDs. For example, it has been the policy at KSU to require a published book of any candidate for a creative writing job—not just significant publications or presentations—but a book. We don’t hold our critics to the same standard. When I questioned this, an administrator told me we did it because we could—the market allowed it. Thus I encourage my students to get a PhD with Creative Writing concentration. It is a more flexible degree and may allow them to teach while they build a publishing record.
Q: Can I get you to speak about the current state of the literary quarterly? What happens if everything goes to the Internet? Which quarterlies are you interested in on a consistent basis?
I used to know a lot about this when I was involved in arts administration at the national level. Nowadays, I am less aware of the overall state of small press publishing. I doubt if every thing will go to the internet, but rather that on-line publishing will offer another dimension to the overall picture. I can’t imagine that there won’t be at least a few paper books and journals since part of the reading experience is the art of the physical book. I follow just a few magazines these days, namely The Chattahoochee Review, The Crab Orchard Review, and The African American Review. These journals are very open to new voices—though, I hasten to say, I enjoy reading widely.
Q: Speaking of new, what are considering now for future projects?
I’m working on what I call my Swedish novel. It is about black American expatriates in Stockholm in the 1970s and explores questions about racial and national identity. Also, I continue to work on poems, primarily contributing to my manuscript about travels in Africa. Mainly, these poems focus on West Africa, but now having been to North Africa, I might find use of Casablanca as a setting. I am also fiddling around with some short stories, though novel writing takes most of my time. You know they say that art is long and life is short—and life is also unpredictable—but I imagine the writing aspect of my life as being dedicated to socially aware writing, in many genres, set both near and far. God willing. --Atlanta, GA, August 2010.
Andrew Plattner is the author of Winter Money, winner of the 1997 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and The Kentucky Derby Vault: A History of the Run for the Roses. His fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, New Letters, Epoch, Sewanee Review and other journals. His new collection of stories, A Marriage of Convience, has just been published by BkMk Press. He teaches writing and literature at Kennesaw State University and lives in Atlanta with his wife, Diana.
Mark Twain, "Nigger," and the "N-Word"
February 6, 2011
Jim and Huck, illustration by Thomas Hart Benton
Growing up black and Southern during the Civil Rights Movement days, I was called nigger—regularly. People say it is a hurtful word—a painful word—and that is true, but it is also a fear-inducing word. When I heard it as a boy, I prepared myself for, at the least, a public humiliation, but just as often the threat of physical violence. So many of our brothers and sisters, niggers and nigger-lovers alike, were tortured and killed at the hands of those who called them that word. This is a part of the legacy of the word, and a legacy that still gives it emotional and political power.
Even knowing the fear the word engenders, I can not support Professor Alan Gribben’s and New South Books’ well-meaning effort to sanitized Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn of its 219 uses of “nigger.” Gribben wants to make it easier for teachers to teach Huckleberry Finn probably because he sees it as I do, as an essential novel about American experience. Twain’s novel derives much of its power from its language—the vernacular of the Mississippi River—including the word “nigger.” To substitute the word “slave,” which carries its own oppressive and fearful baggage, flattens not only the emotion of Twain’s language, but also obscures his meaning. Towards the end of the novel when Huck reports to Aunt Sally that there had been an explosion on a steamboat, and she asks if anyone was injured, he answers, “No’m. Killed a nigger.” In this short phrase, Twain delivers a powerful indictment of the racism of the 19th century. The language is as raw and as filthy as it needs to be. It will disturb and provoke teachers and students, alike—as it should do. As a writer and a reader, I object to Gribben’s censorship. Regardless of the intent, his kind of censorship is not only politically, but also, artistically unethical.
In general, I object to the Disneyfication of racist language. Racist language is meant to be raw, and to prettify it is intellectually dishonest. To substitute “n-word” for “nigger” does not obliterate its meaning, but shifts the responsibility for using the word from the speaker to the listener. As with most euphemisms, though the speaker did not say what he meant, the listener imagines it. Since “nigger” is such a provoking word, perhaps even a dangerous word, those who would use it should not be given an easy route around it. I say this even though I know the euphemism is designed to soften the pinch and to maintain decorum, but it is also an ineffective opiate for matters we should face soberly.
November 19, 2010
SELF LOVE
For the writer of conscience, writing is a way of being in the world, a commitment to justice and art. Such a commitment begins with love—love of the universe, love of others, and love of self. The love of self is the foundation for the others because it recognizes the self as a particle in the universe, and so accept others as both particular and universal. The love of self is not the same as egoism, in fact, it is altruistic. It is a celebration of body and soul as interdependent with others and with the universe.
My old father, the Greybeard, Walt Whitman, put it this way:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
“ Song of Myself ”
And the good doctor, W. C. Williams put this spin on it:
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
--“Danse Russe“
And Sister Nina Simone said it this way :
"Ain't Got No/I Got Life" featured on Simone’s album “Nuff Said” (1968) is her version of songs by James Rado, Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot from the musical “Hair”.
