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1. Introduction

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert […] "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." […] She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me.1

Ah wanted to preach a great sermon about colored women sittin’ on high, but they wasn’t no pulpit for me […] Freedom found me wid a baby daughter in mah arms, so Ah said Ah’s take a broom and a cook-pot and throw up a highway though de wilderness for her. She would expound what Ah felt. But somehow she got lost offa de highway and next thing Ah knowed here was you in de world. So whilst Ah was tendin’ you of nights Ah said Ah’d save de text for you.2

A few years short of the turn of the 19th century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an out- spoken leading figure in the early women’s rights movement, refused to attend a suffragists prayer meeting that was to begin with the singing of the hymn Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah. Her reasons for not attending, recounts Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza in In Memory Of Her, was her conviction that the Biblical Jehovah had “never taken any active part in the suffrage movement”3 and that ecclesiastical teachings made Christian women falsely believe that any man had “ever [seen] or talked with God.”4 Her experience of the seeming indifference of a patriarchal Yahweh figure preached in church towards the rights of the op- pressed sparked her deep personal conviction that the Bible itself carried great political influence. In the ensuing project which became known as The Woman’s Bible which was to gather and re-interpret all statements referring to women in the Bible, she outlined her critical insight into a radical feminist theology: “(1) The Bible is not a ‘neutral’ book, but a political weapon against women’s strug- gle for liberation. (2) This is so because the Bible bears the imprint of men who

1 Genesis 16:7-13 New International Version (NIV). If not otherwise stated, Biblical cita tions in this work are based on the New International Version (NIV) of the Christian Bible. 2 ,Their Eyes Were Watching God. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978) 15-6. 3 Barbara Welter, “Something Remains to Dare: Introduction to the Women’s Bible,” The Original Feminist Attack on the Bible: The Woman’s Bible. Ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al. (New York: Arno 1974) xxii. 4 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: a Feminist Theological Reconstructi- on of Christian Origins. (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 12. 12 never saw or talked with God.”5 She met the accusations of clergymen that this book was the “work of women and the devil,” with biting wit: This is a grave mistake. His Satanic Majesty was not to join the Revising Committee which [sic] consists of women alone. Moreover, he has been so busy of late years attend- ing Synods, General Assemblies and Conferences, to prevent the recognition of women delegates, that he has no time to study the languages and “higher criticism.”6 Indeed, the struggle for an insight into the relationship between Biblical- historical interpretation and feminist reconstruction of women’s image has been, and still is, somewhat of an “intellectual and emotional minefield”7 that has also been explored by literary writers. The example of the Egyptian slave girl Hagar illustrates this. The Biblical portrayal of Hagar as a powerless and feeble subject to her owners, Abraham and Sarah, and mere bodily vessel to her son Ishmael, has, through the centuries, become a complex and powerful point for negotiating female emotional and physical resilience in the face of oppressive, patriarchic structures and practices. Mistreated and abused by her owners, Hagar flees into the desert where she encounters God, the one who truly sees her. This image has, throughout the 19th century, been appropriated mostly by white women writers (E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Marion Stephens and others) telling the story of a Black woman who, involved in sexual relations outside of marriage, defies patriarchal tyranny and embarks on a quest of self-expression. Among the first African American female writers to reclaim the Hagar myth was Pauline Hopkins who in the serially published novel Hagar’s Daughter (1901/1902) at- tempts a critical response to the systematic undermining of black female identity and actively resists the sexualization of Black women. Iconic Black women writers of the 20th century, among them Gayl Jones and pick up the thread of Hagar’s narrative by challenging in their writing the stigmatization of Black women’s sexuality in a white patriarchal society. After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the narrative sur- rounding the slave girl Hagar started to open up the forgotten door to a hitherto male-dominated theosophical discussion, pointing the way to a newly re-covered understanding of women with regards to themselves, divinity and creation.8 Dur-

5 Schüssler Fiorenza 7. 6 Welter 2.7. 7 Schüssler Fiorenza 3. 8 Prior to that, throughout the 19th century, it was mostly white women writers (E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Marion Stephens and others) appropriating the Hagar myth which they portrayed as a story of a black woman exhibiting sexuality outside marriage, defying patriarchal tyranny and embarking on a quest of self-expression. However, these white women novelists more or less eliminated Hagar’s blackness 13 ing her studies in the 1970s at the New York Union Theological Seminary, the now renowned scholar and theologian Delores S. Williams learned of the star- tling absence of black women’s experiences from Christian theology and began to construct a worldview from the perspective of African-American women.9 It was in this inconspicuous slave girl Hagar that Williams discovered a vantage point for this “second tradition of African-American biblical [sic] appropria- tion”10 that allowed for the significance of the Black woman’s experience within the Bible but also in real life as the analogies between Hagar and Black women in the US delivered historically identical testimonies of sexual slavery and loss of identity. The novelist Gloria Naylor, herself deeply influenced by her upbringing in the restorationist Christian sect of the Jehova’s Witnesses that promotes the idea of the imminent establishment of a divine kingdom on earth, emulates Williams’ considerations in her fictional writing and keenly incorporates her matricentral concept within the cultural paradigm of Africana Womanism. In this book, I will show that the contemporary African-American novelist Glo- ria Naylor not only partakes in this tradition of Biblical appropriation, but also develops it further in her fiction: I argue that through the literary appropriation of Biblical master narratives and Judeo-Christian imagery, and through the in- corporation of Africana Womanist elements as a subtext, Naylor provides an

from her character in order to make it an “acceptable” character for the white readers- hip. In Hagar the Egyptian, Savina Teubal points out that Hagar’s story is in fact not only indicative of a slave-owner relationship but also about the relationship of women among each other.The fact that surrogate motherhood (Hagar acted as surrogate mother for the barren Sarah) was commonplace leads Teubal to the conclusion that Hagar’s and Sarah’s troubled relationship is indeed indicative of misperceptions and prejudices of one woman towards another (Savina J. Teubal, Hagar the Egyptian: The Lost Tradition of the Matriarchs (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990). 9 Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993) 1-2. Her goal was to “shape a theology that is at once committed to black women’s issues and life -struggled and simultaneously addresses the black community’s historic struggle to survive and develop a positive, productive quality of life in the face of death […] [to] design theological language and devise theological methods that not only speak in the academy but also speak to African-American women and the African-American co mmunity in a language they can understand.” In the course of her research, she disc overed that “For over a hundred years, the community had appropriated the Bible in such a way that black women’s experience figured just as eminently as black men’s in the community’s memory, in its self-understanding and in its understanding of God’s relation to its life” (xii). 10 Williams, Sisters 2. 14 alternative view on the Christian discourse on suffering and arrives at a liberat- ing, matricentric theosophy that is juxtaposed to the traditional, patriarchal, fic- tional world. This is a two-tiered endeavor: on the one hand, Naylor offers her African American characters, through the revision and appropriation of identity- creating cultural master narratives, the possibility to redeem themselves from century-old sexist, racist and classist stigmatization. On the other hand, she transforms, through the recovery and integration of the female perspective within these narratives, the textual fragments of female archetypes into complete and autonomous existences through which the female creative principle survives side by side with the male. In a close-reading analysis of the literary pillars of Naylor’s fictional New World Order, i.e. the narrative structure and orality, emotional ties, and geo-psychic space of the novels, this work will examine Naylor’s attempt to find an alternative to the conventional Judeo-Christian form of redemption, i.e. redemption from suffering through suffering under a patriar- chic, male God-projection. By discussing her fiction against the backdrop of re- visionist mythmaking, Naylor’s work presents itself as that of a new generation of Black-American woman writers who act as contemporary exegetes for the African American community in general, and for women in particular. I contend that Naylor (re)creates in her writing a gynocentric theosophy, or in the words of Delores Williams, a “God-talk” from the point of view of a contemporary Afri- can American “Hagar,” that enables her to deliver this “sermon about colored women sittin’ on high” that Zora Neale Hurston’s Nanny couldn’t.11 The Author and her Work Through this work, Gloria Naylor has proven to justly stand in line with other great African American writers, which literary luminary Henry Louis Gates ac- knowledged by editing in 1993, together with K.A. Appiah, an entire collection of essays on Gloria Naylor’s work. Born in to parents who had been sharecroppers in Robinsonville, Mississippi, Naylor experienced both, the fast-paced, volatile and anonymous life in the city, and the familial inclusiveness of the rural south. Although she left the religious sect when she entered college, Naylor’s long-lasting involvement with the Jehova’s Witnesses as a teenager still influences her writing, in which she draws extensively on the Bible and its apocalyptic and archetypical elements. It was only in college, when this child of working-class parents who had been part of the migration movement from the South to the North, was introduced to Black literature in general, and Black feminist literature in particular. She went on to earn an M.A. from Yale Univer- sity in Afro-American Studies, already publishing short stories before Mama

11 Hurston 15. 15

Day became her break-through success.12 Recent, controversial developments surrounding the author, however, have somewhat dented her literary reputation. In a National Public Radio interview from 2006 with Ed Gordan, Naylor spoke about her latest semi-fictional work 1996, in which Naylor speaks out about be- ing under surveillance by the government.13 Her publicly declared conspiracy theories about government surveillence and mind control have caused rumors about a nervous breakdown and have considerably harmed the author’s standing as a successful literary under-dog. Although Naylor’s theosophy arguably expands over her entire oeuvre, this book focuses on two of her novels in order to emphasize a detailed analysis of the process and impact of the author’s literary appropriation of scriptural and theological material. The two novels in question are Mama Day and Bailey’s Café, published in 1989 and 1992, respectively.14 The reason to single these two novels out lies in the fact that, although Naylor uses similar techniques and tools in all of her fictional writing, Mama Day and Bailey’s Café are, for me, the two most prominent examples of the author’s establishment of a fictional cosmol- ogy, based on the creation of a fictional matricentral space,15 relationship and narrative structure. With their story-lines most intimately connected to each other, the analysis re- veals that Mama Day and Bailey’s Café are built on the same conceptual pillars, as both novels represent the width of Naylor’s cosmogonist spectrum: while Mama Day is pervaded by a maternal cosmic authority, Bailey’s Café sings of the devastating loss of mother figures; when Bailey’s Café depicts fragmented women, torn within their crises, Mama Day brings forth women who have “found the meaning of peace.” Castration of femininity, infertility, and maternal abandonment in one fictional world are met by healthy strong motherhoods in

12 Voices from the Gaps. “Gloria Naylor.” University of Minnesota. June 26, 2009. Web. July 2011. 13 “1996: Under the Watchful Eye of the Government.” National Public Radio. January 23, 2006. Web. July 2011. 14 Gloria Naylor, Bailey's Cafe. (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), and Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988). From here on forward the two novels are abbreviated as “BC” and “MD.” 15 This discussion of Naylor’s work in terms of the “spatial form” and subsequently the “spatial turn” (E.W. Soja, H. Lefebvre etc.) throws light on her writing as “rooted in the […] spiritual and emotional climate,” and informed by a relational concept of space (particularly in terms of M. Foucault’s idea of counter-spaces or “heterotopoi”), rather than by linear-temporal considerations (Joseph Frank, “Spatial Form in Modern Litera- ture.” The Sewanee Review. Vol. 53. No. 4 (Autumn 1945): 643-53. 651). 16 the other; the truncated speech patterns of Bailey’s women transform to a vivid, circulating “porch-talk” in the world of Mama Day. Therefore, for the purpose of uncovering the amplitude of Naylor’s fictional cosmology in its essential de- tails, Mama Day and Bailey’s Café arguably provide the best basis for research. Whereas all of Naylor’s fictional works have been highly praised by literary crit- ics, they still do not enjoy the same level of familiarity and name recognition as other contemporary novelists. Yet, Trudier Harris suggests that Mama Day “is one of the most strikingly effective examples of the intersection of African American written and oral traditions.”16 This is a statement that equally applies to Bailey’s Café, which has yet to be recognized in its entirety as a progressive work in terms of overlapping literature and orality. Another decisive element for the hitherto undiscovered significance of the two novels lies in the recognition that they both offer, contrary to other literary works of this time, positive visions for the future. In the course of this book it becomes clear that the two novels in fact represent lighthouses for a transforma- tive and reconciliatory ideology. Whereas Linden Hills and Women of Brewster Place symbolize times of destruction before reconstruction (e.g. the tearing down of the wall at Brewster Place, or the burning down of Luther Nedeed’s house in Linden Hills, each signify the necessary demolition of the old world before a new world can be created), Mama Day and Bailey’s Café already enter into this new world after the collapse of the old. Hence, the two novels in ques- tion present the “(e)merging [of] (im)possibilities […] where […] antithetical paradigms meet in productive co-existence.”17 Naylor chooses to locate Mama Day and Bailey’s Café in a restorative space in which the female voice aims to subvert the forms of authority that patriarchy legitimizes, and thus construct a New World Order for themselves. Against the backdrop of Africana Womanism, Black Womanist Theology with its strong liberationist appeal, and literary revisionism (as practiced for instance by Elizabeth Cody, Alicia Ostriker and others), this work identifies three main pillars of Naylor’s fictional cosmology, which are subject to analysis: the narra- tive structure and texture of Naylor’s writing, in terms of orality and its struc- tural significance; the emotional relations of which motherhood forms the nexus of Naylor’s fictional cosmos; and quality and importance of fictional spaces as

16 Trudier Harris, The Power of the Porch. The storyteller's craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1996) 55. 17 quoted in Margot Anne Kelley, "Sister's Choices: Quilting Aesthetics in Contemporary African-American Women's Fiction." Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern. Ed. Cheryl B. Torsney and Judy Elsley (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994): 49-67. 16. 17 essential settings for the psychological development of the characters and the plot. An abundant well for literary exploration, Naylor’s work addresses a vast amount of fascinating aspects. Therefore, my analysis of the two novels does not make a claim for completion of the world-creating concepts presented here; thus, Naylor’s literary propensity toward for instance shall not be discussed here18 Rather, this work aims to be seen as representative and illustra- tive, as it hopes to give the reader an educated insight into the literary world of one of the most promising contemporary African-American female writers. Employing close reading and critical discourse analysis of Naylor’s novels as its main methodology, this book aims to examine the author’s work in terms of Black Feminist criticism and Black Womanist theology as represented by Bar- bara Christian, Clenora Hudson-Weems, Delores Williams, Joanne Brown and Patricia Hill Collins among others, which provide a deeper level of understand- ing especially of Naylor’s literary treatment of womanhood, maternity and the relational web of emotional interdependence in her novels. Theoretical consid- erations on the importance of artistic blueprints for Naylor’s narrative structure are provided not only by ’, but also by Shirley Williams’ discus- sion of Blues- and quilting-roots in African American narratives. I also refer to prominent findings regarding the reader-response relationship which help to closer identify the narrative strategy inherent in Naylor’s writing. In my discus- sion of the significance of concentric emotional, physical and spiritual relation- ships, particularly those surrounding a central mother figure, I draw knowledge from the analytical psychology shaped most prominently by C.G. Jung and his disciple Erich Neumann, as well as from social theorists such as Henry Le- febvre, and feminist cultural theorists such as Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler. With regards to the production and significance of space in terms of geography and corporeality in Naylor’s narratives, I refer, among others, to (post)structuralist theories by Elizabeth Grosz, Julia Kristeva and Michel Fou- cault which help to dissolve binary oppositions not only of spatial attributes but also of gender-specific expectations. Against this backdrop of theoretical con- siderations, I set out to trace back Naylor’s literary (re)interpretation of the Scriptures in which she isolates lessons through the essence of the stories them-

18 Naylor’s work has been thoroughly examined on her use of magic realist techniques; see, for instance: Elizabeth T. Hayes, "Gloria Naylor's Mama Day as Magic Realism." Critical Response to Gloria Naylor. Ed. Felton, Sharon and Michelle Loris. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997): 177-86; and: Karen Castellucci,”Magic and Memory in the Contemporary Story Cycle: Gloria Naylor and ” College English. Vol. 60 No. 2 (Feb 1998): 150-72.

18 selves much like the Jewish exegetical practice of “midrash”19 which seeks to approach a (Biblical) narrative from the points of view of other (often neglected) characters in the text. This process helps to heed Jacquelyn de Weever’s advice to observe the work of Naylor as a Black female writer who succeeds in travers- ing from the “traditional double-voicedness of the Black American experience into a triple-voiced enterprise, one based on a triangular culture.”20 That is, Nay- lor pursues an intertextuality that demands consideration of how her novels par- ticipate in the dominant culture as well as in the discourse on an “other” culture and a gendered ideology. By examining Naylor’s construction of her fiction’s narrative structure and tex- ture, its inherent emotional relations and its geo-psychically important spaces, this work hopes to tell the “whole story” of Naylor’s cosmology. Firstly, Naylor recognizes the significance of integrating the Afrocentric residual oral culture, i.e. orality, into the narration21 in order to create fictional worlds in which cer- tain “ways of saying” have structurally and textually direct influence on the forming and survival of communities. Utilizing prototypical African American aesthetic signposts such as the Blues and the quilt, Naylor dedicates her work to express the power of the word(s) as a “socially symbolic act and imaginative reconstruction of the quest of African Americans for personal and social free- dom.”22

19 Midrash: oral interpretation, originally the “interpretation of the Torah, the Law of Mo- ses,” the Jewish practice of midrash aims to not only explain “opaque or ambiguous texts,” but also to “contemporize […] to describe or treat biblical [sic] personalities and events as to make recognizable the immediate relevance of what might otherwise be re- garded as only archaic. […] There are Midrashic interpretations that grow out of both a lexical problem in the verse and the desire to apply the explanation to the thinking and need of the later age” (Mircea Eliade, ed. “Midrash.” The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 9. (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987): 509-15). 20 quoted in, Dorothy Perry Thompson, “Africana Womanist Revision in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Bailey’s Café,” Gloria Naylor’s Early Novels. Ed. Margot Anne Kelley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999): 89-109. 90. 21 Although not stressed in this work, Naylor’s work could indeed be considered against the backdrop of a feminist narratology theory (comp. for instance Susan Lanser’s “To- ward a Feminist Narratology” (1986) which emphasizes not only the “’what’ but also […] the ‘how’ of narration” (David Herman and Manfred Jahn, eds. “Gendered Narrato- logy.”Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. (London: Routledge, 2005) 197). As Naylor’s narrators are almost exclusively female, the very act of endowing women with their own narrative voice, constitutes an act of resistance. 22 Bernard W. Bell, The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Mo- dern Literary Branches. (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2004) 3.