I recently found this academic paper while going through things in my home. It is a book review of Dorothy West's novel, The Wedding. It was written sometime between 1994-97 when I was working with the Dean of Empire State College, James H. Case, who served as my mentor. I do not know how to put footnotes in Blogger so I will be using asterisks with an associated number which can be found at the end of the piece.
Two days ago I closed Dorothy West's book, The Wedding, and fell straight to sleep. I had a dream. I was out shopping but had an appointment with E's therapist later in the day. I was supposed to meet E there. I called twice to say I would be late and finally arrived when the session was over. When I arrive, E and the therapist are friendly. The therapist tells us of a party we might be interested in going to later that very evening. E and I agree to go. We arrived at the party and I immediately split to go sit with the gay men and begin to yuck it up as only us queens can do.
E goes to the other side of the room, unbeknownst to me, with the therapist. Suddenly a bathtub is brought out with a naked white baby in it with buckets of brown mud. The room hushes and E smears the baby with the mud. The therapist comes out grandly, quiets the room, isolates me and declares that E is symbolically portraying my feelings about my wishes for his daughter to be lighter. The therapist declares that all of E's problems stem from my uncomfortableness with her dark skin. I get up from the table of queens, declare the therapist an asshole, E a wimp, and me forever burdened with reality. All the queens applaud.
I am left feeling that there is more to this book than my simply thinking that Ms. West created characters that are unlikable and shallow. There is something hidden underneath that feels sinister and broken but which I am unable to put my finger on. I ask E to read the book and to tell me what the sub-plot is. He falls asleep three nights running without so much as glancing at the cover.
There is a photograph that hangs in our kitchen of E's father, along with his parents and an assortment of others long since forgotten. It is on the occasion of George, E's father, being sworn in as Brooklyn Borough Chief. This was back when ladies wore hats, weren't seen without gloves and men wore suits. It is very difficult to discern who is black and who is white in this photo for everyone looks about the same to me. I think the photo has something to do with the book, but I don't know what the question is that needs to be asked.
I find these quotes in reliable books, but I don't know what they mean in relation to the book.
"Lighter color, and having freed person ancestors before The Civil War, [who] have long been associated with higher education, the professions, good taste, old family connections, and prestige in the black community. One hundred years after The Civil War, the black upper-class in The United States could still trace its origins to the antebellum mulatto elite's through three generations". (*1)
"This renaissance implied rejection of both physical amalgamation with whites and the total assimilation of white culture , and the creation instead of a new culture that was neither African nor white, but drawn from both". (*2)
"If it is wrong for whites to make other people miserable because of something so unimportant and involuntary as color, it is wrong for blacks to do so too". (*3)
"While thousands of books, plays, and poems came out of the Harlem Renaissance, Black authors and artists still needed the approval of Whites to get their work published or produced. Melodramatic stories about tragic mulattoes were tried-and- true themes, and many of the Harlem Renaissance writers continued to write in this genre). (*4)
"It was also during the Harlem Renaissance that Black writers began to reflect seriously on the issues of color prejudice within the Negro community". (*5)
These quotes are a part of the puzzle but not the entire story. I am wondering if darker skinned people have thought me awful, like the Cole's, (characters within the book), because I was lighter than they were. I'm not sure if it the skin color or the attitude that I must have to offend. I write eight pages about wonderful things that have nothing to do with the book. I end up where I began. My father calls. I tell him about the plot of the book, for he has never read this author. I tell him that the characters's Ms. West has written about all seem like a nightmare to me. The Cole's of the Oval and Lute McNeil with his three little girls; they are all bizarre to me. Every single conversation had by any one character revolves around the color of their skin or someone else's. I ask my father what this obsession is and he tells me this story.
The Plantation Fable
Once upon a time there were a people that felt the same as everyone else. They were full of the sun and gloriously brown. When they smiled and showed their teeth, it was then that a passerby could see their gift, for their smiles were brilliant. They were a strong and happy people; able to resist most sicknesses that seemed to befell many others. They lived far, far away on a huge island. They were innocent and noble too but like all people there were those among them that thought only in terms of profit. These kinds of people often find themselves in the company of others who share the same vision.
And so a time came when a meeting was had between the two like-minded people with profit on their minds. An agreement was made so that some of those, whom internalized the sun, would be sent away come what may, to a far away land to earn their keep, help build a new territory and to further the profits.
No sooner were they on their way that the sun began to seep from their souls. But this was only the beginning for it would take centuries for the seepage to stop. They arrived in the new land and were immediately put to task. They were required to do much hard work for their keep, but hard work never did anyone harm. These new land profiteers saw that without a way to enforce this hard work they would soon lose these sun filled people. So they tricked the sun people and used them in a way that made it appear that they were mutually using once another and that it was all a good thing.
Soon these profiteers began to have children with these hard working sun people and because they were the off-spring of themselves they took them out of the fields, away from the sun, indoors where their tasks were easier.
Once out of the sun these children became lighter and lighter and sometimes they would look out of the window, see their families and friends and long for them deeply. Often the profiteers, being their very own father's would catch them looking out and say to their dimming children: They are not as good as you. It is better to be sunless for your tasks will be light. Those out there are with the sun are dirty, bad and useless. Let us, you and I, use them. Look at yourself, you are good.
The first time the father said this to his child there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth for there was a comfortableness and safety that was felt with the family outside that couldn't quite be felt with their new family. The heart becomes heavy when you can no longer sing in the field.
Time passed and with each new sister or brother conceived inside it became a community and a new family was begun. The light ones looked less and less out of the window for they were not alone anymore. They began to see what their new father had said and began to appreciate this new family. They began to feel indeed, that it is better to work less and have more privilege. They could see, as the years passed by, that they looked more and more like their inside father and soon, with enough time they could walk down the street just like their father, hold their heads high, and reap profits like the profiteers. Profits that they were entitled to for after all they were like their father and not like the others whom they sometimes noticed outside of the window.
More years passed and the memory of the sun went to sleep. The sun-less ones began to make lists of all the things that their father did, and had, so that they could remember and practice how to be like him. Before they knew exactly when they knew, they were able to recite by heart all of the things that were on the list. They were happy and proud for finally they could stand up and be different. They began to see the window as an obstacle and boarded it up. It became a barrier and they felt safer inside the house than outside in the sun. They adopted a new language from their father which always began with an 'us' or a 'them', but they were happy. Like their father they now knew that to be with the sun was a bad thing and they did all they could to stay out of the sun.
No one knows how many more years passed but a sad thing happened. A tragic thing happened; a thing that should never have happened to the child of the father. He told his children that no matter what they did he would always see to it that everyone thought they were the people of the sun no matter how sun-less they looked. And they were abandoned. And they wept and gnashed their teeth.
They went back to the people of the sun but they were no longer recognized, and some, who had remained with the sun felt hurt that the sunless had abandoned the sun. They tried to remain with their father but the father didn't want them either, so they decided to huddle together, hold their heads high and build their own houses with windows that looked out over those that looked like themselves. They did this as a way to feel safe, but they also did it in case their father wanted them back-- they might be easier to find.
Sometimes on sunny days you can see them by their windows looking out with a profound sense of sorrow. In private they weep and gnash their teeth, and it is then that you can knock on their door for they will answer and invite you in like a long lost friend.
My Plantation in 1959
I remember the evening when I discovered I wasn't white like my mother. I was fresh from my evening bath, running around naked in our apartment on Dyckman Street. I was soon lassoed and told to go to bed. I was wee, no older than five. Next to the bed was a white sewing machine, the kind that is rarely seen any longer. It required you to reach into the cabinet of folding wood panels, lift the machine up and refold the wood layers thereby supporting the machine, not unlike a fetus delivered by cesarean. Once it was securely propped up a phallic type metal paddle hung down to the right where a woman had to learn to rhythmically and lightly rest her spread outer right thigh against the hanging paddle in order to make the machine run. The machine, when not in use served as a side table and had a small cheap white mirror hanging directly above it.
At my wee age of five I was able to climb onto the bed and hoist myself up onto the sewing machine and gaze into the mirror. In retrospect I am sure that I must have done this many times before but it was this evening that the reflection I saw transmitted into my being a meaning I had never connected with prior.
My mother at that time had waist length blond hair. She, aside from being French Canadian is also of German descent and for as long as I can remember was often told she resembled Ingrid Bergman; a suggestion that often made her feel proud for she swooned when it came to the movie stars of her era. Something she would never admit to but blushing red faces are rather hard to hide as are conversations about Charles Boyer and Claude Rains that carry on past normal decency.
After this bath I was soft as only little things are and being the youngest this was my last chance before bed to run the gauntlet of our apartment stopping here and there with a brother or feigning dying interest in something on TV as a ruse to stay up longer.
I went to the bedroom, and climbed to the top of the sewing machine to look at myself in the mirror. This action and a series of unanswerable questions were a last ditch attempt to ward off bedtime. I arrived at my reflection in the mirror and it was the first time I saw, really saw, that my hair was not long, straight or blond. I had always thought, even though I couldn't see my hair as others might nor was it styled like hers. I really thought I was the spitting image of her, a wee replica. This reflection, my reflection was false and I looked behind the mirror for the truth which, alas, was never to be found there.
For a terribly long time afterwards I was convinced I was adopted. This had to be the only explanation for this discrepancy but no matter how many times I asked I was told, "No" I just didn't believe her. There is a small pat of me that still harbors the thought that when she finally dies there'll be a note found, or some legal document that explains how I came to be in her care. There are many reasons why adoption would ease my mind; my reflection is no longer one of them. Once she tells me the story of an annual summer trip to Canada whereby one of my older brothers, who wasn't happy about leaving New York City for the summer, wrote a sign which read: Help! I'm being kidnapped and flashed it to various cars passing us by. The police eventually did stop the car and demanded birth certificates all around. Our mother claims she couldn't stop laughing.
After the Plantation Was Sold
The mother decided to abandon her children but these children were saved for their father thought them beautiful and took them out into the glorious sun.
(*1) Davis, F. James: Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition. Penn State University P. 74-75
(*2) Ibid. Page 58
(*3) Ibid. Page 148
(*4) Russell, Kathy: The Color Complex. Doubleday 1992 Page 139
(*5) Ibid. Page 139
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