slavery – Tess Perko's Blog

James: Tom Sawyer’s Literate Companion

I recently read James, Percival Everett’s story about the runaway slave, Jim, who accompanied Tom Sawyer down the Mississippi River. The story is told from the slave’s perspective which gives Everett many opportunities to reveal the slave’s character.

The most remarkable thing about this story is how Everett portrays Jim as a well-read and highly literate man, not mentally bound by the psychological chains of slavery. Instead of being illiterate, he is able to effectively communicate ideas, can understand complicated information, and is capable of critical thinking.

Ability to Read and to Understand Complicated Subjects

Early on in the story, the reader learns that Jim has taught himself to read by studying the books in Judge Thatcher’s library. In addition to learning how to read, however, he also has developed the ability to think about complicated subjects such as civil liberties and how the morality of religion conflicts with the concept of slavery. He has read the literature of philosophers such as Voltaire who advocated for civil liberties through freedom of speech and freedom of religion and has seen texts by John Stuart Mill who wrote about individual liberties. We also learn that he knows of the works of Rousseau and John Locke, both of whom influenced the French and American Revolutions. Jim proves his literacy and ability to think about complicated subjects by contemplating the differences between being enslaved or possessing individual rights.

Awareness of the Effects of Various Language Skills

Before Jim runs away,he teaches his daughter and other slave children the difference in speaking like a slave and speaking like a literate human being. He cautions them to never make eye contact with a white person, never speak first, or ever to broach a subject directly with another slave since these are the behaviors of someone who is confident about their opinions. In fact, he teaches them not to express opinions of any kind and to let the whites identify any problems that come up.

He coaches them on using poor pronunciation, incorrect spelling. The goal is to make the whites think that blacks are stupid and that they can’t express themselves clearly. This puts the whites in the position of feeling superior and protects the blacks from being blamed for trouble. What is made abundantly clear, however, is that Jim and the children he teaches are capable of distinguishing between the language that keeps a person subservient and a language that empowers them.

Ability to Write

At one point in the story, Jim asks a slave to get him a pencil so he can write. Young George steals a pencil from his owner, gives it to James, and eventually loses his life because of his “crime.” However, James keeps the pencil in his pocket, the safest place he can find to avoid losing it. The pencil represents his ability to write down his own ideas, one of the most empowering aspects of being a literate person.

Use of Literacy to Make Better Decisions

Jim’s literacy allows him to make better decisions about how to survive. At one point, since he knows he’s being searched for under the name of “Jim,” he tells a white man, Norman, to call him February, but to say that he was born in June. If he hadn’t been able to read, he’d not have known the order of the months or how to manipulate them to help save his own life. When he returns to Judge Thatcher’s library, he forces Thatcher to show him how to use the map to find the farm where his wife and daughter are living.

Jim wouldn’t have been successful at escaping slavery without his literate skills. His literacy allows him to communicate with people he meets, analyze his predicaments, and form judgments about how to survive. In the end, when the sheriff asks him if he is Nigger Jim, he elevates his name to the more formal version, James. After all, he is no longer the slave that was once given the name of Jim.

Achieving Belovedness

The African American woman has the most to complain about in America. She, after all, was brought here against her will in the bowels of a ship, raped by her master before she turned fourteen, bore his illegitimate children, fell in love with her lighter progeny, lost her mind when her children were ripped away and sold to other plantations, lashed across her back and legs when she did not submit, and forced to smile day after day beside her master’s wife.

To understand the African American woman’s plight, we must contemplate the plight of all women in America.

Most still have not achieved equity. This is tragic, especially for a country that pats itself on the back for its individual rights. No, American women don’t all wear veils and burkas, but their voices still are silenced and subjected to the will of men in power.

Blatant examples exist all throughout American society.

One example: American Catholic women have no voices. The power of the church is carefully guarded and only granted to males through church “laws” that maintain male power. When Catholic women speak, they are expected to follow the strict rules set down by Catholic men ever since the church was first adopted as the official Roman Empire religion. Never mind that, prior to the Roman take-over, Christian prayer groups were once led by women. Catholic women are not encouraged to think independently; instead, they are coerced into following orders. Like soldiers in the military: valued for their obedience, not their wholesome humanity.

In American culture, women are raped and blamed for their acquiescence. They are prevented from rising above the glass ceiling while blamed for having children. They are paid less than men who hold the same jobs and blamed for not working harder.

Even First Lady Melania Trump walks like a voiceless doll next to her husband. When she is asked a question, her answer is amended by the opinion of her husband. And so, she is silenced, muzzled.

But the African American woman has suffered some of the greatest indignities. Perhaps this is why Toni Morrison chose to be her voice. In interviews, Morrison said that she wanted to tell the story of the female slave: what being a woman was like under the yoke of bondage, the lack of having a voice or will, the scourge of being at the mercy of selfish and insensitive men.

I first read Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was a mother of two young children. Much as I wanted to appreciate the story, written by this African American professor whom I admired for her achievements, I was confused. Trying to understand how a dead daughter floated in and out of her mother’s life and then lived and haunted her mother, sister, and friends for over a year was intriguing, but what was the author’s point?

I was frustrated that I couldn’t understand the story. Was my white privilege so strong that my heart was unable to empathize with a slave woman’s experience? Was I too comfortable in my white prosperity that I didn’t really want to understand? I knew that slavery was immoral, but what else could I learn? Clearly, Morrison had pondered about the African American story for a long time. She knew a story that I didn’t know, and I longed to overcome my ignorance.

After I read Beloved, I read every Morrison novel I could find: Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye. I also read essays which spoke to the aspects of Morrison’s writing such as “Toward the Limits of Mystery: The Grotesque in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Susan Corey. Then, finally, I read one of Morrison’s own essays, “The Source of Self-Regard,” in which she supposes that Beloved is an intimate version of history.

Much to my surprise, Beloved is based on a true story of a run-away slave named Margaret Garner. While being pursued as a fugitive slave, Gardner slit the throats of three of her children so they wouldn’t have to return to the cruelty of slavery and endure the abuse and torture that she knew too well. One of those children died. Remarkably, Garner wasn’t tried for murder; she was tried for the theft of her master’s property. Proving that history is carved by those in power.

In Morrison’s fictional version, the protagonist is Sethe. Sethe escapes from Sweet Home Plantation with her four children across the Ohio River to Cincinnati. When the slave-catchers find her, she grabs her kids and hides in a woodshed where she slits the throats of three of her babies. Her two older boys live, but her oldest daughter dies in her arms. We never learn this dead baby’s name, but Sethe has the word “Beloved” etched into her tombstone. Her younger daughter, Denver, is uninjured.

Abolitionists succeed in securing Sethe and her three remaining children’s freedom, and she moves into a house in the community. When the boys become teenagers, they leave home, tired of their mother’s grief for Beloved and wanting to become men.

One day, neighbors find a strange adolescent girl sleeping outside of Sethe’s house, and they believe it is Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved. Sethe becomes enamored with Beloved; she cooks for her, bathes her in affection, and ignores her other daughter.

A former fellow slave, Paul D., escapes captivity and finds his way to Sethe’s house. He, at first, removes Beloved’s ghost from the house, but later, when Beloved has transformed into a more physical presence, she seduces him and becomes pregnant with his child.

Once I understood that Morrison wanted to tell the story of the female slave. I decided to read Beloved again. To hear the female slave’s voice. To feel her pain and sorrow. To experience her fear and dread. I finally felt like I was ready to understand the meaning of the story that had eluded me for twenty years.

This is what my second reading of Beloved taught me.

When Sethe is attacked in the plantation’s barn by the Schoolteacher’s grown nephews while her husband watches from the rafters, I feel her indignity—a knife thrust into the pin cushion of her femininity. They drink the milk from her breasts that she needs for her infant. Not only do they rob her of her intimacy, but they harm her child’s viability. These men violate her center, the core of her femaleness. Tragically, her husband, her one-time protector, dies from insanity, not having the power to save her, and she loses his partnership.

When Sethe takes the life of her daughter, her already weakened core responds, and she acts out of distress—trying to save her children from all the abuse that their parents have endured. At least in death, they can find peace; in a slave’s life, peace will never come.

But Sethe suffers dearly for her actions. Psychologically, she lives in anxiety, questioning whether or not she made the right choice for her child. No matter what the child’s name, the child is her “beloved.”

The pain of Sethe’s conscience is so deep that she believes that Beloved comes back to her, so that she can make up for depriving her mother’s love. This is a manifestation of Sethe’s guilt. Whether or not Beloved is really present is unimportant; in Sethe’s mind, Beloved is present, loved, lost, wanted, missed, and grieved. Beloved can also wound Sethe, and she does when she becomes pregnant with Paul D. Like betrayal, the loss of a child hurts acutely and forever.

Sethe’s suffering is raw, violent, and close to the surface. Her pain wracks her body with weakness and her soul with despair. She can barely live, and has no need for freedom after she has lost so much of herself.

At the end of the story, Sethe tells Paul D., “She was my best thing.” This means that when Beloved died, Sethe died with her. She lost her willingness to live, he ability to think without guilt or sorrow, and even her capacity to love her other children completely so that they could enjoy their free lives.

Female slaves lost not only physical dignity, but also their emotional and psychological self-possession.

Paul D. corrects her gently: “You your best thing Sethe.” What he is asserting is that she can overcome her deep grief and loss and find a way to recapture who she is. She can wash up her battered body and mind and live the present. Put the past in the past. It does not have to define her.

As an American female, I am the African American’s sister; I, too, have lived with the loss of dignity. Even though my damage does not equal the forfeiture of slavery, I have been slashed by violations, a lack of voice, and scars of discrimination.

I stretch out my femaleness, my soft center, my vulnerable heart to my African American sister so we can raise each other up, celebrate our communal bond, and feel unified. Our past does not determine our future. We have changes to make in this America.

Clearly Bothered

I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor.

Movie Theater — I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor . . .

One night after I teaching my courses at Diablo Valley College, I attended the showing of a movie—Sorry to Bother You—written and directed by Boots Riley, who will be coming to campus in March as part of Black History Events.

The movie is an artistic commentary about the negative characteristics of capitalism. The main character Cassius Green, who is Black, gets a job as a telemarketer and finds out that he is successful only when he uses his “white voice,” a nasally, high-pitched tenor with overtones of lassitude and a lack of interest.

Just as the poorly-paid telemarketers unify to demand a union and better pay, Green is promoted to the “Power Telemarketer” floor where he enjoys the luxury of a modern office and sells labor for a company named Worry-Free.

While Green is enjoying the parties, alcohol, and access to the CEO of Worry-Free, he learns that the company transforms humans into horse-like creatures who can work harder and stronger than the average human, creating even more profits for capitalistic, greedy companies. Green’s girlfriend informs him that all labor is slave labor when capitalism controls the corporate culture. The employees work at the mercy of those in power, thus having no rights or voices.

Finally, in the end, Green quits his job, gets back his pure-of-heart girlfriend, and retains his morality.

I walked into the theater right at 4 p.m., thinking the movie would be starting on time. The room: a theater with about three hundred seats that stepped down to a big screen, where a podium stood to the side with a laptop set up to show the movie. An IT woman, that occasionally comes to my classroom to fix technical problems, stood behind the podium.

I looked around before choosing a seat. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I sat in a seat on the right aisle about six rows from the door.

Scattered in the rest of the seats were students who did not reflect the diverse nature of the college. About half were Black, sitting in twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the room. Several Asian students, sitting by themselves, also filled the seats. Three white students sat together. Where were the Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Native Americans? I saw no professors—the people in the room were all in their teens and twenties.

Waiting for my English colleague who was bringing her class to the showing, I changed my seat to an aisle seat in the middle section of the room. Definitely felt like I needed some physical support in this room that did not reflect either my age group or my status. Finally, I’ll call her Carol, Carol walked in with her class—an assortment that more reflected our college’s diversity, and I adjusted more comfortably into my seat.

At about 4:15 p.m. a Black man strode down to the podium and turned to face the audience. He wore his hair in a wide, black afro and dressed in casual clothes, not helping me decide whether he was a fellow student or professor. In any case, when he started talking, his sophisticated vocabulary and well-practiced speaking voice let me know that he was used to speaking in front of groups about issues that he supported. He introduced himself. Let’s call him Brian Miller.

Miller explained the focus of the movie. He discussed how students have to use their “white voice” when they speak with their professors.

At this, I squirmed in my seat. I spend lots of time in my English classroom teaching students how to speak and write in Standard English. I explain that they will have to use formal language in the workplace, and that they will be more successful when they attain a command of it. I preach that the acquirement of this language is empowerment.

I also inform them that, once they learn the mechanics of formal English, they will be able to purposefully adapt the language to suit different writing and speaking purposes. While speaking, they can employ a short sentence to give listeners time to think. When writing fiction, they can utilize fragments to create emotions or visual impressions.

But here, this person was inferring that the formal language I teach is not only “white,” but also oppressive. That what I teach in my classroom is a form of domination that subjugates people to conform to those in power, and those in power are the “whites.” I wasn’t sure I belonged in this room, being an English professor and white, but I wasn’t willing to miss learning about how an African American film director was going to portray the white culture. I wanted to know and try to understand, so I stayed deep in my chair.

One scene in the movie showed the CEO of Worry-Free Company surrounded by scantily clad women who fawned all over him. Another scene showed naked women having sex with naked men at a company party. I was certainly offended at the misogyny of the scenes, and commented about it to Carol. My first thought is that people are more concerned about equality amongst the races than they are amongst the genders. Troublesome. A uniquely American issue that continues to plague our whole society.

At the end of the film, Miller asked the audience to rate the film from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Most people rated it as a 3 or 4 as Carol did. I didn’t even raise my hand. The film was such an in-my-face opinion about the culture that I represented that I couldn’t even decide what to think.

What could I learn from this Avant Garde criticism of America set in Oakland, California? As I drove home from campus, dodging the headlights of dozens of cars whirling around me, my heart fluttered like a moth burned by the heat of a lightbulb.

Why would this director claim that capitalism was “white” culture? Because the white Europeans colonized the Africans in order to rob them of their land’s natural resources such as rubber and diamonds. Because the English aristocrats, who profited from the Caribbean plantations, left the sin of slavery behind when they went back to England to live in their mansions and estates. Because American plantation owners treated the slaves like they were savages and erased their African roots by converting them into Christians and partial human beings. Because African Americans have never felt like the benefactors of the capitalist system. They have slaved before and after the Emancipation without profit and, for hundreds of years now, have been robbed of their human dignity.

When I got home, two new volumes of African American literature were waiting for me on my doorstep. I recently had ordered them from Norton. As I sat at the kitchen table in the hallowed light of the room, I read the Table of Contents of each volume.

The first volume starts with the words of spirituals—religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. As I followed the long list of songs, I recognized the name Brer Fox, but most of the words were not familiar. In the latter lists, I spotted Phillis Wheatley, a slave who was taught to read and write by her mistress, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Harlem Rennaissance poet Langston Hughes. Volume 11 covers literature up to the 2000 years, and I knew of Melvin Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the lists of people I had never read was longer. The editors of the volumes are two African American professors from elite Eastern universities. Obviously, they have used their long literary careers studying the works of African American authors of all forms and styles. I never even heard of many like Bob Kaufman who wrote Jail Poems or Adrienne Kennedy who is still living and wrote Funnyhouse of a Negro.

I’m not surprised I don’t fully understand the perspective of Boots Riley and other African American writers like him; I have two disadvantages. For one, even though I have experienced discrimination and prejudice for being a woman, I have never worn the dress of an African American. Second, I have much, much more reading to do and more empathy to cultivate until I understand why Blacks distance themselves from me, from someone who wants to be their fellow citizen, but, first, who needs to qualify.