©Copyright 2013 Irena Percinkova-Patton
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©Copyright 2013 Irena Percinkova-Patton Toast to Morrison: The Trickster Paradigm in African American Literature Irena Percinkova-Patton A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Brian Reed, Chair Sonnet Retman Nikolai Popov Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of English University of Washington Abstract Toast to Morrison: The Trickster Paradigm in African American Literature Irena Percinkova-Patton This dissertation is an examination of the trickster paradigm—an aesthetic, a principle that is specific to black creativity and narration and an enabling force behind the subversive rhetorical strategies of “Signifyin(g)” or double-voicedness, that I trace in the African American vernacular and literary tradition. Through an analysis of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Melvin Tolson and Toni Morrison, I outline a theory of the trickster principle that is operative on several levels. My project relies on a reading of the trickster as a culture hero—figure of mediation and resistance—and codifies the importance of this figure as a “signifier” in black consciousness that has endured over centuries, encompassing acts of subjugation and transformation in response to historical changes. In addition, my discussion of the trickster tradition opens up a larger argument pertaining to the dynamics of vernacular/literary production and the ability to respond to the demands of American modernity—in terms of mobility, urbanization, industrizalization, etc. I also trace how these processes of reclaiming and recovery of vernacular expressive modes and their use in written literature reveal the unsettling issue of not just coming to terms with American capitalist modernity, but also with the American modernist literary canon. Finally, the last chapter suggests a “transnational turn” as I look into the specifics of cultural contacts between two geographically distant literary traditions—the African American and the Macedonian— and their respective engagements with their folk past. This analysis brings to the fore the peculiarities of historic relatedness and a shared articulation of a people’s “spirit” in traditions that respond to the violence and annihilation of enslavement and colonization. This kind of globalization of African American literature and theory opens up a new, exciting possibility to read black literature beyond the transatlantic and transdiasporic frames. It adopts a transnational approach that emphasizes connections among “minority literatures” across nation-states and re-defines the scope of a new global multiculturalism. Chair of Supervisory Committee: Professor Brian Reed Department of English Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: From Signifyin(g) Trickster to “Ba-adman” Stagolee: Culture Heroes in African American Folklore .................................................................................................................................. 16 Chapter 2: Heroic Tricksters in Toni Morrison’s Sula, Song of Solomon and Tar Baby ........................... 60 Chapter 3: “Laughing to Keep from Crying”: The Black Oral Tradition and the Double-Talk of Poetry .......................................................................................................... 100 Chapter 4: “That Man in the Gutter Is the God-Maker, the Creator of Everything that Lasts”: Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God ......................................... 139 Chapter 5: Different Horizons: Macedonian Traditions of the Heroic ...................................................... 184 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 227 i AKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my committee for their valuable assistance and guidance. I owe so much of my success to my dissertation director, Brian Reed. His teaching, guidance, incredible encouragement, and generosity were essential to the completion of my dissertation. My sincere gratitude and appreciation to the other members of my committee, Sonnet Retman and Nikolai Popov, for their intellectual presence and ongoing support. Many thanks to Jennifer Bean for her insightful comments and ideas for future considerations regarding this project. Also, this dissertation would not have been possible without the exceptional guidance of professor Joycelyn Moody. I am especially grateful to the outstanding faculty and staff of the English Department at the University of Washington. In particular, my deepest gratitude to Kathy Mork and Jennifer Siembor for their assistance every step of the way. My gratitude goes to the EWP Program and the Director Anis Bawarshi, for their continuous support that made my academic work possible. Also, this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of my professors at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. I wish to thank in particular professor Violeta Hristovska, professor Dragi Mihajlovski and professor Zoran Ancevski. My gratitude goes also to the researchers at the Macedonian Institute of Folklore “Marko Cepenkov,” in particular, Ermis Lafazanovski, and also Ana Martinoska at the Institute of Macedonian Literature, for their assistance in my research regarding Macedonian literature and folklore. I owe much gratitude to my families and dear friends in Macedonia and in the US who have nourished me and supported me through the highs and lows of this process. My sisters, Tanja and Lidija, who were always there to listen and care, my mother for “pushing me to finish already” and my father, who even though left us much, much too soon, I am sure is watching proud that his little girl from Macedonia pursued her American dream. To my friend Sonja who cheered me on even when I wanted to give up. I thank my friends Vlado and Lidija for providing sustenance and much needed joie de vivre in the breaks between writing. My American family for being loving, supporting and encouraging, always. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my husband Kent and our lovely son Killean. Portions of this work were written in the most writing conducive and the least inspiring of places: my underground office in Padelford; Laura’s basement; a barbwire compound in Kabul; a charming apartment on the edge of the Old City in Jerusalem; the magnificent reading and research rooms at the Library of Congress in DC; a drafty apartment in Skopje, and finally, in my attic office in our house in Ballard, overlooking breathtaking Pacific Northwest sunsets. In our perpetual state of homelessness, Kent’s gentle reminders of “silver linings” and “almost there’s” made the world and this project real. This accomplishment would never have been possible without the incredibly sustaining power of his love, sacrifice and relentless optimism. To Kent, the most remarkable, life-affirming, generous and beautiful person I know, thank you. ii 1 INTRODUCTION [Folklore] offers the first drawings of any group’s character. It preserves mainly those situations which have repeated themselves again and again in the history of any given group. It describes those rites, manners, customs and so forth, which insure the good life, or destroy it: and it describes those boundaries of feeling, thought and action which that particular group has found to be the limitation of the human condition. It projects this wisdom in symbols which express the group’s will to survive; it embodies those values by which the group lives and dies. These drawings may be crude but they are nonetheless profound in that they represent the group’s attempt to humanize the world. --Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act. The world, in Brer Rabbit’s wary eyes, is a jungle. Life is a battle-unto-the-death for food, sex, power, prestige, a battle without rules. There is only one reality in this life: who is on top?--Bernard Wolf, “Uncle Remus & the Malevolent Rabbit.”1 […]Counterfeit is a term I use to discuss the ways in which black writers create their own authority in order to craft their own, alternative system of literary currency and value, so to speak, functioning both within and without the dominant, supposed gold-standard system of American culture. Counterfeit I also see as a literary counterpart to the long-standing tradition of the trickster. There are many other names for the black artists, who, like the trickster—just one prototype African Americans have embraced—seeks to go beyond expectations, both black and white. For the black author, and even the ex-slave narrator, creativity has often lain with the lie—forging an identity, “making” one, but “lying” about it too.” --Kevin Young, The Grey Album: The Blackness of Blackness. 2 In his remarkable meditation on African American culture and its artistic traditions, The Grey Album: The Blackness of Blackness (2012), the poet Kevin Young makes it abundantly clear how central the idea of the trickster is to black artistic creation, as he reminds us that that the African American trickster tradition—related to black rhetorical strategies like “lying” and “storying”— “has just as much place in African American letters as rituals of church or prayer or music.”3 1Bernard Wolfe, "Uncle Remus & the