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Name of Course: Black American Fiction.
2. “Black American fiction is a literary representation of an oral tradition.”
Substantiate, modify or refute this claim.
EXAM ESSAY
Except for ideas and passages properly
acknowledged in the text, this writing is all my
own work.
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2. “Black American fiction is a literary representation of an oral tradition.”
Substantiate, modify or refute this claim.
Although the objectives of Black American fiction writers vary significantly, a prevailing
outcome appears to be the legitimization of black oral tradition through its inclusion within
established literary culture. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
imitate the structural and technical aspects of jazz compositional style, creating polyphonic
narratives that explore the dialogic, nonlinearity of black culture, highlighting its discordance with
the Western novelistic tradition. In doing so, they champion the musicality of black orality as an
essential component of African-American culture, worthy of literary documentation.
Contrastingly, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (Their Eyes) and Alice
Walker’s The Colour Purple manipulate narrative voice in order to transpose oral culture into
written text. Whilst Hurston uses this technique to establish black orality as a worthy cultural
medium within westernized literary tradition, Walker legitimizes this orality by creating a restored
African-American literary tradition, which embraces the black vernacular.
In order to explore how Morrison and Reed incorporate oral modes of discourse within a
literary form, it is pertinent to consider the influence of jazz music, which, according to Keren
Omry “has always been linked to African-American experience” (1). The defining aspects of the
African-American oral tradition include nonlinearity, improvisation and call-and-response,
paralleling the techniques used in jazz music. As a result, despite each novel’s textual identity, the
“atextuality” (23) and thus orality of jazz resonates in both narratives. Louis Armstrong
emphasized the importance of “play[ing] away from the score” (502) in jazz music. This can be
applied to the fiction of Morrison and Reed, who “play away” from the literary reverence of the
novelistic linear tradition, using the oral techniques of fragmentation and reassembly to “destroy
and recreate” (Gayl Jones 54) traditional fiction, constructing a new and innovative form of
polyphonic orality, symbolic of African-American culture.
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By adopting a music-based, interweaving narrative, Morrison disrupts westernized plot
linearity and “the literary tradition of omniscient perspectives that leads readers to accept master
narratives” (Suzanne Lane 257), expressing an authentic black culture built from vocal,
polyphonic interaction. The Bluest Eye’s fragmentation and reassembly of the “Dick and Jane”
narrative mimics the jazz technique of improvisation, where musicians use repetitive phrases, but
alter them slightly each time. An example of this repetition and variation process occurs when
Pecola ruminates over her desire for blues eyes: “Pretty eyes. Pretty blue eyes. Big pretty blue
eyes. Run, Jip, run. Jip runs, Alice runs. Alice has blue eyes. Jerry has blue eyes” (Morrison
44). Placing repetitive phrases so close together gives the impression of a song within the
narrative, and so this repetition deviates from literary, textual repetition, instead evoking musical
repetition. When listening to a piece of jazz music, due to the heavy improvisation and emphasis
on rhythm, it is often difficult to follow the melody. Similarly, Morrison’s repetition and variation
combinations disrupt the linearity of the plot and render it difficult to follow. This reflects the
difficulties black writers face in placing oral culture within a constrained textual medium.
Another example of the unconventional effect of the repetition and variation combination
occurs at the beginning of the narrative, which starts with a generic representation of the nuclear
family, set out in regular conventional prose: “…Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and
Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy…” (1). However, this is then
repeated with no punctuation marks and then again with no spaces between words. This
breakdown in convention mirrors the “mocking disregard for formality” (Joel Rogers 495)
expressed in jazz music. We have a strong desire to impose meaning on the sections lacking in
formality, but the difficulties this poses makes for an uncomfortable reading. Morrison thus draws
attention to our perception of the world, which is formulated through a structured, conventional
framework, derived from the written language of westernized tradition. By subverting our
expectations for literary formality, Morrison suggests that black culture cannot be viewed through
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the conventionalities of westernized literary history. Furthermore, after its initial appearance, the
“Dick and Jane” narrative is then broken into segments, which are placed at the beginning of each
chapter, for example: “HEREISTHEFAMILYMOTHERFATHERDICKANDJANETHEYLIVE
INTHEGREENANDWHITEHOUSETHEYAREVERYH” (Morrison 36). In consistently
regenerating the original narrative via unregulated and decontextualized fragments, the fluid and
conventional English prose is disjunctively combined with chaotic, fractured language; the latter
appearing out of place within the conventional literary form. As a result, the reader is presented
with the westernized myth of the nuclear family and the notion that this is incongruous with the
musicality and thus orality of black culture.
Morrison also uses call-and-response patterns, which according to Henry Martin and Keith
Waters, formed “the basis of work songs and spirituals in the United States” and “became a
significant component of blues and jazz.” (21). Furthermore, Lars Helgert comments: “the calland-response affect [in jazz] is created by contrast of rhythm and register between the two parts”
(238), a technique apparent in the narrative structure of The Bluest Eye. Morrison predominantly
uses third person narration through the consciousness of Claudia, but she also interjects this with
first person perspectives from characters such as Soaphead Church, who expresses his thoughts
through a letter to God, and Pecola, who participates in a disconcerting dialogue with her
imaginary self. This creates an interweaving texture, in which numerous narrative voices act as
rhythmic syncopations against Claudia’s dominant narrative perspective, mirroring the contrast
between rhythm and register in jazz music. Another example of this pattern occurs when Claudia
describes an overheard conversation. The following description highlights the interweaving
structure of the call and response pattern, in which differing narrative voices interact with one
another: “sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is
upstaged by still another: the two circle each other…” (Morrison 13). Claudia then proclaims that
in order to make sense of their words, she had to “listen for truth in timbre” (13), suggesting that
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an authentic representation of black culture must be presented through the musicality of oral
communication. Through the call-and-response tradition, Morrison challenges the conventional
linearity of traditional narrative, which, according to Lisa Wieland “enables her to give credibility
to various and significantly different voices” replicating “the complexity and polyvocality of
African American culture itself” (244).
Mumbo Jumbo is similar in many ways to The Bluest Eye, making use of fragmentation,
“polyvocality” and nonlinearity. However, Reed’s novel takes these to the extreme, contrasting
written text with photographs, illustrations and historical references, creating a “…complexly
structured text that defies the linearity of traditional prose” (Omry 109). Moreover, Walter
Kingsley concludes that jazz music is characterized by “strict rhythm without melody” (479). We
can see these aspects textualized in Mumbo Jumbo through the force of “Jes Grew” (Reed 13) and
through narrative structure, both of which symbolize the spontaneous, chaotic, indefinability of
African-American jazz culture. Reed explores a desire to create written documentation for this
non-textual force: “Jes Grew is seeking its words. Its text. For what good is liturgy without a
text?” (6). However, this statement is immediately followed by an image (7), consisting of a
group of African-American men dancing along to jazz music. The interjection of an image at this
point conveys the difficulty of textualizing “Jes Grew”, an idea expressed by Abdul Hamid: “the
words were unprintable. But the tune was irresistible” (95). “Jes Grew” is a force governed by
music, which incites physical action, thus removing it from the literary sphere. In the same way
that Morrison suggests the incompatibility of black oral tradition with westernized literary
tradition by creating a musical, polyphonic narrative; Reed highlights the struggle in confining the
oral, rhythmical essence of African-American tradition to words, by disrupting plot-driven linear
progression. While Elisabeth Wesseling in an analysis of Mumbo Jumbo, notes the dependence of
orality on textualization: “spontaneous, oral cultures of ethnic minorities need some form of
written codification which can grant them access to the channels of official culture” (207); I shall
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disregard this view in favour of Omry’s analysis of Reed’s text, which dictates: “The sweeping
search for text and for language does not conflate or equate the two but constructs a complex
relation between them” (110). Reed clearly interjects linguistic sections of his text with other
modes of communication, such as images of singing and dancing, to suggest that the oral origins
of “Jes Grew” cannot be written. He thereby proposes that African-American writers should not
attempt to transpose oral tradition into traditional, conventional literature, as this mode is
inappropriate for the conveyance of black orality.
I will now look more specifically at jazz compositional style and how it relates to
fragmentation and nonlinearity within Mumbo Jumbo. In the same way that African-American
music deals with the “complex interaction of the linear and circular elements of swing” (Jürgen
Grandt 39), Mumbo Jumbo deals with the contrast between a plot-driven detective narrative and
various harmonic, nonlinear representations. David Price highlights the contrast between
“horizontal (melodic) and vertical (harmonic) elements” (194) in Mumbo Jumbo. The traditional,
conventional, detective narrative constitutes the linear melody, whilst other forms of non-literary
culture, such as photographs and illustrations, comprise of harmonic interjections that disrupt and
fracture the main plot. This renders linearity unimportant, instead asserting the multidimensionality of African-American oral culture. Reed thereby highlights the conflict between
western plot-driven narrative and the spontaneous, oral forms of communication within black
culture, emphasizing their incompatibility. Reed and indeed Morrison were writing at a time in
the black cultural community when there was “an uncompromising demand to formally break
from distinct, white, European cultural demands and create something quintessentially black”
(Omry 105). Their polyphonic narratives are so distorted and unlike traditional textual narratives,
that we are constantly reminded of black, oral, music-based culture as being irreconcilable with
westernized literary tradition. Both authors thus imply the creation of a literary form more
authentically appropriate to oral tradition.
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Next, I turn to Hurston, who experiments with narrative voice as a literary convention. Jones
has commented: “To write in the oral tradition, yet to be taken seriously, like Twain, such
[African-American] writers are often led to …multilinguistic writings that admix both vernacular
and literary styles” (13). Hurston’s fusion of orality with literacy deviates from Morrison and
Reed’s rejection of the western literary tradition. In Their Eyes, Hurston enacts a gradual
progression as the narrative unfolds, in which the direct speech of the protagonist is at first
apparent, but is then gradually fused with the narrator’s consciousness. In roughly the first section
of the novel, Janie’s first person account clashes with the narrator’s conventional English in
omniscient third person form. An example of this dichotomy occurs when Janie begins to tell her
story: “‘Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things
done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches. ‘Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell
yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start at’” (Hurston 11). Another example occurs when Janie
speaks up to Joe Starks: “‘Humph! Talkin’ ‘bout me lookin’ old! When you pull down yo’
britches, you look lak de change uh life.’…Then Joe Starks realized all the meanings and his
vanity bled like a flood” (106-7). In both cases, the harsh dialect is softened with an explanatory
passage in Standard English. In juxtaposing the dialect of black oral tradition with conventional
literary narration, Hurston situates the vernacular as an invalid form of discourse, as it requires
conventional interpretation in order to be accepted within the literary sphere.
Henry Louis Gates believes that Hurston promotes dialect as a form of discourse “fully
capable of being used as a literary language even to write a novel” (251). However, the reliance on
conventional narrative voice and the decision to take away Janie’s voice completely by the end of
the novel would appear to negate this analysis, instead suggesting that dialect must be written in
the English literary tradition in order to be fully comprehensible. The framing device used via the
inclusion of dialect at the beginning and end of the novel may appear to give authority to black
vernacular, due to its being used to open and close the book. However, although the narrative is
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built on Janie directly relating her story to Phoeby, Hurston does not let Janie narrate the entirety
of this story in her own voice. Furthermore, as the plot progresses, Hurston uses free indirect
discourse to bridge the gap between oral and literary forms. For example, the town’s analysis of
Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship is conflated with the narrative consciousness: “It was after the
picnic that the town began to notice things and got mad. Tea Cake and Mrs Mayor Starks! All the
men that she could get, and fooling with somebody like Tea Cake!...” (Hurston 147), which differs
from the conversations in direct discourse at the beginning of the narrative when the townsfolk
make comments about Janie: “‘At dat she ain’t so ole as some of y’all dat’s talking.’ ‘She’s way
past forty to my knowledge, Phoeby.’ ‘No more’n forty at de outside.’” (4). Moreover, at the end
of the narrative, we do not get to hear Janie speak at her own trial, we only learn of what she says
through the narrating consciousness: “She made them see how she couldn’t ever want to be rid of
him. She didn’t plead to anybody. She just sat there and told and when she was through she
hushed” (251). Hurston thus transcribes Janie’s speech into standard written English. Most of the
great books of Western literature have been principally written in third person, omniscient
narration and so it appears that Hurston uses this mode in order to refigure the orality of the black
vernacular tradition into the high literary tradition. Jones outlines the question of Hurston’s central
predicament, in which she must: “render the colloquial voice authentically, break out of the frame,
and yet be impressive literarily” (138) in her fiction. Their Eyes does start off by giving authority
to black colloquial diction. However, by gradually fusing character’s voices with the narrating
discourse, Hurston clearly does not “break out of the frame” provided by the English literary
tradition. Instead, in an attempt to be impressive literarily, she downplays black oral culture by
textualizing it within conventional literary tradition.
If we now turn to The Colour Purple, Priscilla Leder has noted: “Walker draws upon the
black tradition by having Celie write in dialect, thereby asserting both her literacy and her
blackness” (145). Like Hurston, she fuses oral culture with literary tradition through free indirect
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discourse, but by relating the speech of other characters through Celie’s black vernacular, Walker
“writes” orality into existence rather than transposing it into literacy. Examples of this free indirect
discourse occur through the speech of Carrie: “Shug Avery, Shug Avery, Carrie say. I’m sick of
her. Somebody say she going round trying to sing. Umph, what she got to sing about.” (Walker
21), and Harpo: “That’s right, say Harpo. But not Sofia. She do what she want, don’t pay me no
mind at all. I try to beat her, she black my eyes. Oh, boo-hoo…” (61). Throughout the novel,
examples like this show how “Celie’s voice and a character’s merge into one, almost exactly as we
saw happen in Their Eyes when Janie and her narrator speak in the merged voice of free indirect
discourse” (Gates 249). However, in Their Eyes, this “merging” demonstrates a move away from
authentic black vernacular discourse in order to fit in with literary tradition, whereas in The
Colour Purple, this mergence validates the authentic dialects of multiple characters through one
authorizing voice, which communicates through black vernacular. Walker thus emphasizes the
importance of authentic black orality, but still presents this through written text, accomplishing
Jones’ concept of Hurston’s task, to: “render the colloquial voice authentically, break out of the
frame, and yet be impressive literarily” (138). Walker constructs a literary text by “writing” the
black vernacular, refusing to differentiate black dialect from literary language, separating her
novel from Morrison and Reed as well as Hurston.
A further example of how Walker’s text “writes” the black vernacular into literary history, is
conceptualized through the image of a quilt constructed from scraps, as a symbol for the
reassembly of oral fragments from Celie’s mind into physical, textual material; a technique which
shares similarities with Morrison and Reed’s structural adoption of jazz compositional style
through fragmentation and reassembly. Judy Elsley comments: “Walker…fragments [her story]
into letters and then adheres them together and presents them as textual” (164). The idea of
constructing a quilt from fragmented textiles occurs in the narrative at a number of points: “Let’s
make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains” (Walker 41); “Me and Sofia piecing another
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quilt together…My basket full of scraps on the floor” (54). This act of sewing pieces of fabric
together to create something physically whole, parallels the act in the text of piecing together
Celie’s internalized thoughts with various other vocal perspectives, into something than can
appreciated physically as a textual artifact. Walker may reject the conventionality and linearity of
the westernized literary form, but she does not reject the literary form as a method through which
to express black oral tradition. Instead, she encourages the creation of a new, African-American
literary model.
These four writers clearly explore black oral culture differently. Morrison and Reed aimed to
create a new concept of black culture, separating black orality from linear, novelistic tradition in
order to negate the validity of westernized literature as a frame through which to communicate
oral traditions. Walker aims to legitimize black oral culture as a valid form of discourse by
“writing” it. Hurston, however, differs somewhat from the others in her transcribing of oral
tradition into a conventional medium, seeking to incorporate black culture within westernized
literary tradition - an inclusion that the other authors seem to reject. However, despite their
differences, each text aims to champion black oral traditions by textualizing them, either within
the existing westernized literary tradition, or within a new “Africanised” one.
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Grandt, Jürgen. Kinds Of Blue: The Jazz Aesthetic In African American Narrative.
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