The Importance of Voice: The Role of African American Literature - Essay Example

The Importance of Voice The role of African American literature in recent years has been to illuminate for the modern world the sophistication and beauty inherent in their culture as well as the constant struggle they experience in the oppressive American system. When writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois and Alice Walker present their material, they manage to convey to a future world the great depth of feeling and meaning their particular culture retained as compared with the culture of their white counterparts. Without this attempt at preservation, much of the richness of this community might have been lost or forgotten. At the same time, they illuminated some of the problems inherent within their society, including lack of education, lack of appreciation for their own value and lack of opportunity for the future. All three of these writers work to capture the important concepts of their society within the figurative elements of daily life, urban or rural, as they are defined from within rather than without. In poetry such as Hughes’ “Mother to Son”, W.E.B. DuBois’ work Souls of Black Folk or Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”, one begins to understand the unifying theme of the black community as a constant struggle between attaining higher social status and more comfortable conditions while still remaining deeply connected to the cultural and spiritual richness of their heritage and families. Rather than attempting to ‘make friends’ with the white man in hopes of gaining sympathy, the struggles of overcoming slavery and battling blatant oppression are not allowed to go unnoticed within Hughes’ poetry, as is illustrated in “Mother to Son.” In this poem, Hughes employs a metaphor to depict a mother as she explains to her son that her own path through life “ain’t been no crystal stair” (2). As she tells her son about the path she’s walked, the mother illustrates how it has been scattered with numerous hazards that one would immediately recognize as dangerous within the context of a never-ending stairway up. This imagery includes “splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor” (4-6). The character’s language paints a very real picture of an old and dangerous stairway that provides little in the way of support and is constantly threatening harm. The details such as splinters force one to think of sudden sharp pains in unexpected places while the torn up boards introduce ideas of sudden instability and lean times. The road of life has not been full of comfort either, as the carpet is thin or even missing from entire segments, but still the older woman continued to climb, “And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners, / And sometimes goin’ in the dark” (10-12). The life depicted thus provides few safe havens in the form of ‘landin’s’, if all the boards are in place, but more frequently prove difficult in their own way as they introduce corners and sections that must be navigated completely in ignorance. Picturing trying to climb this twisting stairway, it is easy to see how this life has been littered with all kinds of difficult trials and tribulations, but also sprinkled with comfort in the idea that the floor was covered with carpet sometimes and rest in the concept that she came across landings sometimes. The language used by the old woman further supports the concept that her life has not been easy as it is full of ignorant slang, what was termed the ‘black dialect’ because of its unschooled nature, but despite this, she has attained a deep wisdom and strong faith in herself. It isn’t until roughly the last quarter of the poem that it becomes clear that this is a mother trying to encourage her son to continue to struggle for something better than she’s ever experienced: “So, boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps, / ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard” (14-16). Her words may not be polished, but her wisdom is true as she realizes how easy it is to give up under the tremendous pressure of life as a black man (or woman in her case) by simply allowing oneself to sit down or take a break. Although she knows the climb he’s making is not easy, she is telling him that she is able to understand because she has had to follow a difficult path as well, perhaps one darker and more dangerous for the particular circumstances she faced. As she illustrates to him the various hardships she’s had to endure as she climbed the stairway of life, she is also letting him know that at the least, he is starting from a higher point than the place where she started. “For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin’, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (18-20). Despite the hardships, the mother is telling the son that she’s stronger for her trials and she is still fighting to find something better for herself and for her descendents by encouraging him to continue climbing upward and never give up. The concept of fighting for something better for future generations of black people is also found in W.E.B. DuBois’ work The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois writes from a non-fiction point of view as a means of attempting to improve a condition that he argues is more a matter of opportunity and the lack of it than any real differences between the races. He argues persuasively that the position of the black man can only be improved upon through the continuation and encouragement of higher, more classical educational goals such as those pursued by white men. He acknowledges the plans of others such as that suggested by Booker T. Washington regarding providing the black men of his time an industrial education as a means of providing a stepping stone from slavery and the oppression of the Jim Crow South to better conditions for the future: “The industrial school springing to notice in this decade, but coming to full recognition in the decade beginning with 1895, was the proffered answer to this combined educational and economic crisis, and an answer of singular wisdom and timeliness” (Du Bois, 1999, p. 65). The crisis he refers to in this statement is the crisis of the South as it moved into the industrial age and the ever-more stringent legal system put in place by prejudiced white men to severely restrict the movements and opportunities available to freed black men. Despite this, Du Bois points out that this direction in education was merely a means to an end, “the Gates of Toil” that swing before the “Temple of Knowledge” (p. 65). Once an acceptable livelihood had been obtained, however, he insists that the natural condition of man is to pursue the higher education he himself has attained as a means of achieving equality with the white man. DuBois started this argument by suggesting that the pursuit of higher education is already started in preparing the black man for industrial jobs. After all, it is necessary for institutions of higher education to be open to the black man as a means of providing the necessary teachers for the lower schools that instruct the basic math, reading and writing necessary for industrial positions. “They must first have the common schools to teach them [the black workers] to read, write and cipher; and they must have higher schools to teach teachers for the common schools … Southern whites would not teach them; Northern whites in sufficient numbers could not be had. If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers” (p. 66-67). Because black students were able to achieve acceptable levels of education in the lower schools and were capable and willing to become teachers for the future, DuBois argues that they should be encouraged to continue attaining higher degrees and education. To complete his argument, Du Bois discusses the results of a study into the 2500 graduates of classical universities conducted in 1900. While he acknowledges that approximately one third of these graduates could not be found for the completion of his study, the rest of the former students were all gainfully employed as teachers, principals, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, artisans, merchants and farmers. “Comparing them as a class with my fellow students in New England and in Europe, I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their life-work, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among Negro college-bred men” (p. 70). In illustrating the life pursuits of his fellow educated black men, DuBois makes the subtle case that a highly educated black man is of higher quality than the higher educated white man. Rather than attaining higher education for himself alone, the black man or woman of higher education was typically found in occupations and pursuits that encouraged other black men and women to attain something greater in life than the blue collar positions to which the white man had wished to confine him. The structure of his argument, progressing from the acknowledgement of the early effectiveness of the industrial approach through the necessity of higher training in order to provide the basic instruction necessary prior to reaching industrial training through to the conclusion of the case studies in which higher education has done much to bring about even more sweeping and positive change for the black race effectively proves for Du Bois that a classical education could benefit a single black man as well as the black race much more than a simple industrial education alone could have done. Unlike Hughes, DuBois’ argument is placed in the very educated, upper-class attitudes of the white man rather than kept within the black vernacular, but his subject remains a careful consideration of the impoverished conditions of the race at large and the broad applicability of poems such as Hughes’ to illustrate the condition of life for too many of his people. However, the wisdom of educating the black man beyond the knowledge of his family is not without its own brand of loss and hardship as is explored in Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” In this story, the author places two sisters side by side for an afternoon of visiting as they are compared by their mother. One of these sisters, Maggie, lives with her mother in a small, poorly built shack on the edge of the country and is planning to marry a somewhat unattractive but dependable man in their small town. As a child, she was caught in a fire and still bears significant scarring on her legs and arms, a fact that makes her shy and withdrawn. The other sister, Dee, lives a beautiful life in the city with her good looks, her outgoing charm and her refusal to be denied. She is described as having lived a charmed childhood, easily able to get her way with other people as a result of her natural charm and good looks while her brains enabled her to attain a higher level of education than either her mother or her sister. Throughout the story, both girls are seen to have a strong appreciation for their past, but each approach this past from a vastly different perspective revealing the depth of one and the near-emptiness of the other. Both girls know and appreciate the many things around the house that have been created by one relative or another, Dee able to recognize “Grandma Dee’s butter dish” and “the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t afford to buy chairs” while Maggie tells her “Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash … His name was Henry, but they called him Stash.” Despite these similarities, the girls’ interest in these things seems to hail from different sources. Dee’s appreciation of her past can be seen as something of a second-hand reminiscence rather than a true experience as one of the first actions Dee makes on her arrival is to grab her camera. “She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house.” Dee happily accepts the traditional food her mother makes for her as a novelty, the same food the mother and Maggie tend to eat all the time. Dee’s reaction to much of the events of the visit are reminiscent of a person’s reaction to a historic theme park, attempting to make a connection with a way of life she has transcended yet feeling a sense of loss as a result, which is a connection Maggie lives every day of her life. The type of interest Dee shows in her surroundings is immediately depicted as approaching cultural awareness from a distance. What makes her different is seen as primarily her difference in education. Dee was sent to the Augusta school where she learned to love the stories she read about in books, “She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice” and grew up wanting nice things as they are defined by the white culture. While she apparently loves her mother and sister, it is also apparent that she takes little or no pride in her own past. However, that she takes pride in the heritage as its imagined in the city is revealed as she announces to her mother that she’s taken on an African name, “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” although she was truly named after her aunt. The items she takes from the house are all strongly associated with her culture and past, but she intends to put them to alternate uses within her home, “’I can use the chute top as a centerpiece for the alcove table,’ she said, sliding a plate over the chute, ‘and I’ll think of something artistic to do with the dasher.’” She can’t understand why her mother might not allow her to ‘properly’ take care of something as valuable as the heritage quilt she’s dug out of her mother’s trunk. Despite Dee’s overwhelming presence, Maggie is the first girl to be introduced in the story as it is she who has apparently helped her mother to make the yard “so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. … It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room,” indicating the social aspect of their society as well as their close connection with their property. Strongly contrasted against Dee in the education department, Maggie is more like her uneducated mother. While she attempts to read to her mother in the evenings, “she stumbles along good-naturedly but can’t see well.” She is apparently accustomed to doing things the way her mother did them, understanding the feel of the “small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood” of the dasher for the butter churn and is comfortable living in the same way her mother has for years. In the argument over the quilts, Dee correctly assumes Maggie “would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags.” Maggie is intimately familiar with the many priceless treasures that can be found still in use throughout the house, many of which could be easily overlooked as mere junk or indications of poverty without the careful inventory provided in Dee’s restless culling of the property for items of ‘cultural significance’ regardless of their value within the home. For example, Dee wants the top to the butter churn because of its cultural significance, its obvious age and its personal family history while Maggie values the churn top because without it, the rest of the churn is useless and she can no longer make butter even as she appreciates the connection it gives her to her ancestors. In the same way, Dee appreciates the hand-pieced quilts because of all the work and care that went into them as well as the historical significance of the fabrics used while Maggie appreciates them for all this history as well as the possibility of them keeping her warm on winter nights and making her beds beautiful in the daytime. Toward the end of the story, Maggie seems to sum up the differences of the two girls’ relationship with their past by telling her mother, “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts”, highlighting the difference between a lived and shared culture versus one that is only seen from the outside. Whether it is poetry, non-fiction or a short story, the importance of black writers writing about the black experience cannot be overemphasized. This is because they are able to convey a greater empathetic understanding of the circumstances of their people, urban or rural. Hughes’ poetry, thick as it is with the dialect of the people, conveys both the lack of education and the hardships this creates for the people as well as the beauty and richness of their understanding and the determination of their spirit. The argument presented by DuBois illustrates some of the problems regarding education within the black community. While some felt that an industrial education was the best course of action, DuBois points out the temporary status of this solution and argues convincingly that black men and women should be encouraged to achieve higher status positions, proving the greater service they provide to their community both as role models and in more tangible ways while tacitly criticizing the condition of the white men who achieve only to improve their own condition. However, this encouragement does not come without its own cost, as is illustrated in Walker’s “Everyday Use” as Dee, who has been well educated and achieved a standard of living comparable to that of the white urban middle class, loses some of her deep connection to her cultural heritage, a heritage that is an intrinsic part of her sister who lives in it every day. The constant struggle of the black community to better its condition at the same time as it retains a close connection with its cultural past is thus a constant theme throughout black literature. References Du Bois, W.E.B. (1999). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Hughes, Langston. (1995). “Mother to Son.” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Classics. Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” February 17, 2009 Read More