University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting Template

SCHOOL DAZED: EDUCATION THEORY IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS

KAYLA RODNEY

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2020

To — My parents who at one point thought I would be a medical doctor and still supported me through my change in interest. I am still a doctor though, so mission accomplished.

Elias Cottrell Sr., cofounder of Mississippi Industrial College whose commitment to the education of the Black community lives on through this work.

All the people who look like me who are searching for way to exist in their truth.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my parents, Brigitte Cottrell and Brett Rodney, for instilling in me the work ethic and desire to always be the greatest version of myself and encouraging me to always reach for the next achievement. I would also like to thank my stepfather, Wayne

Washington, for making the first three years of my educational journey as easy as possible by creating an avenue for free education at a top HBCU. I would like to thank all the teachers and professors that have influenced me over the years, especially my undergraduate mentor Biljana

Obradovic. Last but not least, I would like to thank my committee for their time and energy, especially Dr. Debra Walker King who has been nothing short of incredible, mentoring me as I have navigated the PhD.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 6

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMANIST AFROCENTRISM ...... 8

The 5 Overarching Womanist Characteristics ...... 12 Chapter Summaries ...... 27 Chapter 2: “When Uncle Tomming Goes Right: Slavery, Knowledge, and Wisdom in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada” ...... 27 Chapter 3: “Upping the Ante: Afrocentricity— the Answer to Afro-Pessimism” ...... 28 Chapter 4: “Here: How Afrocentricity Releases Celie from Oppression through Knowledge of Self”...... 30

2 WHEN UNCLE TOMMING GOES RIGHT: SLAVERY, KNOWLEDGE, AND WISDOM IN ISHMAEL REED’S FLIGHT TO CANADA ...... 32

3 UPPING THE ANTE: AFROCENTRICITY—THE ANSWER TO AFRO-PESSIMISM ...52

4 HERE: HOW AFROCENTRICITY RELEASES CELIE FROM OPPRESSION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF SELF ...... 81

5 CONCLUSION: TRANSATLANTIC FUTURES ...... 106

WORKS CITED ...... 111

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 115

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

SCHOOL DAZED: EDUCATION THEORY IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS

Kayla Rodney

August 2020

Chair: Debra Walker King Major: English

School Dazed positions Black authors as theoretical authorities of liberatory education through the narratives they write. It argues that Black writers explicate and develop methodologies for navigating and attaining effective education as a means of overcoming oppression. The texts under survey articulate effective practices through characters, the lives they live, and the educational methods they use to advert danger. These practices and characters offer the dissertation case studies through which it extracts information for eventual real-world application.

Leeds: Now I bet you n*****s do think y'all white. College don't mean shit. Y'all n*****s, and you gonna be n*****s forever... just like us. n*****s. Dap: You're not n*****s. —Spike Lee School Daze

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMANIST AFROCENTRISM

Afrocentricity, as defined in Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, written by

Molefi Kete Asante, the father of Afrocentricity is: “a mode of thought and action in which the centrality of African interests, values, and perspectives predominate. Regarding theory, it is the placing of African people in the center of any analysis of African phenomena” (2). As it pertains to education, in An Afrocentric Manifesto, Asante makes clear numerous times that to be

Afrocentric is to center the African in academic spheres as much as we center the European in order to have a well-rounded and meaningful education that makes the African a subject and not an object (79). Asante’s definition and grounding ideals have absolutely no mention of gender or sexuality. Without mentioning gender and/or sexual orientation, it can be assumed the definition intends to be inclusive of all people who trace their lineage back to Africa and identify as Black.

Yet hotepery, as enacted by people facetiously referred to as “hoteps”, co-opting of the ideology has taken it far away from its intended use and created the belief Afrocentricity is not inclusive of all people who identify as Black. But what exactly is a hotep and how did they manage to sully something created with such good intent?

The word “hotep,” according to Anpu Unnefer Amen, author of The Meaning of Hotep: A

Nubian Study Guide, has many meanings in its original Egyptian context which include: “to rest, to be happy, to be content, to be at peace with, to do good to someone, joy, content, offerings, gifts, a shrine, offerings made to the deceased (ancestors), an alter” (7). One can see the original definitions and context of the word hotep are largely positive, and there is no definitive reason why Black people chose this word to define a negative quality in certain segments of the Black population. Yet and still, it started and still is at its most basic level, a term of well wish, greeting, and positivity. Now, in the 21st century, like many other words, we have seen an

expansion in meaning. This new meaning has not yet entered standard dictionaries such as the

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, or Oxford English dictionaries, so there is no definitive definition for the newest understanding of the word, but there is a general community consensus as to what a “hotep” is. According to Damon Young in his video titled “What Is Hotep?” from The Roots series, A Very Smart Brother Explains, he says, in short, a hotep desires to replace white male patriarchy with Black male patriarchy. These Black people (but men in particular) do not want to dismantle systems of oppression. They want Black men to be the oppressor. Young also describes hoteps as participating in “performative pro blackness,” then goes on to explain this pro blackness stops at straight Black men, seeking to effectively lock women and queer people out of the fight for equality and equity.

Some prime examples of the quintessential hotep man are:

• Dr. Umar Johnson, who has been accused of stealing money under the guise of building a school for Black boys

• Yada, of internet fame, whose most famous claim is that the female menstrual cycle is a European concept,

• The character Preach from the movie Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, who spends the entire movie dressed in African inspired attire, “preaching” hypocritically about what the Black community needs to prioritize, and ironically pursuing a purposefully unattractive white woman (his “milk of magnesia”) as a love interest the entire time.

These types of men make unfounded claims about the world, oppression, and conspiracy theories, and focus their energies on the uplift of the Black man while often giving misguided information to Black women about their bodies and their supposed role in the Black community and the world. They also tend to tell Black LGBTQ+ identifying people they must prioritize their racial struggle over their struggle for freedom from sexual expression, or worse, that something is wrong with them and they are part of the “gay agenda” to “destroy” the Black man. They are not always inaccurate as there are sometimes inklings of truth in what they say, which helps to

maintain vestiges of credibility with those who claim to follow their teachings. Lastly, they tend to focus heavily on parts of African history that privilege men (polygamy for example) and seem to be very (mis)informed about Egypt, often tending towards monumentalism, neglecting parts of

African history that do not fit a given patriarchal agenda.

Though the term “hotep” in reference to Black people who desire the implementation of

Black male patriarchy is relatively new, the idea is as old as the Black Power Movement and has been critiqued, while unnamed, many times over in Black centered pop culture. Much of this

“performative pro blackness” is rooted in a co-opted version of Afrocentricity that became a key element of the male centered rise of the Black social and cultural movements that focused on men as the “natural” leaders of the Black race, falling into patriarchal ideologies perpetuated by white society (Matthews 235). Women (and queer people), then, were relegated to support roles, forcing them into silence though they had every desire to speak out and contribute to the movement as well. Left out, abused, and silenced, many of this mistreated segment pulled their support, partially resulting in the crumbling of these movements (Spencer 108) as this bastardized version of Afrocentricity ignores the fundamental tenets of the ideology and is unsustainable as it relies on half the Black community while expecting whole results.

This is where Womanist thought intervenes. Womanist thought helps to bring

Afrocentricity back to its origin point through dialog around what kinds of experiences and perspectives are important to holistic antioppressionist education by bringing women back into the conversation. At its most basic level, Womanist thought is a worldview that centers the everyday lives of women of color in their movement making, community organizing, and problem solving. Womanist thought maintains when we center women of color, who deal with both racism and sexism, in problem solving, we can excavate nuances of oppression and

sociocultural conflict in ways that benefit others as well as ourselves. In other words, by examining the unique positionality of women of color, Womanists engage activism and personal change in ways that can yield benefits for all people. This idea can work for almost all community ills including ineffective and decentering education, one of the greatest

(un)equalizers in a capitalist society. Of course, Womanist thought is not limited to people who identify as women in its application as Womanists are committed to holistic community wellness, which includes all members of a community1.

There are two reasons I decided to reunite these ideas here in this dissertation School

Dazed: Education Theory in the Literary Works of African American Writers. The first is the simple reason stated above. Afrocentricity has been forced far from a helpful locale and, like always, the loving hands of a Black woman centered perspective were needed to bring it back to a grounded reality. The second reason is a need for Womanist thought to work its way into the academic sphere in ways that allow it to manifest naturally and holistically without losing its grounding in the five overarching Womanist characteristics (as defined by Layli

Phillips/Maprayan) I discuss next. Simultaneously, Afrocentricity fosters space for Womanists to focus primarily on the Black community without underlying feelings of selfishness and guilt.

Also, in comparison to white focused Women’s Studies departments, Afrocentricity presents a less resistant, more complementary entry into academic discourse for Womanist thought by being a predetermined designated space for Black centered education. I elaborate on both claims later when discussing Clenora Hudson-Weems’ Africana Womanism, which is one of the more radical versions of Womanist thought. Yet and still, by finding the middle ground between

1“What makes womanism different from Black feminism is its focus on spirituality (not religion), which aligns with the original meanings of hotep as well as Yoruban spirituality, quantum physics, and metaphysics (among other concepts)” Dr. Debra Walker King.

Maparyan and Hudson-Weems, then joining it with Afrocentricity, I have been able to create a new form of Womanist thought that has space for focusing solely on Black people, is LGBTQ+ inclusive, and ready for easy application in the academy. This new version of Womanist thought,

Womanist Afrocentrism, is what I use both as a way of life and analytical lens.

The 5 Overarching Womanist Characteristics

According to Layli Maparyan2, writer/editor of two seminal works in Womanism— The

Womanist Reader (2006) and The Womanist Idea (2012)— there are five important overarching

Womanist characteristics that include being: antioppressionist, nonideological, spiritualized, vernacular, and communitarian. Though all these characteristics are inherent to both Womanism and Afrocentricity and are also described below, I will focus primarily on their spiritualized, vernacular, and communitarian aspects as I believe those three characteristics are key to their working for educational advancement and knowledge formation. Starting with these basic characteristics allows for a grounding point before exploring the more radical Africana

Womanism alluded to above as all these characteristics, regardless of how radical the Womanist, still apply.

Antioppressionist: Maparyan defines antioppressionist as being, “identified with liberationist projects of all sorts and that womanism supports the liberation of all humankind from all forms of oppression” (Phillips, xxiv). This is because, “a womanist knows oppression when she (or he) sees it, and she (or he) is against it” (xxiv). Once a womanist recognizes oppression, they work towards dismantling it in order to remove the barriers it creates, striving for a society of equality and understanding.

2Layli Maparyan was formerly known as Layli Phillips. She will be referred to as Layli Maparyan throughout this chapter.

Nonideological: When Maparyan says Womanism is nonideological, she means it is decentralized and does not function in rigidity, preferring a state where multiple people can participate without necessarily having the same concept of what it means to be a Womanist.

Being nonideological avoids collapsing into a closed system of thought and practices, which do not allow shifts and transformation, realignment or situational refocusing. As a nonideological operation, Womanism allows the organic nature of change to permeate and transform processes, providing a space for situationally specific methods of investigation, transition, and revision. The served do not fit into a process or limiting spaces of democratized categories. Instead, the process changes to fit those it serves as well as the identified cause the problems under consideration.

Spiritualized: Stating a Womanist is spiritualized means, for a Womanist, tending to the spiritual or transcendental is important to community growth (Phillips xxvi) because every aspect of the Womanist’s reality involves the spirit (Idea 34) which is why being spiritualized is so important. For the Womanist, spirit exists in everything from traditional spiritual belief systems such as Christianity, to understandings of the universe and how spiritual vibrations and energy affect life outcomes (Idea 34-37). Spirit takes part in guiding decision making, avoiding negative situations and people (women’s intuition and mother-wit), and manifesting desires. When the spirit is invoked, there can be spiritual healing that goes deeper than the visible, legal, and physical changes the Womanist experiences. The spiritual aspects of Womanist thought allow for a womanist to find healing both in the midst of oppression and, of course, upon overcoming it.

Vernacular: Vernacular associates Womanism with respect for the genius of everyday people, their lives, their ways of overcoming obstacles, and their grassroots social change activities. It aligns womanists with the “masses of humanity” (The Womanist Reader xxiv). The

focus on vernacular, the everyday language of ordinary people, is paramount to creating space for those who may not use elevated or collegial language to discuss complicated concepts that affect them daily. It does so by allowing for people to speak and act from their own context and honoring the language they have for a more productive and centering place in the conversation.

In short, this characteristic means the Womanist is concerned with the lives of common, everyday people, how those common, everyday lives factor into the larger global community, and how those common, everyday people articulate and address them. When considering vernacular, oppressed people take ownership of their lives and the movements that impact them.

Communitarian: Lastly, to be communitarian means the Womanist strives for collective wellbeing or commonweal (xxv). Womanists believe in the concept of LUXOCRACY, or the inner Divine Light of all, that connects humanity as a sacred community. They embody the

African proverb, “I am because we are; and we are because I am,” meaning all members of a community are interconnected, sacred, and necessary. For example, a Womanist’s job is not done until every woman of color is healed and whole because absent of holistic well-being there is no communal wholeness or commonweal. In thinking this way, the Womanist strives for a society that does not need rules and regulations to maintain a just and humane society as the work of changing hearts and minds would make them unnecessary. Through this divine inner- connectivity, women and men become equals, allowing the voices of women to be amplified and heard, eliminating male domination. Essentially, what Womanism seeks to do is work so well it is no longer a necessity even though they know that is impossible within the parameters of this millennia.

Having outlined the five Womanist characteristics, it is easy to see connections between

Womanism and Afrocentricity. For example, seeing as a Womanist is concerned with “all sorts”

of liberationist projects, a liberating education would be one of the Womanist concerns. In fact, according to Maparyan’s “Ladder of Learning,” which outlines three rungs of a ladder starting with information and facts on the first rung, actual knowledge on the second, and wisdom on the third, knowledge formation, acquisition, and transformation are all important aspects of community educational cocreation (Maparyan, The Womanist Idea 38-41). By positioning knowledge as something community created and sustained, the Womanist sees the community as agents of education, which aligns with Afrocentricity’s desire to make Black people the subjects of their own educative journeys. Furthermore, the Womanist positions knowledge as beyond what books can teach, but also includes knowledge types such as “street knowledge” and generationally passed down wisdom, creating space for nontraditional scholars. As

Afrocentricity seeks to counter the oppressive Eurocentric education that objectifies Black students in learning environments, it is clear both Womanism and Afrocentricity share the characteristic of being antioppressionist by understanding education needs to be for and by the people it intends to benefit.

Asante specifically states of Afrocentricity: “Women are not relegated to some second- tier realm as they have been in Western thought…. Women and men are equally important in any

Afrocentric construction of knowledge” (Asante, Manifesto 48). With the father of Afrocentricity himself making this definitive statement, the partnership between the two in the antioppressionist agenda is concretized and concise. Asante always intended to include a Womanist perspective in his educational paradigm, even if he never called it by name. Not only did he always intend to include women, he saw (and sees) the inclusion of women as important to the effectiveness of his theoretical model. The exclusion of women from Afrocentricity is oppressionist and counterproductive.

In terms of being nonideological, Afrocentricity functions in the same way as Womanist thought because both have only one requirement for participation, and both change the process to fit the served rather than trying to force the served to fit the process. For Afrocentricity, that requirement is a call to center the many kinds of Black experiences in education with the desire for effective positive change by remodeling education to serve a Black student body.

With an open definition of blackness, i.e., the experience of a Black person, all experiences become important to the narrative and understanding of our global afro-diasporic blackness as represented by the diaspora around the world. One may identify as a womanist if he or she centers woman-of-color experiences as a key component of positive social change perspectives and activities. Furthermore, this dialog and centering must lead to creative actions that address the cause of oppression, or the cause of sociopolitical effects that defy, corrupt, delimit, or deny commonweal. Both Afrocentric ideology and Womanist perspectives maintain this belief because, “one of the primary obligations of the [Afrocentric] scholar is to make an assessment of the condition of research and then to intervene in the appropriate manner”

[emphasis added] (Asante 44). Without intervention at the level of affect (not effect—i.e., not the oppression but its cause) one cannot truly be an Afrocentrist or a Womanist. Neither seeks to be a point of argument, but rather a pivot point between discussion and action. Both seek to identify the formation (causal desire, thoughts, or emotions) and creation (material manifestation of harm) inherent in /to oppressive operations and tools. In this respect, the combining of

Afrocentricity and Womanism forces Afrocentricity to actively consider the one thing it seems to be missing in this coupling: actions pertaining to and addressing the issues of Black women.

Though Afrocentricity is much more concerned with the academic and may seem less inclined towards the spiritual, it is indeed spiritualized. It depends on the working definition of

“spirit” and relates closely to the idea of combating and avoiding “soul murder,” which is,

“killing the joy in life in another human being” (Shengold 38). The Afrocentric idea is concerned with the well-being and confidence of Black people, believing, like European descended children, if Black people have an education that affirms them, they will move in the world with confidence provided through proven, tangible examples. Ultimately, giving Black children more to hope for in life has the potential of fostering rather than killing joy as there is then something more to live for. Put simply, their spirits remain whole. In this way, Afrocentricity combats the soul murder enacted by the oppressive education system resulting in Black children with intact spirits and the ability to feel and experience being alive as agential seen beings versus, “muteness and invisibility” i.e., being “unheard and unseen” through the action of being “cut dead but still alive” (Ellison 3). In short, when Black children come to believe they are worthy of the best, they will begin to strive for it.

Additionally, Afrocentricity is not only focused on educating Black people, but all people, hoping to change the hearts and minds of detractors who believe it unnecessary to center blackness in academic discourses. The hope is if a European child receives an Afrocentric education, child will potentially come to see Black children as equals and grow up to not oppress

Black people as an adult. Is this not a spiritual change, or a conversion of sorts to “wokeness” as it is now often termed? I see this for Black learners as a progression from the place of self- hatred, a low vibration energy, to a place of self-love and respect, a high vibration transformation, others will have no choice but to follow. Everything about this is, in my understanding, Womanist as it turns education into a form of energy manipulation in the eyes of the Womanist (Maparyan 36). With Womanist thought and Afrocentricity working together, these above-mentioned concepts (soul murder and being “cut dead but still alive”) have no

choice but to consider female perspectives where they primarily and originally focus on male perspectives and experiences. To ignore the importance of the female experience is to commit soul murder against Black women and Black girl children, leaving them “cut dead but still alive” and therefore, leaving a portion of the community behind. With Womanist Afrocentricity, spiritual transformation is more likely to occur as the focus on the everyday and the self in both formal and informal settings add to the transformative and impactful desires of both ideologies for all members of the Black community.

Vernacular, one of the two most important characteristics, certainly applies to

Afrocentricity as it does not privilege the perspectives of just one type of Black person and does not see one type of knowledge as better than another. That means global Black experiences as well as those spanning class, gender, and sexuality are important to the narrative. In “Giving

Voice: An Inclusive Model of Instruction— A Womanist Perspective,” Vanessa Sheared says:

Afrocentrism [and] womanism, are just some of the methods and theoretical constructs that adult educators have explored or are currently exploring and implementing…. Each of these methods and constructs reflect and attempt to give voice to political, economic, and social life stories, experiences, cultures, and histories that have been excluded from the educational mainstream. (“Giving Voice", 269)

Sheared positions Womanism and Afrocentrism as two practices striving for the same goal. She then goes on to discuss how the classroom is a locale where everyone learns about each other’s contexts in order to make it a more accepting and self-actualizing place. She calls this representation of student experiences in the classroom “polyrhythmic realities” which she defines as the phenomenon of everyone experiencing multiple realities at once which she ascribes to African American artistic expression and language (270). The polyrhythmic education would then encompass all experiences available in the classroom and would create an inclusive learning environment that sees all experiences, historical and current, as relevant.

The direct connection to the Afrocentric extends from the belief education should,

“provide historical overviews of the nation, the continent and the world which accurately represent the contributions of all ethnic groups to the storehouse of human knowledge” (Shujaa

331). This goal is applicable to multiple conceptions of ‘history’ (personal, cultural, global, etc.) and would mean the historical and current context of a Black single mother, a college educated

Black man, and a middle class Black family are just as important as the knowledge of Kemet, the ancient Igbo, and the Middle Passage and would only add to what we understand about the Black experience, and the larger human experience. Even more so, Afrocentricity believes other ethnicities should have their own version of Afrocentric education because all people need to have an affirming and centering education. These different targeted lessons would then become part of the polyrhythmic vibrations of the classroom as not only does a person see their own lived contexts represented in the material, but other people’s contexts, and can add to their own knowledge by seeing another’s experiences as important educational material. Also, cultural and foundational differences among students would become positive assets to celebrate just as similarities would bring them together.

Vernacular is one of the most important aspects of both ideas in their practical application because, “cultural orientation makes a difference in the way one critiques society” (Shujaa 343).

The entire original premise of Womanist thought is to view society from a perspective inclusive of Black women and women of color. This more inclusive positioning allows for greater understanding of connected global problems in order to make changes that address the needs of those who are facing oppression in the way they deem appropriate. The same is the basis of

Afrocentricity as the Afrocentric educator is always working for social change through their classroom teachings.

Finally, I grappled quite a bit with whether or not Afrocentricity is communitarian, and initially I believed it was not, but on second thought, it is not that Afrocentricity is not communitarian, it is that it is academic and therefore designed for academic permanence. The

Afrocentric movement grew out of the Black Studies revolution which sought to center blackness in the classroom. This movement developed into Africana Studies and the

Africological movement (Asante 93-100). This history in mind, Afrocentricity is at home in the classroom and other learning environments because it is concerned with education as the way to solve community problems. While Womanist thought seeks to work itself into disuse,

Afrocentricity simultaneously desires its place in the academy and is working itself into disuse.

At some point, in theory, if educators implement Afrocentricity on a global scale and make the spiritual impact it seeks to make, then there will not be a struggle to include affirming Black education in curricula. It will always be considered because everyone will be positively affected by the teachings (the elimination of racism in white people and the affirming of Black people) to the point of seeing its importance and continuing with it naturally. Black centered curricula would then be the norm. Therefore, in a perfect world, though Afrocentricity would still be in place, it would be a natural part of any academic setting, not a counter to racism.

The true exchange here is that instead of constantly placing Womanist thought in

Women’s Studies departments that center their curriculum around white women, it can find a more natural place in academia with Afrocentricity through Black, Africana, and African

American studies departments. According to Asante, including Womanist thought with

Afrocentricity is most logical. When Afrocentricity and Womanist thought come together holistically, Womanist thought finds even more ways to enter traditional academic environments while also creating learning experiences that transcend the narrative of Black woman as victim or

Black woman as perpetually struggling. With Afrocentricity, Black women have more organic opportunities for ownership over their narratives, which is important in an educational environment.

Though this research explores the need for the reconnection between Afrocentricity and

Womanist thought, this is a conversation previously initiated by Clenora Hudson-Weems, creator of a very specific version of Womanism called Africana Womanism. It is of note Asante himself cosigned the most recently published version of her book Africana Womanism: Reclaiming

Ourselves, released in 2020, cementing the connection between Womanist thought and

Afrocentricity through Asante’s expressed support. She also refers to Asante and Afrocentricity several times throughout the book, making intersections between the two scholars and their ideas more concrete. Hudson-Weems, in the first section of her book outlines the theory and historical context of Africana Womanism, explaining how she came to name her Womanist theory:

Upon concluding that the term “Black Womanism” was not quite the terminology to include the total meaning desired for this concept, I decided that “Africana Womanism,” a natural evolution in naming, was the ideal terminology for two basic reasons. The first part of the coinage, Africana, identifies the ethnicity of the woman being considered, and this reference to her ethnicity, establishing her cultural identity, relates directly to her ancestry and land base— Africa. (14)

Hudson-Weems, in using the word Africana rather than Black or no ethnic descriptor at all, made an intentional decision that connects her theoretical branch of Womanist thought directly to

African heritage, ancestry, and location. In so doing, she takes Womanist thought from the realm of the more general to the specific, from applying to POC (people of color) to applying to the

African descended, or as she says later in the text, the melanated. In this way, the Africana

Womanist or the Melanated Africana Womanist is not only able, but expected, to primarily focus on the issues facing Black women and the Black family.

Hudson-Weems then goes on to say Womanist thought, for her, came not from Alice

Walker though she acknowledges Walker’s version of Womanist thought is the most well-known and widely accepted. It instead came from Sojourner Truth’s speech “And Ain’t I a Woman,” where she grappled with ideas of womanhood as it pertained (pertains) to Black women during the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Furthermore, she explains she needed Womanist thought to specify the focus is the human woman, not the female, which could be an animal or plant of any species, or the female counterbalance in electronic and mechanical terminology (14).

In fact, Hudson-Weems is in stark contrast to Walker’s original definition of womanism, which explicitly includes the LGBTQ+ community, and defines a womanist as, “not a separatist, except periodically, for health,” (Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose) making womanism a social change perspective that considers all women of color, men, and all sexual orientations. Of major concern for my argument, is Hudson-Weems’ focus on the Black family in such a strict and traditional way does not allow a Womanist to truly embrace their entire community and in some cases, their entire selves. Once again, in centering men others must suppress themselves or be left out, resulting in reaffirming societal structures of privilege.

Consequently, there is still validity and usefulness in limiting the scope of Womanism to Black people which is where Womanist Afrocentrism diverges from Walker’s original Womanism.

There are, of course, places where the Womanist thought privileged in this dissertation and that of Hudson-Weems diverge. Most notably, is Hudson-Weems’ assertion there is an order of operations for Black women when it comes to addressing the issues they face. Hudson-Weems writes, “Long before the question of gender and class came to the forefront in contemporary literary criticism and theoretical constructs, positions were taken and decisions were made about options available to the Africana woman on the basis of her race. Thus, it was and remains

evident that the Africana woman must first fight the battle of racism” (32). I argue this mentality places the same strictures on Black women that Black men placed on them during the Black power movement, where they had to choose the fight against racism and told to wait to address the fight for women’s rights. Unfortunately, the fight against racism has seen no end in sight, so when do women get their turn if this is the case? I believe Black women are capable of multitasking and therefore able to address both simultaneously. To suggest otherwise is limiting.

Womanist Afrocentrism and Africana Womanism also differ in that Womanist Afrocentrism, much like Walker and Maparyan’s ideations of Womanism, has space for the LGBTQ+ community while Hudson-Weems’, in making her work “male-compatible” (63), is, much like the Black Power movement, silencing a segment of the Black community that deserves Black community support. Womanist Afrocentrism desires to make sure all members of the Black community see their issues as valid and worthy of study while also showing support to LGBTQ+ identities and relationships.

Yet and still, Hudson-Weems, in clarifying the focus of her form of Womanist thought, creates space for a reconnection with Afrocentricity as, “From its very nature, Africana

Womanism…has a definite slant toward Afrocentricity in its truest meaning/sense…. Africana

Womanism commands an African-centered perspective of Africana women’s lives— their historical, current and future interaction with their community, which includes their male counterparts” (31). Not only does Hudson-Weems explicitly state the connection between

Afrocentricity and Africana Womanism, she also makes clear there has yet to be a shift toward inclusivity in Women’s Studies departments writing:

For many White women, Africana women exist for their purpose— a dramatization of oppression. As for their identity, they consider themselves the definitive woman and thus there is no need, for example, to name their studies “White” Women’s Studies. Moreover, while gender-specific discrimination is the

key issue for Women’s Studies, it unfortunately narrows the goals of Africana liberation and devalues the quality of Africana life. Gender-specific neither identifies nor defines the primary issue for Africana women or other non-White women. It is crucial that Africana women engage in self-naming and self- definition, lest they fall into the trap of refining a critical ideology at the risk of surrendering the sense of identity. (24)

Though Hudson-Weems does not go as far as saying Africana Womanism should join African

American/Black studies, her statement regarding the inherent racism and white focus of

Women’s Studies paired with her connecting Africana Womanism and Afrocentricity, in my opinion, naturally leads to the inclusion of Womanist thought in African American/Black studies departments. She expresses the same concerns as Asante, believing under Women’s Studies,

Black women and their experiences are coopted, misused, reduced to struggle, and white- washed. Hudson-Weems desires Black women to represent the fullness of their experiences and does not see that as a possibility within the current Feminist academic structure. With Womanist thought paired with Afrocentricity, Black women can freely explore and embody Black womanhood without limitations. This freedom comes from the fact Afrocentricity focuses on and expresses the fullness of the Black experience, creating the space for the celebration of Black women rather than constant forced victimhood as perpetuated by white perceptions of the Black experience.

Hudson-Weems’s desire for specificity as it pertains to Womanism is the needed first step toward an Afrocentric discourse that is inclusive of all Black identifying people and experiences. It also allows for more positive Black women’s experiences to enter the narrative as learning material. This pairing opened the door for this dissertation to truly explore what it would mean for Black women to have space to focus primarily on Black issues rather than considering the problems of all people all the time. This space to explore is not only represented in the texts analyzed herein, but also in my agency and empowered stance as a researcher to

unapologetically focus solely on Black texts and Black perspectives. Without Womanist

Afrocentrism, I may not have felt as empowered to narrow my focus in such a way.

This study positions Black authors as theoretical authorities of liberatory education through the narratives they write. It argues Black writers explicate and develop methodologies for navigating and attaining effective education as a means of overcoming oppression. The texts under survey articulate effective practices through characters, the lives they live, and the creative educational methods they use to advert danger. These practices and characters emerge as case studies through which I extract information for eventual real-world applications. In this way,

School Dazed implements the five overarching Womanist characteristics, especially that of being spiritual and communitarian. It does so believing the authors (and by extension the characters) are experts in their own experiences and have a worthwhile world view, and that “spirit” in its many ideations is as important to communal and individual well-being as other more concrete aspects of a person's educational journey. Furthermore, positioning these characters as representative of real-world archetypes allows a more sociological approach to the study of literature, which can create avenues for practical application of literary studies.

In this study, I take a sociological approach to the analysis of literature by addressing several concerns through the examination of each subject text and main character. I begin each textual analysis by looking at the educational experiences of the main character(s) in order to appropriately categorize the experiences as positive (affirming) or negative (traumatic). I determine this by examining several factors including but not limited to: the presence or lack of psychological, emotional, and/or physical stressors, levels of white indoctrination experienced during the learning process and its causes and effects, opportunities for self-actualization, presence of systemic oppression or resistance, and how difficult it is for the character to

overcome said systemic oppression/resistance, etc. Once I categorize the experience, I determine it is positive, I explore why. If I think it negative, I not only explore why, but, in Womanist fashion, what could have potentially improved the educational experience of the character.

In order to come to my conclusions, I take two analytical approaches throughout this dissertation: either a combination of comparative and theoretical analysis or theoretical analysis alone. In both cases, I apply Womanist Afrocentrism as a theoretical and pragmatic lens. For the analyses that use both comparative and theoretical approaches, I go through the steps outlined above, then determine how the positive educational experiences of main character(s) in one text subvert the educational trauma experienced by the main character(s) of another text. Through this method I can make statements akin to, “the problems faced by Character A in Text 1 could have been lessened or avoided through these means as demonstrated by the resulting lack of problems in the life of Character B in Text 2.” For the comparative analysis included in this dissertation, I use Womanist Afrocentrism to explore how a character navigates learning and knowledge formation for the best possible liberatory outcome.

By broaching texts in this way, School Dazed finds new approaches to education theory that allow for the expansion of what we call educational material. It also shows practical demonstrations of how the everyday is valuable to learning experiences and life outcomes. Only two of the texts explored in this dissertation, Ellison’s Invisible Man and Walker’s Meridian explicitly discuss formal education. The others show characters overcoming oppression through a combination of formal education and nontraditional knowledge such as wisdom, seership, and street smarts— three knowledge types discussed as important to the wellbeing of a community in the “Ladder of Learning” (Maparyan, The Womanist Idea 38). This diversity furthers the idea that there are different types of education, and that nontraditional types of knowledge are just as

valuable as that gained through receiving a college education. School Dazed, in looking at fictional novels written by authors who do not have formal educational backgrounds as well as those versed in education theory, then, is the first of its kind. Through its unique approach, it explores non education texts and writers as progenitors providing a broad spectrum of education theory. By doing so, it claims even without a background in education, one can still know education’s power and impact as well as what makes an education effective. This assertion in no way takes from the fact there are many who have devoted their lives to the study of education and how to best teach people of all ages and backgrounds, but it simply adds unheard and unconsidered voices to the narrative.

Chapter Summaries

There are several books under examination in School Dazed including: Narrative of the

Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself, Ishmael Reed’s

Flight to Canada, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Meridian, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible

Man. The chapters are largely ordered chronologically starting with “When Uncle Tomming

Goes Right: Slavery, Knowledge, and Wisdom in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada”, followed by “Upping the Ante: Afrocentricity— the Answer to Afro-Pessimism,” and ending with, “Here:

How Afrocentricity Releases Celie from Oppression through Knowledge of Self.” In the conclusion, I discuss further research and goals.

Chapter 2: “When Uncle Tomming Goes Right: Slavery, Knowledge, and Wisdom in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada”

In Chapter 2, “When Uncle Tomming Goes Right,” is a comparative analysis of

Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself and

Flight to Canada. I decided to start with a chapter exploring these slave and neoslave narratives because I believe Henry Bibb historicizes the Black struggle for education and its ties to freedom

while the anachronistic style of Flight to Canada broaches the subject of modern-day definitions of freedom and how attitudes around education and knowledge have (or have not) changed since the era of slavery. Here I compare the effectiveness of the education of three characters as well as the effectiveness of how those characters transform knowledge into wisdom to attain freedom.

In so doing, ask how wisdom (the product of experience and internalized and applied knowledge) effects the attainment of freedom? To answer this question, I focus on Henry Bibb, according to his autobiography, and Raven Quickskill and Uncle Robin as created by Reed.

Through this analysis, I explore the importance of moving knowledge beyond information and into internalization and application for the formation of wisdom— what I deem the most important form of knowledge as determined by this analysis and the Ladder of Learning. I conclude wisdom is only truly obtained by Uncle Robin, a voodoo practitioner, long time enslaved person, and “Uncle Tom” trickster. Uncle Robin, having garnered wisdom from both formal education and the racial education of slavery, demonstrates there is value in the trickster figure who plays into stereotypes to outsmart unsuspecting white oppressors. He also shows without wisdom, the benefits of formal education are limited.

Chapter 3: “Upping the Ante: Afrocentricity— the Answer to Afro-Pessimism”

In Chapter 3 of School Dazed, “Upping the Ante,” I perform a comparative analysis of

Walker’s Meridian and Ellison’s Invisible Man, which after extensive digging, I can definitively claim no one has done in full until now. I assert throughout Chapter 3 that Meridian, published in

1976 and set in the 1960s and 70s, is a Womanist Afrocentric response to the Afro-pessimism presented in Ellison’s 1952 Invisible Man which takes place in the 1930s. I come to this conclusion by looking at similarities between the plots in both texts, which demonstrate, for me, a desire for Walker to contribute to the conversation around effective advocacy and education.

She does this by responding to the life of Invisible Man (a call) as she places Meridian in similar

situations, but then allows her the ability to overcome and heal rather than go further into Afro- pessimistic darkness, here interpreted as a demonstration of Womanist self-care (a response).

Therefore, I claim Invisible Man’s acceptance of his socially dead positionality through the end of the novel stands in stark contrast to Meridian who finds purpose after overcoming similar and compounding intersectional oppression. Meridian is only able to do this with Womanist thought practices that prioritize the self as much as the community. Ultimately, I conclude for Walker, it is less important to worry about what white society does or does not value, but instead to focus on what one can do to uplift the community and self in ways that are accessible and inclusive

(i.e., vernacular and communitarian). Walker also asserts productive solitude rather than isolation is necessary for healing and sustained community involvement.

I also broach the subject of the historical and cultural purposes of Historically Black

Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) because both texts explore fictionalized versions of two

HBCUs: Spelman College (Meridian) and Tuskegee University (Invisible Man). The texts under examination allude to the fact HBCUs, and other “black”3 spaces, weaken their liberatory impact when controlled by or catering to unseen heteropatriarchal white supremacist. As both characters have incredibly traumatic experiences with the heteropatriarchal white supremacist power structures of their fictionalized institutions, it became important to discuss HBCUs in their earliest years as upholding status quo power structures for benefactors who sought to educate

Black people post- slavery in ways that benefitted white society. This examination reveals what happens when learners remain at the first rung of the “Ladder of Learning” to their detriment

(and white supremacy’s benefit). To historicize this critique, I reference W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker

3I use “black” instead of Black here because in this context and under these conditions, this is not Black. One can argue reconstruction era HBCUs were at times white supremacy in blackface. I also want to make it clear I understand the growth and evolution of HBCUs over the years as the proud product of Xavier University of Louisiana, but this fact does not mean we should not be critical and aware of their history.

T. Washington, and Carter G. Woodson, three early Black educators and education scholars who were essential to the rise of Black centered education.

Chapter 4: “Here: How Afrocentricity Releases Celie from Oppression through Knowledge of Self”

In Chapter 4, the final chapter of School Dazed, “Here: How Afrocentricity Releases

Celie from Oppression,” I perform a character analysis using Womanist Afrocentrism to discuss how Celie’s life improves through Womanist Afrocentric knowledge of self. I assert Celie’s liberation comes from the spiritualized and communitarian efforts of two other characters in the novel: Shug (her lover), and Nettie (her sister). Shug’s Womanist guidance through Spiritual

Advocacy and Nettie’s Afrocentric knowledge of history, origin, land, and people create a perfect Womanist Afrocentric balance for Celie that empowers her to become a strong self- advocate. Self-knowledge and self-definition, two modes of both Womanist and Afrocentric consciousness building, are what help Celie overcome her oppression. Ultimately, I claim with

Womanist Afrocentrism, Celie transcends abuse and enters subjecthood in a self-created narrative. Her empowerment also positions Celie to uplift other women in her community and simultaneously break the generational curse that led to women like her mother being economically dependent on men to take care of them. In this way, she officially changes the trajectory for not only herself, but the women who will come after her by showing alternative ways of being that allow for freedom and self-actualization, which is only truly possible for Celie with Womanist Afrocentrism.

In retrospect, this organization not only displays different attitudes around education and liberation, but also developing attitudes around best practices for freedom. The slave era texts in

Chapter 2 show favorably viewed characters role-playing for safety, while Chapter 3 demonstrates a rejection of these kinds of characters with a turn towards more radicalism, and

lastly Chapter 4 deep dives into what happens when a character is allowed to flourish without constraint. My conclusion discusses the ideal forward progression of this conversation as my research and ideologies further evolve into a transatlantic perspective.

CHAPTER 2 WHEN UNCLE TOMMING GOES RIGHT: SLAVERY, KNOWLEDGE, AND WISDOM IN ISHMAEL REED’S FLIGHT TO CANADA

Education is arguably the most important element in the African American freedom journey. Literacy and knowledge are key components to liberation, and many died for the right to a proper one, which makes it important to define “proper”. The word education usually invokes classroom imagery, but what about lessons derived from experience and common sense?

By analyzing slave and neo-slave narratives, I examine how modes such as cunning, trickery, common sense, folk knowledge, and “playing dumb” help enslaved people reach freedom.

Using, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by

Himself, and Ishmael Reed’s neo-slave narrative Flight to Canada (1976), I analyze knowledge’s value to freedom. I argue Uncle Robin’s wisdom makes attaining freedom easier because he combines Raven Quickskill’s education with Henry Bibb’s experience. I ask what role wisdom

(knowledge + experience + application) plays in attaining freedom.

First, how do we define knowledge? In Knowledge: Is Knowledge Power knowledge scientists Adolf and Stehr, write: “We would like to characterize knowledge as a generalized capacity to act and as a model for reality. Knowledge enables us to ‘set something in motion’ or prevent something from occurring such as the onset of an illness. Knowledge creates, sustains and changes existential conditions” (22). Essentially, knowledge is a social construct and only as useful as it is accurate, and accuracy depends on information availability. This idea means knowledge can change according to one’s surroundings, time period, or societal advancements.

Society, then, determines and accepts facts, meaning knowledge changes as society develops.

Also, knowledge changes society and spreads, becoming common knowledge, belonging to everyone despite people’s educational statuses. The universal ownership is a part of what creates knowledge.

This leads to the second question: are there any advantages to formal education (one in a school setting and/or under an instructor) over informal (experience-based) education? The short answer is both are integral to creating wisdom as climbing up the ladder of learning to a wisdom state requires an ability to apply the knowledge gained. Wisdom, then, is the most evolved form of knowledge one can have as it determines one’s ability to and history of knowledge application. In Reed’s Flight to Canada, wisdom proves most important as seen in Uncle

Robin’s success after internalizing the lessons of slavery. It is also of interest that Uncle Robin is the most spiritualized character examined, and arguably has the most communitarian results as he now owns and can free and entire plantation of slaves. With these points addressed, the conversation about education in both Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb and

Flight to Canada becomes more about the evolution of knowledge into wisdom than acquiring it.

Flight to Canada, with its postmodern approach to the slave narrative, analyzes how society defines freedom. The narrative primarily follows two enslaved men— loyal servant

Uncle Robin and fugitive slave Raven Quickskill— owned by dyslexic white man, Author

Swille. The text starts with Quickskill’s poem “Flight to Canada,” a summation of disrespectful actions Quickskill performs during several imaginary trips between Canada and the plantation. In the poem, Quickskill directly addresses Swille as he discusses his journey to freedom in Canada, desecrating Swille’s property, and attempting to kill him with rat poison (Reed 3-5).

Unfortunately, at the time of writing and publishing his poem, he is not yet in Canada. Instead, he tries to get there using money earned from his poem while also avoiding recapture. When he finally reaches Canada, he realizes it is not much different from America. Instead, he determines he needs to find freedom on a metaphysical level, meaning he must achieve freedom mentally before attempting physical freedom as no one can truly enslave a person’s mind.

Simultaneously, there is Uncle Robin, a trickster figure still on Swille’s plantation.

Robin, who spends the entire book pretending to be an Uncle Tom figure, stays devoted to Swille until Swille dies. Then, the reader learns Reed was tricking his audience with Robin’s exaggerated behavior. By the novel’s close, Swille dies and Quickskill returns to the plantation, while Robin, by way of Swille's unwavering trust and access to his documents, wills himself all

Swille's possessions.

Flight to Canada redefines freedom for readers, and in so doing also redefines attaining it. In Reed’s postmodern, anachronistic world, anyone can be a slave while being physically free and anyone can have freedom while being a slave. He makes freedom into a mindset showing how locale and capitalism factor in as much as racism. Because it goes beyond race, it is potentially physically unattainable for both lower-class white men and slaves yet certainly attainable mentally in metaphysical space, meaning one gains freedom in Flight to Canada in a mental space, transcending physical limitations. Reed emphasizes this through characters who see Canada as a promise land only to be disappointed when they arrive, or characters so concerned with getting there, they neglect opportunities for freedom in more attainable locales.

Some of Reed’s characters are so concerned with physical freedom they forget about mental freedom— the most important distinction to Reed because mental freedom has permanency whereas physical freedom, at that time, did not. Hence, mental freedom, the one people have control over, is more important in the narrative.

Throughout the text, defining freedom becomes the crux of the plot. Unfortunately for

Quickskill, escaping the plantation does not make him a free man of color, but a fugitive slave.

The distinction “fugitive slave” means he is still a slave. He has only attained freedom under erasure or “freedom,” meaning slave catchers can track him down and take him back at any time,

without consequence, because he still legally qualifies as someone’s property. Here begins

Reed’s subversive treatment of what it means to be free. While Quickskill struggles to become physically free, Uncle Robin is free mentally all along which helps him attain his physical freedom, a concept I discuss later in this chapter.

As mentioned earlier, rising star poet Raven Quickskill writes a poem called “Flight to

Canada.” Reed wants the reader to associate Quickskill with flight such as running away or escaping. The poem also further pushes the idea of flight by his leaving for Canada on a jet.

Basically, Reed uses his last name as a pun because “Quickskill must use quick skill to avoid a quick kill,” making deeper connections between Quickskill and the trickster figure he thinks he is (O’Neale 176). Yet with writing the poem, Reed reveals Quickskill’s lack of foresight. Where

Uncle Robin waits, determining when and how to act, Quickskill becomes a fugitive slave. To be clear, one form of resistance is no better than another. Countless slave narratives, like Bibb’s, give examples of fugitive slaves who escaped their plantations successfully. Still, for Quickskill, writing “Flight to Canada” made him easier to track. Reed writes, “‘Flight to Canada’ was the problem. It made [Quickskill] famous but had also tracked him down. It had pointed to where he,

40s, and Stray Leechfield were hiding. It was their bloodhound, this poem ‘Flight to Canada’”

(13). Here, away from the plantation as a fugitive slave, his education becomes something easily used against him. His writing turns into a heat signature making his freedom unstable.

Surprisingly, while on the plantation, Quickskill is in the same position as Uncle Robin.

In “Images of Subversion: Ishmael Reed and the Hoodoo Trickster,” James Lindroth compares

Quickskill to the hoodoo trickster figure, with Lindroth noting Quickskill’s use of literacy both on and off the plantation before his escape as a subversive act. That trickster mentality comes through in the below passage quoted by Lindroth:

…the worst betrayal of all was Raven Quickskill, my trusted bookkeeper. Fooled around with my books, so that every time I'd buy a new slave he'd destroy the invoices and I'd have no record of purchases; he was also writing passes and forging freedom papers. We gave him Literacy . . . and what does he do with it? Uses it like that old Voodoo--that old stuff the slaves mumble about. Fetishism and grisly rites, only he doesn't need anything but a pen he had shaped out of cock feathers and chicken claws. (Reed 35-36)

While on the plantation, Quickskill helps others with literacy, and in this position, he portrays the trickster figure with his antics toward Swille. Still, he does not learn to use literacy for his own advantage. As a fugitive, he does not write himself a pass or freedom papers, instead focusing solely on physical freedom in Canada. He misses opportunities to use his literacy to escape, making it wasted knowledge. Quickskill neglects to apply what he knows while pursuing freedom, because all he has is knowledge and experience without the needed step of application required to transform the knowledge into valuable wisdom during his escape, therefore remaining at the lowest rung of the ladder of learning.

There are two major flaws that make Quickskill the character least able to attain freedom.

He at first cannot conceptualize freedom as metaphysical, instead focusing on freedom in the limiting physical landscape. Worse, he associates the vague and specific north (northern

American states and Canada) with freedom even though it was not much better for Black people than being in the south. Reed paints Canada as a disappointing, racist place plagued with the same capitalism that enslaves people in America. The second and most detrimental flaw is he cannot combine his expert grasp of the English language with experience to create wisdom.

Quickskill believes so much in the north he imagines himself there, a clever trickster character in his mind, hopping borders undetected to desecrate his former master’s property and home. This behavior in and of itself shows a lack of wisdom. The entire idea of the novel is redefining freedom yet Quickskill still has a standard literalist understanding of what it means.

According to Zohreh Ramin, “[Flight to Canada] frequently emphasizes that Raven has been

trying to find a way to become an active, agentic subject rather than a passive, obedient object”

(252). Quickskill understands his enslavement and knows he wants to be free, which is a step above not acknowledging his enslavement at all, and very important to pursuing freedom as one cannot pursue something they do not know they are missing. Quickskill’s base understanding becomes clear when considering his desire to be a fully realized human being and his developed consciousness, which allows critical thinking about his enslaved state. But Reed wants his characters to achieve the more important mental freedom Quickskill lacks. Quickskill believes one gets freedom on free land, but once reaching “free” land he is disenchanted. His enormous letdown comes from the fact he does not feel free, indicating a state of mind rather than a physical place. Encountering an unkind capitalistic Canada full of covert racism makes him feel like he could have stayed in America.

Reed defines slavery as not only chattel, but as a part of capitalism that exists within a market society. Quickskill cannot ever be physically free because he must still participate in capitalism. He then feels defeated by this never-ending enslavement and goes back to the plantation as he, “eventually comes to this conclusion that freedom is not bound to and conditioned on one’s place of residence, but as stressed in the novel, is ‘state of mind’ and can be realized only if one manages to liberate his consciousness from the chains of dominant restrictive conventions” (Ramin 252-53). Quickskill spends the entire novel concerned with reaching

Canada only to learn he was wrong about it in the first place. At this point, Quickskill finally reaches the wisdom that sends him home to write Uncle Robin’s story1. After Canada disappoints him, he develops an appreciation for Robin’s wisdom and life after hating him up to this point (Ramin).

1Unlike Stowe who utilized the Uncle Tom figure to assuage white ideals (Ramin), and who will be discussed in more depth later.

It takes going to Canada for Quickskill to refocus his energy on mental freedom because he never internalized the things he learned as a slave. The experience-based lessons he missed are clear from the beginning. As stated earlier, the poem he published made him easily traceable.

Though Quickskill is dissatisfied with the very visible way his companions Leechfield and 40s were living their lives (Reed 78), Quickskill’s premature poem causes all their problems. Unlike in Bibb’s and other slave narratives, Quickskill did not wait until he was secure in a free land with abolitionists shielding him from his recapture to write an important piece of literature, thus intensifying the instability of his position.

Being a fugitive slave, remaining inconspicuous until the search died down or until he was taken into benevolent company would have made more sense than publishing a poem and becoming famous. Priorities shifted making safety and security paramount, but the poem undermined that making Quickskill lucky to have gotten to Canada at all. His behavior throughout the narrative stands in stark contrast to Bibb and especially Robin because it shows a high level of immaturity and a low level of wisdom. The largest oversight, is instead being the trickster figure he wants to be by using his mastery of reading and writing and his experience on the plantation to write freedom papers or passes for himself and his companions to reach Canada more easily, he uses his education to write a poem that makes him easier to find. When

Quickskill finally realizes what freedom truly means, he goes to live with Uncle Robin on

Robin’s plantation. Quickskill’s move to Uncle Robin’s plantation proves Robin has the superior positioning as he acquires the plantation and gains subjecthood through being the subject of an unfiltered, true biography, not Quickskill himself.

Henry Bibb has the second-best grasp of turning knowledge into wisdom. Bibb, born into slavery in May of 1815, was the uneducated son of an enslaved woman forced to bear children

for her master, James Bibb, where he derived his last name. Bibb accounts in his narrative that he ran away many times, going back and forth between Canada, free states, and slave holding states with the intent of rescuing his wife and child from slavery. His goal was freeing his whole family so they could be together lawfully without the risk of separation through sale or having his wife’s virtue disrespected by “licentious” white men, as Bibb calls them several times throughout the narrative. In his writing, he describes himself as being very near white in his complexion, which both helps and hurts him throughout his “adventures” as he calls his many escapes in the title.

The narrative reads as a boys’ adventure book, reminiscent of The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn. It focuses on the fantastical elements of his escapes paired with the actual antislavery purpose of slave narratives.

There are many similarities between Bibb’s narrative and Flight to Canada. Most importantly, both the metapoem “Flight to Canada,” by Quickskill and the autobiographical account Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave are slave narratives. In the metanarrative poem, Quickskill describes in detail the many times he went back and forth between Canada and Swille’s plantation. Though he never actually made multiple trips, it mirrors Bibb’s narrative where he did go back and forth between Canada and his plantation in attempt to save his family. He was captured and sold into slavery many times and repeatedly attained freedom for short bursts until abolitionists persuaded him to stay in America where he could help forward the antislavery cause. Through his actions, it is clear experiential knowledge was Bibb’s greatest asset. Also, both Bibb and Quickskill are discovered many times and returned to their plantations/owners, one to discover his owner was dead anyway, and the other to escape again successfully.

Yet, Quickskill and Bibb do not have the most in common. According to Bibb himself when discussing being officially secure in the free north, he:

resolved to go to Detroit, that winter, and go to school, in January 1842. But when [he] arrived at Detroit [he] soon found that [he] was not able to give [himself] a very thorough education. [He] was among strangers, who were not disposed to show [him] any great favors. [He] had every thing to pay for, and clothing to buy, so [he] graduated within three weeks! And this was all the schooling that [he has] ever had in [his] life. (174)

Though the reader never learns if Quickskill attended or graduated from formal schooling, the reader knows Quickskill learned to read to fulfill his master’s needs, making this formal education under an instructor. A literate person not only taught Quickskill to read and write for white use but allowed him to perfect his skills to the point of publishing a renowned poem. Bibb was far less educated, having started school after escaping then “graduating” in three weeks, which even for the 1800’s, is a short time. One can ascertain Bibb did not receive a good education.

This puts Bibb closer to Uncle Robin in terms of his most freeing education. Bibb’s often stated means for freedom are trickery and quick wit. There are two forms of deception that made the most difference: his racial ambiguity and general cunning such as disguise and playing stupid, much like Uncle Robin. For example, to remain undetected while running away from the

Vires’, Bibb tells any witnesses he is searching for a horse or cow, then produces a bridle as proof (Bibb 16-17). His survival and safety depend on his ability to think of, then act on schemes.

Also, race for Bibb is an unstable positioning and double-edged sword. In fact, several times in the narrative racial ambiguity becomes an asset. On one such occasion, after boarding a boat to Ohio and blending in with the passengers because of his light complexion, Bibb says:

… I kept from the light as much as possible. Some, men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; but this was not the case with myself; it was to

avoid detection in doing right. This was one of the instances of my adventures that my affinity with the Anglo-Saxon race, and even slaveholders, worked well for my escape. But no thanks to them for it. While in their midst they have… almost entirely robbed me of my dark complexion. Being so near the color of a slaveholder, they could not, or did not find me out that night among the white passengers. (48-49)

Here, Bibb weaponizes his lack of melanin, caused most likely through the rape of enslaved women by white men, to travel through the slave holding territories, hence deceiving white men with the result of their own wrongdoings. He can do this not only because of the genetic mixing that caused his light skin, but also because he understands the social context in which he maneuvers and applies that understanding to his life, subverting the white gaze and white ideas of blackness. Quickskill fails to do this throughout his journey to freedom because of both his complexion and his inability to fully apply his experience as an enslaved Black person in

America to his escape. Bibb applies his knowledge of the American context of slavery and creates wisdom allowing him to run away, whereas Quickskill turns his knowledge into a potentially easier recapture because he never seems to understand his enslavement in relation to whiteness, blackness, and how white people expect him to behave. He cannot play into and subvert what he does not fully understand, and Swille most certainly was not supplying books on race play for freedom. This wisdom only derives from applying knowledge gained through experiences with white people and whiteness, which both Bibb and Uncle Robin have achieved.

Though Bibb sometimes uses his complexion to his advantage, the times it disadvantages him are the most interesting. Assumptions made due to his complexion in contrast to those made due to his race, cause a schism in how white people see him. Many times throughout the text, people assume because of his light complexion he is one or a combination of the following: prone to running away, smart, and/or can read, lowering his value as a slave. In fact, one can say as his slave value plummeted, his human value rose because he gets mistaken for a slaveholder

more than once while trying to sell himself, ruining his plans, as failure prevented him from keeping his family together (Bibb 107-108). In order to have value as a slave and fit the normative stereotype of a Black person, especially a Black man, Black people needed to be subservient, submissive, and dumb, that last one being especially important. Slaveholders assumed educated slaves would have notions of freedom, and if they had notions of freedom, they would want to run away— one of the main reasons slaves were uneducated. Then, of course, with such a light complexion, Bibb stands outside the most common indicator of an

African American: darker skin, meaning white people automatically deemed him educated and white.

While in New Orleans looking for a buyer, he comes across two white men and approaches them as potential masters. In the first encounter, one of the men believes him to be a slave trader and then asks him the quality of his slaves. When Bibb learns white people think he is a slave trader he writes: “I knew that it would be of no use for me to tell him that I was myself a slave looking for a master, for he would have doubtless brought up the same objection that others had brought up,--that I was too white; and that they were afraid that I could read and write; and would never serve as a slave, but run away” (Bibb 107).

Bibb understands as a Black enslaved man with lighter skin, white people do not think he conforms to his understood societal role. This disconnect is because lighter skin/whiteness was never associated with being a slave and therefore, he, like a white man, would not make a good slave in their minds. Yet, this same whiteness associates him with being intelligent and industrious, something expected in white people, but not Black people. This dissonance explains why people thought he was a slave trader, clearly higher on the ladder than a slave,

demonstrating the instability of race itself. For Bibb, the lighter the skin, the more complicated the positioning in slavery.

Bibb’s racial identity complications increase when he discusses successfully selling himself to Mr. Garrison. When Bibb approaches him, Garrison asks, “In the first place, my boy, you are a little too near white. I want you to tell me now whether you can read or write?” and says for him to answer honestly like a “good boy,” subtly implying that his race makes him potentially prone to lying. He also wanted to know if he had ever run away. Bibb then lies to appear to fit the normative stereotype of good, submissive slave and get what he wants— a sale with both his wife and child (109-110). Granted, it would have served him better to tell the entire truth because Mr. Garrison was a crueler person than any of his previous masters.

Deception plays so much a part of his gaining freedom that he receives lessons on deceiving white people to get a favorable sale away from Garrison. His slave traders said, “to act very stupid in language and thought, but in business [he] must be spry; and that [he] must persuade men to buy [him], and promise them that [he] would be smart” (149). He must simultaneously pretend to be stupid and savvy, two mismatched qualities. Bibb navigates a complicated racial playing field where he perfectly combines all the expectations and necessities for him to survive, an education only achieved through his applied practical experiential slave knowledge.

Essentially, Bibb must pass for Black to get what he wants, putting on a show to distract uncomfortable white people from his ambiguous racial identification. Since they cannot pinpoint him as Black without stereotypic behavior, he adopts a stereotypical Black affect for their appeasement. Then, Bibb goes back to passing for white after he escapes to avoid detection and recapture, making Bibb’s escapes to freedom potentially more complex than Uncle Robin’s and

especially Quickskill’s. Bibb expresses a deeper understanding and wisdom of the world in which he lives than Quickskill, making his many trips back and forth possible where Quickskill has trouble crossing the border once with his limited perspective. Yet, Bibb’s level of trickery is not as sophisticated as Uncle Robin’s because Bibb lacks Robin’s formal education. Robin so deeply understands blackness in relation to whiteness he gets both mental and physical freedom without leaving the plantation. Instead, he steals the plantation and dethrones his oppressor, potentially freeing everyone else in the process.

Uncle Robin is still physically enslaved on Swille’s plantation with privilege through his position therein. To start, being Swille’s favorite slave, he has benefits other slaves do not. For example, Robin can read and write. The reader first discovers he can read when he converses with Swille about Drapetomania, a relic of scientific racism naming a “mental illness” which makes slaves want to run away (Cartwright). This socially favorable pseudoscience, further cements how the stereotype of the African being the perfect submissive slave became knowledge, no matter how wrong, in that time period. While discussing runaways Swille says,

“Yes, you don’t have to say it, Robin. He’s gone. Stray Leechfield, 40s and … Quickskill. They contracted Drapetomania, as that distinguished scientist Dr. Samuel Cartwright described in that book you read to me…” Here, Swille forgets the title of the book causing Robin to finish his thought, “Dysaethesia Aethipica, Mr. Swille?” (Reed 18). Robin cannot only read, but he can read at an advanced level. He is, for all intents and purposes, educated, regardless of his education is originally for Swille's use. Furthermore, due to his favored position, Swille trusts him so much he allows him to indulge in reading without the usual fear reading will make him want freedom. Not only can Robin read, but Swille cannot read and write well, something confirmed when Robin reveals his plot: “Well, anyway, Swille had something call dyslexia.

Words came to him scrambled and jumbled. I became his reading and writing. Like a computer, only this computer left itself Swille’s whole estate. Property joining forces with property. I left me his whole estate. I’m it, too. Me and it got more it” (171). If Swille did not have dyslexia, he would have written or reviewed his own will, but because he cannot, Robin takes advantage of the trust gained from acting like Swille’s Uncle Tom. With this trust, he makes changes to the will Swille never sees because he cannot read effectively. In this way, Robin maintains and attains his freedom in contrast with Bibb and Quickskill.

Looking at Uncle Robin more closely, the reader sees Reed playing with the “Uncle

Tom” idea. Robin is a Black house slave who serves Arthur Swille and when they converse with one another Robin’s language reveals extreme brown-nosing, a way to describe the behavior of someone overly obedient and servile to the point of obsequiousness. For instance, when complimented Robin says: “Thank you, Massa Swille. I return the compliment. It’s such an honor to serve such a mellifluous, stunning and elegant man as yourself, Massa Swille, indeed an honor. Why…why, you could be president if you wanted to” (Reed 20) [emphasis added]. What prompted Robin’s over-the-top response was Swille saying how much he enjoys Uncle Robin’s service and he can, “make a man feel like … well, like a God” (20). His language and behavior here demonstrate playing into his expected role: Uncle Tom. His name, Uncle Robin, also adds to his connection to the “Uncle Tom” figure.

The term “Uncle Tom” comes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle

Tom’s Cabin, so it is no coincidence he features a caricature of Stowe in Flight to Canada, with her wanting to steal Robin’s story for a book, making the connection between the Uncle Tom figure and Uncle Robin even stronger. There are two ideas of the Uncle Tom expressed here, first being the Uncle Tom stereotype. When people think “Uncle Tom”, they are generally

thinking of someone, “docile, nonassertive, and happy-go-lucky,” in their dealings with white people and who appears complacent if not happy in their oppression (Sue 56). They do their best to conform to what their oppressor expects of them as a Black person, and Uncle Robin fits into this category, doing his best to conform to what Swille expects from an enslaved Black man.

Yet, there is a second iteration of Uncle Tom here as well: Uncle Tom Syndrome.

Derald Wing Sue in Multicultural Social Work Practice describes many of the qualities of the stereotype above, but he adds one additional piece of insight, “Many multicultural specialists … have pointed out how African Americans, in responding to their forced enslavement, history of discrimination, and America’s reaction to their skin color, have adopted toward Whites behavior patterns that are important for survival in a racist society” (55). Sue then goes into detail about the consequences a slave faces for non-compliance, and how slaves use this exaggerated expression of submission for protection and survival as it does not challenge white authority. It is a step above “playing it cool” where one masks their true feelings in order to, “prevent offending or threatening white people” (55). Uncle Tom syndrome intends to hide true feelings by acting in the way most likely to keep them safe, and Uncle Robin does so masterfully according to the outcome of his plan.

Uncle Robin’s behavior ties to something called “role-playing,” “which can be oversimplified as a superficial performance without internal effect on the actor” (Wyatt-Brown

1230). Bertram Wyatt-Brown writes, “In the eyes of others, ‘deviants’ of one description or another must meet the obligations of their assigned stereotypes,” (1230) and Uncle Robin does this through racial role-playing. Role-playing, though an act, suggests an act in one’s real life, not a stage, meaning the act still becomes a part of the actor’s identity, which here forms from other’s perceptions. Therefore, the Uncle Tom figure during slavery potentially represented

someone playing a role to avoid abuse with the hope extreme obedience would help.

Furthermore, according to Brown, slave owners thought this behavior in Black men trickled down and caused submission to white slave owners in slave women as well. This survival behavior was supposedly passed down to their children, creating more docile slaves. Essentially, according to white slave owners, breaking male slaves meant breaking all slaves (1229). This forced obedience became part of white society’s knowledge about what African American people, especially men, were like. These attitudes solidified the stereotype of African Americans as made for slavery because of naturally obedient mentalities and Uncle Robin operates within this knowledge.

For Uncle Robin, an entirely different person with entirely different intentions exists under the role-playing. He reveals this hidden identity through rewriting Swille’s will. The reader sees Uncle Robin as a stereotype, a character who should garner mistrust and dislike.

Instead, he at most represents an expression of the true desires of African American men who perform stereotypes for self-preservation. Otherwise, he shows a re-visioning of the Uncle Tom and their role on the plantation. Reed imagines power and potential for the Uncle Tom figure, implying he sees the Uncle Tom as a form of valid resistance.

In Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, “Stereotypes and the Shaping of Identity,” he discusses three types of stereotypes: statistical, false, and normative. In brief, according to Appiah, a statistical stereotype is generally true but subject to exceptions. For example, men are generally stronger than women though there may be some women who are as strong or stronger than the weakest man. A false stereotype is simply not a characteristic of all members of any group, an example being the idea of “shifty” Jews when there are shifty people in all groups, no one group owns shiftiness, and no one group is more prone to shiftiness. Lastly, a normative stereotype is

one members of a certain group adhere to for consideration as part of that group by society.

Appiah relates this most closely to gender stereotypes where society expects women to wear dresses and men, pants. Not ascribing to these ideas does not make a woman or man less woman or man but makes others more comfortable categorizing them (47-49). Appiah discusses normative stereotypes as neutral, resulting in positive outcomes if they add positively to an individual’s life:

The importance of normative stereotypes [or] scripts for identities, is central to understanding the place of identity in moral and civic life…. the construction of one's own individuality, the creation of a self, is indeed a project for every human life, and if… collective identities are a resource for that self-creation and not just a hindrance, then it follows that we must accept the existence of normative stereotypes. For a social identity is, among other things, a set of normative scripts for shaping your behavior, your plans, your life.… They have to be configured in such a way as to serve as potential instruments in the construction of a dignified individuality. (51)

He then amends his idea of positive normative stereotypes by saying they are only positive if they add to an individual’s life. Otherwise, they cannot provide for positive outcomes or identity formation (51-52). But ultimately to Appiah, performing normative stereotypes can lead to healthily identifying with a social group. Though I agree with Appiah’s definition of the normative stereotype, when applying this to Uncle Robin, or other stereotypical slaves, the idea becomes complicated. His use of the word “scripts” relates to Wyatt-Brown’s “role-playing” mentioned previously through the idea society expects people to adopt a prescribed identity, but when in conversation with Wyatt-Brown, that adoption is for safety. So though one may say acting like an Uncle Tom “lacks dignity,” for Uncle Robin, it not only helps place him in a more dignified position in the long run, it creates a protective layer against the ills of slavery. In short,

Uncle Robin understanding, learning, and playing his expected role helps him attain freedom. He uses this unorthodox education given through oppression to his advantage. The slave stereotype, at least for the sake of his plan, is a positive normative stereotype used for his safety and

eventual dignified individuality. Seeing as he is the books hero figure, his conniving undertone is the ultimate subversion of the role he takes on.

The reader knows Robin plays into stereotypes because as soon as Swille dies, his entire demeanor changes. At the reading of the will, he still praises Swille and acts as if he does not know everything is his according to the will, demonstrating his false devotion to Swille. He uses speech like “hebben” for “heaven” and “’low” for “allow” (Reed 168) further playing into the idea Black vernacular means Black stupidity. When they ask if he has the intelligence to keep up the entire estate due to his brain being, “about the size of a mouse’s” (167), he responds he learned everything from watching Swille, which is akin to, “going to Harvard and Yale at the same time and Princeton on weekends” (167).

Swille’s dyslexia makes it unlikely Robin learned everything from him. Yet again, Robin plays to the idea slaves are docile, dumb, and in need of guidance from white people to overcome their idiocy and lowly position. Speaking this way before the judge during the reading of the will grants him favor and trusts through normative stereotype role-playing. After the reading of the will, he stops using the exaggerated Black speech, transitioning to “proper”

English. Uncle Robin’s trickster persona also belies his attachment to African spiritual practices, showing a spiritualized approach is also necessary for Uncle Robin’s plans and comes with his truest identity. While discussing changing the will he states, “I prayed to one of our gods, and he came to me in a dream. He was wearing a top hat, raggedy britches and an old Black opera waistcoat. He had on alligator shoes. He was wearing that top hat, too, and was puffing on a cigar. Look like Lincoln’s hat. That stovepipe. He said it was okay to do it. The ‘others’ had approved” (170).

Uncle Robin references Elegba/Esu, the trickster orisa of choices, crossroads, and free will who acts as messenger between humans and gods, allowing people to somewhat determine their own destinies and, “his weapons are trickery and deceit.” Voodoo practitioners call him

Papa Legba, and they usually depict him as described by Robin, down to the cigar. He enjoys games and is represented by game pieces representative of infinite choices such as dice and checkerboards (Edwards and Mason 11-18). Unsurprisingly, someone denied choices their entire life due to enslavement prays to a god who provides endless options. Here, the African spiritual practice allows him freedom and aligns more authentically with his true self. The connection between Uncle Tom syndrome and Uncle Robin strengthens because he was masking his true intentions so masterfully, he hid a strong connection to his African heritage beneath the façade of docility. The only way he could have possibly achieved this was to know this stereotype or expectation and apply it in order to get what he wants. This spiritual African connection to a trickster god helps Uncle Robin become a trickster figure himself, speaking to the importance of considering the spirit in a Womanist Afrocentric pursuit of Black freedom. Though he could read and write, literacy meant nothing without the trickster behavior demonstrated throughout the text that allowed him to use his wisdom, gained from years on the plantation, to wait it out and get everything in the end. The reading and writing would have been useless without the wisdom and knowledge to play his race cards right. This fact sits in stark contrast to Quickskill, but strongly connects him to Bibb. Robin’s behavior and wisdom also makes him the perfect subject for the biography Quickskill writes.

Being a combination of Bibb and Quickskill then, Uncle Robin truly challenges how to attain freedom. Reed sees no issue with running away from slavery, but he also suggests being more understanding of those who perform according to racial expectations. He imagines Uncle

Robin in such a way as to make the reader believe the Uncle Toms around us may be plotting something, seeking to position themselves as favorably as possible before making a move potentially beneficial to everyone. In contrast to Quickskill, Robin accesses freedom in the metaphysical sense first, creating something intangible that no one could take from him. When comparing Uncle Robin to Bibb, who also uses deception and stereotypes to his advantage, he becomes humanized. Furthermore, though Bibb also saw his freedom as based on location,

Bibb’s understanding of race in America and what roles he needed to play not only got him his freedom but saved his life many times over. Yet and still, Bibb does not achieve his goal of freeing his family, giving up after learning his wife was forced into concubinage (Bibb 189), so

Bibb still does not attain his main goal. Ultimately, though many may not agree with using stereotypes to get ahead, Uncle Robin proves that for the enslaved, getting to freedom meant more than running away. It meant having a complex understanding of one’s condition as a slave and how to use that understanding for survival and freedom. White slave owners may have thought they kept their slaves uneducated, but they were very much mistaken.

CHAPTER 3 UPPING THE ANTE: AFROCENTRICITY—THE ANSWER TO AFRO-PESSIMISM

There are many ways to dissect Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Alice Walker’s

Meridian. They share numerous similarities including being canonical African American novels named for their main characters. They both start at their lonely ends, making them full circle narratives. Both characters have dubious educative experiences, Meridian, taking on a fictionalized Spelman College through the novel’s Saxon College and Invisible Man through a surreal Tuskegee University. Both characters botch grade school speeches, revealing their shared mistrust in the speeches’ forced words. Each encounter ambiguous symbols denoting the uncertain status of Black leaders or movements: Invisible Man confronts his school founder’s statue and its veil while Meridian sees a confusing political button. Invisible Man receives mothering from a Black woman named Ms. Marry after a paint factory explosion, like Meridian and Ms. Winter when Meridian experiences paralysis. Lastly, both see the schools as propagators of racist and sexist abuse. In attacking famous HBCUs1, Walker and Ellison say college alone is not the answer. They agree that without effective leaders who holistically consider race and gender, higher education institutions cause soul murder2 and social death for Black learners.

Yet, the texts diverge at their resolutions. Invisible Man’s nameless main character,

Invisible Man (IM), removes himself from society, becomes “invisible,” sneaks into a basement and decides stealing from his white oppressors is the best course of action. He does not desire to contribute to society, choosing instead to simply exist. Conversely, Meridian of Walker’s

1This chapter discusses Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the “civilizing” stage after the end of slavery, not modern HBCU practices.

2Soul murder as defined by Leonard Shengold, “is a descriptive designation for what has happened to people who were abused or neglected as children to the extent they have been largely deprived of their capacity to feel love…. Soul murder is not a diagnosis; it is a descriptive metaphor for a crime, killing the joy in life in another human being” (38)

Meridian, experiences a rebirth after a lengthy sickness that helps her find ways to rally her community to action while still entering solitude. At the book’s close, the reader presumes she either continues the voter registration work she was doing before leaving Truman or embarks on a new project.

Either way, Meridian’s necessary solitude becomes a catalyst for regeneration and healing, allowing for her continued community work. Meridian demonstrates the importance of finding one’s place in the community and discovering ways to help in its uplift rather than only leaving one’s educational institution and isolating oneself from society like IM. The result is

Meridian’s hopeful ending, unlike that of Invisible Man where the protagonist’s isolation leaves him no space for healing or growth, keeping him socially dead. Both books dabble in Afro- pessimism, but while Ellison finds no way to avoid social death, further isolating his character in a basement, Walker makes Meridian a socially engaged community signal amplifier. By making her a communitarian point of contact for isolated community members, Meridian brings them together saying, “‘But that is my value,’ …. ‘Besides, all the people who are as alone as I am will one day gather at the river. We will watch the evening sun go down. And in the darkness maybe we will know the truth.’” (Walker 242).

These similarities (or subversions) are paramount to understanding the call and response between these authors. In this chapter, I will focus on the similarities and subversions in the beginnings of the novels, the speeches, the veil and button, and the endings, beginning with IM and followed by Walker’s response. Comparing major points of similarity between these novels reveals Womanist Afrocentrism to be an answer to the Afro-pessimism adopted in Ellison’s text.

Where Ellison’s IM suffers social death and accepts it until the end of the book, Meridian has a communitarian and vernacular breakthrough that gives her life purpose.

These similarities reveal the answer to the social death implied by Afro-pessimism is the agency provided through Womanist Afrocentrism. This ideology asserts genuine and validating interactions with a community can successfully solve Black people’s problems and better Black people’s social, political, and economic positions. For Meridian, only Womanist Afrocentrism combats the soul murder she faces in the abuses she suffers throughout the plot. Alternatively,

IM never overcomes the soul murder caused by his social-historical position and the effects of social death, leaving him excised from his world’s social fabric. Though both texts address Afro- pessimism, Walker’s offers space for renewal, regeneration, and release while Ellison’s only allows recognition of the crushing defeat of social death’s soul murder and permanent domination.

What is Afro-Pessimism? Afro-pessimism evokes ideas of doom and gloom ideologies existing on a spectral end of theory opposite all forms of Womanism. In order to understand this dichotomization, one must understand what Afro-pessimism really is, but it proves difficult to define. In short, it is the idea of Black peoples’ “social death” starting at slavery (Sexton). Sexton pulls the idea of social death from Orlando Patterson and says the following: “For Patterson, the social death of slavery is comprised of three basic elements: 1) total powerlessness, 2) natal alienation or ‘the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations,’ 3) generalized dishonor, this last element being a direct effect of the previous two” (Patterson

1982). In an interview with Frank B. Wilderson titled "The Position of the Unthought," Saidiya

Hartman says the following about Black life, relegation to the status of property, and consent in the determination of American human subjecthood:

existence in the space of death, where negation is the captive's central possibility for action, whether we think of that as a radical refusal of the terms of the social order or these acts that are sometimes called suicide or self-destruction, but which are really an embrace of death. Ultimately it's about the paradox of agency for

those who are in these extreme circumstances. And basically, there are very few political narratives that can account for that. (187).

Hartman and Sexton believe since Africans arrived in America through the triangle trade, they have experienced social death. These captives were once people in their homelands, but through chattel slavery they were demoted to property. As property, Africans could not be social subjects in America. Through demotion, they “died” and existed outside of American politics and society. This social death created, normalized, and at one point legalized, racism.

Legalization of social death restricted people deemed property from participating in society.

Under this system, only white people qualified for civic participation, because American (white) society was never considered property in American history. Here, Afro-pessimism aligns with critical race theory, which asserts Black people were once slaves and, therefore, outside of the benefits of citizenship and kinship (Spillers 74). Afro-pessimism says Black people have not and cannot ever shake objectification because society will always treat Black people as objects.

For example, since the Women’s Suffrage Movement abandoned the antislavery cause when it no longer served them, white feminism has since continued to leave Black people, particularly Black women, out of the narrative and, therefore, out of social or political subjecthood. Socio political exclusion is also why Black returning WWII veterans were unable to use the G.I. bill effectively, leaving them out of the social narrative of home ownership. In both examples white society discards Black people as soon as white and Black interests no longer align.

Afro-pessimism also sees all progressive efforts for Black equality as futile. This futility applies to individual efforts such as “using the master’s tools” and going to college but struggling to find work due to racism, but it also applies to how white racism undermines large

movements like Black Lives Matter or the Million Man March. An Afro-pessimist presumes no matter the “progress” Black people can never attain full freedom and anti-blackness will prevail.

Consequently, Afro-pessimists are pessimistic about Black American social progress writ large.

While being pessimistic, they still value trying to enact social change for African Americans because they view inaction as absolutely ineffective. However, Afro-pessimists keep expectations for the success of their actions low. Their theory causes them to believe themselves perpetually and infinitely defined by oppressive powers committing soul murder against them with no way out. The Afro-pessimist cannot fight the instrument of soul murder, so they are constantly “being murdered.” By contrast, Womanist Afrocentrism names, locates, and combats the oppressor in order to uplift and rebirth the soul, bringing the spiritualized to the forefront in the search for holistic education and reversing social death.

Keeping these ideological positions in mind makes it easier to see Afro-pessimism in both texts, as well as where Walker resists Afro-pessimism while Ellison embraces it. As stated previously, the Afro-pessimist has no answer, only objections. The Womanist Afrocentric needs answers because they see pessimism as akin to resigning to subjugation. Resignation to subjugation is not an option for them. Ergo, this chapter attempts to dissect the Womanist

Afrocentric answer to the Afro-pessimism of Ellison’s novel.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man follows a young man dealing with white supremacy through the education system. The novel begins at the end with him living in the basement of a whites-only apartment complex, stealing electricity in his room full of a thousand lights. For the rest of the novel, IM relays his story—from graduating as his high school’s valedictorian through the downward spiral that begins with his “social responsibility” speech and the accompanying

Battle Royal. IM then describes his time at college where he becomes disillusioned before being

expelled, solidifying his lack of place in the world. He attempts civil rights work which leaves him disenchanted, followed by his work at the paint factory which explodes, injuring him. This explosion leads him to the basement stealing from the Monopolated Light & Power Company, ending with his mad descent into darkness and social death to the extent he cannot shake the scent of decay from his nostrils, returning back to the beginning of the story. Essentially, the racist assaults he endures on his educational journey result in invisibility through forcing him out of social participation.

The novel starts with a currently invisible IM and the pessimistic ideologies discussed previously. He explains his invisibility is, “a matter of construction of [white people’s] inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality” (3). He further says, “you ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful” (4). From the very beginning of the novel, Ellison paints Black life as hopeless. IM’s invisibility stands in for Black people’s invisibility writ large or, as the second quote implies, Black pain is invisible to white eyes that refuse to see even when Black people “strike,” “curse,” and “swear to make them recognize.”

White society also only sees Black pain, reducing Black people to a monolithic image of extreme suffering used at white people’s discretion. None of the cursing, swearing, or striking, works because Black people, like IM, are not the problem. According to Afro-pessimism, no matter what Black people do as a community or individuals, they remain invisible unless white society decides to change or have better sight.

Also, like most Afro-pessimists, IM intends to do something rather than sitting in inaction. He calls his hole a “warm hole” for “hibernating” and explicitly states living in a hole

does not make him dead. To his credit, the word “hibernating” alludes to eventual emergence.

Moreover, not only does he live in a warm hibernation hole, the hole is full of light, with 1,369 filament bulbs filling the space, which shows IM does necessarily want to be in the dark (Ellison

6-7). Though he appears to make the best of his situation, I argue a hibernation hole still intends to be dark, cold, temporary, and inherently uncomfortable. Invisible Man has worked to make the hole homey, as if he does not intend to leave. He is not just temporarily hiding in this basement; he lives there as a squatter. He has no ownership over or agency in it. Even though IM intends to act, action will mean nothing if he does not shake death’s hold on him by leaving the basement.

Resultantly, even though he intends to leave, the scent of death lingers.

Ellison, in starting at the end with an invisible IM, shows he believes Black people have no choice but social death, especially since white people do the seeing. The cycle of the novel and the character’s life indicates the futility of fighting. The novel begins with his movement towards formal education catalyzed firstly by a speech then a literal battle. Influenced by his

Grandfather’s dying words, IM’s early attitude towards white people was docility:

‘Son, after I’m gone, I want you to keep up the good fight. 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 deconstruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open. (Ellison 16)

IM’s grandfather, and by proxy, IM himself believed interacting with white people in such a way to be revolutionary, which speaks to the ideals of Booker T. Washington. Although Washington did not explicitly state Black people, as a whole, should be overly agreeable, W.E.B. Du Bois, while praising Washington’s legacy, critiques Washington in The Souls of Black Folks:

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission… Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost

completely to overshadow the higher aims of life…. Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races…. Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens…. at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing. (22)

No one, including Du Bois himself, can deny Washington’s strides on behalf of Black people, yet Du Bois still believes Washington’s theoretic practice further solidifies Black people’s social death. Washington’s trying to “overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, [and] agree

‘em to death and deconstruction,” as IM’s grandfather would say, simply reifies the agreeable

Black slave and prevents Black people’s social visibility.

According to Washington’s own words in Up from Slavery, he learned to value service by being Mrs. Ruffner’s (a “Yankee” woman nobody liked but Washington) houseboy for over a year. He discovered she wanted everything kept clean, his complete honesty, and for him to maintain her home. Washington then explains, “from fearing Mrs. Ruffner [he] soon learned to look upon her as one of [his] best friends,” demonstrating a Stockholm syndrome like regard, as fear should not be a part of friendship. She did though support his efforts towards learning (21).

It is a valuable skill for any person to know how to clean, which was Washington’s takeaway from his time with Mrs. Ruffner, but this lesson return in a degrading and nearly beggarly way after his long trip to Hampton University.

Washington arrives at the school dirty from traveling, making the head teacher hesitant to let him into the university. Instead of making a quick decision to dismiss him, they kept

Washington around doing tasks while admitting other students. They used him for free labor like a slave. The worst was when they asked him to sweep the recitation room and he took it upon

himself to not only sweep, but to sweep it three times and then to dust it four, accounting for every bit of dirt when they only asked him to sweep. He says he, “had the feeling that in a large measure [his] future depended upon the impression [he] made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room” (25). He felt his admittance into the school depended on his ability to provide free menial labor rather than his intelligence. This behavior propagated by an HBCU makes it more offensive than other white supremacist assaults because even at an HBCU, where administrators should uplift him, his continued societal position as property is more important, solidifying his social death post-slavery. Washington is not even safe in a Black-serving space. After gaining his freedom, learning all he could, and working, he still ended up a slave for those who intended to

“help,” making social mobility even more difficult. His slave positionality also made his integration into the student body nearly impossible because he was still seen as a slave rather than a student.

Washington’s concept of making oneself useful to white society and supremacy relates to

IM’s overly agreeable grandfather and IM himself, who takes the same stance as he goes forward in his first encounters with white society. His grandfather, like Washington, spoke of meekness as something revolutionary, causing the naive IM to see no issue giving a speech about making friends with white people to a Black audience (Ellison 30).

For IM, agreeableness earns white praise, and an invitation to read his school speech to a room full of white people. The cost of this reward during the most famous scenes of the novel is far worse degradation than Washington endured, and leads to his first social death. This is because, “Though it may appear counter-intuitive, or rather because it is counter-intuitive, this acceptance or affirmation is active; it is a willing or willingness, in other words, to pay whatever social costs accrue to being [B]lack, to inhabiting blackness, to living a [B]lack social life under

the shadow of social death” (Sexton). When IM tells his schoolmates to make friends with white people and be “socially responsible,” he tells them to bend to white people, giving them their desired power. He also tells Black people instead of seeking equality, they should accept and stay where anti-blackness places them— a “death” that keeps them outside of the benefits of

Americanness. IM does not yet understand that white supremacy needs Black people to accept subjugation. His rhetoric earns him an invitation to speak before a white audience—as well as his surprise forced participation in the “Battle Royal”. He unknowingly accepts both.

IM first meets the supposed contradiction of Black social involvement at the battle. Upon his arrival, a white man informs him, “since [he] was to be there anyway [he] might as well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of [his] schoolmates as part of the entertainment.

The battle royal came first.” In this scene, IM first suffers an act of soul murder, and the accompanying social death caused by an abusive white society. The young Black men must beat each other up for white entertainment proving themselves willing and compliant participants in their own and others’ oppression and forced submission. The white audience makes the Black students wear thin white boxing shorts and before they fight, a room full of white men, greedy for their discomfort, sexually humiliate the young Black men by placing a naked dancing blonde white woman with an American flag tattoo on her stomach in front of them. The audience taunts and verbally abuses them whether they look or not, and the young men’s resultant erections— an image of Black male sexuality caused by the naked woman— turn into weapons used against them. They are forced to look at this representation of America, and their erections prove they are attracted to it, but they are then berated and mocked for doing so (19-20). The punishment and psychological abuse received when in accordance with the white gaze and what white

American society says they should strive for, even when taking direction from white people,

further points to the students’ ensuing soul murder and social death, solidifying the invisibility white society requires. Their incapability forces them into stagnation, subjugated and unseen.

After being sexually, socially, and materially humiliated by the crowd of men, IM must literally blindly fight his Black male classmates for the entertainment of white men who agitate the situation from the sidelines. However, the battle does not mark the end of the young Black men’s manipulation. After fighting each other for nothing until bloody and bruised, the crowd of white men force them to crawl on an electrocuted rug for fake coins. Much like IM’s grandfather and Booker T. Washington, the young men must, literally and metaphorically, grovel for nothing. Despite acquiescing to white society’s demands, they still end up socially dead.

Afterwards, mouth full of blood, IM finally gives his speech, much of which the white audience ignores. While speaking, he experiences a kind of Freudian slip where he says “social equality” instead of “social responsibility” and the audience badgers him until he corrects himself, then ignores him again as he spits “responsibility” through a bloody mouth (30-31). In

“Ralph Ellison’s American Democratic Individualism,” Lucas E. Morel writes, “[IM]’s speech at the Battle Royal…is not truly his but merely the ritual utterance of an aspiring Black youth seeking to garner favor with the white movers and shakers of his hometown. Because it’s really the audience’s speech and not [IM]’s, he remains voiceless” (58-59). They ignore him because

Black people operating within the system can be ignored because, once compliant, they become invisible through social death. In giving a speech that puts the oppressor’s words in his mouth, it is impossible for IM to act autonomously. He loses his autonomy, pride, and power, becoming an empty vessel white supremacy can use as an avatar— not a person, but personhood as white society sees fit.

What is more, IM’s Freudian slip garners attention because “equality” with white men implies he deserves something. “Responsibility” means IM must watch his behavior and attitude in order to fit white expectations of him, making it Black people’s responsibility to keep racial tensions down. Bringing back the word “responsibility” has him, once again, speaking the words they desire him to speak and as Morel says, makes him voiceless and invisible, someone ignored because they are not a threat. At the end of the scene, IM gets his briefcase, a previously promised scholarship, and a nightmare he calls a dream where he reads a letter which says, “‘To

Whom It May Concern,’… ‘Keep This Nigger-Boy Running’” (Ellison 33). Even in his dreams,

IM is not safe from anti-blackness. More depressingly, chasing his dreams means the taunting of a “greater power” chasing him. It is Ellison claiming higher education keeps Black people running after the American dream even though that dream is for whites only.

The reader then follows IM to a bastardized Tuskegee University where Ellison criticizes

Booker T. Washington and the school itself for how it positions Black people for white comfort and use. IM then encounters an ambiguous veil either lifted or lowered over the eyes of the statue of a slave. The person lifting or lowering the veil strongly resembles Washington. IM says:

I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding. (Ellison 36)

IM encounters the statue of the founder when he first arrives on campus. Its ambiguity makes a statement about HBCUs in their early years as propagators of assimilationist ideologies. The

Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson explains this plainly when discussing what critical race theory calls “interest convergence” as it pertains to Black schools and their underlying purpose. According to Woodson, “the usual way [then was] for whites to work out

their plans behind closed doors, have them approved by a few Negroes serving nominally on a board, and then employ a white or mixed staff to carry out their program.” Woodson statement positions HBCUs as fronts for white control of Black intellectuality. He goes further to say,

“This is not interracial cooperation. It is merely the ancient idea of calling upon the ‘inferior’ to carry out the orders of the ‘superior’” (16). The veil is also strongly associated with Du Bois who discusses it as a psychological color line continuing white supremacy. Du Bois’ “Veil” works differently for Black and white people. For whites, the Veil solidifies their understanding of white superiority as they structure society around their own perceived supremacy, and the perceived inhumanity of Black people. For Black people, this same Veil prevents them from seeing themselves as fully human, causing them to fall in line with the ideas of white supremacy

(Du Bois 34). Ellison, through the veil, provides imagery for how HBCUs reified Black peoples’ subjugation by acting as the veil preventing Black people from seeing and realizing their full potential.

Once IM is on campus, Ellison introduces Mr. Norton. In Ellison’s use of Mr. Norton, a white benefactor whom the university president, Dr. Bledsoe, wants IM to impress by driving him to the nice parts of the surrounding Black neighborhood, Ellison shows the university’s real leadership: wealthy white liberals. Impressing Mr. Norton determines funding which explains why Dr. Bledsoe is furious when he learns of Mr. Norton’s displeasure. So, as IM considers the veil with uncertainty, he also looks with uncertainty at the university and its hidden white leadership, funding, and agenda. The reader sees here another exposure of afro-pessimism. IM is not sure the purpose of his educational experience, whether it be to uplift or further subjugate him. IM’s uncertainty coincides directly with what Du Bois says about Washington (as quoted

previously). If the statue of the founder and the slave represents Washington, then Ellison and

Du Bois are more in line regarding Tuskegee during the time of the novel.

Also, if the president represents the founder’s ideals, then Dr. Bledsoe is the most extreme caricature of Washington Ellison could create. Bledsoe, much like Washington, as the president of an HBCU that has white benefactors knows, “that he has more to gain by leaving white supremacy unchallenged,” so he, “creates a system designed to project the illusion of open-ended possibility, though it is predicated on the notion that Black achievement should remain circumscribed” (Beavers 206). Du Bois has already dissected this problem as it relates to

Tuskegee and similar institutions:

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that [Black] people give up, at least for the present, three things,— …political power, …insistence on civil rights, [and] higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth…. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro. (Du Bois 22)

Ultimately, Du Bois believes Washington turns Negroes into intelligent objects capable of filling white needs, meaning also supporting their objectification and melding their interest with white supremacy. By transitive property, Du Bois’s critique also applies to Bledsoe. In relating Bledsoe to Washington and claiming Washington maintains white supremacy, Ellison says Bledsoe’s position as university president depends on white supremacy and its demand for order and compliance. He must hide his connection with white liberal desires to allow for his continued accumulation of wealth and power. In other words, Bledsoe (and Washington), appears to be a

racial sellout and his need for control makes him delusional about his own level of power.

Bledsoe goes on to say he will, like the slave who becomes the overseer, act in whatever way necessary to protect white supremacy’s hold on the institution, solidifying the social death of everything and everyone who does not comply with white supremacy and American capitalism.

Simultaneously, he affirms the hopelessness of the situation,

“The white folks tell everybody what to think—except men like me. I tell them; that’s my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about.… Well that’s the way it is. It’s a nasty deal and I don’t always like it myself…. I didn’t make it, and I know that I can’t change it. But I’ve made my place in it and I’ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am.” (Ellison 143)

Bledsoe reveals himself as a stand-in for white supremacy. The control he thinks he has is extremely limited because white benefactors control him. Bledsoe has minimal agency and, because he is just a stand-in, when he tells IM “You don’t exist,” (143) he may as well be saying it to himself.

Adding further to Bledsoe’s complacency with white supremacy, he calls IM “nigger” while demanding his honesty (139). He uses the slur again when he says, “‘I had to be strong and purposeful to get where I am. I had to wait and plan and lick around … Yes, I had to act the nigger!’” (143).3 Here, the reader sees Ellison’s final push to create the connection between

Washington and Bledsoe because like Bledsoe, Washington’s, “insistence on the correctness of his Tuskegee method and on the unconditional acceptance of that method effectively stifled the emergence of new ideas. In this way, [Washington] became an oppressor” (Chennault 130).

Bledsoe’s words are certainly oppressive and admonish deviation from the university’s methods.

In only seeing one way of doing things, both Washington and Bledsoe further limit Black

3Reminiscent of Uncle Robin “acting” and waiting for Swille to die but with a self-hating angle

potential where white people can see unlimited possibilities (Chennault 130). These limitations keep Black people from attaining personhood and therefore still in a socially dead space. Bledsoe then dismisses IM from the school with his “blessing” and a letter he puts into the briefcase, the same one he received from the battle, his earlier traumatic experience with white people. For IM, the briefcase, an image of the white American middle-class working man, simply builds a case against the university and upholding whiteness as a means for progress.

For IM, the book starts and finishes in an isolated state. At the end of the penultimate chapter, after his expulsion, inability to find work (because Dr. Bledsoe wrote a non- recommendation letter), participation in a dubious Black radicals movement, and severe injury in a paint factory explosion, he leaves everyone, even Miss Mary, behind saying:

And now I realized that I couldn’t return to Mary’s, or to any part of my old life. I could approach it only from the outside, and I had been as invisible to Mary as I had been to the Brotherhood. No, I couldn’t return to Mary’s, or to the campus, or to the Brotherhood, or home. I could only move ahead or stay here, underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out. Here, at least, I could try to think things out in peace, or, if not in peace, in quiet. I would take up residence underground. The end was in the beginning. (571)

Just before this point, IM described waking from a dream where he, “awoke in the blackness…. simply lay there as though paralyzed” (570). Ending IM’s narrative paralyzed with only the epilogue left to close out the book leaves no time for IM to regain sight. Ellison, after putting IM through harrowing racial experiences, demonstrates IM’s permanent soul murder and social death by placing him in a mental space that makes movement impossible. By doing so at the book’s close and then starting the book in this same place, Ellison makes a statement about all Black people: they can never lift themselves from their social death and soul murder. They will stay in the basement.

The ominous statement, “the end was in the beginning” signifies two things for IM. First, it tells his audience the literal end of the narrative is also the beginning. The statement also points to the end, where he and all other Black people remain, no further than the socially dead state of slavery, which is where Afro-pessimists believe everything starts and ends for Black people who experienced the slave trade. In the epilogue, he states, “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact. What else could I have done?” (572). According to IM, he always existed in a hole. He was born in and living in this whole and all the things that happened to him led to this realization. He then discusses the moment he leaves his basement:

I must shake off the old skin and come up for breath. There’s a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell either of death or of spring—I hope of spring. But don’t let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me. And if nothing more, invisibility has taught my nose to classify the stenches of death. (580)

Entering the hopefulness of springtime, Invisible Man still smells death, indicating he and

“thee” (the reader and the larger Black community, in particular) always carry death, even if they hope for spring. This belief about Black people post-slavery leaves the community with nothing to do but “rave” (581). IM ends his memoir telling everyone he just wanted to express his thoughts—which leads nowhere, but at least he has hope.

Alice Walker’s Meridian, a book about a young girl forced to face a world seeking to oppress her for her gender and race, offers a subversive response. Meridian, the title character, goes through many trials in her attempt at education. The oppression she faces causes her to react both mentally and physically as she enters bouts of paralysis and blindness caused by extreme sickness and psychophysical response. In the end, Meridian ends up dropping out and committing herself fully to bridge leadership. In that position, she finds room for seclusion and

regeneration, ultimately having a large impact on her community through her voter registration drive and fearlessness in facing down oppressive forces.

For Womanist Afrocentricity, Meridian acts as a corrective for IM’s philosophy, so much so, her life responds to Ellison point for point. Meridian, the creative and intellectual product of a Womanist, takes a much more intersectional approach to views on education. She also looks at how women can contribute to the conversation about community uplift while still holistically considering Black men, showing how the revitalizing practice Meridian takes up applies to all people. In so doing, Walker shows us Meridian’s power from the very onset.

In the beginning of the novel, Walker depicts Meridian staring down a tank in protest of the segregation forced on the poor Black community— children in particular— who can only see a visiting circus exhibit one day a week because the rest of the week is white’s only. Standing between white and Black society and facing a militarized police force, Meridian, in placing herself right at the divide, makes herself visible, large, and commanding. One onlooker, speaking with Meridian’s ex-boyfriend Truman Held, exclaims, “‘she thinks she’s God… or else she just ain’t all there. I think she ain’t all there myself’” (Walker 7).

Walker does several things differently at the start of her novel. First, she places Meridian as a visible and active community member with a fearless position on protecting and advocating for Black people. She, like IM, acts mostly alone, the Black community around her being, “still- as-death” (6), a comparison to the unshakable “stench of death” surrounding IM at the end of

Invisible Man. Though Walker insinuates the Black community around Meridian is dead, while the white community is “bright” (6), Meridian does not allow the surrounding death to keep her from acting on behalf of her community. Instead, Meridian starts the novel above ground

fighting for Black children, a sign of life and continuing generations, implying Black people are not socially dead, but instead growing and vibrant.

The biggest takeaway from this moment is Meridian’s fearlessness in staring down the militarized police force. While Meridian faces the police and their tank, her frail form an unwavering display of mental fortitude, the children move forward without resistance and enter the circus exhibit (8). Walker shows the fight Black people take on is not necessarily for themselves, but for future generations. Where IM seems disenchanted because he cannot reap the immediate results of his work, Meridian, though drained, plays the long game with hopes the effect will be apparent in the future.

In the beginning, the reader also gets a glimpse of Meridian’s home, which Truman describes as a “cell” (Walker 9). Her house is unfurnished except for a sleeping bag, and she covered the walls with the discouraging words of her mother and ex-best friend who do not see value in Meridian’s work. When she leaves the faceoff, four men bring her home, “hoisted across their shoulders exactly as they would carry a coffin, her eyes closed, barely breathing, arms folded across her chest, legs straight” (10). Walker turns Meridian into a much more obvious representation of death than IM because at this point in the novel, though only the beginning, she has already endured several assaults of soul murder caused by misogynoir. Every obstacle she faces for her community is another assault forcing her into solitude for her own regeneration.

Truman may call her little home a cell, but he does not realize it serves a purpose. IM retreats into his basement with no intent to leave. He covers the walls in lights because he lives below ground like a dead, buried body in a sunless place. IM has accepted social death and puts himself in a space with no room for growth or comfort because dead people do not need those

things. Meridian’s home serves a different purpose. She covered the walls with discouraging letters instead of lightbulbs, and she only has a sleeping bag. She does, however, have a window.

Her home reveals she does not intend to spend much time there. She uses her home for health and revitalization. It is intentionally sparse and uncomfortable because it is temporary. Her home is also in a space where the community values her work and accepts her. She does not have to force her presence like IM, squatting in the basement of the whites-only complex. Her community welcomes her. Meridian having this home demonstrates stability, ownership, and agency but also visibility and freedom of movement. By contrast, IM is trapped by his social death— incapable of owning anything, going anywhere, or being part of any community.

In the chapter “Awakening,” which implies she was asleep in previous chapters, Meridian decides to join the Civil Rights struggle as a typist. Early in the chapter, Walker presents

Meridian’s potential disillusionment with this choice when she describes buttons worn by a young man the reader soon learns is Meridian’s future ex-boyfriend—Truman Held: She wanted buttons like that, though. When he came closer she especially liked the large one that showed a

[Black] hand and a white hand shaking, although since the colors were flat the hands did not seem, on closer inspection, to be shaking at all; they seemed to be merely touching palms, or in the act of sliding away from each other (78). The button scene evokes the veil scene from

Invisible Man. For Meridian, the ambiguity of these Black and white hands is, like IM’s meek grandfather, either a lukewarm coming together of white and Black people, or a falling apart.

Considering someone describes the “Movement” as “crazy people'' who are trying to integrate the races, the button must intend to show togetherness (83) even though that intent is unclear to

Meridian.

Furthermore, Mr. Yateson makes a similar comparison to Dr. Bledsoe when he likens his

Civil Rights work to a “plant” and Meridian, a “kind of ‘product’ his plant could produce,” while discussing his decision to send her to school. He also makes it clear she, “might or might not be worthy,” because, “nice girls did not become pregnant in high school— and that he expected her to set a high moral standard” (83). Products must have mass consumer appeal and be usable. As the Afro-pessimist would assume, Mr. Yateson seeing her as a product with potential appeal to whiteness demonstrates how liberal agendas, even when designed for Black people, still work in the interest of the majority, i.e., white people. Ultimately, these agendas either leave Black people socially dead or behind all together.1

The misogynoir2 Meridian faces while attending Saxon College solidifies the idea higher- ed institutions are structures of white supremacy. The chapter describing her first year at Saxon

College, “The Driven Snow,” opens with a poem, “We are as chaste and pure as/the driven snow./ We watch our manners, speech/ and dress just so;/ And in our hearts we carry our/greatest fame/That we are blessed to perpetuate/the Saxon name!” (92). Walker is intentional in opening the chapter with this poem. Snow is white. The poem relating the women to pure white snow directly relates them to whiteness, assimilation, and a denial of self for the benefit of the white heteropatriarchy.

Here, Walker addresses IM’s inability to determine the veil’s purpose on the statue. The button and song combined help solidify the uneasiness of Meridian’s educative journey. The

1The demonization of these two characters (Bledsoe and Yateson) represents an ideological shift. Where the most successful character of Flight to Canada, Uncle Robin, is praised for acting servile to trick his master of his wealth, Mr. Yateson and Dr. Bledsoe are villainized for essentially the same behavior. Walker and Ellison are also writing through rising civil rights movements and racial/gendered tensions.

2The intersectional oppression of sexism and racism experienced by Black women.

civil rights organization sends her to school, and both Saxon College and Mr. Yateson, much like

Dr. Bledsoe, uphold the position of white supremacy in their pursuit of white acceptance. In fact,

Meridian suffers more because she not only faces racism, but intraracial misogyny, explaining why the only breaks Meridian gets are when she enters paralysis. She can get away from white people, but she cannot fully escape men unless she dies.

Right after the opening of the chapter, the narrator says, “Of course it was kept secret from everyone that Meridian had been married and divorced and had had a child. It was assumed that Saxon young ladies were, by definition, virgins. They were treated always as if they were thirteen years old” (93). It is important to remember for most of Meridian’s early life she faces intraracial oppression. She feels pressure to withhold information about herself from other Black women to conform to heteropatriarchal ideas of chastity and virginity.

Walker writes, “In fact, Meridian and the other students felt they had two enemies:

Saxon, which wanted them to become something—ladies—that was already obsolete, and the larger more deadly enemy, white racist society. It was not unusual for students to break down under the pressures caused by the two” (95). Essentially, the only options for these students were: conform or leave. Walker details the story of a young woman violently attacked by white racists while protesting before being just as violently berated for fraternizing with her boyfriend after visiting hours. These two events cause so much mental anguish she drops out of school for the semester. This response is consistent with research conducted by Eric Wesselmann and

Kipling Williams on ostracism and pressure to conform, which states, “when individuals detect they are being rejected or ignored, they immediately experience myriad negative outcomes, such as pain, negative affect, threatened psychological needs, and physiological outcomes common when one perceives a threat” (696). I cannot genuinely claim the young woman in the metastory

experienced “ostracization” per se or being ignored, but the interacial abuse she experienced at the protest, plus the clear othering and potential ostracism caused by spending unapproved time with her boyfriend results in an extreme psychological impact. Her reacting to the loss of social standing as a “lady” and acceptance in the intraracial group causes this negative response. Her response is mild compared to Meridian who the narrator says, as a “former wife and mother, already felt herself to be flying under false colors as an ‘innocent’ Saxon student” (95).

This is the first clue Meridian’s past will cause her suffering at Saxon. In the chapter

“Recurring Dream,” Walker opens up with a social death refrain of, “She dreamed she was a character in a novel and that her existence presented an insoluble problem, one that would be solved only by her death at the end” (119). This is a direct response to IM whose main character can only solve his problem through his social death. Meridian’s existence also poses an

“insoluble” problem as she cannot unbecome a teenage mother so she will always be a problem at an institution that desires chastity. She does not belong there, and Saxon constantly reminds her as she works twice as hard to convince teachers and herself, she belongs. She is on the same trajectory as IM. There are two things signifying her misplacement at Saxon: the Wild Child and her own illness that shows her at the edge of a mental or physical break. The Wild Child comes as a representation of her ultimate untamable presence on campus, a quality that must die for her to exist cohesively with Saxon’s basic principles.

The Wild Child, or Wile Chile, was a homeless and dirty child discovered dumpster diving for food and clothing with no known parents. Wild Child ends up pregnant at what everyone assumes to be thirteen, an irony considering Meridian’s assertion the school desires to view the women as chaste and childlike (93). She did not know how to use a fork and she smelled rancid. Meridian, seeing a need to care for her, attempts to bring her on campus by using

a makeshift leash to maintain a hold on her. The students and Meridian’s dorm mother instantly reject Wild Child. Before Meridian could find a place for Wild Child to stay, Wild Child runs away and a car hits her, resulting in her death. Upon being denied the right to a funeral at the campus church, a riot breaks out for the first time at Saxon (23-39). The Wild Child is the untamed and unwanted aspects of Meridian’s self. Her dormmates consider Meridian as, “deviate in the honors house: there because of her brilliance but only tolerated because it was clear she was one, too, on whom true Ladyhood would never be conferred” (27). The Wild Child existed as the feral incarnation of all those “deviate” things, not even allowed a proper funeral at Saxon.

Distancing Meridian from “untamed” parts of herself to garner acceptance attempts to turn her into an automaton amenable to misogynistic forces and social death. Her disassociation causes mental and physical distress, which leaves her bedridden. After enduring gender and race based sexual, verbal, and physical assaults from Black and white men and women, she falls into one of many bouts of paralysis and blindness and loses her appetite. It takes Miss Winter, a

Black woman who understands her as someone from the same hometown, to heal her.

Here is a greater connection to IM and his relationship with schooling. Miss Winter, the woman who helps with Meridian’s rejuvenation, first meets her after Meridian abruptly stopped talking mid speech and walked off stage declaring she no longer believed her speech about the constitution and “The American Way of Life” (125). Here, Walker responds to IM’s social equality slip. At this moment, Miss Winter says, “‘It’s the same one they made me learn when I was here,’… ‘and it’s no more true now than it was then’” (127). Meridian’s mentor encourages her to stop performing for the white gaze, unlike IM’s grandfather. She has an older Black woman tell her upholding white society (supremacy) never provides truth for Black people. As a result, Meridian sees American institutions as façades from an early age and learns to resist them

while Invisible Man gets indoctrinated into the American education institution. Miss Winter prepared Meridian for survival, where IM’s grandfather prepared him for submission. The difference between them is a maternal figure’s guiding hand standing in for Meridian’s abusive mother, leading her in the right direction. The helpful presence of Miss Winter more obviously demonstrates Womanist Afrocentrism through the connection between Black women and communal cross generational care which is far more important for a Black woman’s well-being and education than submitting one’s self to the white supremacist school system.

Eventually, Meridian and Truman leave college to pursue community outreach and voter registration while maintaining the solitude necessary for their wellbeing. Meridian practices a form of outreach called “bridge leadership” and, “Walker… shows bridge leadership as raising people’s awareness of both the personal and the political stakes of the civil rights movement, and

Meridian’s personal and political awareness as developing in tandem with the movement”

(Patterson 73). Of note, bridge leadership’s conception of the intermingling between the personal and political aligns with Womanist Afrocentrism. Robert Patterson says, “If Meridian’s bridge activities of canvassing neighborhoods to assess people’s needs, registering them to vote, and promoting literacy do not exemplify a form of leadership that compels African Americans to

‘realize their potential,’ it is unclear what would” (74), and her form of activism does indeed activate potential.

In the chapters titled “Travels,” “Treasure,” and, “Pilgrimage,” Walker shows the value of Meridian’s outreach and provides different “answers” to community issues. The first is an elderly couple: currently sick Agnes and recently fired Johnny. Here, Walker makes a direct reference to IM and his basement when describing Johnny’s previous job. Johnny made copper wire; and his employers were intent on them focusing on work, so much so Johnny’s desire to

see out the window in front of him surpassed his desire for work. Agnes says, “‘But my Johnny said he wasn’t no mule to be wearing blinders. He wanted to see a little bit of grass, a little bit of sky. It was bad enough being buried in the basement over there, but they wanted to even keep out the sun” [emphasis added] (Walker 224). Johnny refused to be in a state where he could not see outside of his situation to somewhere better than the basement. After quitting, Johnny began making “logs” out of rolled up newspapers and selling them cheap to the community and expensive outside of it. Through this entrepreneurship, he embodies economic principles outlined by Washington and demonstrates one answer to problems facing the Black community—enterprise—creating businesses for the growth and development of the Black dollar and economic power.

Meridian first demonstrates effective bridge leadership by volunteering to help Johnny dry out and roll up newspapers for more logs. When they are finally leaving, Walker puts the reader in the middle of a conversation between Meridian and Johnny where he says, “What good is the vote, if we don’t own nothing?” (225). Meridian explains all the things gained from voting and how it lets people voice their opinions, overcoming social death and invisibility. Even without his promise to register, Meridian still saw value in their personal lives, bringing them food, which caused Johnny to change his mind after some days, not only registering, but also returning the favor by bringing them six rabbits he caught and skinned himself (226).

In her second act of bridge leadership, Meridian visits Misses Margret and Lucille

Treasure. The Treasure sisters live alone on a plantation that provides everything for them, keeping them from having to go into town unless they need something they cannot produce themselves. Margret Treasure— henceforth, the only sister called Miss Treasure— burns her furniture to cleanse her bedroom because she thinks she defiled it after losing her virginity and,

allegedly, becoming pregnant at sixty-nine. Meridian and Truman help her push the heavy bed into the yard and then, using compassion to understand Miss Margret— instead of telling her she obviously cannot be pregnant because of her age— Meridian offers to bring her to town for a pregnancy test. Meridian shows Miss Margret compassion rather than judgement, leading to

Miss Margret’s voter registration (227-232). By the end of the chapter, the reader has another answer: self-sufficiency through producing what you need on land you own. Meridian’s voter registration outreach was so successful it resulted in enough additional votes to force the city to fill a problematic trench mentioned earlier in the novel.

In the last chapter titled “Release” the reader sees Meridian through Truman’s eyes described as resurrected from the dead, “She was strong enough to go and owned nothing to pack. She had discarded her cap, and the soft wool of her newly grown hair framed her thin, resolute face. His first thought was of Lazarus, but then he tried to recall someone less passive, who had raised himself without help. Meridian would return to the world cleansed of sickness”

(241). Unlike IM, who still endures social death after leaving the basement, Meridian, leaves her metaphorical tomb revitalized. In this final chapter, when she leaves Truman behind and continues to Chicokema where the reader first encounters her at the beginning of the book, she is strong enough to stare down a tank (6).

In the end, Meridian says, “all the people who are as alone as I am will one day gather at the river” (242) signifying being alone is not a permanent state for her because she will continue her method of outreach and, “target areas in the Deep South that other organizations, including the NAACP effectively ignored” (Patterson 78). These secluded areas would include places like

Miss Treasure’s plantation and Agnes and Johnny’s home. If a secluded person reaches these

places, they are no longer alone, creating a force and community of their own. Therefore,

Meridian uses her solitude as a productive way of bringing people together.

Meridian’s intense focus on the uplift of the Black community allows them to come together for change. In this way, Womanist Afrocentrism becomes the crux of Meridian’s bridge leadership. She goes into these communities and engages with their personal lives as a change agent, using the effect she has by being communitarian to create local political change. With a holistic community based strategy, her target demographic, the Black community, not only feels more politically engaged with issues that impact them, but also more engaged with their leader, making her part of a network of people coming together rather than a figure placed on a pedestal.

Meridian’s “boots on the ground” approach is the difference between Meridian and Invisible

Man. Meridian, a Black woman who works both inside and outside of the community to change their circumstances, comes out stronger at the end of her narrative than IM, who allows oppression to cause permanent social death.

Simultaneously, Walker leaves Truman in Meridian’s home in what can easily become the same isolated state as IM, but Meridian does not abandon him because all forms of

Womanism see men as integral to and beneficiaries of the communitarian aspects of Womanism and its offshoots. On the contrary, as her final response to Ellison, Walker allows Truman the space Meridian made for herself, so he, too, can fully recover. Healing is Walker’s suggestion to the tired, beat down, and defeated IM.

In closing, both authors have similar issues with the American institution of higher education. They both hate the process of indoctrination HBCU participated in during their earliest years. Both depict the institutions under scrutiny as bastions of white liberal agendas and

white supremacy. They both believe these institutions neglect their students’ Blackness and in

Walker’s case, also their femaleness, stifling their potential as change makers. Both also see a need to shake, somehow, the social death of blackness. These texts give the reader two options.

In Ellison’s, the available choice is to allow oneself to descend into the “basement” and die, also allowing the white liberal agenda of higher education to win. This option leaves one susceptible to soul murder and social death that prevents forward movement. Meridian proposes a different option. It suggests instead of resigning to social death, one can refuse to allow onlookers to determine one’s humanity. Through Meridian’s life, Walker demonstrates what happens when

Womanist Afrocentrists decide to focus on defining humanity for themselves. Meridian’s mindset helps her resist the soul murder and social death of Saxon College through self- determination to reach self-actualization.

Ultimately, Meridian asks readers to focus not on who they cannot see because of something wrong with their inner eye, but instead she asks readers to focus on channeling that energy into uplifting the community and the self, working to strengthen the entire community in ways accessible to people of all educational levels. Institutions of higher learning are ineffective if they do not have holistic community outreach and uplift agendas. These institutions instead become isolating and humiliating. It is a person’s determination to try for the best possible outcome that keeps them motivated. That is what Meridian’s Womanist Afrocentric approach provides as she works alongside the people she intends to— and succeeds in—uplifting. Her story shows it does not take a degree to do so.

CHAPTER 4 HERE: HOW AFROCENTRICITY RELEASES CELIE FROM OPPRESSION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF SELF

“I'm pore, I’m Black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.”

—Alice Walker The Color Purple

For Alice Walker, self-advocacy is important to the well-being of Black female characters navigating the realm of white people and men (both Black and white) while trying to reach the preverbal mountain top of Womanist Afrocentric empowerment, which often comes from both formal education and self-knowledge. In The Color Purple (TCP), the protagonist,

Celie, does her best to overcome Black male oppression as designed through the white heteropatriarchy, which diminishes her sexually, physically, and psychologically, with Celie practically becoming a slave until Shug and Nettie set her free. The reader then realizes it is a combination of the Womanist knowledge Shug offers and Nettie’s Afrocentric letters that allow

Celie to broaden her self-knowledge for liberation from her husband Albert’s oppression (called

Mr._____ throughout).

This chapter argues through Womanist Afrocentricity Celie overcomes her life of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse at the hands of Mr._____ and sees herself as a subject in her own narrative. She does this by unlearning and rejecting oppressive ideologies and practices such as the white heteropatriarchal God, The Cult of True Womanhood, and The Angel of the House with Shug’s help, and by gaining Afrocentric knowledge through her sister Nettie. With these things working together, she confronts her oppressor and finds freedom.

Ultimately, Celie’s access to Nettie’s letters and eventual self-ownership with Shug’s help frees her by connecting her with the African diaspora through the discovery of her children

being in Africa, and by connecting her with her own feminine power. This self-knowledge introduces a Womanist Afrocentric perspective, allowing Celie to connect to an emancipating origin only possible through reading and writing, adding a liberatory element to Celie’s knowledge. Through Celie, the reader sees emancipatory potential of Womanist Afrocentric education for anyone who engages it.

Walker said of womanism: “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” (Walker, In

Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose). Walker scholar, Dr. Debra Walker King, describes this relationship as an umbrella where Womanism is an encapsulating overarching ideology with all other human/civil rights movements beneath it. The all-encompassing quality of Womanism put it in conversation with Afrocentricity creates what I call Womanist

Afrocentrism as discussed previously. Understanding these connections to the novel is important because Walker, in TCP, speaks on experiences all women can have, such as various abuses including rape and domestic violence, and of course, in terms of Black women, racism. This positions TCP as the first to fully address womanism and its usefulness in how we understand and address the human condition. In naming the novel The Color Purple, Walker says this novel is womanism because the book, like the color itself, addresses the full human condition as demonstrated through Celie and other characters in the novel. The title also directly relates to her statement about purple and lavender, making TCP representative of the overarching purple of womanism. Walker accomplishes making TCP as all-encompassing as Womanism through the epistolary novel style.

Ping Zhou defines the epistolary novel as, “a novel written in the form of a series of letters exchanged among the characters of the story” (287). This definition narratively categorizes TCP, making Celie, Nettie, and God (also Shug as a conduit) the main characters

involved in Celie’s letter-writing process. The back and forth letters between Celie and Nettie and Celie’s unanswered prayer-letters to God, provide a better idea of Celie’s emotional and psychological state because the form, “[creates] a portrait” of a character. In TCP, we get a full portrait of Celie and how Celie’s story defines her (Zhou 287).

Owing to the epistolary style, the novel demonstrates Celie’s development as her own subject and shows the progress of her self-study as she evolves into an interesting subject rather than a passive object. The fact TCP includes Nettie and Celie’s letters to one another in chronological order entails the collection developed as or after she left Mr._____. As she gains necessary self-knowledge, her book grows and becomes an organized textbook about herself.

Thus, the book itself shows Celie’s understanding of her own objectification through self- observation. The letters become something she can look back on to celebrate her growth as well as something she can pass down to other women as cautionary or inspirational messaging.

The first fifty letters begin when Celie is fourteen and are from Celie to God as meditative prayer-letters expressing her pain and asking for answers. Her first prayer-letter says,

“Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.” She then continues with a description of when she first experiences rape at the hands of her stepfather who demands she take the place of her ailing mother saying, “You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” (Walker 1).

The prayer-letter format was not a new technique when Walker adopted it, but through it, she subverts the idea of a benevolent God from the very beginning of the novel by creating one who ignores Celie. Celie’s story begins with presumably her first rape and introduction to what men think womanhood means in the world of the book. Rape is her coming of age ritual and treated as casually as her first period with the statement, “Maybe you can give me a sign letting

me know what is happening to me” (Walker 1). The casual tone normalizes rape for her and shows sex as something that happens to women, not something in which they actively participate. In fact, Celie’s God not only ignores the prayers of a rape victim, but is complicit in the act, with the epigraph of the book being her stepfather saying, “You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy” (1). God is the only one she can tell because God does nothing about it, and God’s inaction continues throughout the book. For TCP, girls become women at the hands of men who see them as interchangeable, replaceable sexual objects, not at the hands of nature or life experience.

In short, when Celie asks God about what is happening to her, she is asking for an explanation for her suffering, one he will not give her. Celie’s seemingly permanent traumatic experience of oppression through racism, rape, and male domination shows severe circumstances for Celie, who needs God’s guidance to help her make sense of and escape her oppression.

Through Celie, Walker displays the long-standing obstacles faced by Black girls whom society does not allow to be girls. Walker’s intentionality allows Celie to speak even more to Black women readers as Walker addresses aspects of childhood usually left out of idealized, white audience assuming narratives because only Black girl children must cope with extensive experiences with racism and misogynoir. Notably, Celie is in this position because of her father’s lynching, which left her mother in need of a man to provide for their family and resultantly,

Celie under the supervision of her own rapist. If Celie's father did not fall victim to the racism that led to his murder, she likely also would not have faced rape in her home, adding more intersectional layers to Celie’s trauma. It also further connects Celie’s trauma with the racism faced by the entire community, demonstrating the interconnectedness of community problems.

Walker also uses naming to address the oppressor as a universal figure. Throughout TCP

Celie hardly calls her husband by his given name. Instead, she addresses him as “Mr._____,” and

Mr.______could be any man. He represents the broader misogynistic attitudes forcing Celie to be an object for the male world to act upon rather than a subject who makes her own decisions.

The idea of the nameless oppressor puts Celie and Mr. _____’s relationship in the same light as the master/enslaved relationship because Celie is, in this coupling, a slave to Mr. _____’s needs and wants. In his mind, she requires abuse (“discipline”) to control her, much like a slave on a plantation broken through physical, emotional, psychological, and verbal assault. Though Celie will only call Albert “Mr._____”, many “Mr. _____s” appear in the novel including Harpo, the officer who rapes Squeak, and the pastor who adopted Celie’s children (also called Mr._____ by his wife.) Mr. _____’s father is one as well and shows where her husband’s oppressive ideologies originate. All these Mr. _____s reveal not just Celie, but all the novel’s women face misogynoir.

The most important aspect of the epistolary novel form to the crux of this chapter is how it demonstrates a character’s being able to read and write. For Celie, reading and writing prove key to her accessing the emancipatory potential of the letters. Through learning to read and write, she eventually finds release from oppression she faces at the hands of men in her life and the world at large. Walker first hints towards this with the juxtaposition of Nettie and Celie’s lives.

Nettie, having attended school and learned to read and write, was able to eventually leave their community and go to Africa as a missionary assistant. It is Nettie's education that allowed her to escape the oppression of forced marriage to someone of her stepfather’s choosing, unlike Celie, who is undereducated and stuck in an oppressive cycle.

Her escape, catalyzed through education, gives her possibilities and freedom. Her move to Africa then becomes Afrocentric by showing Nettie embrace Africa as her origin as the final step to mental and physical freedom. Nettie’s literacy helps her process what she learns from her time in Africa. Ultimately, Nettie’s education makes it possible for her to reach through the letters and free Celie by telling Celie about Africa and her thriving children. This sankofic, communitarian act only works if Celie attains literacy making reading and writing her only way of accessing the Womanist Afrocentric knowledge written in Nettie’s letters. Literacy is paramount to Celie’s development as an emancipated person; without it, she is incapable of truly utilizing the letters. In fact, Celie’s life completely changes through literacy, and displaying that through epistolary storytelling lets readers see her journey and development through her eyes.

With this knowledge (as well as other things discussed later) Celie eventually leaves Mr._____ and begins life as a free Black woman rather than remaining stagnant under Mr._____’s domination. One could argue receiving Nettie’s letters encourages Celie to learn to read effectively, so Mr.____’s withholding the letters also keeps Celie from being motivated to learn to read at all, causing her to limit her own potential. After all, if nobody writes to her, why should she learn to read? Still, to accomplish this and be fully open to the knowledge she receives she first must unlearn self-subjugation.

Not surprisingly, Mr._____ begins effectively oppressing Celie as soon as they marry. At the start of the novel, Celie feels the hopelessness of her situation with Mr._____ and his family.

Her sister-in-law, Kate, tells her, “You got to fight them, Celie…. I can’t do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself,” of which she says, “I don’t say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive” (21).

Mr._____ abuses Celie to the point she thinks her sister died because she fought back and ran

away, something only possible because Mr._____ keeps Nettie’s letters hidden from Celie. Even without knowing how to read, receiving the letters would let Celie know Nettie is alive. The conditioning that leaving means death is like the “seasoning” (breaking in slaves discussed in full later) done on plantations through publicly punishing slaves to prevent others from trying to run away. If Celie had Nettie’s letters from the beginning, conditioning her would not have worked because Celie would have known Nettie was living in Africa, giving her hope. It is therefore beneficial and easier for Mr._____ to effectively cut Celie down if she believes Nettie is dead.

Ultimately, withholding information and keeping Celie uninformed, makes Celie into the woman

Mr._____ and other men need her to be.

Celie’s extreme abuse results in an “Uncle Tom” like manner towards other women, particularly Sofia, to gain favor with and remain safe from men. In the Black community, the term “pick-me”1 has emerged as a way to describe women who cosign male oppression for favor or being “picked”. Celie displays this pick-me behavior when Harpo, Sofia’s husband, complains about her independent ways. Harpo cannot figure out how to make Sophia submit, so Celie writes:

I like Sofia, but she don’t act like me at all. If she talking when Harpo and Mr._____ come in the room, she keep right on. If they ast her where something at, she say she don’t know. Keep talking.

I think about this when Harpo ast me what he ought to do to her to make her mind…. I think about how every time I jump when Mr._____ call me, she look surprise. And like she pity me.

Beat her. I say. (35-36)

1This is similar to Uncle Tom Syndrome, which according to Derald Wing Sue in Multicultural Social Work Practice, is a behavioral adaptation used by the oppressed for safety. See chapter, “When Uncle Tomming Goes Right” for full description.

This passage shows Celie is clearly jealous of Sophia’s courage to fight back against those who seek to undermine her free will. She has also bought into her submissive role due to having the desire to fight physically and mentally beaten out of her. This abuse causes her to then contribute to the abuse and oppression of another woman because she feels Sofia does not act like a wife/woman according to the idea of womanhood the heteropatriarchy, and its God, conditioned her to follow. Celie suffers continued indoctrination that forces her to change through learning lessons important to her oppressors, akin to how a fear-filled slave changes their behavior to avoid punishment. In this way, slave as Black and slave as woman coincide, and Sofia is not a good slave of either kind while Celie has internalized docility and obedience.

This also shows Celie buying the “Angel of the House” ideology that forces women to make themselves meek and small for men’s favor and avoiding potential punishment and societal shunning. The term “Angel of the House” comes from the novel Angle of the House where

Coventry Patmore describes his wife Emily’s, “devotion to his happiness… subservience to his wishes, and … commitment to creating and maintaining the home as a haven,” which over time became the idealistic wife and what other wives should strive for (Crouse-Dick 441-42). The

“wife as Angel” idea is subversive religious oppression using the positive image of the “angel wife” to incept women into attempting to be perfect Godly wives designed for serving their husbands and for their husbands’ background support, while men supposedly represent a home’s

Godly male authority. Though Celie may not know the term “Angle of the House” by name, her religious indoctrination would make her familiar with the concept. The idea is part of the larger concept of the Cult of True Womanhood. According to The Cult, a woman should be dependent, virtuous, and childlike, understand and maintain her role in the house, and look for a man’s support and care. She should be meek, timid, and in need of guidance (Welter 159-60), much like

the slave who should have, “[the] dependency not of the developing child, but of the perpetual child” (Elkins 130).

Sofia, unlike Celie, who tries living out the ideals of the Cult of True Womanhood, lives a loud and visible life. Not a small woman, much like her sisters who are, “strong healthy girls, look like Amazons” (Walker 67) she, “can’t be beat” (Walker 63). She has the strength to walk away when she feels sexually objectified, and she can pinpoint her position as a sexual object rather than an actualized subject and decide to leave (Walker 65). Conversely, Celie, who states regarding her sexual relationship with Mr._____, “…I don’t like it at all…. He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most of the times I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep” (Walker 77), recognizes the silencing, oppressive presence of men in every aspect of her life, including sex and sexuality, but cannot shake them.

Walker exposes her ties to the Angel of the House and the Cult of True Womanhood at the start of the novel when Celie first meets Mr._____. After saying he cannot let Mr._____

“have” Nettie (Walker 7), her stepfather goes on about Celie: “But I can let you have Celie. She the oldest…. She ought to marry first. She ain’t fresh tho…. She spoiled. Twice [by him]…. She ugly…. You can do everything just like you want to and she ain’t gonna make you feed it or clothe it….. Fact is… I got to get rid of her…. She too old to be living here at home” (Walker 7-

8).

In response, Mr._____ says he, “never really look at that one” (8).

Celie’s marriage to Mr._____ mirrors a sale. Because her stepfather “spoiled” her, her value decreased even though her stepfather raping her “spoiled” her in the first place. The idea the “spoiler” is audacious enough to call the victim “spoiled” shows TCP’s men believe their

relationship to women defines women, and their sexual encounters with a woman determine her value. Also, he is trying to “sell” Celie to Mr._____ as if she is a slave with some negative qualities he wants Mr._____ to overlook so he can offload her to the next man. He labels her a bad influence on the other women in the house, just like a runaway slave “negatively” influences other slaves. He also claims she lies (8) but never says how and about what. Most importantly, he does not consider her wants in the process, demonstrating how her stepfather views all women.

For example, Addie Beasley, Nettie’s teacher, teaches because, “She run off at the mouth so much no man would have her” (10) making her spoiled too by his logic. Simply being and speaking despoils a woman. Upon coming back to finish the exchange, the analogy of “woman = slave” continues when he instructs Celie to turn around for Mr._____ to look at her, reminiscent of a potential buyer examining a slave to determine worth. Her stepfather’s last comment claiming she does well with children (10-11), certifies Celie’s marriageability as an Angel of the

House in line with the Cult of True Womanhood positioning her as a good housewife, or house slave. No matter how ugly others deem her, she has value as a stepmother and bed wench.

The reason Mr._____ needs a new wife is because his first wife’s boyfriend killed her.

Now Mr._____, used to having a woman to cater to his needs and the home, does not know what to do with the house, the children, and seemingly himself, making him helpless without a woman. It then becomes clear Celie has stepped into her role well because the first thing his sisters’ compliment is the fact she keeps a clean house better than his first wife (19). Even still, she has a hard time with the kids, and Mr._____ has sex with her like a sex doll. Her situation has done nothing but worsen due to marriage while Mr._____’s life improves, much like a slave master after buying a house slave. With the way people see Black women in the world of the book, and arguably the world writ large, one can call being a Black woman in society an

extension of slavery as the role of oppressor expanded to include Black men, who view Black women through the same objectifying lens as the white male patriarchy.

The level of allowed societal participation also brings Black womanhood closer to slavery as slaves and women both suffered a social death preventing them from fully participating in society through keeping them in the home, denying them education, and withholding religious (political and social) freedom. Again, access to literacy becomes paramount as reading and writing is a gateway to more opportunities and combating oppression.

Without being able to read, slaves had limited access to religious freedom forcing reluctant acceptance of any version of any doctrine, further conditioning slaves for obedience and docility and how Celie comes to believe in a God who does not speak for or to her. The desired obedience is again why Mr._____ keeps Nettie’s letters from Celie. Though the letters do not focus heavily on religion, he wants her uninformed, and much like Celie’s stepfather says she negatively influences other women in their home, Nettie, with her education and liberation would, for Mr._____, negatively influence Celie and make her more difficult to control.

Ultimately, the desire was for slaves to oppress themselves, and withholding knowledge was one way to delimit a slave’s perspective through cutting them down and conditioning them to believe slavery was their destiny, much as men condition Celie to believe Mr. _____’s abuse is her only option. For America’s slave holding population, there were several mentalities they believed necessary to cultivate in African captives for the creation of self-oppressing slaves.

They called these psychological attacks “seasoning” and included six major elements: strict discipline, fostering self-hate, the creation of fear for their masters, a deep care for their master’s wellbeing, conformity to the slave masters’ rules and regulations, and an extreme and total dependence on their masters (Mitchel 80).

Mr._____ (and other men like him) use all six seasoning elements on Celie to force her into submission. For slaves, these six steps helped make ensuing generations of captives more susceptible to Europeanization, which included the idea Africans needed to be slaves to a white slaveholding population’s

…power to physically and psychologically control Africans. In the South, the planter’s seasoning methods eventually reduced most Africans into a maligned ‘slave/negro’ people. For instance, after the first and second generations of African captives were denied practice of their traditional culture, their descendants became more vulnerable to European methods of cultural domination. (Mitchell 80)

Along with the seasoning methods mentioned above, William Goodell states in his in-depth analysis of slavery two of the most important elements of making a person into a slave were (1) a master forbidding education and social religious worship and (2) the state doing the same

(Mitchell 81).

In short, all the oppression methods mentioned above helped keep Celie in forced submission to men like Mr._____ and her stepfather, especially through Mr._____ withholding necessary information much like a slaveholder would ban books. Before seeing Nettie’s letters, i.e., knowledge (especially of Africa), and with Shug’s help, Celie searches for two things: a self- determined identity not molded by her relation to men, and a new God who does not act as a placeholder for men. Again, reading and writing prove the first steps on this search.

Celie’s relationship with and dependence on the white heteropatriarchal God of slavery who overlooks her and sometimes even causes her pain reveals religion holds her back. She opens the text with the prayer-letter to God and gets well into the novel without an answer because this God represents the oppressive men in her life. Walker clarifies God’s function in

TCP through a conversation between Celie and her mother about Celie’s children. Celie says,

“She ast me bout the first one Whose it is? I say God’s. I don’t know no other man or what else

to say…. Finally she ast Where it is? I say God took it” (Walker 2). But God did not father or take away her children, her stepfather did. Here, she has made her oppressor God through substituting her stepfather with God in this conversation, saying he is the only man she knows.

Celie associating God with her oppressor makes sense because:

…the dominant models of God in Christianity are a product of patriarchal cultures.

… the patriarch is the dominant person, who presides over … and leads the community. Central to patriarchal culture is the dominance of males, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the biblical narratives. Patriarchal culture has been embodied in a patriarchal religion that serves to undergird the dominant role of males. (Setyawan 54)

Towards the end of the novel, Celie learns from Shug she must reimagine God so she can keep believing in a divine entity. In other words, she must unlearn the idea that God is a man. Celie states in a letter to Nettie her response to Shug as they discuss what God has done for Celie,

“…he gave me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow … the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown” (192). Walker presents a

God who disappoints Celie in multiple ways because Celie imagines God as a man, and men oppress her, making God a large, complacent, man who participates in her oppression. Walker exposes the problem presented when placing men at the center of one’s life and worship— women who worship their oppressors only garner more disappointment in TCP.

For example, Celie’s God condemns rape survivors like herself. Norma Gregory says,

“One could argue that it is her pain, caused by her inability to relate to God, a higher being at the start of the novel, that is the cause of her distorted perception of God” (368). Gregory argues throughout, “Deity, Distortion and Destruction: A Model of God in Alice Walker’s The Color

Purple” her inability to relate to God causes her association of God with suffering in the novel.

Yet, I would go further and say the true root of her problem stems from her inability to see him as anything other than a man. Since she sees God as a man, she automatically connects God with suffering. She cannot envision God with any positive attributes because she has not witnessed any true positive attributes of real men. Seeing as humans imagine deities having amplified human qualities, if God is an amplified man, then he will only amplify her suffering.

Shug’s God though is everything and everywhere including in sex and exists beyond gender as an “it”. She further explains just because society portrays men everywhere from “your box of grits,” to “all over the radio” does not mean God is a man too, even though men who control the narrative would like women to believe otherwise (197). Shug, like Sofia, has worked her way out of the Cult of True Womanhood by pursuing happiness and reimagining God.

Shug, another “spoiled” woman and a loud blues singer, is a beautiful and self-assured woman often seen as inherently sexual due to fearlessness when displaying her well accessorized beauty. She commands attention, unlike Celie. Also, because she sings, she is vocal and says what she thinks much like Sofia. Furthermore, her profession means she always has money. She does not need a man to provide for her wants or needs which subtly introduces another way

Walker positions freedom for women: through economics. She has children by Mr._____ but did not care to nor have to marry him, so she remained single. Shug helps Celie become more in tune with herself not only sexually through their clearly described lesbian relationship, but also as a woman. When Shug asks Celie if she likes having sex with Mr._____, their exchange reveals what Celie’s sex life entails. It starts with a quote previously mentioned but continues with responses from Shug:

Naw…Mr._____ can tell you, I don’t like it at all. He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep.

…. Do his business…. Why, Miss Celie. You make it sound like he going to the toilet on you. That what it feel like…. You never enjoy it at all?... Not even with your children daddy? Never…. Why Miss Celie,… you still a virgin. (Walker 77)

Shug associates sex with pleasure and love, so lacking those things means lacking sex.

Therefore, in her estimation, Celie cannot ever have experienced sex, and many would agree as

Celie’s experience classifies as marital rape. Celie’s description of her experience with Mr._____ describes silence and objectification, which stems from the numerous rapes that distance her from her body and agency. Mr._____ does not consider her feelings because he believes as his wife she has to allow him to do as he pleases with her body, and as an “Angel of the House,” she should not have the sexual experience to know any better. Shug, on the other hand, experiences sex with Mr._____ much differently. She enjoys the experience because Mr._____ does not treat her like a toilet. The difference in treatment is both because he loves Shug and he does not hold her to the same restrictive standards as a traditional “angel wife”, resulting in her better treatment. Shug exudes sex, pleasure, and bodily sensations, which were at the time (and arguably still today) seen as obscene for women/wives. Furthermore, Mr. _____ could never get

Shug because of her status and self-sufficiency, and he never will because Mr._____ seeks control and Shug is uncontrollable. Mr. _____ needs to feel his wife must stay because otherwise she will be poor and destitute without him, which explains why he clings to a subdued and abused Celie.

Shug also helps Celie learn her body and be in tune with her sexuality through teaching her about her vagina, “Listen… right down there in your pussy is a little button that gits real hot when you do you know what with somebody. It git hotter and hotter and then it melt. That the good part” (77) then she instructs Celie to look at herself and says, “It a lot prettier than you

though, ain’t it?” to which Celie responds, “It mine” (78). Shug opens the door for Celie’s sexual and feminine awakening, where she begins to understand herself and her body as an autonomous being. It is not for Mr._____ or her stepfather, but for herself. This education about herself as a being with sexual agency allowed to enjoy her body’s designed pleasure purposes is another type of education she was missing throughout the novel and it, too, liberates her.

In shedding her life of oppression, she must shed the version of God who has oppressed her and embrace Shug’s God who created all things— including sex and her own body— for her enjoyment and participation. In coming to embrace this God, Celie can see her own beauty as both a woman and as someone who indulges in her own pleasure. Celie taking control of her narrative through the epistolary writing style helps her hone this new God and become part of everything God is by being the teller of her own story and participant in every aspect of her own life. With this version of God, Celie can explore herself, both sexually and mentally without the strictures placed on her by men.

Described thus far are the things Celie has had to unlearn in order to cleanse herself of her own subjugation. She learns she owns her body, including her vagina and her pleasure, and she learns women like Sofia and Shug have courage, ability to fight for themselves, and ability to take ownership of their lives and bodies, qualities worth emulating. Celie becomes a blank canvas for things that will help her actualize Womanist Afrocentrism and knowledge through

Nettie. This idea reaches far back into the writings of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass proves Goodell has a firm understanding of education’s role in making a man a slave. In his autobiography, Douglass recounts learning to read and how it made him feel. He says the following about the impact reading had on his psyche:

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers…. I loathed them

as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted … had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish…. learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.… It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me…. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. (40)

Douglass learning to read, and Celie reading a few of Nettie’s letters with Shug’s help discovering and organizing them, produce the same anger toward their oppressors with Celie feeling vindicated and seeking revenge against Mr._____. When asked if she can handle being around Mr._____ after their discovery, Celie answers, “How I’m gon keep from killing him”

(Walker 144).

Reading the letters initially invokes violence toward Mr. _____, the person who has been oppressing her and preventing her from learning about herself and her family in relation to

Africa, reiterating the seasoning mentioned earlier. Mr._____, like the slave masters before him, hid knowledge from Celie to dominate her and continue to separate her from her family and keep her in his home. Now that she has the knowledge, she wants freedom and can overcome mental enslavement making it harder for Mr. _____ to control her, just like Douglass. Furthermore, akin to slaves who were often not allowed to develop lasting family units, Celie, Nettie, and Celie’s children suffered family separation, Nettie, symbolizing freedom in Africa2. Now that Celie can access this information, Celie’s mental liberation can only inevitably lead to her physical freedom and the reunification of her family.

There are two moments during which Celie violently reacts to Mr._____’s continued disrespect and oppression caused by Celie decolonizing her mind of oppressive thoughts fed to

2It is important to note though Walker positions Africa as a land of freedom for Celie and her children, in TCP Walker also acknowledges its oppressive practices such as preventing girls from getting an education and female circumcision.

her by men in her life, particularly Mr. _____. Since Mr._____ has taken the place of white slavers, he also replaces the colonizer and thus is a colonizer of Celie’s body and mind. In the process of becoming self-actualized, Celie is violently decolonizing herself. Fanon says,

Decolonization is the encounter between two congenitally antagonistic forces that in fact owe their singularity to the kind of reification secreted and nurtured by the colonial situation. Their first confrontation was colored by violence and their cohabitation – or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer – continued at the point of the bayonet and under cannon fire. (Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 2)

In decolonizing herself, Celie experiences the violence of physically and mentally removing the oppressor. Celie first considers violently removing Mr._____ from her life when she and Shug discover where Mr._____ keeps Nettie’s letters— in his coat pocket close to his body:

I watch him so close, I begin to feel a lightening in the head. Fore I know anything I’m standing hind his chair with his razor open.

Then I hear Shug laugh, like something just too funny. She say to me, I know I told you I need something to cut this hangnail with, but Albert git real niggerish bout his razor.

Mr._____ look behind him. Put that down, he say. Women, always needing to cut this and shave that, and always gumming up the razor.

Shug got her hand on the razor now. She say, Oh it look dull anyway. She take and sling it back in the shaving box.

All day long I act just like Sofia. I stutter. I mutter to myself. I stumble bout the house crazy for Mr._____ blood. In my mind, he falling dead every which a way. (120)

Though many describe Sofia as Walker’s first Womanist character, Shug helps Celie refocus the

Sofia energy into nonviolent means, as Walker’s womanism does not have space for resulting to violence as the first course of action. Shug does the energy transformation necessary to prevent

Celie from responding out of anger and doing something that would put her in jail and have her labeled as crazy or violent like Sofia.

As Celie goes through mental decolonization, Shug, looking for an excuse to give when asked about Celie, describes her as “sick” but Celie says, “I think maybe I’m dead” (120). Celie has to come back from metaphorical death in order to reintegrate into the community as a new, mentally liberated person after her first violent reaction and attempt on Mr._____ ‘s life, similarly to Meridian’s experience of rebirth after numerous assaults by oppressive forces in

Walker’s Meridian. It is important though, to examine what Nettie was sending Celie to cause such a strong response.

Not knowing the whereabouts of her children was a major burden for Celie throughout the novel. She sees her daughter once while shopping but is never certain the child she sees is her own (Walker 13). It seems she would have been happy to keep her children despite how they came to be. When she sees Olivia at the store, Celie describes feeling excitement, love, and sadness. Nettie helps to quell her worries by confirming the child she saw was indeed Olivia

(Walker 127). Celie launches her Womanist Afrocentric education learning about her origin

(African heritage) and future (her children) in connection with Africa, a sankofic awakening.

To reiterate, “Afrocentricity is a mode of thought and action in which the centrality of

African interests, values, and perspectives predominate” (Asante 2), and when Nettie writes to

Celie about the things she learns and places she visits in Africa, she simultaneously fosters

African centrality in Celie. Celie’s first introduction to Afrocentric ideologies happens when

Nettie writes, “Did you know there were great cities in Africa, greater than Milledgeville or even

Atlanta, thousands of years ago? That the Egyptians who built the pyramids and enslaved the

Israelites were colored? That Egypt is in Africa? That the Ethiopia we read about in the Bible meant all of Africa?” (132). Nettie then says, “I hadn’t realized I was so ignorant, Celie. The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!” (132). If Nettie, a more educated

woman than Celie, knew so little it “wouldn’t have filled a thimble,” then one could easily deduce Celie knew even less. Also, Nettie considers her lack of African and self-knowledge a deficiency, meaning even with her formal education grounding, self-knowledge is still a necessity.

In the following letter, Nettie describes African Americans in Harlem who, “live in such beauty and dignity…. They love Africa. They defend it at the drop of a hat” (135). She says they saw a Black doctor for their physicals, and upon arriving in England visited a museum, “packed with jewels, furniture, fur carpets, swords, clothing, even tombs from all the countries they have been. From Africa they have thousands of vases, jars, masks, bowls, baskets, statues—and they are all so beautiful it is hard to imagine that the people who made them don’t still exist” (135-

139). Nettie is expanding her understanding through the things she learns and passing this information on to Celie, so she too can have an expanded understanding.

A few letters later in the book, Nettie describes the people of Senegal as “blueblack” with

“brilliant blue robes with designs like fancy quilt patterns,” appearing “magical” in their extreme

Blackness, seemingly shining, “from moonlight…luminous,” with “skin that glows even in the sun” (141). One of the most memorable moments for Nettie is her first time seeing Africa, which she says, “Something struck in me, in my soul, Celie, like a large bell, and I just vibrated…. And we kneeled down right on the deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for which our mothers and fathers cried—and lived and died—to see again” (143). These are the letters Celie reads before becoming murderously angry towards Mr._____. Knowing

Mr._____ has withheld from her all the things that define her— her heritage, her children, her sense of self— helps build the courage she was missing earlier in the novel when she marveled at

Sofia’s power.

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Nettie truly reaches Celie by bringing up her children, Olivia and Adam. Olivia has

Celie’s “stubbornness and clear-sightedness, and she is smarter than all of [the boys] including

Adam, put together” (156). They are doing well in school and their hugs, “restore [Nettie] to the level of functioning if nothing else” (164). They are having cultural and intellectual exchanges with their African peers (165) and are helping make positive changes in the Olinka people by showing them girls can attend school (170). Though what she learns about Africa and the Olinka people romanticize it, this new knowledge connects Celie, Africa, and her generational greatness.

In “Telling Stories: Examining the Views of an African-Centered Female Minority Leader,”

Elizabeth K. Davenport examines different styles of Afrocentric teachings and how they help develop empowered and self-actualized students. One teacher she studies, Dr. Rivers, believes,

…that African-centered education represents empowerment of the African- American family, and its children display conscientization through education, transformation through ancient ecological and spiritual development, and self- actualization through economic and cultural independence…. African-centered education develops responsible adults in families and empowers them to leave a legacy of various talents and economic and academic skills to their children. (Davenport)

Nettie’s letters, through the transfer of knowledge, have the same liberating impact on

Celie, once again recollecting the anger and empowerment felt by Douglass. Yet, this doubles because Celie not only finds empowerment in reading, she finds it through the sankofic

Womanist Afrocentric practice of examining her origin, Africa, and her familial connections there, in order to move forward. Her empowerment climaxes during dinner where Celie finally stands up for herself against Mr._____. At dinner, Shug tells Mr._____ Celie will be living with her and her husband in Memphis and he responds, “I thought you was finally happy…. What wrong now?” (199). First, this statement reflects Mr._____’s connection to white slave masters who believed their slaves were happy in their forced oppression. Second, Mr._____ thought he finally beat, literally and metaphorically, the will for freedom and self-preservation out of Celie

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through the denial of knowledge and psychological and physical trauma. He does not understand at this point in the novel that Celie’s happiness cannot come from him. As a self-actualized being, her happiness must come from herself, not another oppressed person. Her happiness comes from Celie’s newfound pride in herself developed with Shug and Nettie’s guidance. She stuns him with her response: “You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong…. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (199). She continues,

“I got children…. Being brought up in Africa. Good schools, lots of fresh air and exercise.

Turning out a heap better than the fools you didn’t even try to raise” (200). Liberated by Nettie’s letters, Celie can not only leave, but articulate the source of her empowerment and, going back to

Davenport, that empowerment links her to Africa.

Further demonstrating her liberation, she can now defend herself against Mr._____ ’s beatings as seen when Mr._____ reaches over to slap her for speaking to him “out of turn,” and she, “jab[s her] case knife in his hand” (200). Now that she is free, she refuses abuse. Her courage to defend herself shows what Womanist Afrocentrism does for the Black mind once free of oppressive ideologies. The Womanist Afrocentrist way of being and knowing the self safeguards them from feeling they are deserving of intersectional oppressions or abuse.

Even more, upon leaving, Celie shows a Womanist Afrocentric spiritualized development in her invocation of Nommo to remove Mr._____ and his oppression from her life, recalling Dr.

River’s belief that connection with an African center creates a more spiritual individual. Nommo is an idea taken from the creation narrative of the Dogon people of Mali who believe, “the

Creator, Amma, sends nommo, the word (in the collective sense of speech), to complete the spiritual and material reorganization of the world and to assist humans in the forward movement in history and society” (Karenga, "Nommo, Kawaida, and Communicative Practice" 215). She

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says “I curse you…. Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble…. Until you do right by me… everything you even dream about will fail…. Every lick you hit me you will suffer twice…. You better stop talking because all I’m telling you ain’t coming from me…. The jail you plan for me is the one in which you will rot” (206).

During Celie’s ever worsening curse, Mr._____ talks himself into greater danger until

Shug says, “Stop Albert…. Don’t say no more. You just going to make it harder on yourself”

(206). As Mr._____ lunges toward Celie to beat her Celie writes, “A dust devil flew up on the porch between us, fill my mouth with dirt. The dirt say, Anything you do to me, already done to you. Then I feel Shug shake me. Celie, she say. And I come to myself” (207). This scene is important to Celie fully understanding herself as an African descendant and a fully realized human being. Using this understanding of nommo force, the Dogon deity has possessed her and, through the African connection fostered by Nettie’s letters and the spirit and energy work invoked by a true Womanist Afrocentric understanding of self, Celie avoids another beating. At this point in the novel, Celie is a Womanist Afrocentrist empowered by Shug and Nettie’s teachings.

When she leaves Mr._____’s house, she begins to make pants. Her first foray into making pants is much earlier in the novel before leaving for Memphis when Shug suggests they make a pair for Celie. Her response is, “What I need pants for?... I ain’t no man.” Shug then tells her dresses do not fit her body type or the work she does in the yard (146). If anything, dresses represent the physical and mental restrictions placed on her by an oppressive male-centered society, so when she leaves Mr._____, she cannot stop making pants! Pants then come to represent her freedom from all the Mr._____s present throughout the novel. She makes so many pants she needs a factory and hires other women to fill orders, demonstrating Womanism’s

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communitarian principles through Celie’s sankofic behavior. Nettie’s freedom has now affected a group that expands beyond Celie. Shug, her support system, suggests she start a business since her tailor-made pants are so popular, so Celie starts “Folkspants, Unlimited” and the financial freedom and work outside of the home makes her happy (214-15). Pivotal to Celie’s pants is that they represent, “a rejection of the constraints of traditional roles and their associated outward expressions” (Tavormina 221) in TCP. With pants, she sheds The Cult of True Womanhood and the Angel of the House, embracing clothes representative of the bodily autonomy and freedom a man experiences every day. She goes further by dispersing it to a gender-neutral consumer base, granting more women the freedom pants provide. Celie starting a business further proves

Davenport’s findings that [Womanist] Afrocentricity helps foster economic independence in its followers. Shug encourages an unoppressed Celie to be economically independent, freeing her from dependence on anyone else, Shug included, whereas Mr._____ discourages an oppressed

Celie’s independence to maintain his domination. Her independence breaks the potential generational curse that likely began before her mother and created the circumstances that made it necessary for her stepfather to come into her life in the first place. With her own money, no man will ever have the opportunity to step in and create another oppressive environment for her or the women she employs.

With the Womanist Afrocentrism displayed in this novel, Walker allows her audience to bear witness as someone becomes free from metaphorical bondage. Walker takes Celie out of oppression through the communitarian work of Black women determined to make a difference in each other’s lives. Shug helps to release Celie’s sexuality and femininity and Nettie helps Celie develop a cultural and familial knowledge that takes her mind beyond her oppression to a place where she and her children are free. Through The Color Purple, Walker has created a possibility

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of freedom and self-actualization for all women who make up her mother’s colorful garden,

Black, beige, brown, and white alike.

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION: TRANSATLANTIC FUTURES

I began this research believing beloved authors took up writing with more intent than telling a story. Their narratives seek to tell readers how to address pressing social issues stemming from anti-black education, which prevents Black learners’ self-actualization. I have asserted throughout this study buried within their texts are answers to pressing issues in education such as what kinds of knowledge are most important to Black learners (a combination of wisdom and formal education), what learning environments and practices are most effective for Black learners (Black centered and Womanist Afrocentric), and what happens when a learner receives a Womanist Afrocentric education (self-actualization and freedom). Through examining five books by four different authors spanning centuries, one can see how decentering and antiblack education effects Black learners.

Yet, the research done here centers around the African American context, but in truth, these theories can apply on a global, transatlantic scale. The following explores how these theories may be applicable to texts cross-continentally. I use the book Nervous Conditions by

Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga as an Africanist example to demonstrate the

Womanist Afrocentric theories in play globally. My goal is to demonstrate trans-atlantic connections between colonized Black communities impacted by Eurocentric education, while also strengthening my own theories and methods for uplifting and facilitating the education and ensuing self-actualization of marginalized people.

In Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a young Zimbabwean woman, Nyasha, the main character Tambudzai‘s (referred to as Tambu throughout this chapter) close cousin, and a precocious student with a budding self-awareness, develops two ‘nervous’ conditions: anorexia and bulimia, which then further devolves into psychosis. This psychosis forces her into the care

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of two different white psychologists. Simultaneously, main character Tambu, goes from actualization and having a Womanist Afrocentric upbringing to being meek and quiet through

Eurocentric indoctrination in the same colonial school her cousin Nyasha attends. The connectedness of their issues forces the reader to associate the negative changes in Tambu and the psychosis in Nyasha with the colonizers and their school. Seeing as the colonial lifestyle has negative effects on both characters, readers associate the colonial schooling with Nyasha’s psychosis.

Using the same principles applied to the texts previously discussed, I assert Nyasha’s situation as an African woman would improve through Womanist Afrocentric teachings with the goal of not only achieving the three R’s of education (reading, writing, arithmetic) but also the confidence to know she could move in the world as an African woman and be successful. Not only is this my thesis, it is also the revelation that leads Nyasha to vigorously consume historical and cultural knowledge that connects her to her blackness. It also sends her searching for an

African woman role model who can demonstrate the strength she wants within herself.

In fact, according to Mwalimu J. Shujaa, “our folk language…contains expressions to signify that ‘going to school’ is not always thought to be consistent with ‘getting an education’”

(245), which further explains why Nyasha attempts reconciling her self-determined lack of self- knowledge through consuming massive amounts of cultural and historical texts on her own outside school. She is trying to “get an education” that benefits her as an African woman.

Ultimately, Nyasha would benefit from Womanist Afrocentric education and she pursues it on her own accord throughout the text, the end goal being self-actualization and empowerment.

Also, I position her anorexia and bulimia as manifestations of a subconscious decolonization of her mind and body. Not only do they represent decolonization, they also

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represent how her body and mind prepare Nyasha for a more self-actualizing and affirming

Womanist Afrocentric education through making her an empty container. Per Afrocentricity, she must try to exorcise the colonizers’ Eurocentric ideologies to avoid cognitive dissonance and inner conflict. This manifests in violence as the two battle over ownership of Nyasha’s mental and physical bodily landscape (Asante, Afrocentricity, 129).

Maslow’s “A Theory of Human Motivation,” maintains there is self-actualization as,

“This… desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming,” (Maslow 382) aligns with Asante’s belief that Afrocentricity means to, “[tear you] away from mental and psychological habits that [hold] you enslaved to Eurocentric concepts”

(Asante 129). Both beliefs point to self-actualization as self-truth, signifying the importance of discussing truth as it functions for Nyasha as an African, but especially as an African woman.

Nyasha, in reading through historical and cultural texts, not only looks for her own truth and self, but for truth in general as colonizers rewrote Zimbabwean history for their colonial needs. She needs these truths to understand her origins, so one truth can lead to the other.

Mothers’ roles are also valuable to a Womanist Afrocentric reading. Tambu’s upbringing in the village allowed her to be vocal and outgoing, but after moving in with her cousin Nyasha, her Uncle, Babamukuru, and Aunt, Maiguru, (Nyasha’s parents) she adopts a much more submissive nature and cannot easily connect with those in her village. This change in Tambu reflects Nyasha and Maiguru’s behavior, both being subservient to Babamukuru as expected of women in a European society, not the Zimbabwean culture they come from. Yet, there is a brief but important moment in the text where Maiguru decides she can no longer deal with

Babamukuru’s behavior towards her and her offspring and decides to leave. Her leaving has a

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very strong impact on Nyasha, who Tambu describes as having, “a note of awe in her voice that

[she] had not heard before when [Nyasha] talked of her mother” (Dangarembga 175).

Though Nyasha and Tambu realize Maiguru cannot stay away for long due to her familial obligations, Nyasha gains new respect for Maiguru and now has an example of a strong, educated African woman in the household who can speak up when she does not agree and stand her ground, acting for her own happiness as well as that of her offspring. Unfortunately, it is

Maiguru’s failure to stay away longer and also her going into another male household when she separated from her family that causes Nyasha to not attain the self-actualization she needs in order to see and/or make a place for herself in both her home and the school. Though it is the colonial school that causes the most damage for Nyasha, this lack of a positive African female role model compounds the issues and makes navigating oppression more difficult for Nyasha throughout the narrative. Dangarembga uses the mother-daughter dynamic as an example of what is necessary for positive representation on the path to self-actualization as defined through

Womanist Afrocentricity. As Nyasha does not have a working model for what a woman who stands up for herself and her truth looks like, making her incapable of doing so in the least harmful way possible. What little hope she had dies after seeing her mother, a much more educated adult woman, give in so quickly, making fighting against her own oppression look like a much more difficult battle. As Nyasha has never seen a person who looks like her in both gender and color achieve what she seeks to do, she has no example to follow so a positive example would add to her self-actualization. Nyasha’s Eurocentric environment then fails her on all levels.

The last point of exploration for this text (and others like it) is examining the theory behind the all-girls school model and if Nyasha and Tambu would benefit from an all-black all-

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girls school. My overarching belief throughout my reading of this text is Nyasha would benefit from a Womanist Afrocentric education which can come in two models. The first education model centers the Black woman as much as the Black man. This equity, though, should be a given, but it does not solve the problem of implicit biases and the resulting privileges and oppression experienced by young women in mix gender settings. Nyasha cannot experience school the same way as her brother, Chido. Her father being the headmaster certainly does not help the situation, but he clearly privileges the male students over the female students and is much harder on Nyasha than Chido because of traditional European ideals around the roles of women. In looking at how the Eurocentric patriarchal system has impacted both her home and school life and looking at theories and studies around all-girls schools and HBCUs, I hope to be able to apply the thinking, theories, and studies through deductive logic. In doing so, if I discover an overall positive impact on learners in both all-girls and all-Black schools, then there should be a similarly positive impact in a combination all-girls all-black setting.

Approaching Nervous Conditions in this way is a great start to exploring the transatlantic insidiousness of the white heteropatriarchy and how it impacts the lives of those colonized around the globe. In doing so, this approach can explore the interconnectedness of different

Black communities and how common struggles may also have common solutions. In this way, the expansion of this study beyond African American literature and education studies can contribute to a global dialog around problem solving, community building, and seeing others struggling under similar circumstances as unique, yet related, parts of a whole. Also, the transatlantic expansion of my work can allow me to put traditionally “African American” texts under a transatlantic lens in the distant future.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Kayla Briette Rodney received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in English, concentrating in African American literature, from the University of Florida in summer 2020. She previously received her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry in spring 2016 from San Diego State University, and her Bachelor of Arts in English in spring 2013 from

Xavier University of Louisiana. During her time at the University of Florida, Kayla published her master’s thesis Swimming Home as well as several individual pieces of poetry. She has presented at the College Language Association Convention and The Association of Writers and

Writing Programs Conference. Kayla’s studies were funded by the Santa Fe Teaching

Fellowship, several grants from the University of Florida Graduate School, and grants and scholarships from the University of Florida Department of English.

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