Pursuing The Canon: Black Women’s Fiction As Sacred Texts
BLACK WOMEN’S EXPRESSIVITY & THE CASE OF MAUD MARTHA
From customs of storytelling within the slave quarters of enslaved Blacks to the prolific literary output of writers during the 1970s and 1980s, Black women have long been deploying narratives to embody their values because the narratives give voice to their shared experiences of, not only “hard physical labor,” but social and emotional labor as well. Black female writers, then, labor to chronicle the moral wisdom derived from their enslaved ancestors’ experiences of persistent, violent repression and invisibility as well as their triumphs, courage, and resilience. Womanist ethicist Katie G. Cannon emphasizes that such wisdom does not rescue Black women from the hardships of their realities; “rather, it exposes those ethical assumptions that are inimical to the ongoing survival of Black womanhood” and thereby exposes the values, or fundamental ethical concerns, of Black women (60). Thus, Black women’s fiction represents a canon[1] of moral and spiritual thought and thereby constitutes sacred texts. I argue for Gwendolyn Brooks' 1953 novella, Maud Martha, as one such text because it unfolds as a study in one woman’s process of awareness and as a reflection of the Black community’s spiritual and ethical development.
The literature of Black women articulates both the values and dreams of Black folk. Monica Coleman, a postmodern process womanist theologian[2] puts a contemporary spin on the work of Katie G. Cannon, who argues the relevance of Black women’s fiction for understanding the Black experience and the meaning of morality. She writes, “Black women’s literature offers the sharpest available view of the Black community’s soul …The Black woman’s literary tradition is a source in the study of ethics relative to the Black community, because the development of the Black woman’s historical and literary legacy is tied up with the origin of Black people in America” (68). In the eyes of womanist theologian Monica Coleman, analyses such as this establish Cannon as a “weary but joyful trailblazer,” of a realm of Black feminist thought that engages critically with the ethical and spiritual wisdom of Black women’s literature (115). In her essay, “Must I Be a Womanist?,” Coleman cites Cannon’s scholarship as the first she came across that discussed Black women’s literature from the perspective of a religious scholar (115). With her postmodern framework, Coleman extends Cannon’s argument by positing that Black women’s fiction—particularly science fiction in her analyses[3]—“has the potential to give specificity to the previous theoretical discussion of postmodern womanist theology” (127). For instance, Coleman engages with the late Octavia Butler’s science fiction in her analyses of process theology[4] and its potential to effect creative transformation, or liberatory salvation.[5] Coleman’s deft use of various critical lens (e.g., postmodern, literary, theological) has strengthened my conviction that the knowledge available in Black women’s fiction remains relevant and useful to solving dilemmas faced by the human race as it stands today. We are all implicated in the change that, as Coleman puts it, “always occurs in a world of change and becoming” (94).
Gwendolyn Brooks in her home in Chicago, 1968. Courtesy of the Associated Press
Like Coleman and other “second and third generation[s] of [B]lack female religious scholars,” I situate my analyses of Maud Martha amidst the legacy of Black feminist theological scholars who, by engaging with our literary foremothers, extract the “necessary nourishment” and “come to understand [our] lives better,” in the way literary scholar Barbara Christian describes.[6] Furthermore, our scholarly objectives validate Christian’s contention “that literature is, of necessity, political.”[7] Although expressed more than two decades ago, this sentiment resonates today, because Black feminist scholars, such as myself, are still excavating the Black women’s literary canon for instruments of struggle as well as peace and this is a battle, both political and spiritual, in which marginalized groups engage even today. The intellectual legacy of these scholars testifies to the fact that a canon of Black sacred texts does indeed exist. My discussion of Maud Martha as one such text further attests to this reality and, in doing so, challenges those scholars of religious studies who would ignore the contributions of Black women writers to the current body of knowledge within religious studies to examine their biases and engage seriously with the literature.
Black women are trained to be humanists.[8] They have long been laboring in service of others as well as interpreting their own needs and desires. Hortense Spillers attributes the phenomenon of Black women’s work as humanists to the fact that the creation and maintenance of America depends on the “hard physical labor” of the Black female body, which has been “offered in the service of a collective function” (72–73, 65). In other words, Black women have become the reference point for a collective cultural subjectivity. Consequently, and as evidence of this humanistic vocation, Black women writers possess a highly developed psychic, emotional, and interpersonal vocabulary, one that uniquely positions them to express the feelings, emotions, and visions of those who are neither Black nor female and, often, they do so via the narratives of their protagonists. Black women writers, as service to their communities, but ultimately, as acts of survival, labor as cultural interpreters. Cannon notes, “As creators of literature these women are not formally historians, sociologists, nor theologians, but the patterns and themes in their writings are reflective of historical facts, sociological realities and religious convictions that lie behind the ethos and ethics of the Black community” (77–78). Cannon’s assessment supports my contention that Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha functions similarly to other sacred texts as they are typically understood (e.g. The Quran, Vedas, etc.): both guide readers in their spiritual development and orient their understandings of the mores of previous generations. In its contribution to the development and articulation of a Black consciousness, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha represents one such traditional Black sacred text. As such, Maud Martha 1) demonstrates responsible uses of power, 2) asserts visions of liberation, and 3) reflects a life-affirming mode of being in the world.
SACRED TEXTS: A GUIDE FOR YOU, A GUIDE FOR ME
Sacred texts—the Quran, Torah, and Hebrew Bible, for example—assist communities in their efforts toward self-actualization. They guide the “perennial quest for liberation” in that they pose solutions for overcoming hindrances to experiencing oneself as a powerful, subjective agent (Cannon 69). On a macrocosmic level, sacred texts encourage communities to develop an ethical code, or set of moral principles. Unfortunately, the functions of sacred texts such as the aforementioned do not honor the aspirations of Black women (65). Where, then, is the repository of knowledge on which Black women rely to guide their ethical and spiritual development? Sacred texts simultaneously articulate and construct the values of a community even as they orient the reader towards the legacies and traditions of her community. If a sacred text functions to guide one through her spiritual[9] evolution and orient her within her community’s traditions and values, why, then, has Black women’s fiction been omitted from the canon of sacred texts?
For Black people, sacred texts must tell the readers about themselves in a very specific place and time. Dominant narratives, obviously, have elided the spiritual and ethical concerns of marginalized peoples.[10] That these groups have accumulated wisdom deriving directly and indirectly from their experiences of exclusion contributes to the requisite “soul-relevance” of their sacred religious texts. In “kitchenette folks,” one of the most whimsical vignettes, Maud Martha provides character sketches “of the people in her building” (Brooks 108). “Who, further,” she wonders, “would question the truth that Nathalia,”
the wife of John the laundryman, kept her house shining, and smelling of Lysol and Gold Dust at all times, and that every single Saturday night she washed down the white walls of her perfect kitchen? But verily who (of an honorable tongue) could deny that the active-armed Nathalia had little or no acquaintance with the deodorant qualities of Mum, Hush, or Quiet? … Then there was Clement Lewy, a little boy at the back, on the second floor … Little Clement looked alert, he looked happy, he was always spirited. He was in second grade. He did his work, and had always been promoted. At home he sang. He recited little poems. He told his mother little stories wound out of the air by himself. His mother glanced at him once in a while. She would have been proud of him if she had had the time (111, 114).
Maud’s musings communicate the humanity of her neighbors in the wealth of information she presents about them. The reader becomes privy to the tenants’ class status and their typical familial configurations, for instance. With her keen reports on “the positive sense of self” of little Clement Lewy and “the density of simple values” apparent in Nathalia’s work ethic, Brooks contributes to the “concrete depiction of Black life” in a vein similar to Zora Neale Hurston who preceded her (Cannon 77). Maud Martha’s refined, sublime style of characterization exemplifies the unpretentious manner in which Black women have been acquiring and disseminating their moral wisdom and theorizing about their stake in the world. The narrative style of Brooks, the unaffected pedagogue, encourages the reader/interpreter to actively engage with the text, thereby effectively exercising and developing one’s own imagination in tandem with the collective memory. Through this process, one cultivates a quite exceptional mode of living in a manner that affirms one’s self-worth, even in light of repressive constraints. With a subtlety that one begins to recognize as grace, Brooks argues the inherent value of human life and its limitless creative potential.
Sacred texts can make meaning of the ambiguity and surrealism so characteristic of many Black people’s experiences across the Diaspora. They offer discursive tools with which Black people can excavate the meaning potential of their inherited legacies of struggle and resilience even as they suggest a world that is ordered by justice, empathy, and imagination. Even as they provide language systems, sacred texts shape visions of liberation even as the reader struggles to define what it means to live justly as well as empathically. For the reader, the process of making constructive meaning, or sense, via one’s ancestral narratives facilitates personal development in tandem with collective memory. That is, through active engagement in the interpretive process, the reader can develop her self-understanding even as she develops a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the manner in which her community has come into being and continues to become. The process of actively participating in the narrative of the sacred text requires the reader to recognize and honor the humanity enmeshed in the quotidian struggles, not only as her ancestors experienced them, but as she does as well.
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks with a copy of Maud Martha, in 1963. Photo by David W. Jackson
CANON: TO TOUCH AND AGREE ACROSS THE YEARS
A canon of sacred texts functions as a point of reference regarding the identity and lifestyle of a community. Thus, a primary characteristic of canon is adaptability. Its texts must remain relevant to a community’s present challenges while also anticipating its future needs. According to James A. Sanders, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, a story that succeeds in passing from one generation to the next: 1) speaks to a majority of the community, 2) communicates to them a power they seek, and 3) this power meets a common need “to recapitulate their self-understanding and to transcend a challenge born to it” (18). Moreover, a canonical story can “give life” as well as survive in itself (19). The specific contribution of Brooks’ Maud Martha is that its narrative form and evanescent aesthetic enables the reader “to be more awake in the midst of everyday chaos” (Chödrön 16). The ethos of “awakeness” intrinsic to the text exposes literacy as “a set of social practices” that models subjunctive worlds (Christian 132).
In Maud Martha, Brooks illustrates her vision of the world as it could be, negotiating the dissonance between her vision of “Peace” and the realities of a war-torn, impoverished 1950s Chicago (Brooks 177). Maud Martha was written, revised, and published over a ten-year period (1943–1953), spanning both World War II and the Korean War (Bryant 2). Against the backdrop of the political, economic, and social realities of war, Brooks situates her protagonist at home in Chicago, permitting her “to filter these significant events … through youthful and young adult eyes” (2). Undoubtedly, 1950s urban, industrialized Chicago experienced particular hardships as its primary source of labor—young, Black men—migrated from the region, taking with them “that extraordinary quality of maleness” (Brooks 83). With its sparse narration and stream-of-consciousness prose, Brooks’ Maud Martha pays tribute to a second Lost Generation. Maud Martha acknowledges the consequences of strife and war in “back from the wars!,” for example, when she celebrates her brother Harry’s safe return home, saying, “They [the soldiers] “marched,” they battled behind her brain—the men who had drunk beer with the best of them, the men with two arms off and two legs off, the men with the parts of faces. Then her guts divided, then her eyes swam under frank mist” (178–179). Maud Martha’s acknowledgment of the mangled lives lost to this war, amongst many, vindicates the necessity for responsible uses of power. Nevertheless, in her life-affirming determination to evolve amidst widespread destruction, Maud validates both the sanctity of Black life and human life in its infinite possibilities.
TOWARD A BLACK HERMENEUTICS: REVAMPING THE INTERPRETIVE PROCESS
While Black women writers have been diligently documenting their visions of “Peace” and liberation, not much scholarship exists pertaining specifically to sacred texts by and for Black people. Much like Maud Martha’s husband, Paul, Black theologians have “looked around [the academy], resentfully, wanting to see, just a few, colored faces,” (Brooks 74). Many Black theological discourses have focused solely on Protestant biblical interpretation.[11] However, their rigid framework of analyses has highlighted the ways in which “Blacks may use action guides [or guiding principles of conduct] that have never been considered within the scope of their own traditional codes of faithful living” (Cannon 58). In 1975, Black theologian Cecil W. Cone argued that the failure of major Black liberation theologians was the inability to create Black theology from the essential core and essence of Black religious sources (18–19).
Notably, womanist theologians have spearheaded the research regarding alternative repositories for understanding the ethical values of marginalized groups, specifically Black women. These scholars have proceeded “in accordance with their tradition to transform the cultural limitations and unnatural restrictions in the community’s move toward self-authenticity” (Cannon 68). Discussing the Black womanist ethicist as “noncanonical other,” or an outsider to mainstream discourses of canonical criticism, Cannon offers her own process of canonical criticism whereby Black women, as cultural interpreters and custodians, may engage with Black women’s fiction as an alternative source of sacred, moral wisdom, outside of the academy’s historically permissible basis for knowing (124). Once Black feminist scholars become acquainted with the pre-established structures and boundaries of their respective disciplines, Cannon maintains, they work “to balance the paradigms and assumptions of th[ese] intellectual tradition[s] with a new set of questions arising from the context of Black women’s lives” (124). The fact that “the accepted canonical methods of moral reasoning” contain deeply hidden racial and sexist biases—making it exceedingly difficult to employ them in the service of the best interests of Black women—has driven womanist scholars’ interest in the moral wisdom of Black women’s fiction (60, 124). Therefore, I maintain that a Black feminist hermeneutics constitutes one fundamental concern, especially amongst Black intellectuals. Opposed to the ontological limitations a Judeo-Christian canon poses to Black people’s to self-understanding, “the observations, descriptions, and interpretations in Black literature are largely reflective of cultural experiences. They identify the frame of social contradiction in which Black people live, move, and have their being” and effectively articulate the values of the community even as they construct them (Cannon 62).
The methodological and narrative strategies, which womanist theologians and Black female writers alike have deployed, are in accord with biblical scholar William H. Myers' argument that a Eurocentric approach to the comprehension and interpretation of sacred texts hinders Black communities in their attempts to glean meaning from various narratives (41). Rather, interpreters must devise models for interpretation that 1) propel further insight into the Black American experience and 2) endow Black people with autonomy during the interpretive process. His hermeneutical pivot encourages Black scholars to carve a space in which Black people may lay claim to—but not be restricted by—their spiritual and intellectual inheritance. Myers’ call to action breaks from traditional frameworks of analyses that rely heavily on traditionally sacred texts as arbiters of truth and, instead champions interpretative strategies that are grounded in the historical and contemporary realities of Black Americans. His solution calls for Black scholars, specifically, to revise their hermeneutical approaches to the text in question in a way that constructively contributes to “self-understanding” within Black communities (Myers 49–50). Undoubtedly, interpreters of Black life require a hermeneutical model that is characterized by a fidelity to communicating the complicated, ambiguous, down right surreal realities of Black life.
Myers’ proposed mode of canonical criticism agrees with Sanders’ in that both privilege the process and function of the canon. Myers notes,
This canonical criticism shifts … to an emphasis on the way in which canon … explains the world to a believing community at any time in history. Canon from this perspective seems to have more of an unbroken life in the believing community … continuously rejuvenated by each succeeding generation of “shapers and reshapers.” (41)
Emphasizing the participation of “each succeeding generation,” Myers privileges the role of the reader in the process of constructing meaning. His proposed methodology, then, rejoins Deborah King’s proclamation that “We have had to manage ideologies and activities that did not address the dialectics of our lives” (52). The “ideologies and activities” to which King allude represent Black women’s myriad experiences of invisibility and misnaming. Black canonical criticism, then, expands the “legitimate” bounds of interpretation to include the Black women writers who, all along, have been attending to the disparity between sources of oppression and available sources of liberation. Formulating the work of Black female writers into a canon serves manifold purposes: It positions the Black community at the nexus of the interpretive process, forcing interpreters to ask questions of the texts that pertain specifically to the historical realities of Black life and how these legacies inform the character of the Black community. Additionally, this formulation lends access to a wider Black community, primarily, but also to society at large, effectively expanding the boundaries of recognition of sacred legitimacy.
FUNDAMENTAL CONCERNS—ALSO KNOWN AS—REASONS TO CARE
Contemporarily, the ways slavery has informed a shared Black experience in America constitutes one fundamental concern for many Black people. There is no constructive, responsible way to discuss members of the African diaspora’s quest for spiritual fulfillment without critically engaging with their relationship to slavery and its contemporary implications. Indeed, “the social context for the construction of race as a tool for [B]lack oppression is historically rooted in the context of slavery” (Higginbotham 256). For example, for poet and essayist Elizabeth Alexander, the “Black community” is characterized by “the group recognition and knowledge that arose as a functional aspect of the originary rupture of the Middle Passage” (176). The “ghostly or ancestral aspect of [the] memory” of slavery permeates the identity of descendants of the diaspora, becoming a fundamental concern for Black female literary figures, such as Alexander (177). How can it not when Black people have been … “forging a traumatized collective historical memory that is reinvoked … at contemporary sites of conflict” (177)?
Maud Martha represents one Black woman’s distinct account of the “historical memory” to which Alexander refers and the vignettes within characterize the protagonist’s unique struggles as she challenges herself to consistently engage with the “everydayness” of living. While Maud’s experiences are subjective and particular, her lyrical account of self-love amidst repression remains a point of reference for contemporary Black folk who still struggle to live similarly. Maud Martha, then, becomes vital, not only for its vivid articulation of one woman’s perspective on life, but also for its revelation of a particular historical moment in the collective memory of Black folk. Maud Martha filters this history through her own interpretation and thereby offers a more nuanced account, one which arms the reader with a knowledge that will help her discern and anticipate contemporary challenges. Thus, Maud Martha effectively functions as an action guide for succeeding generations.
In their narratives, Black women writers champion judicious implementations of language. This fundamental concern has been informed, largely, by their particular and collective experiences of silencing and misnaming under slavery, as I discussed earlier. Language has the potential to carry community into greater self-awareness. In a warning against allowing this power to lay dormant, Cannon declares, “having no language to carry the memory is the final devastation” (75–76). Historically—from the Middle Passage and into America—Black people have been forcefully silenced and repressed, both structurally and informally. A deficit in linguistic tools created by their exclusion from the United States’ educational resources, for example, constitutes one mode of repression in that Black people become more vulnerable to being misnamed and having their experiences misrepresented. Regardless of intention, narratives of the orthodox canon (as it currently exists) cannot cater sufficiently to Black life because they are not privy to the particular realities—which centuries of enslavement and survivance have engendered—that shape the ethos of Black life in America.
Elizabeth Alexander posits metaphor as a rhetorical device that may render the Black experience more lucidly, effectively bolstering the communal well of memory. She reflects, “Metaphor observes in terms that are often more vivid and therefore in some ways more comprehensive than direct narration. Metaphor fills in where logic cannot. Metaphor literally ‘transfers,’ which gives us another way to think about what is directly in front of us” (201). Take, for example, the opening chapter of Maud Martha, “description of Maud Martha.” We learn about the protagonist chiefly through her aesthetic preferences. Of Maud’s affinity for dandelions, the narrator divulges, “She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to find that what was common could also be a flower” (1–2). Notably, Maud takes most pleasure in that which reflects something of her own essence back to her. The dandelion, “common” simply because of its “everydayness,” sways daily in front of us yet, its accessibility is the very reason we do not appreciate it.
The careful assortment of words such as “second,” “everydayness,” “latter,” and “thought” reveal Maud to be a passionate woman with a penchant for lingering. The reader moves her eyes slowly across the page, soaking up the imagery of dandelions personified in their “demure prettiness,” inevitably moving backwards to revisit the antecedent to “latter.” When the sentiment is through, I cannot help but to gloss back over it just so I can reimagine Maud, a dandelion swaying and languid in the benevolent spring sun. For me, this introduction makes it quite apparent Maud honors the quotidian aspects of living. She is a woman who takes care to note. Indeed, Maud directs the reader’s attention to the material relationship between what is common and what is thought to represent beauty—as embodied in the dandelions. One literary scholar notes how, “Brooks presents metaphors which society deems trivial as Maud Martha’s ‘vehicles of insight.’”[12] Indeed, she plucked the most common flower from the garden and offered it as, both a symbol of Maud’s unadulterated pleasure and, a meditation to her audience on gratitude.
Besides its propensity for metaphor, Brooks’ Maud Martha demonstrates a fascination with the wonders language can achieve through the manipulation of form. With its transitory character sketches and “putative drama,” Maud Martha, negotiates the ambiguous chaos—surrealism—inherent to the Black American experience (91). Brooks writes of Maud: “She had wanted to found—tradition. She had wanted to shape, for their use, for hers, for his, for little Paulette’s, a set of falterless customs. She had wanted stone …” (Brooks 102). With “staccato, simple sentences,”[13] Maud communicates her vision for her family in which stability factors strongly as does sharing. Her act of self-reflexivity orients her within her particular community and gives her purpose. Maud transfers her newfound self-awareness with a “keen sensitivity,” (Christian 131) one that informs her “vibrant, self-aware relationship to the world,” rather than an essential fatalism (Quashie 71). Metaphorical language has the potential to revolutionize “the way in which a group organizes [and disseminates] memory” (Alexander 176). Black Americans, then, require a system of communication that draws upon collective points of reference, or “sites of memory,” in order to mitigate the vulnerability to misnaming and misrepresentation (Morrison 82). Therefore, a successful Black sacred text successfully transfers memory in language that signifies upon the history and experiences of its reader. As a sacred text, Maud Martha does more than describes working-class Black life during a specific historical moment; it also reflects a collective consciousness, or “mass-heart of black people” (Toomer 91). This “mass-heart” signifies upon memories of the trauma and joy that color and shape Black life, even as it continuously renegotiates its ideals (91). In “love and gorillas,” Maud ruminates,
This was awakeness. Stretching, curling her fingers, she was still rather protected by the twists of thin smoky stuff from the too sudden onslaught of the red draperies with white and green flowers on them, and the picture of the mother and dog loving a baby, and the dresser with blue paper flowers on it. But that she was now awake in all earnest she could not doubt. (Brooks 7)
It is in moments of self-reflexivity such as this that the protagonist gathers information, sensually and organically, that guides her refinement of her values as well as her efforts to reshape her relationship to her world. Evinced by her stream-of-consciousness delivery, Brooks’ character has mastered the art of inhabiting a moment without judging it. Moreover, Maud inhabits each moment with a deep appreciation for it. With the “fine but indelible strokes” of her prose, Brooks creates a sanctified space wherein the reader, too, may dwell upon her or his own quiet[14] strength (Christian 132). Maud’s language deepens and refines the vocabulary with which “the mass-heart of [B]lack people”—deemed so three decades earlier by Toomer—may understand one other. Brooks’ work surpasses that of Toomer’s in that the text does not merely relay the reality of Black folks’ lives as sometimes doomed (but always surreal). Rather, the eponymous protagonist exhibits a zest for “everything … moody, odd, deliciously threatening, always hunched and ready to close in on you but never doing so” (9). Maud Martha neither guards herself from the unknown nor laments it. Instead, she recognizes its sublime character and remains “awake in all earnest,” fully inhabiting each moment and, in this way, develops her life-affirming mode of being in the world (Brooks 7).
Further indicative of a Black women’s literary consciousness, Brooks’ unwavering trust in the power of observation and imagination contributes to the general enduring rhetorical power and impressionistic aesthetic—important to its status as a sacred text—of Maud Martha. During a 1967 interview, Brooks muses, “In my writing I am proud to feature people and their concerns—their troubles as well as their joys. The city [of Chicago] is a place to observe man en masse and in his infinite variety” (Lee 134). We see this flaneur’s propensity for observation in Maud Martha, too. Maud relishes the ordinary, everydayness of her life, though she is not banal in the least. In “description of Maud Martha,” the narrator relays,
What she liked was candy buttons, and books, and painted music (deep blue, or delicate silver) and the west sky, so altering, viewed from the steps of the back porch; and dandelions. She would like a lotus, or China asters or the Japanese Iris, or meadow lilies—yes, she would have meadow lilies, because the very word meadow made her breathe more deeply, and either fling her arms or want to fling her arms, depending on who was by, rapturously up to whatever was watching in the sky. But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to find that what was common could also be a flower. (1–2)
In this passage, the reader experiences life alongside Maud, evinced by the staccato punctuation and intermittently placed “ands,” suggestive of spontaneous thought. Brooks’ rhetorical and poetic devices permit the reader to engage with the ordinary as supreme in the same moment that Maud Martha sees her own life-force reflected back to her in the “demure prettiness” and “everydayness” of the dandelions. Brooks’ devices also lend an air of vulnerability to the ephemeral aesthetic of the novella. Maud has expressed her most heartfelt delights and it is now the prerogative of the reader to actively engage with her spirit-essence.
Biblical scholar J. Renita Weems’ discussion of Black women’s historical relationship to theological exegesis poignantly highlights the ways that Black women’s historical role as cultural interpreters characterizes their consciousness as an artistic community. In her essay, “Reading Her Way Through the Struggle: African American Women and the Bible,” she writes, “Meaning is viewed as emerging in the interaction between reader and text” (64). Similarly, Brooks empowers her readers to experience themselves as agents of personal power as they witness Maud do the same. She neither encourages domination nor abuses of power. Rather, she asserts the undeniably human “power to grow, to resist victimization, to become responsible, despite forces of oppression and destruction” (Andrews 70). Brooks, then, has contributed a body of work that has functioned to guide the development of self-understanding and intellectual autonomy within the Black community.
Gwendolyn Brooks by John Matthew Smith, 2001
A LIFE WELL-LIVED: MUSINGS ON EMPATHY, JUSTICE & POWER
Brooks’ meditative novella chronicles one Black woman’s development of a womanist consciousness. Maud, in her immense powers of observation, wants “to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good’’ for her.[15] In this way, Maud reflects Brooks’ own interest “in grown up doings.”[16] Primarily regarded as a poet, Brooks was perceived as a literary outsider and, in her liminality, “freer to experiment with fictional forms” (Washington 38). One critic playfully exclaims that Brooks “enter[ed] fiction through a side door” (38). What, then, can an artist such as Brooks, who is irrefutably proud to feature her hometown and its inhabitants in her work, teach Black folk about living in an “oppressive Western culture” (Myers 43)? She encourages her readers to recognize the vitality of their cultural inheritance within their own community as well as to learn to “love moments” (Brooks 78). Brooks eloquently articulates her positionality as a Black/female/working-class-raised/artist/activist, stating, “I … am qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now. New consciousness and trudge-toward-progress. I have hopes for myself … I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.”[17] She communicates her Black hermeneutics as one that entails the study and expression of nuanced Black life, from the vantage point of the one who is living and becoming within her Blackness.
Brooks’ predilection for “Black emphasis,” in conjunction with the tenets of a Black hermeneutics, is in accordance with the tradition of the sacred text in that, fundamentally, both uphold a conviction that community and culture are prerequisites for self-understanding. In meeting this requirement, Brooks was also creating new forms, a move which one Black feminist literary critic described as “entering fiction through a side door.”[18] Brooks’ decision to merge her poetic prowess and literary finesse had far-reaching implications. For instance, in 1982 poet/playwright/author Ntozake Shange published her novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. While the text is rife with moral wisdom, it is also an experiment with form. Shange beautifully scribes the life these three eponymous daughters share with their mother, Hilda Effania through the rituals, recipes, and letters that they exchange among one another. Shange once mentioned that she enjoyed varying form, because it forces active reader participation.[19]
I would take her claim further and argue that the heightened sense of engagement, which active participation demands, facilitates a process of consciousness-raising within the reader. As the reader dialogues with the text, it begins to communicate to her a power she seeks,[20] much in the way Sanders describes the function of a canonical story. While the history of Brooks’ literary protest has revolved around racial inequality, generally, Shange takes a markedly gendered approach in that her work deals with, primarily, relationships amongst women; and when men do enter the narrative scape, their characters revolve around the orbit of the women. Nevertheless, both women share a decidedly political vision in that they intend for their work to nurture the reader mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Shange, for instance, has stated that she intends for her work to give little Black girls information that she did not have as a youth.[21] With snippets of wisdom enclosed in the ritual texts of “To Rid Oneself of the Scent of Evil” and “Wounds that Cannot be Easily Seen,”[22] undoubtedly, Shange disseminates knowledge of a life-saving caliber.
In subtler mode, Brooks permits her protest to evolve through suggestion. In the vignette, “at the Regal,” Maud, tender yet resolute, reflects on her role in humanity, stating, “What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other. She would polish and hone that” (22). Significantly, Maud regards her being as a work of art. Her “offering” conveys her understanding of life as a process of becoming, one that is effortful, yet infinite in its possibilities; so much so that it is to be “polished” and “honed.” Portrayed through the brushstrokes of the consciousness of one brownskinned, working class, meditative Black woman, Brooks renders Black life vivid and revelatory in all its fullness, yearning, and dynamism. Her canvas, ultimately, intimates to the reader that she, too, possess a life-force that is capable and instructive. With these offerings, it becomes clearer that Black women’s fiction does indeed function as a canon. First, Brooks’ and Shange’s artistic intentions reveal the intertexuality of their work. That is, their texts demonstrate a relationship to one another that eventually configures into a literary tradition.[23] Second, both Maud Martha and Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo demonstrate what Sanders calls “adaptability.” The narratives remain relevant to the present challenges of various groups of Black Americans, while also anticipating their future needs, as evinced by Shange’s desire to transmit information that she did not have as a young girl, but has since acquired.
As reflected in their art, the authors’ irrepressible love for their communities and thus themselves, parallels Myers’ insistence that Black people construct their own models to assess the sanctity of their narratives. Both writers highlight the affirmative potentiality of Black women’s fiction. Black female authors shape visions of liberation even as their protagonists struggle to define what it means to live justly as well as empathetically. With their narratives, these writers help their audience transcend challenges “born to it,” a literary feat worthy of canonization according to Sanders.[24] Supportively, Weems writes, “African American women have sought to be sensitive to oppression wherever it exists, whether in society or in narrative plots” (69). Brooks privileges and nurtures Maud Martha’s personal agency by filtering the entire story through her consciousness. Thus, her narrative style characterizes Maud as one who “experience[s] herself as a source of power,” rather than someone primarily subjected to it (Quashie 60). She debates responsible uses of power in her everyday life, even for dilemmas as mundane as whether to spare the mouse that scurries throughout her home. Brooks’ archive of Maud’s concerted efforts to channel her power compassionately renders the ordinary, everyday life of her protagonist a sacred experience.
Daily, Maud Martha remains especially sensitive to dynamics of power and oppression on a minute, ordinary scale. Her keen awareness thus probes readers to recognize and honor their own quotidian struggles and thereby reassess their own self-understanding. For instance, in “at the Burns-Coopers’,” Maud grows increasingly exasperated with her condescendingly “stiff, cool, authoritative” employer, vowing to herself, “I’ll never come back,” as she hangs her apron for the last time (and with a dramatic air of finality, I imagine). Likening her employer to a “firing squad,” Maud decides that it makes no difference “whether the firing squad understood or did not understand the manner of one’s retaliation or why one had to retaliate … Why, one is a human being” (Brooks 163). As a sacred text, Maud Martha recapitulates the humanity of Black existence. One gift of humanity is the capacity for empathy. Maud’s sole gain during this particular stint of labor was that “for the first time, she understood what Paul had endured daily” (162). Maud now has an empathetic understanding of what it means to be infantilized, one that transcends a gendered lens and pulsates throughout the “mass-heart.”
For so—she could gather from a Paul-word here, a Paul-curse there—his Boss! when, squared, upright, terribly upright, superior to the President, commander of the world, he wished to underline Paul’s lacks, to indicate soft shock, controlled incredulity. As his boss looked at Paul, so these people looked at her. As though she were a child, a ridiculous one, and one that ought to be given a little shaking. (162)
The relevance of Brooks’ depiction of Maud in the workplace supports Cannon’s conviction that scholars and interpreters must “probe more intimate and private aspects of Black life” (59). Further, only through her own visceral experience of attack is Maud finally able to empathize completely with the defeat her husband experiences regularly. In this scene, Maud realizes the sheer futility of explanation. With that, the reader becomes privy to the necessity of relating to others in ways that are not predicated upon systems of domination and isolation.
Consequently, Maud practices the just use of her power and, thereby models a life-affirming mode of being in the world. In “Maud Martha spares the mouse,” she finally traps “the little creature” whose “bright black eyes contained no appeal … but a fine small dignity,” only to begin to ponder the mouse as her equal—a living organism “nursing personal regrets” (70). Finally, her wild imagination reaches its peak and Maud Martha releases the rodent with a stern order to head home. While undeniably comical, the vignette serves a pedagogical function as well. The narrator relays,
Suddenly, she was conscious of a new cleanness in her. A wide air walked in her. A life had blundered its way into her power and it had been hers to preserve or destroy. She had not destroyed. In the center of that simple restraint was—creation. She had created a piece of life. It was wonderful. “Why,” she thought, as her height doubled, “why, I’m good! I am good.” She ironed her aprons. Her back was straight. Her eyes were mild, and soft with a godlike loving-kindness. (70–71)
Interestingly, Maud Martha frees the mouse and then, “suddenly,” becomes aware of her altered psychic state. Actualizing the potentiality of the sacred text, Maud’s awakeness has positioned her to be centered and fully present, like “a wide air” and, in her self-consciousness, she becomes free to release destructive habits of being as she embrace alternative modes that endow her with a “godlike loving-kindness.” She does not anticipate a reward of any sort, which makes her “new cleanness” all the more enchanting. In her contemplation of power, we can discern various psychological transformations of the protagonist. For example, once Maud releases the mouse, she discovers that her greater reward for “that simple restraint” is a divine experience of herself as a creator of life. She chooses to constructively participate in the unending process of becoming and, in doing so, experiences an epiphany of everydayness. That is, she gleans knowledge by simply engaging with the world in a manner that is life-affirming. Maud’s awakeness yielded a glimpse of a more capacious vision of freedom in which she consistently experiences herself as good, worthy, and capable. Considered in its entirety, the novel embodies an ethos of awakeness that reveals literacy as a set of social practices that models humanity as it could be. If consistently reshaped and reengaged, these social practices, like the manna of the Israelite’s wilderness experience, may sustain generations.
CONCLUSION: TO WRITE THE VISION & MAKE IT PLAIN; THIS IS FREEDOM
In its immense powers of reflection and discernment, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha unveils the potential and necessity for Black expressivity to develop its own processes of awareness and methods of interpretation. The Black literary imagination has always been versatile, including slave narratives, magical realism, and science fiction, as examples. Far from proliferating an uncritical rendering of a “monolithic Black community,”[25] various artistic identities and spiritual ideologies have flourished through the Black literati’s offerings. Indeed, for scholars of religious studies, the versatility that the Black literati have exhibited represents an alternative model to rigid, orthodox canonical formation.
Brooks infused her work with the political consciousness that she so unfalteringly espoused in every aspect of her life. Her love for Black folk is palpable in her work; it is a love that begets empowerment, overwhelming in its sheer force. In an interview, Brooks once exclaimed, “I hope you hear how this poem cries out for our doing something about our plight right now, and not depending on acquiring God or whatever” (46). Her plea encourages her audience to no longer rely on hegemonic narratives as discursive tools for “acquiring God.” Instead, Brooks suggests we rely on our own stories and poems that foster esteem and a healthy self-consciousness. Brooks’ novella signals the development of self-understanding and intellectual autonomy within the Black community. And Brooks, like her Maud, does everything “with a little grace” (Brooks 66). Her experimentations with form tend to the “mass-heart” of her community in a manner that is both liberating and life-affirming. In the same collection of interviews, Ntozake Shange describes the charge of the woman writer as the responsibility “to discover the causes for our pain and to respect them” (Tate 155). For, “if the root [is] sour what business [does one] have hacking at a leaf?” (Brooks 88). Only a hermeneutics grounded in the historical and contemporary realities of Black folk can satisfactorily tend to their psychoemotional and spiritual needs.
Maud Martha’s subtle, poignant observations also reveal that Black women have all along—regardless of recognition—been shaping their own visions of liberation. Though it inhabits a unique space within the cultural milieu, Black women’s literature shares with other canons 1) its potential to orient the reader within the ethos of her community and 2) a propensity to articulate constructive modes of knowing and living in the world. The narratives, however, remain unique in their predilection for a humanistic epistemology. In the final chapter, “back from the wars!,” Maud Martha elegantly articulates her own vision for humanity, proclaiming,
But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world—or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower … And was not this something to be thankful for? And, in the meantime, while people did live, they would be grand, would be glorious and brave, would have nimble hearts that would beat and beat. (179)
While Brooks may have “enter[ed] fiction through a side door,” her experimentation with form revolutionized Black American literature. Maud’s “awakeness” and attunement to the life-force of, not only herself, but also those around her, is a far cry from the doomedness of Toomer’s Cane or the crippling self-consciousness of Ellison’s Invisible Man, for instance. Further, not only does Brooks foreground the worldview of a young brown girl[26] in 1950s war-torn United States, she treats her subjective “everydayness” as a supreme form of the ordinary. Indeed,
The difference was in the knowing. What was unreal to you, you could deal with violently. If chickens were ever to be safe, people would have to live with them, and know them, see them loving their children, finishing the evening meal, arranging jealousy. (155)
Peculiar, gleeful epiphanies such as the one in “brotherly love” assure the reader that Maud’s narrative is not assessed and evaluated in relation to another’s (Benjamin Lecture). Thus, the reader can trust that the process by which Maud’s critical consciousness germinates is organic. She is an autonomous, yet interdependent being, enamored by glorious everydayness. Maud’s paradoxes tap into the sublime “the heart of literature,” which one critic defines as “a critique of America, and by extension, a critique of identity formation. The tradition may be viewed as one long and connected quest for identity and attendant ways of being in the world” (Newson-Horst 177). Literature as social critique represents an opportunity to confront, grapple with, and understand one’s own humanity as well the nature of a humane existence. The moral wisdom that Brooks’ Maud Martha contributes to the canon “passes over national borders and reaches deep into the common human experience” (Sanders 48). With Maud Martha, Brooks carves a literary and spiritual space wherein descendant Black female writers may testify about their own, unique quests for identity formation, and eventual transcendence, even as they continue to excavate the myriad sites of Black experience. The tireless reshaping of the canon of Black women’s fiction means that, in accordance with Maud Martha’s vision, these women’s narratives may eternally attend to the needs of all nimble-hearted peoples.
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In his essay, “The Hermeneutical Dilemma of the African American Bible Student,” William H. Myers writes, “Canon … explains the world to a believing community at any time in history.” See Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Ed. Cain Hope Felder. Minneapolis: Fortress P, 1991. 51. Print. ↩
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In Chapter 2 of Making a Way, “A Postmodern Framework: Process Theology and Salvation,” Coleman asserts that postmodernists endeavor to simultaneously overcome the inaccuracies and shortcomings of lessons obtained during modernity and acknowledge new information about the world and. She writes, “Constructive postmodern thought wants to transcend the limitations of modernity without negating the wisdom of the modern and premodern periods. A constructive postmodern theology attempts to construct a worldview by which we can be faithful to a concept of the divine without ignoring what we currently know about the world in which we live” (46–47). ↩
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In this same discussion, Coleman goes on to write: “Situating black women’s science fiction within the genres of utopian writing, science fiction, feminist literature, and African American literary traditions demonstrates that it is exceptionally capable of providing imaginative models of creative transformation and ancestral immortality” (127). See Chapter 5 of Monica Coleman’s Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress P, 2008. Print. ↩
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In process theology, God is understood as “the principle that provides relevant possibilities to the world. God contains all the possibilities of the world and offers them to us based on the particularities of our context” (54). ↩
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Coleman perceives Black women’s science fiction as a critique on current society that offers proposals for “‘what could be,’ and possibly ‘what will be,’” going on to state “Black women’s science fiction talks about salvation (54). Notably, Coleman’s work as a process theologian drives her perception of salvation as a distinctly assertive endeavor. She writes, “Salvation is found in the process of building a community of diverse, disenfranchised people with a common yearning for a better life” (147). ↩
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In “The Race for Theory,” Barbara Christian discusses the pervasiveness of academic hegemony and ways in which, historically, people of color have used narratives to theorize. She writes, “Among the people who speak in muted tongues are people of color, feminists, radical critics, creative writers, who have struggled for much longer than a decade to make their voices, their various voices, heard, and for whom literature is not an occasion for discourse among critics, but is necessary nourishment for their people and one way by which they come to understand their lives better” (13). See The Black Feminist Reader. Eds. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 11–23. Print. This article is particularly useful, because it highlights my contention that academia has remained rigid in its criteria of “acceptable” and “worthwhile” knowledge, grossly ignoring the histories of peoples who have been engaging in similar practices of knowledge acquisition and refinement. While Christian argues literature as theory, generally, my project examines the specific theoretical insights of one narrative. ↩
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Ibid. 14. ↩
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According to the American Humanist Association, humanism is “a democratic and ethical lifestance which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives … (it is) a belief that when people are free to think for themselves, using reason and knowledge as their tools, they are best able to solve this world’s problems. An appreciation of the art, literature, music and crafts that are our heritage from the past and of the creativity that, if nourished, can continuously enrich our lives.” ↩
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Lee Irwin defines “spirituality” as activities that establish “connectedness to core values and deep beliefs” as well as “a pervasive quality of life that develops out of an authentic participation in values and real-life practices meant to connect members of a community with the deepest foundations of personal affirmation and identity” (3). See Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Print. ↩
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Thomas Tweed makes this point more explicit in his theory of religion, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. He privileges metaphors of movement and relation to discuss a community of Cuban Catholics in Miami during the feast day of Our Lady of Charity, the national patroness of Cuba (54, 166). Aptly and succinctly stating his purpose, Tweed writes, “My scholarship has sought to make those on the move … easier to notice” (166). See Cross and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 2006. Print. ↩
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Speaking specifically to intellectual trends with womanist theological circles, Coleman supports this observation in her essay, “Must I Be a Womanist?,” stating, “womanist religious scholarship has not done well in reflecting the religious pluralism of (B)lack women’s faith associations.” She notes “the assumption that womanist religious scholars always reference Christianity and goes on to assert that “Without clarifying the theological difference between God and Jesus, womanists are incapable of speaking to the many (B)lack women do not identify as Christian …” “Must I Be a Womanist?” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 22.1 (2006): 118. Print. ↩
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See Barbara Christian’s essay, “Trajectories of Self-Definition: Placing Contemporary Afro-American American Women’s Fiction,” in Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Eds. Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1985. 238. Print ↩
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See Frederik L. Rusch’s discussion of narrative form in his essay, “Form, Function, and Creative Tension in Cane: Jean Toomer and the Need for the Avant-Garde.” This work was very helpful to my discussion of Brooks’ experimentation with form in Maud Martha. MELUS. 17.4 (1992): 16. Print. ↩
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Notably, Kevin Quashie explores the capabilities of a Black subjectivity that is not rooted in notions of publicness. His use of the term “quiet” is twofold. On the one hand, Quashie employs it as “a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life,” while on the other, he develops it as “an analytical framework for reading and exposing life that is not over determined by narratives of the social world” (8). Quashie’s analyses have been particularly significant to my appreciation of Maud Martha’s abstract, transient aesthetic as well as its protagonists various negotiations of power and predilection for all things beautiful. See The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers U P, 2012. Print. ↩
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See Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 90. Print. ↩
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Ibid. 90 ↩
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“Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917–2000.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Magazine, 2015. Web. 28 April 2015. ↩
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See Mary Helen Washington’s “‘The Darkened Eye Restored’: Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Group, 1990. 38. Print. ↩
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See Claudia Tate’s interview with Shange in Black Women Writers at Work. Ed. Claudia Tate. New York: Continuum, 1983. 163. Print. ↩
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See James A. Sanders’ Canon and Community: A Guide To Canonical Criticism. Philadelphia: Fortress P, 1984. 18. Print. ↩
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Tate, Black Women Writers. 163. ↩
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See Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1982. 30. Print. ↩
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See Mary Helen Washington’s Introduction to Black-Eyed Susans/Midnight Birds: Stories by and about Black Women. Ed. Mary Helen Washington. New York: Doubleday, 1990. 7. Print. ↩
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See Sanders’ Canon and Community. 18. Print. ↩
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See Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s discussion of the failure of Black historians to thoroughly evaluate the relationship between gender and class to racism, an elision that “uncritically render(s) a monolithic ‘black community,’ ‘black experience,’ and ‘voice of the Negro’” (255–256). “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs. 17.2 (1992): 251–274. Print. ↩
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See Regina Jennings’ analysis of the history of colorism regarding the protagonists of Black women’s fiction in “Understanding Maud Martha through an Africana Womanist Conception: Notions of Self and Gender (Mis)Comunications. Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha: A Critical Collection. Chicago: Third World P, 2002. 119–120. Print. ↩
May 2020. Vol nº1