What's Your Love Medicine?

This week’s reading is Love Medicine. Written by a Native American author, it focuses on a Native American family and their history through (according to the family tree in the front) five generations. The first half of the book focuses on three of those generations, with a bit of insight from one member of the fourth.

The Kashpaw family lives on a western reservation. Beginning with the death of one of the adopted grown children of Marie and Nector Kashpaw, the book then takes the reader into their lives. The story bounces from one character to another--sometimes members of the same family and sometimes only connected by adoption or love-affair. The author illustrates how the decisions made by one generation can affect those generations that follow.

The author paints pictures with her words, allowing passages to flow with a poetic beauty and rhythm:

“I was not immune, and I would not leave undamaged. To this day, I still hurt. I must have rolled in the beds of wild rose, for the tiny thorns—small, yellow—pierced my skin. Their poison is desire and it dissolved in my blood. The cats made me one of them—sleek and without mercy, avid, falling hungry upon the defenseless body. I want to grind men’s bones to drink in my night tea. I want to enter them the way their hot shadows fold into their bodies in full sunlight. I want to be their food, their harmful drink, to taste men like stilled jam at the back of my tongue” (82).

These words are from Lulu Nanapush, who has married Moses Pillager, a ‘dead’ man who lives as a hermit on an island not far from where Lulu lives. Her marriage to him is in the traditional Ojibwe sense (prologue/family tree). She does love the man, even though she eventually leaves him. The author, Louise Erdrich, paints a picture of Lulu as someone who will not be bound to a man, but who will bind men to her. She will be their poison, the cause of their downfall, and this is the woman she becomes. I include that passage because it is so beautifully written with its poetic flow and mental images. It made an impression on me.

Another impression I get from the book is that the women are the backbone of their men. Nector says, “It seems as though, all my life up till now, I have not had to make a decision. I just did what came along, went wherever I was taken, accepting when I was called on” (141). While the Native American culture may be largely patriarchal, in Erdrich’s book it is the women who have the strength. The men turn to alcohol, they often beat their wives, they have affairs and illegitimate children, yet the women uphold them and stay with them. This is especially true of Marie Lazarre, the wife of Nector Kashpaw. He is unable to hold a job, what money he does earn he often spends on binges. Marie continues to bear children and to take in children that do not belong to her. She feeds them and cares for them, treating them as her own, and she supports herself the only ways she knows, “I was saving cream to sell in those days, trying to make butter, piecing quilts, sewing other people’s clothes, beading dance outfits, whatever I could do to get by without Nector” (97). She is the support of the family, both financially and emotionally. I admire her strength and wish I could be as strong.

The style of the book puts me in mind of The Thorn Birds, with its generational organization and religious undertones. While religion doesn’t really play a big part in the story itself, it is a part of it none the less. We first meet Marie as she is wishing she could become a Saint. Some of the chapter names can have Christian meanings as well (something that was pointed out to me by another student on the class BB), such as the allusion to Fishermen in the first chapter, Saint Marie, Flesh and Blood, and later, Crown of Thorns, and Resurrection.

The Native American culture is rich in its story telling traditions and this story goes along those lines. The pictures Erdrich draws and the way she weaves this family’s story is strong in details and complete in the image she gives us of the Kashpaw family and those connected with them. I don’t think this book will have a happy ending, in the sense that many of us come to expect many books to end. I think it will end with the newest generation learning some things from those preceding it, but falling victim to many of the same traps as well.

He still ain't lyin'.

For me, the hardest part of this book was my inability to piece things together with some form of organization. I find it difficult to quote passages because I’m unsure of how they actually fit together to prove whatever point it is that I am trying to make. The story is such a jumble of thoughts and facts and nonsensical meanderings that I found it difficult to make much sense of it. It is obviously the story of conflicting cultures and differing ways of life. I also see it as a struggle between acceptance and non acceptance, change and non change. I get angry at the thought of Whites being portrayed in such brutish manners, with no real culture of their own and in staunch opposition to the idea of any other culture being real, or good enough to belong in our society. I, for one, do not agree. I love the exploration of other cultures and to me, it helps to clarify my own history and adds color and depth to my traditions. It makes me open my mind to historical/religious possibilities other than those I grew up learning and believing.

Oh.

Wait a minute.

Therein lies the problem, don’t you think? Maybe I am one of a minority of people who believes that there is more than one way to view history, and that perhaps my way is only part of the big picture. Maybe my willingness to be open-minded and eager to learn is the very thing that the Wallflower Order seeks to stop. If one culture makes the claim that perhaps their way isn’t the only way, don’t they risk losing their traditions and diluting their beliefs? Maybe- but I choose to believe that the beliefs of others can only add depth and color to our understanding of our own.

So, off the soap-box and on to the next point. What in the world is Jes Grew? I thought it was the culture of the African American and that the ‘plague’ was the spread and growth of that culture. Suddenly people were standing up and saying, “Hey! I count! My view and my traditions and my history counts!” So why try to squelch that? Because if you are a member of the Wallflower Order, you can see your own history being brought into question because it varies from the history of another culture. The culture that you have tried so hard to cultivate may have to step back and admit that maybe it’s just one fish in a pond full of other fish.

I loved what one of my classmates said on our board. I’ll quote her here:

“Ah, so I guess that Jes Grew is the anti-plague to the suppression and conformity of blacks living in white America - losing touch with their roots and mother culture? The cure is to reclaim and celebrate their heritage. The real disease is having no identity” (CG).

I found those words profound. Isn’t that what is happening? Not just within the Black Culture, but within so many different cultures- they are losing their very identity and heritage, it is being watered down by the American culture- or non-culture- however you choose to see it. America, being a relatively young country, has no long standing traditions; we have had to make new ones: fireworks on the Fourth of July, Patriots Day (for those of us in New England), even our beloved Thanksgiving is a part of our new culture. Look at what has recently been added: We now celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, and Kwanzaa has been added to our calendars. These are important steps toward acceptance of other cultures as well as those cultures embracing their own histories and traditions. Does that make sense?

Anyway- I’ll be honest and say that I am glad this book is behind me. It was a challenge from the beginning. I am sure Reed said what he needed to, but I wish he’d said it in a way that was a bit easier for me to grasp. I am still not sure that he got through to me the point he was trying to make.

Or perhaps he did.

He Ain't Lyin' When He Says Mumbo Jumbo!

Painful. That is the word that comes to mind as I forced myself to crawl through this week’s reading. It was painful. Ok- maybe I’m being a bit over-dramatic there, but let me explain.

This book was written in the mid 70s and it takes place in New York in the mid 20s. This was a turbulent time in American History to begin with. As a nation, we were struggling through the aftermath of a war that had taken thousands of young American men to Europe and returned them maimed-physically and/or emotionally-if they were returned to us at all. Alcohol had been made illegal, the flapper generation was pulling at the moral fiber of our country and the blacks were in the mix as well, trying to find their rightful place in society.

This seems to be what Mumbo Jumbo is about: finding that rightful place, but the style of writing is jumbled and chaotic. There is a mix of fact and fiction; real names and real places interact with the fictional names and places. The mix makes me wonder how much of what I was reading really happened and what is made up of whole cloth. I suppose this adds an element of believability to the story.

Though the book is supposed to be “a racy and uproarious commentary on our society”(back cover), I have yet to even crack a smile. I see the book as a clash between black and white. The whites in the book (most of them) want things to stay the same and they feel the blacks should keep their place in society as backward, submissive, uneducated former slaves, while the whites continue to dominate society and keep the blacks from progressing as they naturally would and should. This archaic attitude has caused discontent and anger between both races. It makes me want to say, “I don’t understand.. why can’t we all just get along?” Adding to the difficulty is the style in which the book is written. 1's are used instead of the word one. Quotations aren't marked, making it difficult to figure out who is talking to whom. There seems to be no organization to the chapters or to the order of the book. The rules are ignored. Is that one of the points the author is trying to make? No one is following the rules?

So- what is the first half of the book about? I wish I knew. We have two cultures clashing- one culture is arrogant and brutish while the other is intelligent and sophisticated. The whites are portrayed as the brutes, trying to force this other, alien culture back underground. Meanwhile, Jes Grew, a plague to some, anti-plague to others is making its way around the country, infecting people by the tens of thousands. What is Jes Grew? Is it acceptance? Is this why the dominant culture wants to squelch it, so they can force the other culture into hiding and submission?

I have begun work on the second half of the book and that will, I hope, shed a bit of light on what I have read thus far. This has, admittedly, been a difficult read for me, but now I need to know if it is my own attitude that prevents my understanding or if the book itself is the stumbling block.

Stay tuned.

Family Linen Part 2

After a week away, I’m back with the continuation of Family Linen.

The second half of this book is as entertaining as the first with some subtle shifts in the narrative voice. Smith relies less on the view points of the individual character and shows more interaction. This, as mentioned by several classmates, is a sort of “weaving” of the fabric of the story, much like linen is woven together (my paraphrasing). After Elizabeth dies, her children are left to deal with the pain that her death causes each of them. However, they now learn to lean on one another to help deal with that pain. They slowly begin to learn to accept one another and to come together as a family unit, something that was not possible as long as their mother was alive. Elizabeth’s views and personal issues spilled over onto her children, thus preventing them from bonding with one another early in life.

There is only one chapter in which we ‘meet’ Elizabeth and it is very enlightening. Until that point in the book, the reader sees Elizabeth only through the eyes of her children and siblings. To see her life through her own eyes gave me a deeper understanding of her.

Days of Light and Darkness: Memoirs

Elizabeth has a flair for the dramatic as well as the poetic. Her writing style is elegant and fits the elegant manner in which she has tried to live. Unfortunately, that elegance is not terribly realistic, nor are her views of the world around her. She is angry about her sister Nettie’s tom-boyish ways. She feels hurt at her father’s seeming preference of Nettie over her, even though it is Elizabeth who tries so hard to make their home comfortable and inviting after their mother’s death. I thought of Elizabeth as a very traditional Southern Bell who was born a hundred years too late. Her thoughts, her writing style, and her morals seem to hearken back to an earlier day, the day of plantations and hoop skirts. She does not fit in well in the 20th Century.

The chapter written from Elizabeth’s viewpoint is a short one and it is the only chance we have to get to know her as she sees herself. I would have liked to see more of her life as she grew older and had children.

It is from Nettie that we learn about Elizabeth’s first husband, Jewell, and what really happens to him. It is not Elizabeth who kills him, but Fay, with whom he has fathered a daughter. Jewell repeatedly takes advantage of Fay and her mental handicap. He rapes her, as Nettie witnesses,

“And the worst part about it was Fay’s face, which I could still see, I could see her face all the time, over Jewell’s back, above his white shirt. Her face had changed from that waiting, knowing look into something terrible where wanting and hating went back and forth like the shadows of clouds across a field, back and forth faster and faster, ending up as something awful which you’ve not got the words to say” (234-5).

Fay gives birth to Candy, who is raised as Elizabeth’s daughter and it is Fay who kills Jewell and dumps his body in the well--not Elizabeth, as Sybill remembers through hypnosis.

Toward the book's end, many things happen at once. The body of Jewell is found, Sean tries to kill his father, but the gun misfires, and Fay is found dead.

The book abruptly moves forward some weeks to Karen’s wedding. Elizabeth’s children are learning to be a family and that their differences aren’t really all that important. Family is family and you accept them and love them anyway. It’s a rather hokey thought, but an apt one, I suppose. Don and Myrtle have done some work on the family homestead and are now living there. The wedding of their pregnant daughter Karen has brought the family together again, but this time it is under happier circumstances. They seem much more accepting of one another and it is difficult to imagine the scene unfolding happily if Elizabeth was still alive. It was she who kept the family apart for so many years. Now that she is gone, the siblings are free to see one another through different eyes, not through the eyes of their mother. There is no more competing for her love and approval.

I did enjoy the book, but I felt that it hurried the ending a bit. I would have enjoyed seeing a bit more of the healing process as it happened between the siblings, though Smith did manage to wrap it up fairly neatly and without any gaping holes. Sybill lost some of her bitterness and edge, Myrtle lost some of her need for approval. Sean learned the importance of his parents and that, though they may be pains in the butt, they really do mean well. Lacy is accepting her lot in life, that of divorced woman; Candy continues to style hair, oblivious to her real parentage and Arthur seems to have found a woman who may be able to keep him in line while helping Nettie and Clinus in the process. Basically, Family Linen is a story about a dysfunctional family realizing that they can be dysfunctional and still love one another. Another happy ending

Airing that Family Linen

This is a fun read and one that I know will have layer upon layer of story, each layer building upon the one beneath it. It’s like Hemingway’s iceberg effect. What we see on the surface is nothing compared to what lies beneath.

The book is set up in sections that are like chapters, with each ‘chapter’ being told by a different character and in a different form. Sybill’s story is told in third person, as if someone is looking in on her life and her thoughts. Her sisters’ and brother’s stories are told the same way. However, there are two characters whose stories are told in first person: those are the characters of Sean, son of Myrtle and grandson of Elizabeth, and Fay, Elizabeth’s mentally challenged sister. By telling the story in this way, the author is able to present the story as a whole. The reader sees all the different angles and can form their own opinions about the characters and their lives and views. We see Sybill from her own point of view as well as seeing her through the eyes of her siblings, nephews and aunts. We see each of the family members in this way and we end up with a well rounded representation of a pretty messed up family.

I wonder about the reasoning for the changes in voice throughout the story. Why are some told in third person while the others are told in first? I think it is to show the attitudes of the characters. Sybill, Myrtle, Candy, Arthur, and Lacy have lives that are out of control. Sybill is, as I said, a control freak. Myrtle is as well, to a certain extent. For her, appearances are everything. She lives in the nicest house in town and has a decent marriage to a well respected dermatologist. She has also just turned 40 and is embarrassed about letting anyone know because she doesn’t think she looks her age.

“Because it’s true that if you don’t look your age, which Myrtle doesn’t, you don’t want it broadcast around. And she has worked hard on herself. People simply cannot believe that she has a daughter twenty-two years old, or Theresa who is eighteen, or Sean, fourteen” (pg 50).

Sybill is the old maid. She must be in control of every aspect of her life and for this reason, I think, she has never taken a mate. Once you introduce someone else into your life, you lose that complete control. Myrtle must continue to maintain what she believes is perfection, even though her life is far from perfect. Arthur is an alcoholic who has never managed to hold a job nor is he able to hold his family together. Lacy is the youngest and newly divorced. She is unhappy and has no control over the things happening in her life. Candy, while she seems the happiest of the siblings, lives in two rooms over her beauty shop and has been having an affair with her brother-in-law for 20 years. But she has no control and feels trapped in the life she has, “Kids around here get married so fast, they can’t see beyond the back seat of a car. They can’t see the trap. Well, it doesn’t look like a trap, then. Candy couldn’t see it either, nobody can. And you can’t tell them” (pg. 115). The thing that seems to tie these characters together is the feeling that they are all simply watching their lives go by them, that they are simply going through the motions and not really living. For that reason, perhaps, their stories are told in the third person, as if they themselves feel that they are the ‘third person’.

Fay and Sean on the other hand, tell their stories in the first person. Sean is an angry fourteen year old who, while having little actual control over his life, doesn’t seem to realize it yet. He does what he wants to do. He is testing his boundaries and the limits of his parents’ control. He can anger them or pacify them, depending upon his mood.

“Where’s breakfast?” I say. Mom starts crying harder, and dad says, “Son, can’t you fix yourself some cereal at least? Is that too much to ask?” “Just fuck it,” I tell them all. “See you later,” and I leave. “Son, get back in here,“ Dad is yelling. “I’ll be back in a little while,” I yell back. (pg. 141)

Sean is more in control of his surroundings than any of the other characters so far. He is living his life, not just making the motions and therefore, his voice is first person. I’m not so sure I can explain Fay in the same way. Her story is also told in first person, but being mentally challenged, she is like a child in many ways. Perhaps the voice has more to do with the way the characters view themselves and the world around them, than the idea of control. I am still working that out in my mind.

As far as a pattern in the chapter set-up, I don’t see one yet, but I think that has to do with that iceberg. On the surface the pattern is not obvious, but once you go a bit deeper it may become so. This family is certainly a dysfunctional one, and it scared me more than a little to see similarities between myself and the characters of Sybill and Lacy. It could be my age, which is close to the ages of those characters. It could be that I am a divorced woman, like Lacy, and living the life of a single woman with no male attachments, much like Sybill’s. I found myself identifying with these women, at least in a small way (More so with Lacy then Sybill, thankfully!)

The rest of the book will be digested in the coming week and I am looking forward to digging into it to uncover the layers that I am sure are lying there, atop one another and waiting to be peeled back and understood.

Goopher Those Grapevines!

How do I say that a black author in the late 19th century wrote in a way that would make most whites of that time think the author was a white person, thus surprising those whites who would stereotype most blacks as being uneducated and unintelligent? Furthermore, how do I say that without offending anyone or sounding racist, an attitude that many of the people in the late 19th century held, though they may not have been aware of it. Perhaps I simply put it that way and hope that it makes sense to those who read it.

As I read Goophered Grapevines, this is the thought I had: here is a black author whose piece was picked up and published by a popular literary magazine, in a time when many whites considered blacks to be somehow second class citizens. Segregation was in full force and the idea of ‘Civil Rights’ was so far in the future that it probably hadn’t even been thought of yet. Charles Chesnutt wrote eloquently, and in GG, his characters show that education and social standing does not necessarily indicate intelligence. In this way, he also showed the reader of that time that color plays no part in ability, intelligence, or class.

The person narrating the story is a Northerner. While it never actually says that the Northerner is white, it was an assumption that I made. Considering the era that the story takes place and the area the Northerner is hoping to settle in, it seems a logical conclusion. This made me wonder if those reading the story also thought that way, furthering my thoughts on Chesnutt and his reasons for writing the story and the positive influence he may have had on the attitudes of non-blacks.

Told largely in dialect, GG features Julius, who is a former slave, as the story-teller. This dialog was sometimes difficult to read and I found myself speaking many of the sentences aloud in order to make sense of them. However, this dialog served to make Julius clear in my mind’s eye. I saw an aging former slave sitting on an old pine log and telling a story about bewitched grapevines, life in a world of slavery, and the culture of the slave who was forced to live in submission to the often less intelligent master.

The master, Dugal McAdoo, hires a ‘witch’ to bewitch the grapevines in order to keep the slaves from stealing the grapes which is, he thinks, cutting into his wine profit. Julius is careful to mention that even though McAdoo is sure the blacks are stealing his grapes, “somehow, er nudder dey couldn’ nebber ketch none er de niggers. I dunner how it happen, but it happen des like I tell yer, en de grapes kep’ on a’goin des de same.” Julius also mentions that the master set traps and succeeded only in shooting himself in the leg. While he couldn’t catch the slaves, he managed to catch himself!

Later, McAdoo hires a ‘Yankee’ to help him cultivate his vines. McAdoo does everything he is told and most of the vines die because of it. He also loses large sums of money to the Yankee in nightly card games. Later, vowing to kill as many northerners as possible, McAdoo joins the Civil War and is killed himself, leaving Julius to profit from the vines the master has left behind.

It seemed to me that it was the profit that Julius was trying to protect with his tale of the bewitched grapevines. He hoped to discourage the Northerner from purchasing the vineyard because it means the loss of Julius’ livelihood. However, the Northerner does buy the vineyard and has no problem with bewitched vines. He also keeps Julius on and pays him a wage to make up for his loss in income.

This brings about the question of intelligence. Who was the smarter? McAdoo, who worked to keep the grapes to himself, shoots himself in the leg, loses money to a stranger and ends up losing his life in the war, or Julius, who sits back and makes a decent living from what is left of the grapevines? Julius gets my vote.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and the vivid pictures Chesnutt’s dialog painted in my mind, but it left me wondering about Chesnutt's reasons for writing his tale of the Goophered vines? What was the effect upon the literary world of 1887 when the story was originally published? Also, is there more to the story? Is there more Chesnutt was trying to say that I may have missed? The story speaks of the brutality of slavery, but it is not an anti-slavery story in itself. The story spoke to me of the unfairness of racist attitudes and of the need for equality, while thumbing its nose at the attitudes of the day and giving us a character who, though uneducated, is not in the least bit unintelligent.

The Yellow Wallpaper

This week’s reading was phenomenal. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is complex and has such depth that to only read it once is to be doing it a great disservice. There are so many ways to look at this piece and I feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface. I want to get so much deeper into it and learn the meanings of the many different situations that occur.

Jane, who we learn late in the story is actually the narrator, is suffering from a mental illness of some sort, one that her doctor husband tries to help her deal with, even though his ‘dealing with’ means Jane must acknowledge that there is really nothing wrong. She is merely nervous or easily excited. Of course this only makes Jane feel worse because she knows there is something wrong; she feels so sad and feels such despair--yet the fact that her husband says it is nothing only makes it worse for her. The wallpaper we see becomes, in a way, one of the main characters.

Jane has a room upstairs in what was once a nursery. The bed is nailed to the floor; the windows have bars on them and the walls are partially covered with a horrible yellow wallpaper. The paper has been torn in places. It is old and faded and when the dampness reaches it, it smells. It is a smell that permeates the entire house and clings to everything. Jane finds herself mostly confined to this room where the wallpaper takes on a life of its own. She finds herself trying to form patterns within it and one of those patterns “lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.” The eyes don’t blink and they follow Jane everywhere. At night, when the moon shines in, the wallpaper forms bars. Jane is trapped within the room, just as she is trapped within her illness.

The illness, I believe, is post-partum, because we learn that she has recently had a baby. Even by today’s standards, post-partum is often misunderstood. Very recently, there was a great deal of publicity surrounding it when one celebrity went as far as to say that the post partum depression suffered by another celebrity was mostly of her own making and that it wasn’t a real condition. Given the era that this piece was written, the doctors were completely unaware that such a thing even existed.

Jane sees a woman on the other side of the wallpaper, a woman who is struggling against her wallpaper bars trying to escape. Jane helps that woman escape by finally locking herself in the room and going at the wallpaper with ferocity and tearing at all of it she could reach. However, I don't think the narrator actually wants the woman to escape. She has a rope with which to tie the woman up when she is finally freed from the wallpaper. In the end, the narrator refers to Jane in the third person and she becomes the woman in the wallpaper.

There are a few situations within this story that I did not understand, for thing what does the creeping signify? The narrator sees a woman creeping about, “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows…I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.” Is the creeping woman really there? Is it the narrator who has distanced herself so far from reality that she views it from afar? Another is the fainting husband. What causes him to faint and why is this important to the story?

I enjoy reading literature of this type because I know there is so much that is not plainly written that the reader must think about and find out about. It was a great piece and I’m looking forward to digging into it more deeply.