Notes

Chapter 1

1. My generalities refer to stereotypical patterns in represented images of black wornen. There are certainly alternative, though not as prominent, images of black wornen in popular culture as weil as in literature. I recognize problems inherent in categorizing wornen as "Iarge" or "fat." A wornan who wears a dress size 12 or 14 in one culture rnay be perceived as large or fat, whereas she rnay be perceived as skinny or at least slender in an• other. Since I am dealing prirnarily with black and white conceptions of size in the Uni ted States, I would posit rhat a white wo man who wears a size 14 or 16 is generally considered fat whereas a black wornan rnay not be labeled as such until her dress size reaches 22 or 24. Please keep in rnind that large size as I williater use it to refer to sorne African American wornen does not rnean that the wornen are perceived as unattractive. Keep in rnind as weil generational consideration in terms of size arnong black wornen. Prirnarily as a result of education and upward rnobility, rnany African American wornen under 30 are often just as conscious about con• taining their size through diet and exercise as are their European American counterparts. 2. Such depictions occur in autobiography and fiction. For representative ex• arnpies, see Frederick Douglass's account of the whipping his Aunt Harriet receives in Narrative 0/ the Lift 0/ Frederick Douglass (1845) and Margaret Walker's account ofLucy and Vyry being whipped in Jubilee (1966). For a theoretical discussion of black wornen's bodies during slavery, see Hortense J. Spillers' 1987 essay, "Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: An American Gramrnar Book," in Within the Circle: An Anthology 0/ African American Literary Crit• icism ftom the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, ed. Angelyn Mitchell (Durharn: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 454-481. 3. Saidiya Hartman, "Seduction and the Ruses of Power." Special Issue• Emerging Wornen Writers, Callaloo 19:2 (Spring 19%): 537-560. 4. For a discussion of these images in selected European American literary texts published by wornen writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Diane Roberts's The Myth 0/Aunt Jemima: Representations 0/ Race and Region (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 182 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

5. See M. M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career 0/ Aunt Jemima (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998); Marilyn Kern-Fox• worth, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994); Roberts, The Myth 0/ Aunt Jemima: Representations 0/ Race and Region; and Patricia A. Turner, Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1994). 6. Lisa M. Anderson mentions this pattern in Mammies No More: The Chang• ing Image 0/ Black Women on Stage and Screen (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefie!d, 1994), p. 6. See Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mam• mies, and Bucks.· An Interpretive History 0/ Blacks in American Films (rev. ed. New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 11 for a still shot of the mammy from Birth 0/ a Nation. Anderson indudes the same still shot following p. 86. 7. Distributed by California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street/420, San Francisco, CA 94103. 8. One of the ironies of the contrasts in Cabin in the Sky is that sleek, beauti• ful Lena Horne plays opposite Ethe! Waters, who by this time is the stereo• typically large, spiritual singing, matronly black woman. Photographs of Waters from the 1920s reveal her as the sleek, beautiful, thin, black woman. This is perhaps another indication of the comforting girth into which black women grow and the perceived "rightness" of that size in particular for cast• ing in certain visual roles. Horne, as the jezebe!, fits into another stereotype of black women. 9. Compare the transformed images in Kern-Foxworth, photo essay following chapter 4. See also the images in Phi! Patton's "Mammy: Her Life and Times," American Heritage (September 1993): 78-87. 10. For a discussion of this phenomenon, where the emphasis is obviously on European American women, see Kim Chernin, The Obsession: Reflections on the Tjranny o/Slenderness (1981; New York: HarperPerennial, 1994). 11. Donald Bogle asserts that, although Hattie McDaniel (who played the mammy role in Gone With the Wind) "weighed dose to three hundred pounds" (p. 83), Louise Beavers (who starred in several movies, induding Imitation 0/ Lift), had to overeat substantially to maintain the required large size in the roles she played. "She was heavy and hearty," Bogle writes, "but not heavy and hearty enough. Thereafter [after she was relegated ro the role of cook instead of mammy in her debut appearance in Uncle Toms Cabinl she went on force-feed diets, compelling herself ro eat beyond her normal appetite. Generally, she weighed dose to two hundred pounds, but it was a steady batde for her to stay overweight. During filming, due to pressures, she often lost weight and then had to be padded to look more like a full• bosomed domestic who was capable of carrying the world on her shoulders" (p. 63). 12. A1though Hansberty had a hand in the casting for this role, I would main• tain that my argument still holds. As Ossie Davis points out, McNeil in the role ofMama Lena became everybody's "great American Mama." In her em• phasis on the type in American culture, Hansberry was surely aware of the Notes 183

comforting implications of such casting. See Davis's "The Significance of Lorraine Hansberry," Freedomways 5:3 (1965): 399. 13. Donald Bogle heads the caption for astilI of EtheI Waters in Pinky (1949) with "Black shoulders were made to cry on," as he pictures her with the young, white Jeanne Crain leaning against her; Crain apparendy "learns" the lesson weil. Bogle mayas weIl have asserted, "Black female bosoms were made to cry on." See Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, p. 153. Another stiIl-of an older Waters comforting an even younger white person in The Member 0/ the Wedding (1952)-appears on p. 163 in Bogle. 14. See, for example, Herbert Aptheker's American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943) and Gary Y. Okihiro, ed., In Resis• tance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and Afro-American History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1943). 15. Toni Morrison represents this phenomenon in Jazz (New York: Knopf, 1992), where hips become the site for desire. However, there is a generational gap here as so me African American men prefer smaller hips. I thank Lova• lerie King of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for pointing out Eddie Murphy's condemnation of"large asses" in The Nutty Professorand the revelation during O. J. Simpson's trial of Simpson's "disdain" for his wife Nicole's "nigger butt" during her pregnancy. 16. The best visual representation I have seen of this phenomenon is in the movie Soul Food (1997), in the scene in which Vanessa L. Williams and her screen sisters engage in a love affair with the preparation of a Sunday din• ner-in memory of the deceased strong motherlgrandmother of the family (who ironically died from diabetes probably induced by these very foods). 17. I made this discovery in 1995, when I was in rhe process oflocating a hotel for my own family reunion, which was held in July. 18. This is another point at which it is important to point out that, in the 1990s, some younger black women preferred skinny legs. Of historical note is the fact that in various black communities throughout the country night clubs held "big leg" contests for black women-well into the 1960s. 19. This pattern influences the literature in several works. There is "Big Sweer," whose adeptness with a knife protects Zora Neale Hurston in Mules and Men (1935-the character also appears in other Hurston works) and "Big Laura," in Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography 0/ Miss Jane Pittman (1971). Shay Youngblood entides her 1989 collection The Big Mama Stories. Two con• temporary film presentarions of the powerful Big Mama are Soul Food (1997), in which Vanessa L. Williams plays an important part, and Nothing to Lose (1997), in which Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins encounter the wrath of Lawrence's on-screen mother, who admonishes hirn for coming in late because it sets a bad example for his children, who are more importandy her grandchildren. When he tries to talk back, she slaps hirn, then slaps the Robbins character when he butts in to offer further explanation. This is per• haps one of the few times that a character resembling a screen mammy, here played by Irma P. Hall, could get away with slapping a white character. 184 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

20. Toni Morrison, "What the Black Woman Thinks about Women's Lib," New York Times Magazine, August 22, 1971,63. 21. In tbe artide I published on tbis topie in 1995, I identi/Y several characters and works tbat fit into the paradigm outlined in the preceding few paragraphs. They indude, in earlier, less developed manifestations, Elizabeth Grimes in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (New York: Dial, 1953) and Mary Rambo in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1952). An early strict manifestation of the type is Aunt Hagar Williams in Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1930; rpt. Collier Macmillan, 1969). Otber characters who fit tbe paradigm are Hansberry's Mama Lena Younger and Morrison's Sethe Suggs, who will be treated in later chapters, Mor• rison's Eva Peace in Sula (New York: Knopf, 1974) and Mrs. MacTeer in The Bluest Eye (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970), Ernest Gaines's Oc• tavia in "The Sky is Gray" in Bloodline (New York: Dial, 1968), and several of Gloria Naylor's characters, induding Mattie Michael in The Wilmen ofBrewster Place and tbe women in Bailey's Cafl (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). "The Sky is Gray" is particularly insightful in showing tbe impact of tbe unemotional, uncommunicative strong black female character on an offspring. Octavia beats her eight-year-old son James into killing redbirds for a family din• ner without explaining to hirn tbe necessity for such action, and she refuses to allow hirn to express affection for her by hugging her or saying, "I love you," because "that's ctybaby stuft;" and he is a "man." Morrison's Song ofSolomon is equally powerful in showing tbe consequences to offspring of tbe strong black female character. Pilate Dead may be admirable for her strength and knife• wielding abilities, but she ultimately cannot-and does not show any indina• tion to-pass on her survival skills to her feeble-minded daughter or her misguided granddaughter. See my "This Disease Called Strength: Some Ob• servations on the Compensating Construction ofBlack Female Character," Lit• eratureandMedicine 14 (Spring 1995): 109-126. 22. Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters (New York: Vintage, 1980); and Gloria Naylor, Mama Day (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988). 23. Tina McElroy Ansa, "Mudear," Ugly \%ys (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1993). In Baby of the Family (New York: Harcourt Brace Jo• vanovich, 1989), her first novel, Ansa introduces us to Lena, who is privi• leged to commune with the dead because she has been born with a caul, that is, her birth sac, over her face. Though younger than the other women, Lena nonetheless reflects the mythical, though she has not used her otherworldly strength to the detriment of others. 24. Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar (New York: Harcourt Brace Jo• vanovieh, 1983). 25. J. California Cooper, Family (New York: Doubleday, 1991). 26. See, for example, James Baldwin's The Amen Corner (New York: Dial Press, 1968). 27. This visual history is traceable in images of black women in film, sketches, and photographs, in late-nineteenth-century popular magazines (such as Notes 185

Ladies Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, and Good Housekeeping) , on television (especially in the 1970s and 1980s), and on the stage. For discus• sions of representational images of black women in these various media, see Roberts, The Myth 0/ Aunt Jemima; Manring, Slave in a Box; Kern-Fox• worth, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus; Turner, Ceramic Uncles & Cel• luloid Mammies; Anderson, Mammies No More; and Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. See also Birth 0/ a Nation anq the video doc• umentary, Ethnic Notions. 28. In "This Disease Called Strength," I identify the biographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright as having direct influences upon their cre• ations of strong black women. In Black Boy (1945), Wright recounts how his mother would not let hirn into the house when boys in their neighbor• hood took the family's grocery money from hirn. He paints his mother as being unsympathetic to his plight, generally unemotional, and so strong that she could whip hirn into a fever without it having any impact upon her. Wright paints black women characters such as Mrs. Thomas in Native Son (1940) and Sarah in "Long Black Song" as being in league with whites who keep black men in their place. In Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Hurston recounts how she was so insulted by her stepmother's alienation of her father's affection from his children that she beat the woman unmerci• fully. In that epic batde, Hurston depicts herself as having almost superhu• man physical, emotional, and moral strength. She was still unrepentant about her act many years later. In several of her fictional and cultural works, the character Big Sweet appears as the quintessential strong black woman with an impressive knife-wielding ability. Maya Angelou approximates Wright's depiction ofhis mother in her representation ofMomma Hender• son in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). In one instance, Momma Henderson whips Maya for saying "by the way," because, to her mind, it is blasphemous; it parodies the biblical teaching that Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life." 29. Alice Childress has drawn upon this mythical relationship in her play, Wine in the Wilderness, where a black man wants to paint a triptych of black women, one of whom will be "Mother Mrica, regal, black womanhood in her noblest form," an "Mrican queen" (9). Shirley Williams draws upon this relationship in a negative way when she has a black man seduce and finan• cially abuse a black woman in "Tell Martha Not to Moan" by calling her his "Black queen." 30. Alice Walker, "Everyday Use," in In Love and Trouble: Stories ofBlack Wamen (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text. 31. Nickolas Ashford and Valarie Simpson, 'Tm Every Woman," The Bodyguard Original Soundtrack Album (New York: Arista Records, Inc., 1992). 32. Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise (New York: Bantarn, 1978). 33. Nikki Giovanni, "Ego Tripping," in The Wamen and the Men: Poems (New York: Morrow, 1975). 186 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

34. In ascribing goddess-like qualities to her persona, Giovanni anticipates liter• ary characters in the 1980s and 1990s who routinely exceed the bounds of human limitations. 35. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937; New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 140-41. 36. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 44. 37. Lisa M. Anderson makes passing reference to this phenomenon in Mammies No More, p. 41, but it is implicit in numerous discussions of the era. MicheIe Wallace discusses it in great detail in Black Macho and the Myth 0/ the Su• perwoman (New York: Warner, 1978). 38. Ruby Sanders, "HUSH, HONEY." Unpublished manuscript provided in 2001. 39. Alice Walker, "Women," in Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), pp. 159-160. 40. Octavia Butler, Wild Seed (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980). 41. See Spillers, "Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: An American Grammar Book," in MitchelI, pp. 454-81. 42. For a discussion of the dozens, see Roger Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jun• gle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets 0/ Philadelphia (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); John Dollard, "The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult," in Alan Dundes, Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation 0/ Afro• American Folklore (rev. ed. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1991), pp. 277-294; and Abrahams, "Playing the Dozens," in Dundes, pp. 295-309. 43. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "The Negro Family: The Case for National Ac• tion" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department ofLabor, 1%5), in which he ar• gued that the central problem in Mrican American families was matriarchal, emasculating black women, created quite a stir when it appeared, especially in its implications for public policy. MicheIe Wallace's Black Macho and the Myth 0/ the Superwoman (1978) was also controversial in its exploration of strong black women, particularly in their political and interracial relation• ships, as weil as in their romantic relationships (or lack thereof) with black men. Many of the women I treat do not have the public power traditionally expected of matriarchs, and only one of them is sexually active.

Chapter 2 1. I selected the word "tyrant" to describe Mama Lena before I discovered that Hansberry also uses the term to refer to her. In focusing on Mama Lenas ab• solute control of her household, neither of us intends the despotie or evil connotations frequendy associated with this word. I especially want to em• phasize that Mama Lena's role and position within her family can rarely-if ever-be challenged. Notes 187

2. "Lorraine Hansberry," Dictionary 0/ Literary Biography, 38 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1985), p. 127. Carter also considers the play "Iess a work of protest than a celebration of the multigenerational black struggle for progress" (126) and notes Hansberry's "emphasis on black social conditions, black strength, black struggle, and Pan-Mricanism." 3. James Baldwin, "Introduction," in To Be Young, Gifted and Black, ed. Robert Nemiroff (New York: Signet, 1969), pp. xii-xiii. 4. The play boasted the first black director, L10yd Richards, on Broadway, the first starring role for Sidney Poitier, the first success for its producers, and, most important, the first play to reach Broadway by a black woman play• wright. RAisin won the New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play of the Year in 1959, thereby making Hansberry the youngest American, the first Mrican American, and the first woman to win the award. 5. "Thoughts on 'A Raisin in the Sun'," Commentary Oune 1959): 529. 6. "Ireland and Points West," New Yorker 35 (21 March 1959): 101. 7. "A RAisin in the Sun," New Republic, 13 April 1959, p. 21. For other con• temporary reviews, see Nan Robertson, "Dramatist Against Odds," New York Times, 8 March 1959, p. X3; Brooks Atkinson, "The Theatre: 'A Raisin in the Sun,'" New York Times, 12 March 1959, p. L27; Harold Clurman, "Theatre," The Nation, 4 April 1959, pp. 301-302; Henry Hewes, ''A Plant Grows in Chicago," Saturddy Review, 4 April 1959, p. 28; and Max Lerner, ''A Dream Deferred," New York Post, 5 April 1959, p. xx. 8. Ossie Davis, "The Significance of Lorraine Hansberry," Freedomways 5:3 (1965): 399, 400. 9. Quoted in Steven R. Carter, Hansberry's Drama: Commitment amid Com• plexity (Urbana and Chicago: Universiry ofIllinois Press, 1991), pp. 52-53. 10. Quoted in Carter, Hansberry's Drama, p. 53. 11. Doris E. Abramson, Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre 1925-1959 (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 254. Less generous in his assessment of characters and play is Harold Cruse, who dubbed RAisin a "glorified soap opera" in which Hansberry forcibly ascribes middle-c1ass values to a 10wer-working-c1ass family to make them acceptable as integrationists. See The Crisis 0/ the Negro Intellectual (New York: Morrow, 1967), pp. 267-284. 12. "A Raisin in the Sun Revisited," Black American Literature Forum 22: 1 (Spring 1988): 110-111. 13. "The Sighted Eyes and Feeling Heart of Lorraine Hansberry," Black Ameri• canLiteratureForum 17:1 (Spring 1983): 10. 14. Mama Lena's deceased husband is occasionally referred to as "Big Walter," a distinction designed to separate hirn from "Iittle" Walter Lee and not neces• sarily one that designates authority in relation to his wife or other family members. 15. "The Mama" designation is also visible in Mama Lena insinuating herself into a motherly role to Asagai. She immediately assurnes that, with hirn being so far away from horne, he needs a nurturing surrogate mother's love: 188 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

"I bet you don't half look after yourself, being away from your mama either. I spec you better come 'round here from time to time and get yourself some decent homecooked meals ..." (52). Historical mamas are noted for play• ing this role, but even Mama Lena lays it on mick for a first encounter with Asagai. 16. Other members of the cast appearing on stage and in the film included Sid• ney Poitier (Walter Lee), Diana Sands (Beneatha), Ruby Dee (Rum), Glynn Turman (Travis), Louis Gossett (George Murchison), and Ivan Dixon (Asagai). Almough Hansberry wrote two screenplays and new and substan• tially different scenes for the film, none of me new material was used. Carter points out that me film "was basically a shortened version of the play." Still, "the final product was good enough to earn a nomination for Best Screenplay of the Year from the Screenwriters Guild and a Special award at the Cannes Film Festival, both in 1961" ("Hansberry," p. 128). A second film version of the play, produced for television in 1989, featured Esther Rolle as Mama Lena Younger and Danny Glover as Walter Lee Younger; other cast members included Kim Yancy (Beneatha), Starletta DuPois (Ruth), and Kimble Joyner (Travis). The play was also transformed into a musical, Raisin, that appeared on Broadway in 1973 and has had many reprisals since then. 17. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (New York: Signet, 1966), p. 27, my emphasis. Notice that, although Hansberry emphasizes Mama Lenas beauty as much as she does her strength (in the sentences quoted and those imme• diately following), Mama Lena's beauty is never a factor in the play, while her physical and moral strength undergird most of the action. 18. "A Raisin in the Sun Revisited," 111. 19. Ferguson argues that Mama Lenas violence should "lead to an examination of African American views on corporal punishment-where such practice is not viewed as abusive and tyrannical but corrective and loving. !t's in the Christi an tradition of violence as redemption. Qesus hangs to save mankind.) Ruth uses the threat of a beating to keep Travis in line, too." Per• sonal communication to the author, January 1997. From a different per• spective than my own, therefore, Ferguson's comment connects nicely to the Christian basis for the actions of strong black women characters. 20. While it could be argued that the parent/ child dynamic is reflective of 1950s historical black reality, in which children were expected to be "seen and not heard," that argument is flawed by the fact that, though she may treat them othetwise, both of Mama Lenas "children" are biologically-if not emo• tionally or economically-adults. 21. As many scholars have noted, Beneathas very name places her in a lesser po• sition, "beneath her," to Mama Lena. 22. In Raymond Andrews' Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), the tide character earns the appellation "the Momma' because of a comparable ability to meddle in everybody's business even as she cares for and nurtures them. . Notes 189

23. When Travis balks at going next door to borrow cleanser from a neighbor, for example, Mama Lena simply responds: "Do as you told" (53), which might be an acceptable directive ro a child, but she treats the adults in her household the same way. When Ruth rises too soon from resting because of her pregnancy, Mama Lena asserts: "Who told you to get up" (54). 24. Particularly informative in this context are Sidney Poitier's comments on his discussions with Hansberry and Lloyd Richards about how the Walter Lee character should be played. Claudia McNeii was so strong as Mama, Poitier asserted, that unless the Walter Lee character were allowed to play direcrly against her, the play ran the risk of making "a negative comment on the black male"-presumably because he would appear weak. Poitier argued• and lost-that the play should unfold from Walter Lee's point of view, not Mama's. See Poitier, This Lift (New Yark: Alfred A Knopf, 1980), Chapter 17, "A Raisin in the Sun." 25. Ruth might not object overly much to Lenas actions because she has pre• cious few other models far considering mature black womanhood. Remem• ber that she threatens ro beat Travis on a couple of occasions, an indication that she has perhaps been inadvertenrly influenced by Mama Lena. Keep in mind as weil that she calls Mama Lena "Lena' ar "Miss Lena." Is this an ef• fort to identifJ, adesire to emulate-even though such aspirations might seem beyond the character traits we see in her? 26. Octavia beats her son James; however, Eva Peace bums her son Plum to death when he develops a drug habit from which he does not seem to be able to extricate hirnself. 27. Walter Lee even refers to hirnself at one point as "Walter Lee"-on the oc• casion when he is trying to persuade Ruth to present his case for the liquor store to Mama Lena (2I); thus he is picturing hirnself in the role of the lit• rle boy seeking approval from a parent. 28. Comparison to Eva Peace in Toni Morrison's Sula (1974) comes immedi• ately to mind, for Eva, in the role of strong black woman, creates reality through the assigning of names to "Tar Baby" (a white man) as weil as to the three "Deweys" (three distincrly different boys she adopts and to whom she gives the same name). 29. Carter, in Hansberry's Drama, offers a position direcrly opposite to my own. He asserts that Walter Lee, by using black folk speech to present the family's position to Lindner, is impressively militant: " ... In context, Walter is say• ing that he refuses to be bought off, that he knows he is preparing to do something that will anger a lot of whites, and that how he acts in the future will depend on how the whites act. If they agree to be friendly, so will he; if they want to fight, so will he, and they will have the responsibility for any blood shed then.) Walter's way of speaking in this moment is as mueh an aet of defiance as what he says because Lindner has told hirn that he and the other whites in Clyboume Park want a neighborhood in which everyone talks and acts the same way" (p. 28). 190 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

30. Abramson briefly points out other comparisons to Native Son; see Negro Playwrights, p. 242. 31. J. Charles Washington asserts that "Lena Younger gives manual labor a kind of mythical, almost Biblical meaning: As Jesus gave his life for man, Big Walter gave his life for her and his family. In other words, work itse\f, as weil as the sacrifice of the worker, is given a higher meaning than the financial and mate• rial rewards it was intended to bring." "A Raisin in the Sun Revisited," 116. 32. A flaw in the play is the uncertainty about how much time has e1apsed since Big Walter's death. The family seems ensconced and comfortable in its cur• rent relational and sleeping arrangements. Where, for example, did Beneatha sleep before Big Walter died, since she is now in his place in bed with Mama Lena? Did Travis sleep in the room with his parents before Big Walter's death and Beneatha on the couch? How long did it take for the insurance check to be processed? Except for Mama Lenas acute memories of Big Walter at the moment of receiving the check, the family's grieving for its patriarch seems to be over. Clarity about these issues would enable more accurate interpre• tations of the impact of Mama Lenas sole influence on her family (e.g., how long she shaped Walter Lee by herself as opposed to raising hirn with Big Walter) as weil as her obvious lack of interest in men.

Chapter 3 1. See, for example, Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada (New York: Random House, 1976); Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose (New York: W. Morrow, 1986); J. California Cooper, Family (New York: Doubleday, 1991); Charles Johnson, Oxherding Tale (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) and Middle Passage (New York: Atheneum, 1990); Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Knopf, 1987). 2. Addison Gayle specifically labels Mammy Barracuda a "man eater" in rela• tion to black males in developing his argument that Reed is too intent on ttying to prove collusion between black women and white men. See Gayle, "Black Women and Black Men: The Literature of Catharsis," Black Books Bulletin 4 (1976): 49. 3. Gayle discusses Mammy Barracuda in his review of the noveI, but it is sur• prising in critical treatments of Flight to Canada and of Reed's work in gen• eral that so few critics offer commentary on Mammy Barracuda. Reginald Martin does not mention her in his book-Iength study, Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), and Joyce A. Joyce only alludes to criticism of Reed's portrayal of black women in "Falling Through the Minefield of Black Feminist Criticism: Ishmael Reed, A Case in Point," in her mtrriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-cen• tered Literary Criticism (Chicago: Third World Press, 1994). While Mammy Barracuda loomed large for Reed, she is mostly invisible in criticism about his work. The absence is especially noteworthy in articles devoted exclusively to Flight to Canada, such as Ashraf H. A. Rushdy's "Ishmael Reed's Neo- Notes 191

HooDoo Slave Narrative," Narrative 2:2 (May 1994): 112-39, and Joseph C. Schopp's '''Riding Bareback, Backwards Through a Wood ofWords': Ish• mael Reed's Revision of the Slave Narrative," in Historiographie Metafietion in Modern Ameriean and Canadian Literature, ed. Bernd Engler and Kurt Muller (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1994), pp. 267-278. 4. Reed, Flight to Canada, p. 57. Subsequent references to the novel are taken from this edition and will be cited in parentheses in the text. 5. Implied or actual catechisms in which white masters try to instilI a master text into enslaved blacks appear in various Mrican American literary works. William Wells Brown's Clotel; Or, the President's Daughter (1853; New York: Collier, 1972) is perhaps the earliest one, bur the pattern also appears in Toni Morrison's Beloved (New York: Knopf, 1987) in exchanges between Baby Suggs and Mr. Garner as weil as between Sixo and schoolteacher. Again using reversal as a primary textual strategy, Reed incorporates the form of the genre into a modified call and response formula in which Mammy Bar• racuda reifies black power-sanctioned by whites-over other blacks. 6. By contrast, that mask-wearing trait is astapIe of Unde Robin's character. When Massa Swille caUs upon hirn to testifY to his satisfaction as an enslaved person, he says, "Canada. I do admit I have heard abour the place from time to time, Mr. SwiUe, bur I loves it here so much that ... that I would never think of leaving here. These rolling hills. Mammy singing spirituals in the morning before them good old biscuits" (19-ellipses in original)-even as he is slowly poisoning Swille and altering Swille's will to his own gain. Given her tendency to sing "Dixie," it seems an egregiously incongruous mix to have Mammy Barracuda sing spirituals as weil. So me spirituals imply sup• port for the status quo, bur others advocate batde in this world rather than longing for heaven. For development of this latter argument, see John W. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Blaek Folk Hero in Slavery and Free• dom (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1989). 7. As an illustration of her dass consciousness, consider this passage: "Massa Swille, there's so me poor-white trash down in the kitchen walking on my kitchen flo. I told them to get out my kitchen and smacked one of them on the ear with my broom" (38). 8. Sondra A. O'Neale shares this evaluation when she asserts that "Reed's own whipping post is the black wo man and the persistent theme of his personal philosophy that she joins the white power structure to castigate the black man. Bur Reed has never created a character so purposed to have his audi• ence join his disdain than the demonic Mammy Barracuda." See "Ishmael Reed's Fitful Flight to Canada: Liberation for Some, Good Reading for All," Callaloo 1:4 (Oetober 1978): 177. In reviewing the noveI, Gayle comments on this historical perception and asserts: "This is not history, but anti-his• tory, a grotesque distortion to be sure; yet, the theme of coUusion, though minus the power implications suggested by Reed, is one in which a great many Blaek males believe. Such coUusions, if such they are, more oEren than not, are unconscious and designed to serve noble ends. Certainly, those 192 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

thousands of mothers, like Wright's mother in Black Boy, who punish and abuse their sons for standing their ground against whites, are seeking to save their children, not to affect an alliance with white men. Likewise, those fe• male writers-Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Walker are examples-who in their works, depict Black males as helpless victims, overwhelmed by an all• powerful male dominated white society, are not guilty of collusion-in the sense that Reed suggests" (p. 49). Nonetheless, Gayle concludes that forces are at work generally in the society "to keep Black men in their places." Gayle's comments should perhaps be read in the context of his extreme ide• ological differences with Reed. 9. O'Neale explicitly posits sexual relations between the two by asserting that "Mammy Barracuda is solely submissive to her master-lover white Swille." O'Neale is also explicit in assigning a lesbian component to Mammy Bar• racuda's character and comparing her to other of Reed's black heroines. See "Ishmael Reed's Fitful Flight to Canada," 177. 1O. Her jewelry is another instance of the status she holds with Arthur Swille, for he has apparently bought several pieces for her. On one occasion when he is particularly enamored of an apple pie she has made, he says: "Pompey ... go and have them order Mammy Barracuda a ruby ring from Cartier's" (130). 11. In commenting brieflyon Mammy Barracuda's diamond crucifix, Hortense J. Spillers remarks that Mammy Barracuda, "in her brilliant captivity, em• bodies an entirely oxymoronic notion-at the crossroads of wealth and ex• change, she is a major player, though not a beneficiary. Wearing wealth's symptoms on her magnanimous bosom and around her neck, she is made to throw a reflection that shatters the sight, instead of healing it." Spillers, "Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed," in Slavery and the Literary Imagination, ed. Deborah E. Mc• Dowell and Arnold Rampersad (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Uni• versity Press, 1989), p. 3l. 12. The notion of Etheric Double is evoked to describe the relationships Ms. Swille and her incestuous sister-in-Iaw Vivian have to Arthur Swille. 13. See, for example, Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Womans World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon, 1982). 14. To illustrate the extent to which Mammy Barracuda far exceeds permissible limits, consider, by comparison, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," in which the townspeople ponder tragically long on what to do about Miss Emily because they cannot "accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad." See Studies in Fiction, ed. Blaze O. Bonazza and Emil Roy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 65. 15. In the Neo-HooDoo philosophy he has developed, Reed finds major prob• lems with Christianity. However, he does use it to suggest acquiescence to the status quo. Cato explains to Swille that, by forcing enslaved blacks to fol• low "only the Jesus cult," the women have become particularly docile: "The women especially be thrilled with the Jesus cult. They don't ask no questions any more. They's accepted their lot" (53). Notes 193

Chapter 4

1. Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen, in Blacks (Chicago: The David Company, 1987), p. 100. 2. Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Knopf, 1987), p. 140. Subsequent ref• erences to this novel appear in parentheses in the text. 3. Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Wife of His Youth," in The Collected Stories of Charles W. Chesnutt, ed. William L. Andrews (New York: Mentor, 1992), pp. 102-113. 4. While readers generally recognize an otherworldliness in Beloved, they sel• dom assign such a characteristic to Baby Suggs. In assuming a status larger than the confinement of the human, Baby Suggs shares kinship with Beloved and literary relatives such as Bambara's Minnie Ransom, Naylor's Mama Day, and Cooper's Clora. 5. Another strong black woman in the role of preacher, James Baldwin's Sister Margaret in The Amen Corner (New York: Dial, 1968) also has difficulty liv• ing as she advises others to live. 6. Alice Walker, The Third Lift of Grange Copeland (1970; New York: Avon, 1971), p. 216. Italics in original. 7. This reinvention motif recurs in Morrison's work. Ir is in essence what Sula Peace does as weIl as what Pilate Dead does on her many adventures and travels. Both women make adjustments necessitated by the circumstances in which they find themselves. 8. This is the strategy that frames Gayl Jones's Corredigora (1975), a story of slavery and incest in Brazil and their consequences to the third generation of women fathered by the same Brazilian slaveholder. 9. As this discussion illustrates, black women's strength can be a virtue or a hin• drance. For my unqualified appreciation of Baby Suggs's and Sethe's healthy qualities, see my Fiction and Folklore: The Novels ofToni Morrison (KnoxviIle: University ofTennessee Press, 1991). 10. Schoolteacher and the nephew who arrives in Ohio with hirn to return Sethe and her children to slavery are equally struck by her eyes: "But the worst ones [eyesl were those of the nigger woman who looked like she didn't have any. Since the whites in them had disappeared and since they were as black as her skin, she looked blind" (150). 11. Like many strong black women characters, Sethe has no friends, and she is not involved in any of the institutions (community, church) that Morrison posits would perhaps have saved Hagar in Song ofSolomon. While a portion of this absence might be voluntary in Sethe's life, it is also because of what her neighbors perceive as her haughtiness, her strength. 12. On several occasions, Baby Suggs exhibits the same directive posture toward Sethe. For example, when Sethe tries to feed Denver after having killed Beloved, Baby Suggs orders, "Clean up! Clean yourself up!" (152). 13. Noticeably, romantic possibility enters Sethe's life when she is at a low point, literally in bed and depressed, in other words, again weakened in comparison 194 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

to her previous state. In this condition, she is allowed to be receptive to Paul D, whereas that option failed when she was mentally and physically stronger. Since the impression is clearly that she will be strong again, it remains to be seen in the literature when an unusually strong black woman character and a black male character engage in a healthy romantic relationship.

Chapter 5 1. I focus in this chapter on The Saft Eaters and Family as examples of strong black women with extranatural powers. For my discussion of Mama Day in a comparable connection, see my 1996 volume, The Power of the Porch (Athens: University of Georgia Press), Chapter 2. 2. I trace this pattern in my discussion of conjure women and their powers in Fiction and Folklore: The Novels ofToni Morrison (Tennessee, 1991). 3. Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters (1980; New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 1. Subsequent references to this novel appear in parentheses in the text. 4. Mama Mae's absence through a connection to a traditional church might be another way for Bambara to indieate that more than Christianity is needed in the lives of these women. M'Dear Sophie, while absent from the healing room, nonetheless has Velmas best interests at heart. Indeed, it could be ar• gued that she is another strong black woman character who seems to have unusual connections to the forces of the universe. She plays a significant role in turning healing energies toward Velma, a role that increases when it is clear that Velma is indeed coming through her crisis (217ff). Through the power of silence-perhaps akin to that of Baby Suggs-she aids the process ofVeimas healing. More attention could be devoted to her as a strong black woman character, but my primaty focus here is Minnie Ransom. Similar at• tention could be-and has been-devoted to Velma, who has received quite a bit of critieal attention, including coverage in theses and dissertations. 5. While Bambara has not claimed Johnson's novel as a direct li ne of influence, she does recount being present at a "passionate" dinner conversation about the novel. See "What It Is I Think I'm Doing Anyhow," in The Writer on Her Work, ed. Janet Sternburg (New York: Norton, 1980), pp. 162-63. In that same essay, Bambara refers to Minnie as "a swamphag healer" (p. 165). 6. Because Velma is destined to take Minnie's place as healer, and perhaps even to exceed her, she is intimately identified with the health of the larger com• munity. Bambara makes clear that Velma serves a microcosmic role and that the community cannot be healthy unless she iso Several characters, therefore, experience epiphanie transformations or moments of enlightenment during the thundering interlude that presages Velma's return to complete con• sciousness and health. It is noteworthy that the thunder is probably identi• fied with the loa, which signals again the multidimensionallevel ofVelma's healing. 7. Elliott Butler-Evans goes slightly further in this interpretation by asserting that, for Nadeen, "Velmas healing becomes a rite of passage" and that Notes 195

"Nadeen's initiation into womanhood and a community of Black women occurs when she experiences in Velma's healing 'a kinship with the woman she did not know,' which enables her to transcend her devalued status and affirm an identity." See Race, Gender, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction ofToni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), p. 183. 8. This unusual measurement of time and Minnie's age come together in an• other reference that Minnie herself makes. When Velma "growls" in anger about things that have brought her to the Infirmary, Minnie asserts: "'1 haven't heard a growllike that since Venus moved between the sun and the earth, mmm, not since the coming of the Lord of the Flames. Yes, sweet• heart, 1 haven't heard a good oie deep kneebend from-the-source growl such as that in some nineteen million years. Growl on. You gonna be all right ... after while. Ir's all a matter of time. The law of time'" (41). While Minnie may be measuring time metaphorically, she nonetheless indicates a different perception from usual Western traditions even as she eauses speculation about her own chronological age. 9. Oshun is a riverain goddess in Yoruba tradition, identified primarily by the metal brass and a mixture of traits, including witchcraft, that are warring and loving. Oya(e), goddess of the Whirlwind, is also known for her witch• craft. See Robert Farris Thompson, Flash ofthe Spirit: African & Afro-Amer• ican Art & Philosophy (New York: Vintage, 1984), pp. 79-83 and 167. People of Mrican descent in the new world, especially in countries like Brazil, pay regular homage to Oshun. Oya(e), who does not have a counter• part in the new world, shows Bambara's concern wirh mixing original Mrican and new world Mrican traditions. 10. Janelle Collins provides a possible explanation for Minnie's seeming lapses: "Velma resists Minnie's energy; the destructive energy released by Velma's fragmentation causes interference in the healing forces of Minnie's power." See "Generating Power: Fission, Fusion, and Postmodern Politics in Bam• bara's The Saft Eaters, " MELUS 21:2 (Summer 1996): 41. Such an explana• tion suggests further that Velma, onee she attains wholeness and accepts her gift, has the capacity to replace Minnie Ransom and indeed to accomplish even greater good. 11. This evokes comparison to the group of 30 women who exorcise Beloved from Sethe's house by the murmurings they make, which are designed to "[break] the back of words." See Morrison, Beloved, p. 261. 12. This phrase is used for all the white slave owners and violators of black women's bodies in the narrative. Ir is thus a significant shaper of black women's strength, for the psychological and/or physical power these women are able to garner usually comes in direct reaction to one of "the Masters of the Land." 13. Fammy, like some of her enslaved literary ancestors, decides to have a child by a dark man so that it will be brown and she will have a better chance of keeping it with her-given the white woman's jealousy; Clora is that brown 196 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

child (4-5). Sethe's mother adopted the same strategy, and Ella, also in Beloved, simply lets her white child die because it resulted from her being raped repeatedly by two white men. 14. J. California Cooper, Family (New York: Doubleday, 1991), pp. 24-25. Sub• sequent references to this novel appear in parentheses in the text. 15. Always, another strong black woman chatacter, uses that space to plan her physical triumph over slavery. Ir is there that she exchanges her own son for the Buder baby and sets in process the plot that will enable her to get a plan• tation after slavery. The lowly, stable-like space, with its biblical connota• tions, therefore becomes a central triumphant image in the final generations of this much exploited family.

Chapter 6 1. Dorothy West, The Living Is Easy (1948; Rpt. New York: The Feminist Press, 1982), p. 4. Subsequent references to the novel appear in parentheses in the text. 2. In her attitude toward southern blacks, Cleo anticipates the Hatlern woman in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man who blames southern blacks for preventing northern blacks from progressing faster, as weil as Toni Morrison's Geraldine in The Bluest Eye, who sees in Pecola Breedlove the epitome of everything she has tried to escape by coming from the South to the North. 3. Her attitude here is not unlike Sethe Suggs's in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Sethe can kill Beloved in part because she "owns" her, has daimed the right to Beloved's body and to motherhood that the slaveholder would deny. 4. Obviously, Cleo has no genuine concern for Robert. She is more conscious of winning an atgument with Bart and of getting her way as far as domi• nating over her sisters is concerned. 5. One of the burdens Cleo forces upon Judy is an attempted alteration of her Negroid features. She insists that Judy "pinch her nose" in a nightly ritual designed to reshape it, as much as self-imposed violence can, into a more ac• ceptable Nordic-looking nose. Judy's nose, therefore, becomes the visible marker of Cleo's failed aspirations to upwatd mobility. 6. By contrast, Bart fervendy believes in God. He feels so dose to Hirn in fact that he experiences visions that have guided hirn over the years in his busi• ness success (see pp. 63, 66-67). Batt does not, however, comment upon how-or whether-God guides his relationship with Cleo. 7. Adelaide M. Cromwell, who wrote the Afterword to the Feminist Press edi• tion of the novel and who was a dose friend ofWest's for more than 40 yeats, comments that West's upper-dass characters in the novel "are all based on real people" (359) and that West's father, Isaac Christopher West, served as the model for Bart Judson. She further comments that "The West family horne on Brookline Avenue at one time induded thirteen persons, all rela• tives of Rachel West [Dorothy's mother], who was one of twenty-two chil• dren" (360). Notes 197

Chapter 7

1. Another striking literary example of a strong black female character and her impact upon her offspring is Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), in which the mother, Silla Boyce, wages psychological war against her husband and her two daughters for mastery of her household. At one point, when her younger daughter Selina calls her Hider and strikes her mother with her fists, Silla end ures the blows, then wraps her daughter in an embrace that is all possessive, all claiming, as the crying daughter gives way to an exhausted sleep in her mother's arms. Marshall's characters are drawn from Bajan culture, which suggests that tenets of the strong woman of African ancestry transcend national borders in the New World. 2. In the 1999 HBO television movie of A Lesson Before Dying, Irma P. Hall plays the role of Miss Emma. She is the same actress who plays Martin Lawrence's strongly violent mother in Nothing to Lose (1997) as weil as the Big Mama who dies in Soul Food (1997). By size contrast, CecilyTyson plays the role ofTante Lou (in the novel Gaines describes her as being very large). What Tyson lacks in physical size, she makes up in power of performance, as the movie has been universally praised. Its power to evoke viewer response is certified in the numbers of my colleagues who found themselves in tears while watching the movie. One reviewer comments that Tyson and Hall "are amazing and moving as two women whose strength, love and digniry guide through the pain." See the http://www.us.imdb.com website. 3. Note that Grant refers to his aunt by the respectful tide of"Tante"; it is com• parable to calling her Big Mama. In her role as godmother to Jefferson, Miss Emma is called "Nannan," another of those respectful tides that fit into the Big Mama category. 4. ErnestJ. Gaines, A Lesson BifOre Dying (New York: Knopf, 1993), p. 3. I will place further references to this novel in parenthesis in the text. The image of the women being as immobile as oak or cypress stumps evokes Christian song imagery. "I shall not be moved; just like a tree, planted by the waters, I shall not be moved." Keep in mind that one of the stories in Gaines's Bloodline (1968), which portrays a strong black woman character, is entided "Just Like a Tree." 5. Toni Morrison, Sula (New York: Knopf, 1974), p. 69. 6. The strong black woman character usually serves her charges without ex• pectations of reward. It is noteworthy, therefore, to reiterate that Miss Emma is confronting the white plantation owner when she asserts that something is owed to her. Obligation might be implicit in interactions between strong black women characters and their offspring, but it is never stated explicidy. 7. As with Mama Lena slapping Beneatha, perhaps most readers would find this an understandable or acceptable instance of violence. Nonetheless, it is violence, and it grows out of the strong black woman character's des ire to re• instate a way of/ife, a pattern of seeing, that existed before the offspring ver• balized the disruption that brought on the violence. 198 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

8. For an extended discussion of food and its production as indicative of rela• tionships in the noveI, see Courtney Ramsay, "Louisiana Foodways in Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying," Louisiana Folklore Miscellany 10 (1995): 46-58. Ramsay contends that "food in its acquisition and its preparation not only provides nourishment and a means by which love is expressed but also serves as a medium to exert power, to express other emotions of acceptance or rejection, and to communicate these feelings to others" (46). 9. Herman Beavers, Wrestling Angels Into Song: The Fictions 0/ Ernest J Gaines and farnes Alan McPherson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 229-30. 10. Gaines reiterates the philosophy of a black male savior here that he articu• lates in The Autobiography 0/ Miss fane Pittman (New York: Dial Press, 1971), where on several occasions the people ask of a newborn black male, "Is you the one?" 11. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 1976). 12. Pearl Cleage, Flyin' west (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1995), p. 7. Subsequent references to this source appear in parentheses in the text. 13. In May 1994, I was invited to the Long WharfTheatre in New Haven, Con• necticut, to lead the after-play discussion of Flyin' west. I observed that the largest female in the cast had the role of Sophie, even though she was dark• skinned and Sophie is mulatto. The smaller, lighter-skinned black woman who played the role of Fannie maintained that she had never thought in those terms. I found the casting and comment interesting for how we in• variably typecast large black women as strong, even though a single instance of casting may go against type in another trait (color in this instance). 14. Of course this scenario evokes Ted Shine's Mrs. Grace Love, who poisons the racist white southerners for whom she works as her "contribution" to the Civil Rights movement. See Shine's one-act play, "Contribution," in The Literature 0/ the Arnerican South: A Norton Anthology, ed. William L. An• drews, et al. (New York: Norton, 1998), pp. 858-68. 15. The only real "man" in the play, it could be argued, is Sophie.

Chapter 8 1. Lauren's active seeking of an alternative to Christianity differs from Beneatha Younger's resistance to her mother's brand of religion as weil as to Grant Wiggins' frustration with his great-aunt's belief system, for Beneatha and Grant do not move far beyond mouthing dissatisfaction with the status quo. 2. Octavia E. Butler, Parable 0/ the Sower (New York: Four Walls Eight Win• dows, 1993), p. 71. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text. The "seed" idea is one that Butler has explored before, es• pecially in Wild Seed (1980), in which the supernatural Doro seeks subjects (seeds) for his envisioned psionic garden of superior human beings. Notes 199

3. Jim Miller discusses Butler's turning of a dystopian universe into a utopian one in "Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler's Dystopian/Utopian Vi• sion," Science Fiction Studies 25:2 Quly 1998): 336-60. 4. Butler continues her portrayal of the strong Lauren Olamina in Parable 0/ the Talents (1998), in whieh Lauren suffers the loss ofher husband (through murder), daughter (through kidnapping for reindoctrination from Lauren's system of belief), and the idealic retreat she succeeds in establishing (the dominant cult in America takes over for purposes of retraining Lauren and her followers. They end up as prisoners who are routinely raped and forced to suffer other indignities). Lauren survives into her eighties, never once los• ing faith in her convictions and never onee wavering from her strong lead• ership role. 5. We are instantly reminded of eharacters such as Clotel assuming such dis• guises in their attempts to escape from slavery. This is not the only tie to the slave narrative tradition and to slavery in Butler's novel. Several families apply to move from the walled community in which Lauren lives to the twenty-first century equivalent of a company town, which Lauren's father interprets as a new form of slavery. Four of the people who join Lauren's group going north have been "wage slaves," held in bondage for food and shelter and because they are hyperempathetic, which presumably makes them more docile. The idea of traveling north also echoes the slave narrative tradition and the mythic connotations associated with that spaee. While California is not the usual site for historical representations of slavery in the literature, it is easily imbued with those connections in Butler's narrative. 6. One brother will reappear in a significant role in Parable 0/ the Talents. 7. The name "Natividad," with its dose resemblance to "nativity;" invites focus on the mother, father, and child who presage a new religion and a new world order. lt reflects another way in which Christianity continues to influence such texts, even when the authors and characters are consciously trying to create an alternative belief system. 8. BankoIe will indeed become Lauren's husband and the father ofher child in Parable 0/ the Talents.

Chapter 9

1. Paula Woods, Inner City Blues (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 38. Subsequent references to this source appear in parentheses in the text. 2. Richard Brodhead, ed., The Journals 0/ Charles W. Chesnutt (Durharn: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 140. 3. Don L. Lee, "From a B1aek Perspective," in Don't Cry, Scream (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1969), p. 34. 4. Shay Youngblood, The Big Mama Stories (Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1989). The two e1derly women who care for the child in Soul Kiss (1996), Youngblood's first noveI, also exhibit so me of these traditional traits. 200 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

5. Michelle Parkerson, "Odds and Ends (A New Arnazon Fable)," in Aftekete: An Anthology of Bklck Lesbian Writing, ed. Catherine E. McKinley and L. Joyce DeLaney (New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 89-95. Several things are going on in this story, including parodie social, historical, and linguistic ref• erences. For exarnple, the men who kill her refer to Sephra as "jemimma" in part because of what they perceive as her audacity in making weapons and in part because of her lesbianism. The fact that Parkerson couches her fable to center upon suprahuman black female characters-with a sexual dimen• sion comparable to Lauren Olamina's-is nonetheless the important point. 6. Ideal also suffers the mental abuse ofJimson, her lover, who, during one long tirade about black women being "holdovers" from slavery in their "marnmy• made" tradition of domination, includes this accusation: "Although you are educated, intelligent, some of you black bitches cannot overcome the stamp of matriarchy." See Polite, The Fklgelklnts (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), p. 180. 7. It is worth noting that many of the strong black women characters portrayed in works in the 1990s, including Loz Wayward, Charlotte Justice, and Har• lan Jane Eagleton, do not have children. That is a significant departure from their literary sisters prior to the 1990s. 8. Jean Wheeler Smith, "Frankie Mae," in Bklck-Eyed Susans: Cklssic Stories by and about Bklck Women, ed. Mary Helen Washington (New York: Anchor, 1975), pp. 3-18. 9. Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro, in Contemporary Bklck Drama, ed. Clinton F. Oliver and Stephanie Sills (New York: Scribner's, 1971), pp. 187-205. Works Cited or Consulted

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Page numbers in bold typeface indicate chapters. Please note: All names of characters are indexed by their first names. For example, Baby Suggs, not Suggs, Baby. All other proper names are indexed according to the surname.

Abramson, Doris, 24 as savior, 20, 62 Mrican American literature characterization sexuality of, 168 ofblack women, 4, 9-11, 16, spiritual strength, 60--61 17-19, 173-79 Baldwin, James, 12, 17, 21-22, 121 Alexander, Elizabeth, 143 Bambara, Toni Cade (The Salt Eaters) , 79-99 Allison (Allie) (Parable ofthe Sower), 166, 167 Bangalang (Flight to Canada), 43, 44, 49 Althea Binney (Thea) (The Living is Easy), Bankoie (Taylor Franklin) (Parable ofthe 102, 116, 119, 120 Sowery, 166, 167, 168, 169 Always (Family), 92-95, 98 Bart Judson (The Living is Easy), 101-2, Ambrose, Rev. (A Lesson Before Dying), 104-10,115,117,118-19 131-32 beauty and evil related, 104--6 Amen (TV), 5, 6 Beloved (Beloved), 105, 117, 161 Amy Dunn (parable ofthe Sower), 156-57 Beloved (Morrison), 20, 57-78 "And Still I Rise" (Angelou), 14 Beneatha (A Raisin in the Sun), 26-27, anger tamedJrage controlled, 57-58, 59, 60, 32-33,35,38,104,127,132 61--63,68,91 Big Girls Don't Cry (Briseoe), 177 Annie Allen (Annie Allen), 57, 68 Big Lauta (The Autobiography ofMiss fant Anyanwu (Wild Seed), 17 Pittman), 16, 44 asexuality see sexuality/asexuality Big Mama characterization, 9, 23-24, 25 Aunt Jemima, 1, 6 The Big Mama Stories (Youngblood), 176 Aunt Sally (fubilee), 16,44, 92 Big Walter (A Raisin in the Sun), 35-36 authority as strength, 9, 13, 62, 160--65 Birth ofa Nation (film), 5 The Autobiography ofMiss fant Pittman black men (Gaines), 16, 132 as absent/expendable/diminished, 150 crippled by the suprahuman black Baby Suggs (Beloved), 57-78 woman, 13, 15 as advisor, 88-89 men's toles usutped by strong women, anger tamedlrage controlled, 57-58, 68 31-33 dying (suicide) as strength of choice, portrayed as children, 28-29, 31-33, 63--66 128-30 imperative nature of, 62 as villains, 150 as mother, 59-60 Block Women Novelists (Christian), 2 otherworldly strength, 66-68 The Bluest Eye (Morrison), 15, 179 physical size, 58 The Bodyguard (film), 14 quitting as strength, 58 body Ianguage as weapon, 127, 155 romance/marriage and, 58 breast size (Iarge), 2, 4, 6-7 210 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

see also physical size (large) Mama Day (Mama Day) compared to, Briscoe, Connie 94 Big Girls Don't Cry, 177 Minnie Ransom (The Salt Eaters) Sisters and Lovers, 177 compared to, 94 Brown Girl, Brownstones (Marshali), 58 as mother, 89-99 the buffoon, 6, 46, 53 otherworldly strength, 12, 66, 89-99 Buder, Octavia E. (Parable o[the Sower), psychological strength, 91 153-71 saint as literary categorization, 19, 164 sexuality of, 168 Cabin in the Sky (film), 5, 7 Clotel (Brown), 97 Carter, Nell, 5-6 dothingl dothes Carter, Steven R., 21, 40 the healerlconjure woman, 80 Celie (The Colar Purple), 110, 176 the mammy figure, 4, 42, 47-48 Charity (The Living is Easy), 102, 113-15, racial stereotypes, 145 116, 118, 119 The Color Purple (Walker), 15 Charlotte Justice (Inner City Blues), 173-74 control as strength, 112-14, 115-16, 129, Chesnutt, Charles WaddelI, 59, 174 130, 164 Christianity Cooper, J. California (Family), 89-99 characteristic representation of black culture adoption by blacks of white, 44-45 women in African American literature, 10, 11, 16-17 Davis, Ossie, 23, 39 Christian morality in character Denver (Beloved), 66-67, 70, 72, 76, 78 development, 52, 54-55 the destructive woman (The Living is Easy), power and, 84-85 101-21 see also religion as a source of strengtb and do remember me (Golden), 176 cirde of acceptability, 18, 38-39, 105-6, domestic abuse of strong women 129, 167 see physical damage done by the strong dass consciousness, 102-3, 116, 119-20 the domineering woman (The Living is Cleage, Pearl (Flyin'West), 139-51, 175 Easy), 11, 101-21 Cleo Jericho Judson (The Living is Easy), Dr. Meadows (The Salt Eaters), 87, 88 101-21 Driver, Tom E, 23, 24 as controller, 112-14, 115-16 The Duchess (The Living is Easy), 102, 104, emotion as weakness, 109 120 emotional containment, 106-8, 111, duty as control, 129 114 formation of, 117 eating/food, 8-9,47, 113-15, 133-34 imperative nature of, 103 "Ego Tripping" (Giovanni), 14 intimacy as weakness, 109 Emery Solis (parable o[ the Sower), 166, 167 as manipulator, 115 Emma, Miss (A Lesson Before Dying), 19, morality/scruples of, 117-18 124, 125-27, 129-36 as mother, 103-4, 110-12 emotional containment, 11, 14, 61-62, re-creation wish of, 115-17 106-8, 111, 114, 128 as servant, 102 emotion as strength, 136 sexuality/asexuality of, 105-6, 109-10 emotion as weakness, 102, 109, 110, 114 sinner as literary categorization, 19 endurance as strength, 68, 90-91 Clora (Family) Ethnic Notions, 5 anger tamed! rage controlled, 91 Eva Peace (Sula), 32, 54, 61, 88, 93, 115, Christian strength, 95-97 128, 168 killing as an ace of strength, 89-99 "Everyday Use" (Walker), 13-14, 140 Lauren (Parable o[the Sower) compared evil to, 162 beauty's relationship co, 104--6 Index 211

Cleo (The Living is Easy), 115 the masculine disguise, 155-56, 167 Frank (F!yin' Wt-st), 144-45, 150 men as enemy, 109, 113, 114 The Living is Easy, 101-21 men's inadequacy in strong women's Mammy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), 54 lives,75 Mister (The Color Purple), 54 men's roles usurped by strong women, Parable ofthe Sower (Butler), 154--55, 13,15,31-33,108-9,114,136 161 white men and black women, 46--47 expectations diminished through strength, Gimme A Break (TV), 5 74-75 Golden, Marita (and do remember me), 60 the extranatural Gone With the Wind (film), 5 see the otherworldly characterization Good Times (TV), 5, 6 the grandmother as sacred, 18, 123-38 Faith and the Good Thing Uohnson}, 81 Grant Wiggins (A Lesson Before Dying), Fami!y (Cooper), 12, 19, 60, 89-99 123-38 family hierarchy of control, 127, 130-31 angerlviolence, 134--35 Fammy (Fami!y), 89,93 childish behavior of, 124, 128-30 Fannie Dove (F!yin'Wt-st), 139, 140, manhood expectations of violence, 142--43, 147--49 137-38 femininiry psychological battle for space, 123 Fannie (F!yin' Wt-st), 147--48 Walter Lee (A Raisin in the Sun) 'Tm Every Woman" (song), 14 compared to, 138 Leah, Miss (F!yin' Wt-st), 139 weakness of, 138 Minnie Ransom (The Saft Eaters), 87 Sophie (F!yin' Wt-st), 139, 141 Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), 174--75 in the suprahuman character, 13 Halle (Beloved), 59, 63, 67, 73-74 film representations of black women, 5 Hansberry, Lorraine (A Raisin in the Sun), 7, The Flagellants (Polite), 176 12,21-39,175 Flight to Canada (Reed), 19,41-55 HarlanJane Eagleton (The Healing), 177-78 F!yinWest (Cleage), 16,20, 139-51 Harry (Parable ofthe Sower), 156, 161-64, food/eating, 8-9,47, 113-15, 133-34 167 Frank Charles (F!yin'Wt-st), 139, 141, 142, Hattie, Miss (The Living is Easy), 113 144--50 rhe healerlconjure woman/swamphag "Frankie Mae" (Smith), 179 clothing/clothes of/and, 80 Fred Holt (The Salt Eaters), 81 Harlan Jane Eagleton (The Healing), Funnyhouse ofa Negro (Kennedy), 179 177-78 futuristic strengrh, 153-71, 173-74, 176 as isolatedllonely, 88 Mama Day (Mama Day), 72, 82 Gabriel Grimes (Go TellIt on the Mountain), Minnie Ransom (The Saft Eaters), 79-89 44 as mother, 80 Gaines, Ernest J. (A Lesson Before Dying), responsibilities of, 83 123-38 as sexual, 87-88 gen der roles The Healing Uones}, 177 black men and running away, 138 Henri Pichot (A Lesson Before Dying), 125, black men with white men, 137 127, 129, 133, 137 black women joining whites to keep black Houston, Whitney, 14 men subservient, 34, 43, 44, 45 How Stella Got Her Groove Back (McMillan), boys in men's roles, 119 177 gender revenge in the mammy figure, 47 Hughes, Langston, 12 male bonding, 138 "Hush Honey" (Sanders), 15-16 manhood expectations of violen ce, 137-38, 146 Ideal (The Flagellants), 176 212 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

ilIness as control, 130, 159-60 as savior, 20, 62 Tm Every Woman" (song), 14 sexuality balanced with strengrh, 168-69 Imitation ofLift (film), 5 spirituality, 96, 170-71 Incidents in the Lift ofa Slave Girl, 97 Leah, Miss (Flyin' w"st) , 139-40, 143-45, Inner City Blues (Woods), 173-74 146, 148-50 Invisible Man (Ellison), 16, 68 Lee, Don L. (Haki Madhuburi), 174-75 A Lesson Beflre Dying (Gaines), 19, 123-38 James ("The Sky is Gray"), 17, 104, 123, 158 Lily (The Living is Easy), 102, 113, 116, Jamey (The Healing), 178 118, 119 Jefferson (A Lesson Before Dying), 123-38 Lincoln, Abraham (A Flight to Canada), 42, The Jeffersons (TV), 5 46-47 Jericho, Mr.lMrs. (The Living is Easy), 105, Lissie (The Temple ofMy Familiar), 12 117 literaty portrayals of black women the Jezebel, 2 see Mrican American literature see also sexuality characterization Joanne (Parable ofthe Sower), 156-57, 160 The Living is Easy (West), 19-20, 101-21 Johnson, Mrs. ("Everyday Use"), 13-14, 156 loneliness/isolation, 13, 35-37, 65, 88 Jones, Gayl (The Healing), 177 Loz Wayward ("Odds and Ends [A New JosefEhelich von Fremd (The Healing), 178 Amazon Fable]"), 176 Josie (The Living is Easy), 116, 117 Jubilee (Walker), 16 MacTeer, Mrs. (The Bluest Eye) , 127 Judy Judson (The Living is Easy), 102-3, Mama Day (Mama Day), 72, 82, 93, 94, 106-7, 108, 110-12, 115 95-96, 159 Mama Day (Naylor), 12, 96 Karen Wilder (The Salt Eaters) , 83, 94 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), 21-39 Kar! Lindner (A Raisin in the Sun), 32, 34 as Big Mama, 23-24, 27 Kennedy, Adrienne (Funnyhouse ofa Negro), Christian srrength, 95-96 179 imperative nature of, 62, 103, 126-27 Kennedy, John Pendleton, 4 as isolated/lonely, 35-37, 65 killing as an act of strengrh moral srrength, 26, 30 Clora (Family), 89-99 as mother, 103 Eva Peace (Sula), 93 as n urturer, 159 Flyin' w"st (Cleage), 20, 139-51 physical size/strength 0[, 25-26, 26-27, Parable ofthe Sower, 153-71 58, 104 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 20, 72-73, 92 psychological damage done by, 29, 38 religion as a source of strength, 22, Landon, Michael, 6 26-27,32, 132, 170 large body size see physical size (large) romance/marriage and, 35-37, 87 Lauren Olamina (Parable ofthe Sower), saint as literary categorization, 19 153-71 as savior, 62 Clora (Family) compared, 162 sexuality/asexuality 0[, 36-37, 87, 168 as controller, 164 silence as strength, 174 described, 160 as tyrant, 78 imperative nature of, 62 violence 0[, 26-27, 32, 104, 144 as killer, 158, 161-62, 165-66 the voice used as force, 125 as leader, 161-65 Mammy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), as lover, 167-68 41-55 the masculine disguise, 155-56, 167 Christian morality in character morality 0[, 168-69 development, 52, 54--55 as motherlnurturer, 156-57, 159, clothing/clothes of/and, 47-48 164-65, 166, 167, 169 as evil, 54 Index 213

as mammy figure, 42, 45 McNeil, Claudia, 7, 23, 24, 25-26 name components explained, 42 M'Dear Sophie (The Salt Eaters), 80, 94 the nurturer, 43 media representation ofblack women, 2-7, physical size/strength of, 42-43, 47-50, 16--17 58, 156 mental strengrh power lust portrayed, 49-52 see psychological strength sexuality of, 47, 168 Merritt, Theresa, 6 sinner as literaty categorization, 19 Minnie Dove Charles (Flyin' West), 139, Sophie (Flyin' West) compared to, 140 142-49 violence/cruelty of, 49-50, 53 Minnie Ransom (The Salt Eaters) working against black community, 145 as advisor, 88-89 rhe mammy figure Clora (Family) compared to, 94 in African American literature, 1-2 femininity, 87 asexual nature of, 47 as healer, 85-87, 98 black acceptance of, 7-8 as isolated/lonely, 88 as black female representative, 1 as mother, 80 c1othing/clothes of/and, 4, 42, 47-48 the otherworldly characterization, 12, Gimme A Break (TV), 5-6 79-89 large physical size and, 2 power limitations, 84 morali social power over white females, responsibilities, 83 48-51 romance/marriage, 87 myth/stereotype of, 7, 42, 55 as savior, 20, 89 the thin self of, 47 sexuality of, 168 as white power representative, 42-45, moral strength, 12-14,26--27,30,95,117, 48, 55 162 MarshalI, Paule (Praisesongfor the Widow), Morrison, Toni 60, 176 Beloved, 57-78 Mary Rambo (Invisible Man), 16, 169 Paradise, 177 the masculine disguise as strength, 155-56, the mother 167 Aunt Sally (fubilee), 92 masculiniry as strength, 12-14, 140-43 Baby Suggs (Beloved), 59--60 Massa (Arthur) Swille (Flight to Canado), Big Mama characterization, 9, 18, 41-55 23-24,25 the matriarch Cleo (The Living is Easy), 103-4, as acceptable behavior, 38-39 110-12 family roles surrounding, 38-39 Clora (Family), 89-99 as isolated/lonely, 35-36 as controller, 103 male roles defined by, 136--37 as healer, 80 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun) as, imperative nature of, 103 23-25 insistence upon conformity, 103 psychological pain/health and, 38 as isolated/solitary, 65 self-sacrificing narure of, 35-36 as killer, 72-73 as stereotype, 39 Lauren (Parable 0/ the Sower), 156--57, Tante Lou (A Lesson Before Dying), 166, 167 123-38 Leah, Miss (Flyin' West), 139-40, 144, see also the mother 145, 149 McDaniel, Hattie, 5 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), 103 McKay, Claude, 108 as manipulator, 125, 126--27 McMilIan, Terry Minnie Ransom (The Salt Eaters), 80 How Stella Got Her Groove Back myth of, 96 Waiting to Exhale, 177 as nurturer, 60, 61, 92, 103, 144 214 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

Octavia ("The Sky is Gray"), 103, 123 Minnie Ransom (The Salt Eaters), 12, pathological nature of strength, 77 79-89 as sacred, 18 as mother, 95 and sacrifice, 59, 68, 75-77, 89-90, 92, Mudear (Ugly "Wtzys), 12 140 physical space in, 93 as savior, 60-61 powers and talents of, 94 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 69-72, 75-78, 92 Ransom, Minnie (The Salt Eaters), 94 Sophie (Flyin' West), 140 and the (saintly) mother, 90-91 stereotype of the elderly black female, see also suprahuman characteristics 11-12 Tante Lou (A Lesson Beflre Dying), 123 Page, Thomas Nelson, 4, 6 see also the matriarch pain transcended through strength, 62-63 Mother to a11 humankind, 12,89,96 Parable o/the Sower (Butler), 20, 153-71 Mudear (Ugly "Wtzys), 12 Paradise (Morrison), 177 Parkerson, Michelle ("Odds and Ends [A Nadeen (The Salt Eaters) , 81-82, 84-85 New Amazon Fable]"), 176 Native Son (Wright), 34 pathological nature of strength neo-slave narrative, 41-55, 57-78, 89-99, in African American literature, 10-11 132 the bed as imagery, 66 the nurturer isolation/loneliness, 35-36 large breasts and, 4, 6-7 lack of emotion/a/fection, 10 1, 102, 106 Lauren (Parable o/the Sower), 156-57, large body size related to, 37-38 159, 169 manipulation of others/lack of scruples, Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun) , 159 103, 108-9 Mammy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), 43 the moment of metamorphosis, 16-17 negative portrayal of, 3 the mother, 77 preying on the weakness of others, 101 Octavia ("The Sky is Gray") Paul D (Beloved), 69-70, 73-75, 78 imperative nature of, 103 Pauline Breedlove (The Bluest Eye) , 15, 119 insistence upon conformity, 103 Pecola Breedlove (The Bluest Eye) , 73,179 as isolated/lonely, 65 Penny (The Living is Easy), 114, 115 as mother, 31, 103, 123, 128 "Phenomenal Woman" (Angelou), 14 physical damage done by the strong, 104 physical damage done by the strong sexuality, 87 Frank (Flyin' West), 144, 146 as tyrant, 78 "Hush Honey" (Sanders), 15-16 violence of, 32, 144 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), 104, "Odds and Ends (A New Amazon Fable)" 144 (Parkerson), 176 Octavia ("The Sky is Gray"), 104, 144 Old Wife (The Salt Eaters) , 84, 85, 86, 87, physical size (large) 88, 94 authority in, 9 In Oie Virginia, or Marse Chan and Other Big Mama and, 9 Stories (Page), 4 black men's role in perpetuation of, 8 the otherworldly characterization black women's acceptance of stereotype, in African American literature, 12-13, 17 8 Anyanwu (Wild Seed), 17 characteristic representation of black Baby Suggs (Beloved), 66-68, 79 women, 4,5-6,16-17 Clora (Family), 12,66,87,89-99 and health, 6 as isolated/lonely, 95 Lauren (Parable 0/ the Sower), 155 Lissie (The Temple 0/ My Familiar), 12 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), Mama Day (Mama Day), 12, 87, 94 25-26, 58 Index 215

Mammy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), rage controlled 43,47-48,58 see anger tamed/rage controlled mammy figure and, 2 A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberty), 7, 19, pathological nature of strength and, 21-39 37-38 Raven Quickskill (A Flight to Canada), 44 physical abuse and, 15 Reed, Ishmael (Flight to Canada), 41-55, 121 and sexuality, 2-3, 8-9 religion as a source of strength Southern food culture's contribution to, in African American literature, 1-2 8-9 Cleo (The Living is Easy), 103, 117-18 as strength, 125 Clora (Family), 95-97 Tante Lou (A Lesson Before Dying), 125 Emma, Miss (A Lesson Before Dying), see also breast size (large) 132-33 physical size (not-large), 58, 125, 140 Mama Day (Mama Day), 95-96 physical space Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), 22, control in, 133 26,32,35,95-96,132,170 privacy rights in, 29 media pomayal of, 6 in recovety, 74, 93 Tante Lou (A Lesson Before Dying), as refuge, 93 132-33 in survivaI, 60, 92-93 see also Christianity; spiritual strength Pilate Dead (Song ofSolomon), 10,66 respectability as strength, 128, 129 the plantation image/ myth, 41-55 ritual, 133-34, 143, 150 Plum (Family), 93, 94, 95 Robert (The Living is Easy), 107, 111, 115 Poitier, Sidney, 138 Rolle, Esther, 6, 7 Polite, Carlene Hatcher (The Flagellants), 176 roman ce/ marriage Praisesongfor the Widow (MarshalI), 60, 176 Baby Suggs (Beloved), 58 psychological damage done by the strong, Leah, Miss (Flyin' West), 139-40 29,38,104,108 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), psychological space, 60, 93, 123 35-36, 87 psychological strength Minnie Ransom (The Salt Eaters) , 87 C1eo (The Living is Easy), 103, 116 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 69, 74-75 Clora (Family), 91 Sophie (Flyin' West), 139 insanity as option, 73-74 the tyrantlthe acceptable tyrant figure, Leah, Miss (Flyin' West), 143 35-37 over the body, 59, 67-68 Roots (Haley), 9 from physical space, 93 Ruth Younger (A Raisin in the Sun), 26-30, Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 68-69, 72, 91 33, 36, 169 Sophie (Flyin' West), 142 violence aspect, 142 sacrifice Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), 35-37 quitting as strength, 58, 63-65 of the mother, 59, 68, 75-77, 89-90, 91-92, 140 race relations for relationship, 59 Civil Rights movement, 15,22 in relationships, 136 intraracial adoption of interracial slurs, thriving on, 59 104 of the tyrant, 35-37 keeping black men in line for white saint as literaty categorization, 19,97, Americans, 2, 43 126-27 mixed race issues, 144-46 The Saft Eaters (Bambara), 12, 20, 79-89 racial advancement, 55 savior as literary categorization skin color consciousness, 105 Baby Suggs (Beloved), 20, 62 216 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

Lauren (Parable ofthe Sower), 20, 62, Marnmy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), 153-71 168 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun) as, 62 the mammy figure, 47 Minnie Ransorn (The Saft Eaters), in media representation of black wornen, 19-20,79,89 3 sinnerlsavior overlap, 145 Minnie Ransorn (The Saft Eaters), Scarlett O'Hara, 120 87-88, 168 self-denial as strength, 11, 12, 24 moral strength and, 14 see also sacrifice Octavia ("The Sky is Gray," 87 Serena (The Living is Easy), 102, 115, 116 physical size and, 2-3, 8-9 the servant physical strength and, 3-4, 14 black wornen of white wornen, 51 prorniscuity stereotype, 14 characteristic representation of black Sophie (Flyin' mst), 139, 168 wornen, 4,5 Tante Lou (A Lesson Before Dying), 168 Cleo (The Living is Easy), 102 the tyrant's, 36 the rnarnrny figure in television, 5-6 a white American construct for black the rnatriarch as, 24 wornen,2 A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry), 21-22 white rnen and black wornen, 2-3, 7 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 57-78, 105 Shange, Nrozake, 143 anger tarnedlrage controlled, 57-58, 68 silence killing as an act of strength, 20, 72-73, as power, 131 92 asstrength, 11,65,104,120,174 mental strength, 68-69, 72 as weapon, 127, 131, 133 as rnother, 69-72, 75-78, 92 Sirneon Binney (The Living is Easy), 102, physical strength, 71-72 104, 109 rornance/marriage and, 69, 74-75 sinner as literary categorization, 19 sinningl saving overlap, 145 sinnerlsavior overlap, 145 as tyrant, 77-78 sisterhood bonds, 116, 143, 148-49 Seven Days (Song ofSolomon), 52 Sisters and Lovers (Briscoe), 177 sexual exploitation, 89-90, 91-92 Srnith, Jean Wheeler ("Frankie Mae"), 179 sexuality/asexuality Sophie Washington (Flyin' mst), 139-51 as acceptable behavior, 2 fernininity, 139, 141 in African American literature, 1-2 Mamrny Barracuda (Flight to Canada) Aunt Jernima and, 1 compared ro, 140 Baby Suggs (Beloved), 168 masculinity of, 156 black women's acceptance of stereotype, as mother, 140 8 physical size (large), 16 characteristic representation of black physical sizel strength of, 140, 140-42, women, 5,16-17 156 C1eo (The Living is Easy), 105-6, as pioneer, 159 109-10 psychological strength, 142 Clora (Family), 168 romance/marriage and, 139 Eva Peace (Sula), 168 sexuality/asexuality, 16, 139, 168 Harlan Jane Eagleton (The Healing), 178 Southern hospitality, 8-9, 47 the healerlconjure woman/swarnphag as, the spinster, 80 87-88 spiritual strength, 60-62, 96, 154-55, 169, Lauren (Parable ofthe Sower), 167-69 170--71 Leah, Miss (Flyin' mst), 139 see also Christianity; religion as a source Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), of strength 36-37,87,168 Stamp Paid (Beloved), 62, 64, 72, 75 Index 217

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 4 sexuality of, 168 strength, acceptability of, 105 silence as weapon, 127, 133 strength (physical) suprahuman characteristics, 128 black women's acceptance of stereotype, 8 taciturnity as strength, 127 characteristic representation of black The Temple ofMy Familiar (Walker), 12 women, 5,16--17 That's My Mama (TV), 5, 6 Cleo (The Iiving is Easy), 103 Their Eyes Were Watehing God (Hursron), 15 Johnson, Mrs. ("Everyday Use"), 13-14, "The Sky is Gray" (Gaines), 18 156 "The Wife of His Youth" (Chesnutt), 59 Lauren (Parable ofthe Sower), 155, 165 Tori Solis (Parable ofthe Sower), 166, 167, Leah, Miss (Flyin' West), 143 169 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), rransgenerational groupings, 84, 89 26--27,32 Travis (A Raisin in the Sun) , 27, 32-33, 38 Mamma Barracuda (Flight to Canada), Travis (Parable ofthe Sower), 164-65 42-43,48-50,156 Tynan, Kenneth, 23 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 71-72 the tyrantlthe acceptable tyrant figure and sexuality, 3-4 asexuality of, 36 Sophie (Flyin' West), 140, 140-42, 156 authority/power roles of, 27-29, 33-35, stereorype of, 12 37 in the suprahuman character, 13 characterization, 11 violence aspect, 15, 26--27, 32, 43, cirde of acceptability of the, 38-39 49-50, 141-42, 146 control and, 30-31 subhuman/extrahuman qualities given black Mama as tide, 25 women,3-4 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun) , suicide as strength of choice, 63-66, 89-90 21-39, 78 suprahuman characteristics Octavia ("The Sky is Gray" as, 78 in African American literature, 1-2, 11 romance/marriage and, 35-37 black women portrayed with, 3-4 Sethe Suggs (Beloved) as, 77-78 Clora (Family), 79 Tante Lou (A Iesson Before Dying) , 125 and the crippling ofblack men, 13 with whites in the subservience of black derivation of, 13 men, 34 the endurer, 1 see also rhe marriarch Mama Day (Mama Day), 79 Minnie Ransom (The Saft Eaters) , 79 Ugly Ways (McElroy), 12 Sethe Suggs (Beloved), 71-72 Uncle Robin (A Flight to Canada), 45-46, suprahuman strength, 71-73 47,53-54,84 Tante Lou (A Iesson Before Dying), 128 Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe), 4 see also the otherworldly characterization Velma Henry (The Saft Eaters) , 79-89, survival as strength, 59, 60, 75, 93, 153-56, @NewAlpha:94, 98 158-61 Victor Bares (The Iiving is Easy), 113, 115, Swallow Barn (Kennedy), 4 118, 119 Victoria (The Iiving is Easy), 115 taciturnity as strength, 11, 127 violence Tante Lou (A Iesson Before Dying), 19, Eva Peace (Sula), 32 123-38 Grant Wiggins (A Iesson Before Dying) , emotional containment, 128 134-35 as mother, 123 Mama Lena (A Raisin in the Sun), physical size of, 125 26--27,32,104,144 religion as a source of srrength, 132-33 Mammy Barracuda (Flight to Canada), saintliness example, 126--27 49-50, 53 218 Saints, Sinners, Saviors

rnanhood expectations of, 137-38, 146 treated as a child, 28-29, 31-33 Octavia ("The Sky is Gray"), 32, 144 violence of, 144 Parable ofthe Sower, 153-71 Washingcon, J. Charles, 24, 26 physical strength and, 15, 26-27, 32, Waters, Ethel, 5, 7 43,49-50,141-42,146 weakness as srrength, 77 psychological strength and, 142 Weales, Gerald, 23 Sophie (Flyin' West), 141-42 West, Dorothy, 119-21 Violet Trace U=), 73-74 What's Happening? (TV), 5 Vivian (A Iesson Before Dying) , 124, 133, white wornen and black wornen, 51, 90 136, 137, 138 Wild Seed (Buder), 17 the voice used as force, 125, 125-26 Willy Harris (A Raisin in the Sun), 33, 144 Wil Parish (Flyin'West), 139, 146-47, 149, Waiting to Exhale (McMillan), 177 150 Walker Vessels (The Slave), 52 "Wornen" (Walker), 17 Walter Lee (A Raisin in the Sun) The Women ofBrewster Place (Naylor), 60 Davis, Ossie, on, 23-24 Woods, Paula (Inner City Blues), 173-74 Grant Wiggins (A Imon Before Dying) Wright, Richard (Native Son), 34 cornpared, 138 helplessness of, 110, 127 Youngblood, Shay (The Big Mama Stories), psychological batde for space, 123 176 response co wornen, 128 Ruth and, 36 Zahra (Parable ofthe Sower), 161-64, 165, subservient role of, 33-34, 37 167