Brown Bodies as Props in Modern Lit

With the recent release of 12 Years A Slave and last year's Django Unchained, some in Hollywood have spoken out about their belief that there are too many movies about slavery being made.  Morgan Freeman has been vocal about not seeing it.  Then there's Nick Cannon, a man with the power to create his own television shows (as chairman of TeenNick and with MTV's Wild 'n Out) or movies about blacks who, instead, takes to Twitter to complain:

Back in March of this year, The Daily Beast lamented that 2013 was sure to be the year of the slavery film, though of the six listed, I'm only aware of two coming to the big screen, and neither has been shown in the states.

• Savannah, starring James Caviezel and, again, Ejiofor; it’s loosely based on the book Ducks, Dogs and Friends by John Eugene Cay Jr. and tells the story of a well-educated white hunter who develops a friendship with a freed slave;
• Something Whispered, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as a man who attempts to free his family from slavery on a tobacco plantation in 1850;
• The North Star, starring Keith David, the true story of Big Ben Jones, a slave who escaped from a Southern plantation in 1848 and is helped by local Quakers;
• The Keeping Room, a Civil War drama about three Southern women forced to protect their home against a group of Union Army soldiers;
• Belle, set in the 1700s, the story of a mixed-race girl who falls in love with an advocate for slave emancipation;
• And Tula, with Danny Glover, focusing on a slave uprising on the Dutch colony of Curaçao in 1795. - The Daily Beast

While I think it's important to tell our story, it's just as important to get it right.  We're seeing a generation of people that believes America went straight from slavery to the civil rights movement and some sort of equality fairy dust was sprinkled and there was a magical cleansing of prejudice and racism.  I don't care if a movie about slavery is released every month if it sets the record straight.  Seriously, go read message boards or comment sections.  They're full of people that want black America to get over it (it being slavery), and to stop whining about racism because it doesn't exist anymore.  So while Nick Cannon is shucking and jiving with Wild 'n Out, but whining on Twitter about there being too many movies about slavery, I don't see him doing anything to educate anyone or help the situation.

Now what does any of this have to do with literature and, specifically, brown bodies as props in modern lit?  While others may have noticed an influx of slavery films, I've noticed an overwhelming number of books in this past year that use slavery as the backdrop and black people as a vehicle to tell a white character's story or gain sympathy.

In Jessica Maria Tuccelli's Glow, the author throws characters, dates and events together to create a story, but at no point does it ever seem like she really understands her characters or knows what she's doing with them.  Instead, you're left with the impression that her publisher told her slavery was what's hot in the streets this year, so if she could find a way to build a story around slaves and their descendants, she'd have a hit on her hands.  I can't imagine any other reason why a first time author with no vested interest in the slave narrative would take on such a project of which she was incapable of handling.

But slaves don't necessarily fare better in the hands of authors of color either.  In The Wedding Gift, Marlen Supaya Golden tells the story of a slave girl given to her white playmate and their "friendship" as they grow into adults.  Though the story is meant to be told from the perspectives of the slave and the mother of the mistress, much more attention is given to the mistress and her family, while the slave's story is all but skipped over until the last few chapters when it's thrown together in haste and leaves the reader unsatisfied.

Books like Ann Hite's The Storycatcher rely on the spirits of slaves and their descendants to assist the featured white characters.  And contrary to its title, Mrs. Lincolns Dressmaker is less about the actual dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, and much more about Mary Todd Lincoln and the goings on at the White House.  Lois Leveen tried her hand at writing a slave narrative in The Secrets of Mary Bowser and produced such a simplified version that I was sure it was written for a middle school reader and not adults. 

With Oprah's announcement of her next big read, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, I had to roll my eyes.  Kidd likes her magical Negroes (i.e., The Secret Lives of Bees), as does Oprah.  Based on real life suffragette and abolitionist Sarah Grimke, Kidd admittedly makes up the character of Handful Grimke, a slave given to Sarah as a child.  The book explores their wonderful (yes, I'm being sarcastic) friendship over 35 years.  If you want to tell your story, you want to do historical fiction, do that.  But what purpose does it serve to create characters if your only intent is to use them as a prop in the telling of your story?

A quick search of "slavery historical fiction" on Amazon will bring up books like the Michael Phillips series of slave and mistress raised as sisters featuring: Angels Watching Over Me , Day to Pick Your Own Cotton, Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart. Or Linda Spalding's The Purchase in which a Quaker family struggles with the decision of what to do with the slave they've inherited, which is somewhat along the same lines as The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier.  None of these books sound especially appealing.

It's important that authors know what they're writing about.  Right now there are classrooms in which The Help is being used to teach the Civil Rights movement.  While the book does offer background on important historical events, it is by no means an authority on the movement and sugarcoats much of it.  For these reasons, and others, authors have got to learn how and what can be used as interchangeable props in historical fiction, and the lives of black people aren't it.  I know people long for the good old days, but quite honestly, those days were only good if you were a white male, first and a white female, second.  So when you use others for whom those days weren't so good and turn those often volatile relationships to rainbows and lollipops for the sake of your story, you're doing everyone a disservice.

All I can ever really ask of authors is to do their research, treat their characters
well and write what you know.  If you don't do the research, if your heart isn't in your characters, it shows.  If you're only writing about brown bodies because you think it'll sell well or your publisher is pushing for more diversity, don't.  Readers can see right through it and you're doing yourself no favors as an author.  Publishers would be better served putting out more works by authors that continue to do the work, like Leonard Pitts, Jr. with Freeman or Jonathon Odell with The Healing, than serving up a platter of historical fiction with brown bodies on the side.

And if, as an author, you really feel like you want to take on history from a black perspective, please know that we exist beyond slavery.  It's interesting to me that authors seem to be stuck in that time period as if our presence in both world wars wasn't historical.  Or as if the Harlem Renaissance didn't happen.  Tell some of those stories.  I promise our lives after slavery are just as important, even if you can't find a way to throw in white characters to whom you'd have us play second fiddle.  Do the work because if you don't, you're no better than slave masters who saw black bodies as property to be used however they saw fit.

#BookReview: The View from Delphi - Jonathon Odell

Set in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, The View from Delphi is the story of Hazel and Vida, women on opposite ends of the spectrum. While one comes from a place of privilege and soon finds herself on the opposite end; the other comes from very humble beginnings, only to find herself surrounded by the material things she always dreamed of.  Unfortunately, she didn't dream beyond acquiring those possessions.

Vida Snow is the daughter of a preacher.  Her father is not just a preacher, he's the Fix It man for the sharecroppers in the area.  Raised with the Senator, Levi Snow has the ear of the biggest landowner in Delphi.  In return for Levi apprising the Senator of any grumblings among the workers, the Senator allows Levi the privilege of preaching, something Levi feels he was called to do.  As a preacher's daughter, Vida Snow has never worked a day in the fields.  Her job is to go to school and wear the pretty dresses her father keeps her in.

Hazel is poorer than dirt.  Worse than that, she's homely.  With her limp hair and plain features, she cries when she finally gets to see a picture of herself.  As a teen, she decided to do something about her looks and by the time she was fifteen, she'd completely transformed herself into a movie star-like creature, the likes of which folks in her part of Appalachia had never seen.  When she meets Floyd Graham and his big ideas, she's ready to ditch the farm and her family and get on with living.

By the time they meet, life has been unkind to Hazel and Vida.  Vida's father's fall from grace propels her into the fields.  Her longing to right the wrongs that have been done to her propels her into a white woman's kitchen.

Hazel is a woman without a plan.  Her immediate plan was to marry Floyd, but she didn't think far beyond that.  Being a mother overwhelms her.  The simplest tasks leave her flustered.  Her most recent episodes leave Floyd with no other choice than to bring in outside help to watch over her during the day to make sure she doesn't do anything foolish again.

Hazel and Vida's friendship is unlikely, and I begrudgingly call it a friendship.  I would be more apt to call it mutual respect.   Hazel draws strength from being around Vida and her group of fellow maids.  In return, Hazel assists the group with copying and distributing voting rights materials.  But are they the kind of friends that share secrets?  I wouldn't go that far.

Had I read this before the acclaimed The Healing, I don't know that I would have been inspired to read about Polly Shine.  The View from Delphi is about 100 pages longer than it needs to be.  It's obvious that by the time Odell got around to writing The Healing, he'd learned to trim the fat in his writing.  Still, it was a noble effort for a first novel.

510pp
Published: August 2005

 

Theme: Mississippi Goddamn by Nina Simone

#BookReview: The Healing - Jonathon Odell

I can admit when I'm late to the dance.  I've had the ARC (advanced reader's copy) of this book since October...2011.  Right, so for almost 10 months, this book just sat on my Kindle waiting for me to get around to it, but as Polly Shine would say, "I can pour water on your head, but you got to wash yourself."

Who is Polly Shine, you ask? She's the healer and giver of sight to those around her.  Things on the Satterfield plantation surely changed for the better the day Polly Shine arrived.  Prior to her arrival, Granada, the teller of The Healing, only thought she knew who she was.

Born on the same day that the mistress of the plantation's daughter died, Granada was taken from her mother and given to the mistress as a play thing.  Now normally a slave of Granada's complexion would not have been allowed to step foot in the big house.  House slaves tended to be light-skinned and were considered more favorable as their appearance was closer to white.  As the daughter of a field slave, Granada should have been out in the fields, but grief is a powerful thing and the mistress was willing to overlook the norms.

Granada takes great pleasure in dressing up in the gowns of the deceased daughter of the mistress annually for Preaching Day.  Standing at the side of the mistress in the fancy clothes and ribbons gives her such joy that she's willing to ignore the laughs and horrified looks of those around her.  Her place is firmly in the big house, next to the mistress.

All of that changes the day Polly Shine arrives.  What kind of slave is worth $ 5,000?  One that can heal.  When slaves on his plantation begin to fall ill, Ben Satterfield, who has never brought in outside slaves, brings in Polly Shine to heal them.  Not only that, he has a hospital built for her and gives her Granada as an assistant.  Of course, this doesn't sit well with Granada.  She belongs in the big house, everyone knows that.  But in becoming Polly's assistant, Granada begins to learn and remember what and who she is and to whom she belongs.

Odell touches on so many points with The Healing.  There's the constant reminder to and from house slaves that they're better than those that live in the swamps and the fields, simply because of the complexion of their skin.

 "Remember, Granada," Sylvie said, "what is bred in the bones will be in the marrow.  You ain't like them out in the swamps that got no behavior.  You been brought up around white folks and learned their manners.  Don't forget that, you hear?  You a proper house-raised girl, and you pretty as a pea, even if you is black as the bottom of a pot."

Then there's the slave mentality exhibited by Old Silas, who had been with the master since he was a boy, and resented any thought of freedom.  He even goes so far as to tell the master how to keep the other slaves in line by keeping them afraid, rendering them unable to hope.

'Mark my words,' I said, 'when a man's not afraid, then he's hoping.  And that's when all hell brakes loose.'

Odell bravely takes on a topic and time period that would normally send white authors running.  But he does so respectfully and definitely did his research.  Using words of former slaves as recorded in the WPA Slave Narratives, the Fisk Collection of Slave Narratives and oral histories of midwives as his guide, he is dedicated to telling the story accurately.  It shows in his work.

352pp
Published: February 2012

 

Theme: Time After Time by Cassandra Wilson