a magnificent distraction

I struggled my way through this book, to be perfectly honest. That's not to say that it wasn't a good read, but that it was difficult after finishing Seraph on the Suwanee (which was a much more absorptive read) and dealt with subject matter that I'm less interested in (i.e. religion). However, there's a lot that I gained by reading this novel. Tying it in with the other African American novels I've read recently, it seems to be part of a larger body of work that's interested in interrogating the religious values that are so much at the heart of the culture by focusing in on different characters. Baldwin seems most interested in religious hypocrisy, which becomes most apparent in John's father, Gabriel. Gabriel is a kind of preacher, but he's not really living a life that would be considered in accordance with the teachings of the Bible. His sister, John's Aunt Florence, says it the most directly at the end of the novel when she reveals her knowledge of Gabriel's unclaimed (and now dead) son; she chastises Gabriel and tells him how his life is really working as she sees it:

"Yes," said Florence, watching his face, "you didn't give her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you?--poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn't treat that other one no better. Who is you met, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain't made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing it still--you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in your grave." (243)

These sentiments are at the heart of the novel, and crop up throughout it (although this is the place where they become the most explicit). There is a wide variety of characters - in both the past and the present -- who have vowed to live a good life according to the Bible only to find themselves in situations where doing what their hearts want and doing what Christianity dictates are completely at odds with one another. The fact that Baldwin situates the most vile character of the novel (Gabriel) as a man of the cloth while simultaneously situating decent, good characters (Deborah, Elizabeth, Florence) as perceived sinners and fallen women highlights the hypocrisy he's so interested in exposing.

It's also interesting that Balwin chooses to explore these issues through a boy who's just turned 14. John's story begins and ends the narrative, with his (foster)father's, mother's, and aunt's stories coming in the middle of his story. The entirety of Part Two is actually analepsis taking place during the evening worship where John will eventually endure his own struggle with his faith. I think part of what this accomplishes is that we're seeing a boy whose entire family -- the good and the bad -- has essentially failed at merging their own happiness with their faith, and here's John who is struggling with his own inner turmoil and trying to decide which direction his own life will take. In the aftermath of Part Two, it becomes clear that John's struggle is somewhat unrealistic. Each of his role models has been through the same struggle, and each has fallen (in their own eyes). How can John possibly succeed? And I think this is the question Baldwin wants the reader to leave with. If he wanted the reader to be more optimistic, why would he include that final exchange between Elisha and John, during which John implores Elisha:

John looked at his father an dmoved from his path, stepping down into the street again. He put his hand on Elisha's arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father at his back. "Elisha," he said, "no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember--please remember--I was saved. I was there." (252)

 Despite the apparent attainment of salvation, John's words speak of uncertainty, or even of a kind of conviction that it will not last. He has no choice but to enter his house again -- the same house where he lives with his mother and his (foster)father, and where he is beaten and his mother is beaten and his brother is beaten. And it doesn't look hopeful. It doesn't seem like it's going to last, and John's own words indicate his awareness of this.

Honestly, I haven't read Hurston for over ten years...and even then, it was Their Eyes Were Watching God that I read (not that I actually remember anything of that novel, unfortunately...perhaps after I finish my exams I'll give it another go). I must admit that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I suppose I've gotten too used to movies and TV and the way they kill off, traumatize, and generally destroy their characters at the drop of a hat. I spent half the novel worried that something was going to happen to Arvay and/or Jim (something horrible and criminal), and can only admit my extreme relief upon reaching page 352 and finding that they made it out alive. And, what's more, happy! Okay, okay, enough of my emotional reactions to this novel. I was really intrigued by the way Arvay's prejudices and preconceptions were confronted for the entire novel. At first, her unusual notions seemed to be simply naive reactions to her own happiness. However, as the novel progresses and Arvay is forced to deal with people from all different walks of life and cultural and racial backgrounds, her stubborn ignorance becomes obvious (and aggravating) to the reader. Because we have no choice but to experience Arvay's thoughts and emotions, we have no choice but to at least tolerate (if not accept or understand) where she comes from and try to consider what it means to be so used to your own way of thinking that you can't see the flaws of the thing.

While that's interesting, and I certainly think Arvay is a sympathetic enough character to allow most readers to be on her side (even if she frustrates them to no end), there was another aspect of the novel that was...troubling: Jim's treatment of Arvay (this could be broadened to a more general discussion of male/female relations, but I'll stick to Jim and Arvay). From the beginning, he seems to know more about her than she does about herself, as evidenced by his little stunt with the turpentine in her eye. This is okay, even if it does rub me the wrong way just a little bit, but where it started getting flat out weird for me was on the day of their marriage. When Jim rapes Arvay, she comes back for more and realizes her love for him. Years later, Angelina's beau tells her that she'd better be careful or he'll rape her, and she tells him that she's going to help him rape her. But that's not Arvay and Jim. There are many smaller instances -- moments where he patiently (and patronizingly) tolerates her ignorance and intolerance -- but the next major instance occurs shortly before he leaves her when he makes her strip and stand before him, naked, scrutinizing her (and humiliating her) and never giving any explanation or justification for his cruelty. I don't really know what to make of all these little problematic moments sprinkled throughout the text, but I know that there's something going on with gender and relationships that's problematic. For now, that's about as far as I can puzzle out about it.

Finally, Hurston's sending some strong messages about religion. It's not my favorite topic to discuss, so I'll keep it short, but basically Arvay's clinging to her Bible (and her gross misinterpretations of its contents) is shown in an almost entirely negative light. Jim comments on this several times, and Carl Middleton (her brother-in-law) illustrates the same principle. I'm not sure whether the overall message is a kind of religion-is-bad sentiment, if it's more focused around religious hypocrisy, or if it's more about the inadequacy of religion in some respects. It's strange. It's interesting. That's all.

Angelou's poetry is a lot easier for me to follow than other kinds of poetry (ahem, lyric poetry, ahem) because each poem tells a story. I know, I've said this before. I think I might have said it for each and every last one of the poetry collections I've written about in this blog. Well, there it is -- the bare truth. I like narrative poetry. So, back to Maya Angelou.... Of course, her poems are also different in that the stories they tell are not always of a specific individual, but of a somewhat abstract, more general individual. Oftentimes, the poems appear to be about African Americans in general (as opposed to a specific person), which is of course highlighted by Angelou's interest in the African American experience, history, and culture. Take the title poem, "Still I Rise." It's a good example of a lot of the things I've been talking about here. While the narrative "I" appears to be an individual, the poem is general enough that there are no specifics about this person other than their race (African American). The last two stanzas provide a good example of what I'm talking about:

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling adn swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously cear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

This poem also brings up the unique rhythms Angelou uses. Okay, so maybe I can't call them "unique" so much as I can say they're not conforming to any rigid forms of poetry (sonnets, ballads, etc.) but instead have a rhythm all their own. She uses a lot of rhyming in her poems, but she seems to like to play with how she uses rhyme. It's not always coming in the form of rhyming couplets or rigid internal rhyme scheme. Instead, it's (again) a very rhythmic rhyming that is tailored to each specific poem. Within one poem, she might switch up the rhyme scheme from stanza to stanza. She does this in "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" -- some of the end rhymes (the -all sound, for instance) occur throughout the entire poem rather than just one stanza, while other end rhymes come in and out for single instances. The first stanza reads:

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Obviously, here the rhyme scheme is fairly simple. However, the third stanza is different:

I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Here, not only is the rhyme scheme different (rhyming couplets, essentially), but the structure is different enough that it could appear to be from a different poem entirely. The 3-words-per-line format is interesting, and reminds me of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" in the way it truncates language and makes its own kind of linguistic sense. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed this collection immensely (a true feat for a poetically intimidated reader like myself).

The last time I read this book, I was a senior in high school. I figured I wouldn't really remember the story, despite the fact that I remember liking it, but I was wrong. As I read, I continued to recall characters' names before they were introduced (most especially Shug Avery), and to have an inkling of what direction the events were headed in. However, my pseudo-vivid memories of the novel also made me realize just how much of it went over my head when I read it way-back-when.

I think what made the novel stick so firmly is the depth of the characters. They're so vivid, more so than even Ellison's characters (who had nearly 600 pages to develop). This is especially true with Celie, of course, since she's the one writing most of the letters and we get her inner perspective much more than the other characters. But the character dynamics are probably the most interesting thing to me in this novel. The way their relationships continue to shift and grow in new directions is fascinating, and the way their lives become increasingly connected is also really interesting. I know, I know..."fascinating" and "interesting" are such vague terms. Let me see if I can clarify. The way Walker weaves together her characters' lives and their always-changing romantic ties to one another seems to be a great feat of verisimilitude on the one hand (because in real life, this constant shifting is always occurring) and idealistic on the other (because all the characters find happiness in their relationships by the end of the novel, which entails a great deal of open-mindedness and acceptance on a level that not all characters actually seem capable of). But the way that the characters change and mellow with age is certainly what keeps the story interesting to read.

To be frank, I love a story with a happy ending, and so this tale appeals to me on that level. However, I think it's really difficult to write a believable happy ending (much more so than to craft a believable unhappy ending), and Walker has mostly succeeded on that front. It's not a conventional happy ending, as Disney would most likely want to have; instead, it's a complicated ending with lots of twists and turns, lots of history, and lots of personal growth for each character. In this sense, I think Walker did an admirable job with it because the ways different characters changed and grew over time was quite believable in most ways.

As for the novel's form, well, someone told me that it's the first epistolary novel in the African American tradition. As such, I find it interesting to look at exactly who Celie is addressing her letters to. For the first half of the novel, all the letters are addressed to God. Ordinarily, this would be quite straightforward...except that Walker complicates even this in the second letter of the novel. Celie writes that when her mother asked her where her first baby came from, she replied that it was God's. Of course, it was her stepfather's, so this calls the "God" of the letters' addresses into question. Lending further suspicion to this idea is the fact that when she refers to her stepfather in these early letters, she calls him only "He" -- with a capital H just like in the Bible when God is referred to with the same capitalized pronoun. Is Celie, in fact, writing these letters to her stepfather? It's a question I have no answer to, especially when Celie and Shug have their discussion on religion and the reader is privy to Celie's ideas of what God looks like (a very large and very old white man with lots of hair).

A veritable tome of a book, but what a story. From the very beginning, I couldn't put it down. Ellison's unnamed narrator tells a compelling story, even though he's not particularly lovable. His various flaws generally serve to make him more human, and to make the reader wish he would have his eyes opened sooner rather than later so he can get on with his life.

One thread that caught my attention was the one having to do with fighters. From the very beginning, the narrator illustrates his ability to fight. Whether you want to consider his example from the introduction (where he talks about beating up a man only to realize the man can't see him because he's invisible) or the instance where he goes to give his graduation speech and becomes entangled in a physical fight with the other boys who were brought there for that purpose, fighting is a crucial part of his life. It's through his first fight (the latter instance mentioned above) that the narrator gets his precious briefcase -- that symbol of so many things. When he takes Mr. Norton to the Golden Day -- the decision that ends his formal education -- the entire bar becomes a roiling fight (even though he stays out of it this time). When he gets his first job, he fights Lucius Brockway the same day he is injured and has to be hospitalized. When he gives his first planned speech, it's at an old arena where years ago a prizefighter "had been beaten blind in a crooked fight, [a] scandal that had been suppressed, and [...] the fighter had died in a home for the blind" (334). When he comes up against Ras the Destroyer, it's in a fistfight in the dark streets. And finally, when he becomes invisible (or really realizes his invisibility) it's as he runs from a fight, flees from Ras' men, falls into the coal pit, and is shut out from the world. I'm not sure exactly what to make of all the fighting imagery except at the most obvious level: the narrator has to fight for every important step in his life. He has to fight for his very life at times, and he continues to struggle rather than to give up. It's only when he truly flees from a fight that he sinks into invisibility...falls into that near-lifeless state his life is in when the novel ends.

Perhaps the most intriguing thread of this novel was what the unnamed narrator's grandfather said on his death bed, which continues to haunt the narrator throughout the story. He said,

"I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." (16)

This, of course, leaves an impression on the narrator, but he continues to think that the whites are going to think he's a traitor when in fact it's his own people he's treacherous to all along...it just takes him some time to figure it out. His struggle with this cryptic bit of advice from an old and dying man serves as a kind of marker of his progress as he works his way through his own life. The various ways he considers his grandfather's words indicate his mindset and his guiding principles each time he ponders this outburst.

This novel reminded me a lot of the kind of sea tales that were popular in the 1800's (like Melville's Benito Cereno) as well as of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In other words, I liked it a lot even though it read like a story from a different time...which is appropriate, I suppose, since Johnson set it in the 1830's.

One of the things the novel really asks the reader to think about is the transformative nature of the Middle Passage. Throughout Rutherford's journal entries, it becomes increasingly clear that he is not the same person. At times, he mentions this explicitly, but at other times he observes it in others or simply says things that he wouldn't have when he was in New Orleans. While the cruelty of the slavers and the suffering of the Africans is obvious, Johnson doesn't choose to focus on it as much as he focuses on the ways that suffering alters the core of everyone's being. When we see the way that (plot spoiler!!) Rutherford has changed at the end of the novel, when he's with Isadora and aboard a gambling ship, Johnson's message becomes clear: the Middle Passage altered the world. Everyone was changed by it. Everyone was affected, nobody walked away without feeling at least some of its impact. I think Johnson's working really hard to make a huge statement about humanity with regards to slavery.

Throughout the entire novel, different characters are in bondage to other characters in a variety of ways, and this is part of how Johnson approaches the issue of slavery -- by showing the many ways people keep others under their power. There's Papa and his underworld of crime (and Rutherford is indebted to him with his life), there's Isadora and her money (Rutherford is also indebted to her), there's Falcon and his ship (he's bound to Papa while his crew is bound to him), Santos and Jackson (both of whom have bound themselves to their masters -- Falcon and Reverend Chandler, respectively), there's Belaka (whose mother has bound her to Rutherford, and who Rutherford has bound himself to), and of course there's the Allmuseri (who are literally enslaved by Falcon and his crew). By creating a world in which everyone is connected to everyone else, and (more importantly) everyone is somehow indebted to, bound to, or held captive by someone else, Johnson complicates the historical outlook on slavery. There's a moment that reminds me of what Butler was doing in Kindred in this novel:

"During a storm, you could never relax, be overconfident, or let fear show upon your face. You developed what Cringle called a 'flood mentality'--that is, you were always prepared to have water high as your waist. During each crisis, every action had to be aimed at helping your fellow crewmen. You cold not afford to tire. Your duty was always to insinew your ship; if you hoped to see shore, you must devote yourself to the welfare of everyone, and never complain, and constantly guard against showing weakness. Looking back at the asceticism of the Middle Passage, I saw how the frame of mind I had adopted left me unattached, like the slaves who, not knowing what awaited them in the New World, put a high premium on living from moment to moment, and this, I realized, was why they did not commit suicide." (186-7)

Just as Butler used her strong female protagonist to address the question of why there weren't more uprisings during slavery (not that there weren't any, or weren't many), Johnson uses his African American protagonist to explore a similar issue with newly enslaved Africans traveling to America under horrible conditions. In many ways, Johnson's work is preoccupied with issues like this, most of them relating back to moral codes...but that's for another day.

What an interesting premise -- I'm really interested in the conflation of past and present, the active role required by the protagonist to ensure her own existence, the interaction between contemporary life and history. I had a concern that Butler's novel had the potential to turn into a thought experiment with little depth or serious consideration of the matter. However, it definitely was much more than a simple thought experiment. Instead of just asking what might happen if a modern African American woman suddenly found herself in the antebellum South, Butler pushes the novel to get at some much deeper issues. For instance, she interrogates the idea that African Americans accepted their slavery when they could have fought harder and gotten out of it by showing how her characters (even a modern American woman) are coerced into their roles on top of the physical threats and dangers as well as the legal and vigilante repercussions surrounding any "disobedience." By giving Dana a white husband, Butler further complicates the situation by forcing the reader to consider the situation from both sides of the color line. It would have been interesting if she had made her protagonist an African American man who happened to be married to a white woman, but it also would have changed the entire plot (obviously). I did find myself wishing for this at some points just because Kevin's race lent itself so easily and simply to the master/slave structure, and because Dana's role as caretaker sometimes rubbed me the wrong way (to be fair, these are my own anti-domestic issues coming out, not anything Butler did).

I remain fascinated by Butler's decision to have the time shifts come about in moments of near-death. I'm still a bit puzzled by it, but find it interesting that she chose to focus in on these dangerous moments -- these times when the characters feel that they are in mortal peril. It's interesting that Rufus finds himself in these situations as often as (or more often than) Dana (if she were allowed to live her own life without being pulled back into her past). I was also curious about her decision for Dana to never reveal her ancestry to Rufus, even when (plot spoiler!!) he was about to try to rape her. Perhaps it's unreasonable to expect that to have made a difference for him, but it's also something that felt like a loose thread.

One last thing: Butler selected Rufus and Dana with great care, and the results are this complex novel filled with moral gray moments. By beginning with Rufus as a boy -- a boy who clearly has the potential to be kind and treat people fairly -- Butler emphasizes the deep structural racism of American culture in the antebellum South and the ways that even kind-hearted white people might ultimately be nurtured out of their natures (if that makes sense). Also, but thrusting a strong contemporary African American woman back into the past and gradually forcing her into slavery, she confronts certain notions (as discussed above) that attempt to justify slavery (to an extent). Also, by illustrating the many physical and emotional forms of coercion placed upon each slave (as recognized by the increasingly helpless Dana -- made more and more helpless as she comes to care deeply for the other African Americans on the plantation), she brings the reader to an understanding of the many pressures and dangers facing all of them.

This collection is definitely haunting. At first, I was kind of enjoying the content, since each of the poems is quite narrative (always a plus for me, since I struggle with poetry, especially of the lyric variety)...but then I reached "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacom" and realized that it was about Emmett Till. From that point out, the poems veered toward the serious and solemn, and the violent and dark. Not a good collection for me to read at night...in the dark...because I'm a total wuss.

Anyway, Emmett Till and the ensuing events continued to haunt the collection every few poems as Brooks touches on the legal aspects of the trial and the verdict, the impact of his death on his mother as well as on the family of the man who murdered him, etc. Given the book's publication date (1960) and the date of Emmett Till's murder and the trial's conclusion (1955), it seems reasonable to assume that the dark undercurrents woven throughout the entire collection were strongly influenced by the young boy's murder. The subject matter of the poems is oddly highlighted by the almost sing-song rhythm and rhymes of Brooks' poems. This rhythm doesn't mock or undermine the content, but instead adds to the melancholy mood.

I've read novels in verse before, but none quite like this. The poetry of Moss' novel really comes from the language (as opposed to the form, although that's there as well). The image of a young slave woman stitching her words onto cloth and wearing them like petticoats is beautiful, but Moss has created so many layers of meaning around these layers of fabric. On one level, there's the idea that this is a woman writing her way to freedom. On another level, she's practicing an act that is forbidden, and is going about it in a poignant and deliberate manner. On yet another level, she's defying Peter Perry by taking something he wanted her to see (the luna moth) and transforming it into her own idea (the cloth diary). Then, on top of all of that, there's the luna moth itself: a creature that has an extremely short life span, that transforms itself via cocoon, and that cannot be contained for very long. This final layer has so many implicit meanings -- Varl-as-moth, novel as bildungsroman of sorts, slavery as a possession of the body but not the mind/will, etc. Suffice it to say, the novel is accomplishing many things and tackling many different issues through this one title image.

On a completely different note, the novel has a definite preoccupation with deformity -- what Varl classifies as not only physical difference (because it's not always a "deformity" despite her continued use of that word) but also emotionally twisted situations. There are several characters who might be classified as "abject" (as Kristeva use the term) -- including Albino Pearl and Dwarf Sully, who have natural differences; Jessper, who inflicts her own difference with the iron (thereby making her suddenly "interesting" to Peter Perry); and Mamalee and Varl themselves, who are intellectually different in their intelligence and their level of education. But more important to the core of the novel is the emotional deformity (depravity?) that surrounds Peter Perry. Varl describes him as a "collector" of unusual slaves, which is why he continues to search for these abject figures to bring to his homestead. Then again, he also thrives off of his mother-in-law's death, charging people to see the hive that honeybees have made of her rotting corpse. And most significantly, there are his relationships with the women in his life: his scholarly relationship (which Varl sometimes speculates goes beyond exchanges of words) with Mamalee, his neglectful/disdainful relationship with Ralls Janet, and his oddly desirous yet abstinent (for the time being) relationship with Varl. In other words, throughout the novel, Peter Perry is depicted as the one who has the deformity (rather than those around him) because of his twisted approach to life. Even at the end, when he (plot spoiler!!) renames Perryville "Varlton" it becomes clear that the entire thing is a kind of experiment he's performing to observe what happens with the three main women in his life (Mamalee, Varl, and Ralls Janet). In other words, he's sick. Or, to use Varl's word, he suffers from "extreme deviancy."

It's been almost a decade since I first read this book, and I remember it being a lot more confusing than it was this time around (it's really weird to read something that you know confused and eluded you at one point in time, but to enjoy it and find it a doable read). Guess that means I've picked up some knowledge and maybe even some skills over the years. :)

Okay, so what I was really intrigued by in this book was the symbolism. Josiah's cattle -- a tough, smart breed of animal that will survive the toughest conditions; a breed native to the land and adaptable to boot -- have so many ties to the Native Americans in the novel that the connection is impossible not to make. Silko presents a very specific perspective on the situation: Native Americans must be willing and able to adapt, and must not forget their culture (which also must remain adaptable) if they are going to find a way to survive in this nightmare world created by the white people. In other words, she maintains the point of view that the culture is essential, but that the world has changed and the culture must change to survive in that world. She's not assimilationist by any means, but she's not preservationist either. The characters, especially Tayo, have to come to terms with the way things have changed, and to find ways to make the culture continue to be relevant to their lives.

Okay, so there's also this odd thing with blue going on here. I feel like I'm missing something after having recently read Vizenor (whose two novels I've read are saturated with blue) and now coming across these female characters in blue dresses with blue shawls and blue shoes and blue doors and blue blankets. Is there any kind of cultural significance with regards to this color, or is this just a coincidence? I mean, Vizenor and Silko are not affiliated with the same tribes, so this seems a bit of a stretch. Well, it's something for me to look into in the future, and to puzzle over in the present.

Finally, this novel (like Momaday's House Made of Dawn) focuses on a Native American man who has just returned from fighting in World War II, and is struggling to find a way to live again. While Momaday's Abel, like Silko's Tayo, is initially unable to find a niche and turns to alcohol as a quick fix, both characters find some degree of hope for their futures -- Tayo more so than Abel. Silko's novel is much more openly critical of the social and historical role American colonizers played (and continue to play) with regards to Native American life and culture. In fact, there are moments in Ceremony where the narrative becomes almost hostile toward white people, explaining their existence as the result of witchery and likening them to a destructive plague or force that is running its course but will ultimately be forced to recede once again.

Finally! I've been meaning to read this book for about...oh, half a decade. I have to admit that the narrative style of this novel was really anti-absorptive (to borrow a term from Charles Bernstein). Momaday's technique of shifting the focalization of the narrative several times throughout each chapter and employing italicized sections of narrative that branch off into even more directions kept me distanced from the story and its characters until around page 110 (and my copy of the novel was only 185 pages long). In fact, it took me about a quarter of the novel to determine with any degree of certainty that the novel was in fact Abel's story, not Francisco's or Father Olguin's.

Anti-absorptivity aside, the novel did some interesting things with form. I'm hesitant to call it a pastiche because although it did contain a wide variety of different kinds of writing (letters, journal entries, songs, stories, questionnaires, announcements, and more) in addition to the standard prose narrative, it's not done in the same style as many of the works we talk about as pastiches today. I guess I don't have any solid basis for making that claim, and really most people would probably be more than comfortable calling this work a pastiche. I suppose I'm trying to say something like this: Momaday's use of different written media to tell Abel's story seems equally interested in commenting on the importance of alternative forms of storytelling/documentation/history. Rather than coming off as a whimsical or complicated formal experiment, House Made of Dawn reads like the history of one man's life as pieced together by memories, other people's encounters with him, documents (personal or otherwise), and other snatches of recollection. Instead of flowing in a more conventional prose-narrative manner (chronological, yes, but also straightforward and to the point, touching on all the important moments and people), the novel moves in and out of different perspectives, weaving together Abel's stories from the outside (which is part of why I had such a hard time getting into it and deemed it "anti-absorptive").

Oh how I love Gerald Vizenor's writing! The first work I ever read by him was The Heirs of Columbus, and this novel has completely lived up to my expectations. The way he uses language is so incredibly complex and playful. But let's see, what do I actually have to say about the story itself....

Well, so I have this burning interest in cross-cultural US ethnic literature, specifically in authors who write about connections between and across cultures in certain ways. Griever is interesting in this regard because of the comparisons between the Native American trickster figure and the Chinese monkey figure. Both figures are culturally known for their troublemaking, their mischief, and Griever happens to be both -- a Native American trickster who goes to China to teach English and of course starts all sorts of trouble there (political, personal, you name it, he started it). The Chinese people he comes into contact with often recognize him as a "mind monkey" and completely accept him as such. At one point he tells a guard that he is an American monkey and the guard laughs but accepts it as the truth. The ease with which Griever crosses cultural boundaries and finds his niche within the Chinese culture (a niche parallel to the one he occupied on the reservation) makes a bold statement about the way different cultures mix and about cultural translation in general.

Also, I am in love with Vizenor's obsession with mixedbloods in this novel. Perhaps this goes back to my own life and my personal experiences (haha), but I really enjoyed it. I think that ultimately the novel makes the point that being a mixedblood is a positive thing. The characters who have a problem with mixedbloods are not characters we're encouraged to like. For instance, Hanah Dustan (not one of the novel's completely reprehensible characters, but certainly not one of its exulted heroes either) says the following of mixedbloods:

"Mix oil and water and you end up with neither. [...] Chinese, now take these people here, victims of the world over, but not so much as their mixedblood children. [...] Even so, when people can be recognized for what they are, then they do better in the world. Jews, like the Chinese and other races, achieve more and earn more in those countries where there is discrimination, but not mixedbloods because no one knows who they are. Mixedbloods are neither here nor there, not like real bloods." (77-8)

While Hannah's speech illustrates her attempts to make sense of various races, the point she's really arguing at the core of the matter is that racism can sometimes work in one's favor, but that mixedbloods are going to be completely discriminated against because of their racial ambiguity -- since they could be anything and are unclassifyable, they get all the bad treatment instead of only some of it. On the other hand, Griever's comments are quite different. (Plot spoiler ahead!!) When he takes Kangmei with him in his ultralight at the end of the novel, he discusses the positive aspects of her mixed racial heritage:

"You can imagine what the peasants must think when we come down out of the air, a mixedblood barbarian trickster in an opera coat, a mixedblood blonde who speaks Chinese, wears a cape with bundles of silk seeds under her arms, and a cock tied behind the ultralight seat. [...] Kangmei was born here but her father was an American, he died in a labor camp during the earthquake at Tangshan. She inherited small bones from her mother and blond hair from her father, which was necessary for her flight to freedom, because, if she weighed ten pounds more we might have crashed in the moat, and if she had black hair she might have been arrested." (234)

Griever's comments highlight the positive aspects of mixedbloods -- that they inherit characteristics from both of their parents, and that they are more adaptable because of it. There's also the implication that they are hardier, better at surviving, well-equipped for life in a crazy cross-cultural world.

All in all, I love Gerald Vizenor. I have nothing academic or professional to add to that statement -- I refuse to quantify it. His writing makes me so happy, and is so crazy and elusive that I just can't get enough!

This collection consists of three of Geiogamah's plays: The Body Indian, Foghorn, and 49. This was my second reading of the collection, and it was a very different experience.

The first time I read The Body Indian, I had a really strong reaction against it. I remember being quite horrified at the way Bobby was repeatedly "rolled" by these people who claim to be his friends and/or kin...so horrified that I'm not sure I picked up on some of the other aspects of the play. This time around, I was a lot more interested by Geiogamah's stage directions, and his focus on the hodgepodge of relationships between the characters...as well as what these relationships mean with regards to the characters' actions. The strongest example of this is Howard's order (plot spoiler!!) that Bobby's leg be removed and pawned for money to buy wine with. The action is abhorrent...but the words are tender. Howard reminds everyone else that Bobby gets the DTs when he goes without drink for too long, and actually quotes Bobby's words from a previous incident where he talked about how horrible he felt during that process. The first time I read it, I was full of incriminating anger against Howard...but this time, I wasn't so sure. James is the only one who expresses disgust at Howard's actions, but he goes along with it anyway -- not to mention, James is a pretty despicable character himself, and unlike the others who seem unaware of what they've done, James is very conscious of having robbed Bobby so he could go out for a night on the town. There was much more "gray" in my reading this time around, and Geiogamah's plays left me with a lot more to ponder.

When it comes to Foghorn, Geiogamah was undeniably heavy-handed in his politicking. Of course, the first time I read it I was upset by The Body Indian and Foghorn gave me the perfect way to vent my anger. This time, I was a little disappointed by the aggression of Geiogamah's critique because I thought his message was weakened a bit by scenes such as the one where the bull is wiping his butt with the broken treaties. Interesting, certainly, but so over-the-top mildly-tasteless in its comedy that it's hard to take it seriously (this without having seen it in person, to be fair). At the same time, I still enjoyed most of the scenes, and found it an interesting and important play for what it has to say about the history of Native American relations in the good ol' US of A.

Finally, there's 49. Similar to the first time I read this, I struggled to figure out what Geiogamah was trying to say. This time around, however, I was really struck by the contradictions inherent in the policemen's actions: they're working really hard to surround these kids and set up a flawless sting-style operation, but when a group of teenagers gets in an accident on one of the country roads very close to the 49, there's no response from law enforcement. Of course, it could be argued that nobody called it in, these were the days before cell phones, etc., but since the police had the location completely surrounded from all directions it opens up some questions about whether or not they knew, why they didn't respond, and what their true purposes are (they continue to let on that they're doing this for the good of the kids and the public, but they simultaneously rattle off numbers of jailed Indians like a sleezeball counting up the notches on his bed). In other words, I left with a lot more to think about this time around.

*Note: While the book that includes these three plays was published in 1980, I've categorized the text under the 1970's because of the original performance dates of the plays. The Body Indian was first performed in 1972, Foghorn was performed in 1973, and 49 in 1975.

Today at lunch, I was talking with a friend who has read Waterlily, and I was struck by something she said. At this point in time, I was about 2/3 of the way through the novel and was saying how I'm not sure I would have realized that Waterlily was the main character until a good way into the text if not for the title. My friend agreed, and then said that the story is, at its core, a love story. I hadn't thought of it that way before, most likely because (plot spoiler coming!!) I had just finished the part where Sacred Horse "bought" Waterlily.

While that's all very interesting (to me, anyhow), there was another thing that came up in our conversation that is much more interesting. When I said that I was just past the part where Waterlily was "bought" our other friend (who was also sitting with us at the time) asked exactly what that meant -- and was visibly surprised and somewhat disturbed at the idea of a human being being "sold" (which of course is not the case in the novel, but was the impression he got from our conversation). This sparked a larger discussion about how the novel really forces the reader to reexamine their own beliefs and take a close look at just how it is that they're looking at the world. For example, at one point Waterlily and her family visit her father's friend, and while they're there they talk about the white people at the nearby fort. When Waterlily's mother asks another woman about white children, the woman responds,

"Listen! those people actually detest their children! You should see them---slapping their little ones' faces and lashing their poor little buttocks to make them cry! Why, almost any time of day if you walk near the stockade you can hear the soldiers' wives screaming at their children. Yes, they thoroughly scold them. I have never seen children treated so... Only if a woman is crazy might she turn on her own child, not knowing what she did. [...] I suppose," the woman said, "when the children are naughty, that is the quaint way of training them to be good. By talking loudly and fast and by striking them, the people doubtless hope to scare them into good behavior. I know it sounds queer." (103-4)

When Waterlily's mother, Blue Bird, hears this, she wonders whether or not physical beauty can "compensate for so horrible a lot" (104). This is just one of the passages that made me think twice about the way I think. While I have never particularly given much thought to comparative child rearing techniques, I must admit that when confronted with that perspective I found myself agreeing with Blue Bird and thinking that the way the Dakotas raise and train their children (through quiet and consistent indirect instruction, as well as through example) in the novel is far superior to the way of life described in the passage above. Likewise with the idea of Waterlily's being "bought." While the word initially rubbed me the wrong way (vague notions of arranged marriage, child prostitution, and western feminist ideals were beginning to take shape in my mind), Deloria's descriptions of the kind of honor and gesture this is ultimately reversed my initial (mis)conceptions of it. It's things like these passages and words that draw the reader's attention and ask them to reevaluate their way of thinking and the preconceptions they're subscribing to that cause the initial reaction to or against the text.

*Note: I've indicated that this novel is from the 1940's despite its 1988 first publication date. My reason for categorizing it in this manner is that Deloria wrote and completed the novel in the 1940's, but it wasn't published until approximately 40 years later. My categorization reflects the period during which it was originally written rather than published.

I read this collection for the first time last spring for one of my classes. When we read it, we also had to listen to a recording of Harjo delivering some of the poems from this book, and I found that the second time around (having heard Harjo speak her work) I had her voice and her rhythms in my mind as I read. Both times, I found Harjo's poetry to be beautiful, if somewhat elusive (not an unusual reaction of mine when it comes to poetry, which you know if you've read any of my posts about poetry collections). Like many, I found myself wondering what the horses meant...but I didn't get caught up on that because I was interested in some other things that were happening in the poems.

First, I was intrigued by the way Harjo chose to break up her collection into 4 different parts: Survivors, What I Should Have Said, She Had Some Horses, and I Give You Back. This makes me think of the significance of the number 4 to most Native American cultures -- 4 is a sacred number, often used in ceremonies, tied to the 4 directions (for one thing). Aside from that, the first section is the only one not named after one of the poems (or in the case of I Give You Back, the only poem) it contains. At first, I tried to force all the poems in this section to somehow fit under the theme of survival, but obviously that was far too simplistic a technique and I abandoned it quickly. Instead, I read the poems as stories of different eras, different people, and (perhaps most importantly) an enduring spirit that is rising up against the hand that attempts to squash it.

Many of Harjo's poems are somewhat cryptic, and while I struggle to realize the deeper meanings of each poem, I often feel inadequate upon leaving one poem for the next. Even though I sometimes doubt the depth of my understanding of these poems, the playfulness inherent in many of Harjo's poems comes through loud and clear. One of my favorite poems in the collection, and also one of the most cryptic (possibly because of just how very short it is), exemplifies many of the aspects of her poetry that I've just discussed:

The Poem I Just Wrote
The poem I just wrote is not real.
And neither is the black horse
who is grazing on my belly.
And neither are the ghosts
of old lovers who smile at me
from the jukebox.

I'm so glad I read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven before watching this movie. I didn't realize that the film came out of the collection of short stories (most especially the story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona"), and it added a significant amount of depth to the movie having read those stories. The way all the stories kind of came together to form the world the film takes place in (I'm thinking specifically of the community on the reservation) makes me reconsider the written collection and wonder if it couldn't be considered a novel written in a non-linear and disjointed form. I mean, the stories are all interrelated, containing the same characters in the same location -- why isn't this classified as a kind of fragmented or fractured narrative, a novel that (similar to Edwidge Danticat's Dewbreaker) is focalized through different characters in each chapter and touches on different events in the past and/or present of each of their lives.

Okay, but to consider the movie on its own terms, I first must admit that I really loved the fellows broadcasting from K-REZ radio (especially Lester Falls-Apart, who sits on top of his broken down van at the intersection and reports on the traffic that has or has not passed). They reminded me of the characters in "The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore" in their observation of the life that happens around them. And the two women who drive their car in reverse have to have come out of the character Simon from "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor" who "always obeyed posted speed limits, traffic signals and signs, even minute suggestions. But he drove in reverse, using his rearview mirror as his guide" (156). Well, needless to say, characters from the short story collection are sprinkled throughout the film -- not always in a readily-recognizable manner.

That being said, I think one of the most significant differences between the collection and the film is the general tone. The collection is, well...somewhat less-than-optimistic. On the contrary, the film is quite optimistic. While at the end of "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" Victor and Thomas realize their relationship ultimately will not change, at the end of the film they appear to be buddies -- friends who have put the past behind them and may perhaps develop a deeper friendship now that they've shared such profound experiences. In the collection, the many seemingly-unchangeable aspects of life on the reservation that cause pain or unhappiness to the people who live there accumulate and leave the reader with a sense of the weight of these matters. However, in the film these issues are buried beneath the comedy of the events. For example, Thomas Builds-the-Fire is not shunned for his stories, but rewarded for them time after time. Furthermore, Victor's family does not continue to drink, but instead his mother stops drinking when she sees how it's affecting him and his father leaves and eventually overcomes his alcoholism. All in all, the film is far more optimistic and positive than the collection of short stories.

This poetry collection, unlike Tapahonso's, is tightly focused around one historical event and the way it has continued to play out for the people involved (and their descendants). In this case, it's the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Like I said, it's focused around that event and its aftermath, but it continues through history to look additionally at the repercussions of the event as they play out in today's world -- which is where Native American veterans of the Vietnam war, for one example, come in. It's a different approach to history than I've seen before -- more of a collective approach in its interest in successive generations.

The unusual form of the collection -- with a few spare lines of prose on the left-hand page and an entire poem on the right-hand page -- focuses the reader's attention rather successfully on individual aspects leading up to, during, and following the Sand Creek Massacre. By prefacing each poem with a few lines of almost-explanatory prose, Ortiz guides the reader, priming them to look for specific things in his poems. As I've admitted in previous posts, I'm not the most at-ease with poetry, and often feel as though I'm missing the point. However, these prose introductions to each poem helped me figure out what the general topic of the following poem was going to be, and because I went into each poem with a basic understanding of the subject matter, I was able to appreciate the form much more and enjoy the act of poetry on its own terms. Additionally, the visual appearance of the words on the page (with the few lines of prose at the very top of the left-hand page, leaving the rest of it blank...and the poem on the right-hand page in a bolder and larger font) lent a certain solemnity to the lonely words on the left side and a certain emphasis to the poetry on the right side.

This collection presents the reader with a specific take on history: the idea that there are histories in our nation's past that have been swept under the rug, and that continue to inform and influence our present-day existence in ways that we are unaware of when we're ignorant of the past. For someone who knew nothing of the Sand Creek Massacre or of the various Indian Removal processes that swept the continent from east to west, the subject matter itself would undoubtedly be enough to leave the reader pondering the grim and bloody past. For someone already familiar with these events, the poetry memorializes those who were murdered and condemns those who did the murdering. Perhaps most interestingly, it illuminates the ways the past continues to haunt the present in different and unanticipated ways.

This collection is a mixture of poetry and short stories, and they're not put in any specific order (like poems first, stories second -- or anything like that). The collection focuses on intimate relationships (although not often intimate romantic relationships) between family, friends, pets, etc. Tapahonso takes a close look at the connections that unite a community, and through her words she explores the unique dynamics of her own family and community. Many of her poems and stories explore different Navajo traditions and practices -- such as the mourning process during the four days after someone's death -- and seem to work hard at illustrating the history of such traditions and the importance of continuing them. Most of her poems could be considered narrative poetry, as they tell stories of their own in a manner that is different from the more familiar (to me, anyhow) prose of the short stories. She includes Navajo words and phrases in most of her pieces, oftentimes without translation -- I wish I knew what they meant (this is different from wishing she had provided translations; I simply wish I knew the language so I could understand these works more fully), or at least how they are supposed to sound. See, in her preface, Tapahonso explains that each of these stories and poems really has a song that accompanies it, and without that song they are rendered incomplete (xi). Since they are in many ways meant to be spoken/performed orally, the pronunciation seems almost more important here than in other texts where finding a translation will suffice -- in this case, even if I were able to find a translation or the means of translating it myself (doubtful), without the sound the pieces seem like they're missing even more than their author already thinks they are.

With this in mind, I have to wonder what it would be like to attend a reading, because if these poems and short stories are what Tapahonso considers incomplete then I can only imagine how beautiful they would be in their entirety. Usually I really struggle with reading poetry -- it's hard for me to follow because poems are typically so short, and because it's fairly rare for all the poems in a collection to have a clear narrative as they do here -- but Tapahonso's poetry was a lot more accessible to me. I feel like they were little stories in and of themselves, and like they shared strong bonds with the other poems and stories in the collection. While they're not as explicitly linked as the short stories in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven are, they are certainly connected by their shared themes and their roots that lie in Navajo family, culture, and tradition.

I've read a few of Alexie's more recent works (Flight, Ten Little Indians, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), but I have to admit that this might be my favorite thus far. I think part of the reason for that is that, as a collection of related short stories, it has many messages to send. Of course, as Alexie admits in his new introduction, some of those messages can be misconstrued (he tells the reader that he received a lot of criticism for the abundance of alcoholic Indians populating the pages of this book, but that it was largely autobiographical and not something he intended as a message about alcoholism on Indian reservations). One such message that I think could be taken away from this book, mistakenly or not, is that in order for an Indian to succeed, s/he has to leave the reservation. In fact, most of the Indians who stay on the reservation are portrayed as people who are going nowhere, or who have nowhere to go. At the same time, most of the people who leave the reservation either (1) return defeated and hopeless, coming home to nurse their wounds after realizing they don't belong "out there," or (2) simply disappear, never to be heard from again. Several characters throughout the collection talk about how it's a good thing when the kids leave the reservation, because at least they're taking a chance instead of ending up young drunks. This is, obviously, problematic (and it's something that's present in different ways in all three of Alexie's other works that I've read).

That's not to say that the stories are all bad, and the collection is rife with negative messages and stereotypical portrayals of Native American life on the reservation. Like I said before, this is my favorite Alexie work that I've read so far. That's because of some of the other messages embedded in these pages, perhaps most significantly the message about community. The characters in this collection care deeply about one another. They show their feelings in a variety of ways, and when you read story after story about people who know each other, who help each other, who give what little they have to give and hold back their judgment, it starts to sink in. Perhaps this does something to counteract the previous leave-the-reservation message. Can we read this as the reason all these people eventually return to the reservation? Do they disappear when they leave because the world outside the reservation not only doesn't care about them, but actually hates them? When I think of it that way -- that the reservation is the space filled with familiar faces and kind hearts -- it starts to make sense in a whole other way. Instead of returning to the reservation because they have to, because the world kicked their asses and they've given up, maybe they're returning because they tasted the world and it was rotten. These characters would rather live on the reservation, with its poverty and other issues, than stay in a city that doesn't have anything to offer them.

Now that I've wildly contradicted myself and argued over my own words, I have one more thing to think about: the two stories at the end of the collection. I read the 2005 version of this collection, which has two new stories tacked on at the end. They definitely felt like add-ons (the different font didn't help). Interestingly, neither one featured an alcoholic Indian (was Alexie, perhaps, trying to desaturate his collection here?), and both focused on immediate family -- one on a brother captured in war, and one on a father who plays only a small role in his son's life. I always feel weird about authors adding to their works after many years have passed (in this case, 12 years passed between publications), and wish that more was said about these additional stories to give some context (Were they written along with the other ones, but failed to make the final cut? Were they written in the time between the two publications? Were they a reaction to the criticism Alexie received for the original collection? Were they stories he always wished he had included, but for whatever reason didn't or couldn't?). And since I have no answers for these questions, this post is over.

I read this book for a class I took last summer, but it was even better the second time around. Truong's language is really beautiful, and in many ways it just feels fresh. Just as the Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein characters take joy in Binh's use of French -- the way he defines things by what they are not, and uses this second language in creative and insightful ways -- so I took joy in Truong's use of English. She tells Binh's story in a delicate and touching manner...but stays away from oversentimentalizing it or making it trite. It's the language of this novel that really hooked me and brought the story itself to life.

Even just the title -- The Book of Salt -- reflects this in the way she continues to return to the idea of salt in all its different forms. When Binh learns what GertrudeStein has called the words she wrote about him, he has questions. "Salt, I thought. GertrudeStein, what kind? Kitchen, sweat, tears, or the sea. Madame, they are not all teh same. Their stings, their smarts, their strengths, the distinctions among them are fine. Do you know, GertrudeStein, which ones I have tasted on my tongue? A story is a gift, Madame, and you are welcome" (260-1). Throughout the novel, different encounters with salt occur at key moments of the text. The last time Binh sees his oldest brother, Anh Minh and his kitchen staff are outside in the heat of a Vietnamese evening bodily whipping egg whites into meringue; they are sweating, and the salt from their bodies mixes with the whites of the eggs they beat to add to the recipe (45-6). Later on, when Binh dines with the Man on the Bridge, he encounters the delights of a rare kind of sea salt called fleur de sel: "A gradual revelation of its true self, as I was beginning to learn, is the quality that sets fleur de sel apart from the common sea salt that waits for me in most French kitchens. There is a development, a rise and fall, upon which its salinity becomes apparent, deepens, and then disappears. Think of it as a kiss in the mouth" (98). These are just two of the moments, but they're examples of the beautiful language Truong writes with -- the beautiful language she gives to this man who has so much to say, but nobody to say it to.

One of my favorite passages from the novel: "I, yes, lost the French word for 'pineapple' the moment I opened my mouth. Departing at their will, the words of this language mock me with their impromptu absences. When I am alone, they offer themselves to me, loose change in a shallow pocket, but as soon as I reach for one I spill the others. This has happened to me many times before. At least now I know what to do, I thought. I repeated my question, but this time I had my hands on top of my head, with only the bottom of my palms touching my hair. My fingers were spread like two erect, partially opened fans. Complete with my crown, I stood in front of my new Madame and Madame the embodiment of 'a-pear-not-a-pear'" (35). Moments like these are peppered throughout the novel, and I enjoy them for the commentary they make about language. Here is Binh, who speaks just enough French to get by, but who finds these poetic and fresh ways to say things (partly out of necessity, but partly because of his personality). He refuses to be defeated by this foreign language, and instead forces it to do his bidding. He makes it work for him, giving his words to others in a selective and intimate gesture. He is a man who has renamed himself without telling anybody, and who renames everyone around him without telling them about it. He nicknames everybody and everything from Sweet Sunday Man to The Man on the Bridge, from his Mesdames' dogs to the food he cooks with. While his French language skills may be limited, his ownership of the language (and of his own internal language) is not.