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Christio-Conjure in Voodoo Dreams, Baby of the Family, the Salt Eaters, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, and Mama Day

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Christio-Conjure in Voodoo Dreams, Baby of the Family, the Salt Eaters, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, and Mama Day Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2002 Christio-Conjure in Voodoo dreams, Baby of the family, The alts eaters, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, and Mama Day Laura Sams Haynes Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Haynes, Laura Sams, "Christio-Conjure in Voodoo dreams, Baby of the family, The alts eaters, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, and Mama Day" (2002). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3197. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3197 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. CHRISTIO-CONJURE IN VOODOO DREAMS, BABY OF THE FAMILY, THE SALT EATERS, SASSAFRASS, CYPRESS & INDIGO, AND MAMA DAY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Laura Sams Haynes B.A., Florida State University, 1986 M.A., Clark Atlanta University, 1995 May 2002 ©Copyright 2002 Laura Sams Haynes All rights reserved ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . 1 2 CHRISTIO-CONJURE AS HISTORICAL FICTION . 32 3 CHRISTIO-CONJURE AND THE GHOST STORY . 55 4 REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIO-CONJURE . 80 5 CHRISTIO-CONJURE ACTIVISM . 102 6 CHRISTIO-CONJURE ROMANCE AND MAGIC . 123 7 CONCLUSION . 147 NOTES . 160 WORKS CONSULTED . 183 VITA . 195 iii ABSTRACT This project examines contemporary African American women’s literature and the legacy established by literary foremother, Zora Neale Hurston. The discussion is positioned at the cross-section of three on-going conversations: 1) current discourses on Conjure in African American women’s literature, 2) analyses of Africanisms in black culture, and 3) previous scholarship on recurring topics in African American women’s writing. Here these frames are unified under one thematic: Christio-Conjure—a rubric borne of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that designates the fusing of Christian and West African religious tradition in African American culture. Thus, this project establishes a new literary matrix for analyzing twentieth-century black women’s writing. Each chapter features a novel viewed through the critical lens of Christio-Conjure. Zora Neale Hurston’s and Luisah Teish’s research offers a framework for the elements of Christio-Conjure integrated throughout the novels. Chapter two, “Christio-Conjure as Historical Fiction,” analyzes Jewel Parker Rhodes’s Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993), a work that provides a compelling image of the black woman as a Christio-Conjure priestess. Chapter three, “Christio-Conjure and the Ghost Story,” examines how Tina McElroy Ansa’s Baby of the Family (1988) incorporates the Christio- Conjure tenet of matrilineage with the cultural transmission of mother wit as African American folk wisdom. Chapter four, “Revolutionary Christio-Conjure,” addresses the revolutionary aspects of Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (1980), highlighting African American communal transformation and afrofemcentric female bonding. Chapter five, “Christio-Conjure Activism,” examines Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982) with the title characters as proverbial soul sistahs who employ iv Christio-Conjure in self-actualization and communal healing. Chapter six, “Christio- Conjure Romance and Magic,” discusses the love story of Cocoa and George against the backdrop of Gloria Naylor’s revision of the holy trinity in Mama Day (1989). As liberation tales, these novels depict characters that appropriate Christio-Conjure as a source of empowerment. In addition, the authors themselves employ Christio-Conjure in their writing as a reaffirmation of their cultural and literary heritage. As a focal point, then, Christio-Conjure functions as a centering mechanism in contemporary twentieth- century black women’s writing, a body of literature historically marginalized. v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Design and Scope This project focuses on select twentieth-century African American women’s literature in relation to the legacy of writing established by early twentieth-century literary foremother, Zora Neale Hurston. To this end, the discussion is positioned at the cross-section of three on-going conversations. First, I situate my project within current discourses on Conjure in African American women’s literature. In addition, I incorporate analyses of Africanisms in black American culture. Also, to a lesser, yet still significant degree, I integrate previous scholarship on recurring topics in African American women’s writing such as the quest for identity motif and the theme of communal bonding. Previously, the academic discourse generated by these foci existed, by and large, as separate and distinct areas of study. Here, these frames are unified under one thematic: Christio-Conjure—a rubric borne of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that designates the fusing of Christian and West African religious tradition1 in African American culture. Thus, I establish a new literary matrix for analyzing twentieth-century black women’s writing. In this discussion, I approach the subject of Christio-Conjure from two distinct perspectives: 1) as an ideological belief system that explains black women’s experiences in life and in literature and 2) as a ritualistic practice that fosters black women’s spiritual development in real life and in fiction. Applying Christio-Conjure as a critical theory, I examine its ideology and practice in five contemporary novels: Rhodes’ Voodoo Dreams (1993), an historical fiction; Ansa’s Baby of the Family (1988), a coming of age novel; Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (1980), a novel about social revolution and unification; Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), a novel of social activism; and Naylor’s 1 2 Mama Day (1989), a romantic novel. The selection includes both celebrated and obscure authors and is a survey of contemporary literature featuring Christio-Conjure. As a dual agent of spiritual liberation and social empowerment, in black women’s writing Christio- Conjure narratives facilitate the symbolic re-centering of the historically de-centered African American female identity. As such, the Christio-Conjure literary movement represents an afrofemcentric—i.e., black, woman-centered—revision of American history. Defining Literary & Cultural Christio-Conjure: Chesnutt, Hurston, & Teish Christio-Conjure as a literary model represents a matriarchal network designed to extol the black woman—continental and diasporic—as the life-force and mother of humanity. A corpus of African American women writers has demonstrated a critical interest in Christio-Conjure not only because of its cultural link with the past, but also because it elevates the image of the black woman. Beginning with one-act plays written by women during the Harlem Renaissance (e.g., May Miller, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Zora Neale Hurston) and including a host of contemporary writers (viz. Paule Marshall, Toni Cade Bambara, Ntozake Shange, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Tina McElroy Ansa, and Jewell Parker Rhodes), black women writers function metaphorically as literary Christio-Conjure women. Although this form of writing typically exists under the dominion of black women writers, in some instances, Christio-Conjure characters and/or tales appear in male- produced texts.2 However, male and female writers appropriate the theme quite differently. Male novelists, such as Charles Chesnutt, Ishmael Reed (in Flight to Canada, 1989), and literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., primarily focus on trickster 3 figures—generally, but not exclusively, self-centered and self-interested—who vie for personal advancement (economic or otherwise). Conversely, women writers such as Paule Marshall, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Tina McElroy Ansa, Gloria Naylor, and Jewell Parker Rhodes feature family and community-oriented figures who promote psychological survival and spiritual salvation for themselves and others. This literary chasm is predicated on historically gendered spheres, e.g., the economic (male sphere) versus the emotional/spiritual (female sphere), as well as the individual (male sphere) versus the familial/communal (female sphere). There are, however, exceptions to this rule; Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and playwright August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (1990) contribute to the literary cultivation of Christio-Conjure in ways I designate as female.3 Granting these rare literary exceptions, there is a conspicuous gendered split in the treatment of Christio-Conjure in black literature. This split is particularly apparent in Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales (1899 added emphasis). Chesnutt’s collection of short stories, despite its illusory title, is a decidedly male- centered text. While the tales feature Conjure women, namely Aun’ Peggy and Tenie, these women remain marginalized as their stories are appropriated first by John, the white narrator, and then again by Uncle Julius, the black storyteller and “old trickster” himself (Ferguson 40). Throughout the tales, Julius negotiates the economy of the post- emancipation
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