Gospel Ideology and the African American Womanist Novel

Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 4-2006 Doers of the Living Word: Gospel Ideology and the African American Womanist Novel Rebecca Erin Huskey Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Huskey, Rebecca Erin, "Doers of the Living Word: Gospel Ideology and the African American Womanist Novel" (2006). Dissertations. 954. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/954 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DOERS OF THE LIVING WORD: GOSPEL IDEOLOGY AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMANIST NOVEL by Rebecca Erin Huskey A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan April 2006 DOERS OF THE LIVING WORD: GOSPEL IDEOLOGY AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMANIST NOVEL Rebecca Erin Huskey, Ph.D. Western Michigan University, 2006 In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison issues a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language: Neither blackness nor “people of color” stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive “othering” of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and knowable in my work. […] The kind of work I have always wanted to do requires me to learn how to maneuver ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains. (x-xi) For Morrison and writers such as Alice Walker and Suzan-Lori Parks, such a project is further complicated by gender. African American female self-definition eventually reaches the crossroads of racism and sexism. That such a crossroads exists is the result of linguistic strategies that have been employed to confine black women both by color and by gender. The problem that African American women writers have always faced is how to define themselves, their characters, and particularly the black female body, rather than being defined by the dominant culture or other members of their community. This study exposes a history of rhetorical and formal experimentation that has at its roots a pro-African American womanist gospel ideology. From Zora Neale Hurston to Suzan-Lori Parks, African American women writers have been freeing up the language with the dynamic and kinetic orality of a gospel impulse. Though decidedly neither theological nor religious in nature, this impulse weaves language and bodily expression with an autonomous self and a corporate self. UMI Number: 3214355 Copyright 2006 by Huskey, Rebecca Erin All rights reserved. UMI Microform 3214355 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 Copyright by Rebecca Erin Huskey 2006 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With undying gratitude to Dr. Nicolas Witschi for asking me to say what I meant and for helping me to get there in the first place. To Dr. Jaimy Gordon for her love of gospel and encouraging me to write about its role in literature. Dr. Gwen Raaberg, thank you for asking me to teach Toni Morrison. Dr. Whitney Womack Smith, thank you for your support and encouragement. For reading, advice, and countless hours of conversation about gospel music, Craig Werner, and Peter Guralnick, thank you to Dr. Steve Feffer. To Dr. Gwen Tarbox for suggesting William Andrews and for continual encouragement and inspiration. Dr. Evelyn Winfield, thank you for strength, courage, and purpose. To my father and mother, Bishop T.C. Huskey and Phyllise Huskey for raising me to ask questions. To my siblings, Julie, Kristin, and Bill for their love and response. And to my dear friends Andrea, Maria, Maggie, and Adeena for wisdom and laughter. I am becoming because of all of you. Rebecca Erin Huskey ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................. ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: BREAKING THE RACIAL AND GENDER CHAINS OF LANGUAGE..................................................................... 1 II. MAKING IT VERSUS TAKING IT IN THE NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON .......................................................................................... 27 III. WITNESSES TO THE DIVINITY OF THE BODY: ALICE WALKER’S DOERS OF THE WORD................................................... 69 IV. IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS’ BODIES: SUZAN-LORI PARKS’ RE-EMBODIED LANGUAGE .............................................................. 98 V. A DYNAMIC RECURSIVE TRADITION: NEW VOICES BLENDING WITH THE OLD ................................................................................... 131 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. 146 iii 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: BREAKING THE RACIAL AND GENDER CHAINS OF LANGUAGE In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison levels a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language: Neither blackness nor “people of color” stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive “othering” of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and knowable in my work. […] The kind of work I have always wanted to do requires me to learn how to maneuver ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains. (x-xi) For Morrison and writers such as Alice Walker and Suzan-Lori Parks, such a project is further complicated by gender. African American female self-definition eventually reaches the crossroads of racism and sexism. That such a crossroads exists is the result of linguistic strategies that have been employed to confine black women both by race and by gender. As many scholars and theorists conclude, the black female body in America has 2 long been conceived of as a site of contradictory meaning: the black female is seen as both nurse/mammy/cook and mistress/seductress/whore. The problem that African American women writers have faced is how to define themselves, their characters, and particularly the black female body, rather than being defined by the dominant culture or other members of their community. If the problem facing contemporary African American women writers is how to wrest the language from racial and gender constraints, the solutions they explore focus on an awareness of form. This awareness of form is twofold: both the form of the text and the nature of its human characters are central to emptying received forms of their traditional associations and pushing language beyond its known limits to reshape constructs of blackness. Form is text and form is body, and these writers demonstrate awareness of both. Their intricate relationship with language allows them to not only free up the way things are written but also the terms in which readers think of themselves. Rather than using forms and ways of constructing their subjects that invite a host of familiar associations, Morrison, Walker, and Parks appropriate the forms of gospel and of fiction in meaningful ways that allow African American women control over their own texts and their own bodies. Blackness and whiteness are not reified here; rather, the focus is on the materiality of the forms of text and body. Whereas blackness is abstract, the black woman’s body is a concrete form. No longer is it a body of shame, something to be marginalized or denied; the body is to be embraced, explored, and dynamically defined and administered by the self. In defining themselves, black women authors not only take control of their texts and their bodies, they also demonstrate to readers the possibility of self-definition and its importance to the community. The hearer/reader 3 learns from the text in the same way that a congregant learns from a sermon or a song. The reader also participates in the expressive act much like a congregant participates in the sermon or song. This can be evidenced in bodily action and oral affirmation and/or encouragement. An expression of the gospel ideology will always contain a dynamic message applicable to both the community and the individual. Ultimately, the hearer/reader decides what to do with that message. It is in this context that

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