Body Knowledge

When speaking in an interview, Octavia Butler responds to the interviewer's comment that the greatest deal of her own work depicts the body as the central communicator by saying that the body must be the clearest communicator in literature. "The body is all we really know that we have," Butler answers, and in her book Fledgling her notion of body as communicator is again seen clearly in the protagonist Shori. The narrative is based solely on the discovery by the main character of how her body works and deciphering what her impulses (like the need for flesh) mean in her existence. When Shori awakes in darkness, the scene is described by the way her body feels: "I curled my empty, wounded body tightly, knees against chest, and wimpered in pain...Gradually, I understood that I must be lying on the ground- on stone, earth, and perhaps dry leaves" (1). The visuals are given so clearly that the reader sees something (we don't know that it's a vampire yet) writhing in pain, probably in a dark cave. And we know this because Shori's body and the way she describes her own self is the strongest technique Butler uses to convey scene and message in the book.

More importantly in a critical social commentary, what is striking about Fledgling's narrative is that Shori as a black female vampire is narrating herself. Shori truly is "writing her body" in the Beauviorian sense, and it is inspiring for women reading the novel. Readers have to get over the whole vampire setting at first, but once examined Shori can be seen as example of how the body communicates every message inwardly and outwardly. She knows from her outward wounds that she has been hurt and she also communicates who she is through the physical act of feeding on other people's blood. Her own listening to her body and mind internally is one of the greatest ways in which decisions are made in her life as well as how she socially acts. When people on the outside talk to her, for example about being black, "I was about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant" (31). Internally she knows what things on the outside mean and what those things used to mean to her. Her life is full of those self-realization moments as the first chapters of the book and I suspect most of the book will consist of her finding out who she really is.

And just as she is learning about herself, she also learns everything about others first by feeding off them for her own physical needs. She knows their body- both male and female- by their almost identical response to when she feeds. They all, like Theodora Harden, "moaned- a satisfied little sound" (25) when Shori was eventually done feeding on them. They wanted more, not knowing that eventually they would be hurt by this feeling of pleasure. Her victims, because they were humans, were not fully attuned to their own bodies, so Shori had to make decisions for them. And, as Octavia Butler notes, "Some things we are afraid to know," one of those things being our own bodies. We refuse to oftentimes listen to what our bodies are telling us, instead using reason to make decisions instead of body messages. We work through the pain, rationalize feeling terrible so that we as humans can attain transient goals. It is only in the face of a character like Shori where women, and all humans, can see what we're lacking in "body knowledge."

The discovery of Shori's situation is a radical and relatively abstract way to think about a person defining themselves by a constant search for self. And as Butler notes, the self is the body- end of story. It might behoove humans to think about our own bodies first instead of what we think others want us to do or how to act. For ages African Americans' bodies have been used and defined by someone other than themselves. In fact, Shori is the perfect antithesis to the idea of slavery- she is not only in control of her own body but is able to control others' bodies as well. It is because she has the most body knowledge that she can have continual moments of discovery and survive on her own. One can learn a lesson from this protagonist, and I would venture to say that the world might make a little more sense if people treated their bodies with a little more respect than the work-till-you-drop mentality that so many of us are under. Shori is just surviving because that's what she needs; it might be time for humans to do the same as this vampire.

Learning How to Read

As Lila Mae Watson picks up Theoretical Elevators by James Fulton after all she has learned about his intentions for writing the piece, she looks at it with new eyes. "She is teaching herself how to read," the narrator reports (186). And it is because she finds out that Fulton is black that she is able to look at the "race" word, supposedly about elevators, and find the royal "we" in Fulton's book. She realizes, like the readers of The Intuitionist, that Fulton's book isn't really as much about elevators as it is about creating a new way of looking at the world. "She has learned how to read, like a slave does. one forbidden word at a time" (230). In reading this novel, readers are also able to learn how to read with a different lens on.
When I described the novel to some of my friends they really didn't know what to make of it. Like the Empiricists and Fulton's book, my friends took the plot for face value and disregarded it because of the ridiculousness of Intuitionism. But, by looking at this novel as Colson Whitehead wanted us to- with the allegorical lens on- we see that the elevators are African Americans: and just as elevators are often not seen or thought about by most of Americans, so the African American struggle and existence is often not thought of as well. It is learning how the invisible daily struggle should be seen and dealt with, through a constant unearthing of how this America actually works. Lila Mae sees Fulton as a completely different man once her vision of this one powerful white man was unearthed and seen in another light. Through a constant probing of his true identity and then a reworking of her own thoughts and stereotypes about this man, she is able to identify and truly see why Fulton named her as "the one."
Learning how to read through the eyes of someone else is one of the greatest gifts a novel like Whitehead's is able to do for Americans. We are used to having one way of seeing people, events, and situations in society; and we usually keep those things in our consciousness for less than a month. The way in which people read is so shaped by their experiences, and like Lila Mae we often close ourselves off from the possibility of our notions to change. It is only when we receive startling news, when our world is somewhat rocked by a new idea (which as the older we get is more rare) that we begin to think of the world as something completely different. Fulton in his work didn't intend for anyone to take his "joke" seriously at first, but all the readers were looking at it with the same eyes they looked at every other text about elevators- real elevators. They didn't get it, and the joke became a reality. It ended up being a better and truly theoretical reality, but Fulton didn't know that was going to happen.
Lila Mae was able to see that new and greater theory by looking at the text without walls. Most of the things I read are put into a box of "good or bad", "worthwhile or crap," which only ends up limiting me to things in my own small world of experience. It is learning how to read with a new vision that will give me the most of everything that is good. Whitehead might have taught me how, along with others before him, how to read outside of myself: it might not just be about me.

Angry With New Velocity

Colson's Whitehead's book The Intuitionist is not subtle, it is not a quiet book about a mousy elevator inspector: it is a racially-charged novel set in an absurd profession. Absurd because it is a government job that no one ever really thinks about: and to be honest with you, getting in an elevator is something that many people (including myself) would rather not over-analyze. Since beginning to read this novel I notice everything about elevators and continually think of them as coffins. So thank you Colson Whitehead.

But more than the brilliance with which Whitehead explores an entire new premise for a novel, he is able to ostracize a woman from a profession that is already part of the forgotten of government jobs. The look at Lila Mae and the profession itself is a fresh take on a racial topic, because the main character is not the stereotypical black woman readers would think of. In fact, to most she is the "moel minority." Lila Mae would be the perfect elevator inspector if she only wasn't an Intuitionist- the odds are truly stacked against her. And it is with elevator backdrop that the isolation of one black woman is made more pronounced in an America full of men with the "Safety" haircuts.

Whitehead is able to use the terminology of the White men's haircuts to play up the fact that nothing to about Lila Mae is safe: a woman, a colored woman they call her, an Intuitionist. But, she has overcome it all to become a professional- something that can't be said for her father, or for many black Americans surrounding her. And it is because Lila Mae is removed from the service jobs of most black Americans at the time that she is able to look at the subjugation with a fresh set of eyes for the reader- a new perspective at discrimination. She looks at the black porter: "But we take what jobs we get...Whatever we can scrabble for. She doesn't take to it, being waited on by colored people. This is wrong" (49). She doesn't look at the man in solidarity, she doesn't pity him. Instead she questions the system that put him there. What Lila Mae is able to do in her quiet and respectable defiance of the system is shed light on those who haven't gotten out of it yet. Her defiance and fight is quieter, an individual and solid fight. For she is a solid woman.

It is because of Lila Mae's solidarity that the reader roots for her because she has such odds. Like the counterweight of the elevator, Lila Mae is the counter-everything to the profession and white men that continually want to buck her for one reason or another. After part one, the stage has been set for Lila Mae to finally become enraged in her quiet way. Whitehead has set up the scene for a massive blowout between the Intuitionists and Empiricists, but more importantly he is setting this conflict as an example of a greater fight between progress and reactionism. Lila Mae is in the center of it, and I think she is ready finally to be "angry with new velocity" (33) in this fight for something new, something better. America should always be ready for a new face.

Blindness and the Racial View

In Edward P. Jones All Aunt Hagar's Children, the story Blindsided gives one of the most poignant phrases for the Black experience in America today. In the context of the novel, a little boy Taylor is asking suddenly blinded Roxanne if being blind physically hurts. Roxanne then turns the question on the boy and asks what he thinks:

"I say yes, but Mama say no. It hurt in other ways." (316)

While speaking of the "other ways" in which being physically blind hurts, this gives a fair reflection on the ways in which White privilege in seen at work in Black culture. The hurt of purely de jure discrimination is a thing of the past; quite honestly it would be a shame to see legally sanctioned race discrimination anywhere. But, the other ways in which African Americans feel the sting of racism is present in so many other ways. Much like the pain of blindness Roxanne feels because her existence as she knows it has been taken away, so too is the Black person in our culture prey to the continuing White privilege idea. The problem is no longer the overt racism that is glossed over in public schools, where a student might leave knowing the name of one or two leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The problem now is the unseen racism that corresponds to the inner hurt of Roxanne. It is seen in the housing market, in the racism of the job market, in the ability to have access to healthcare, the following of a black man in a grocery store by a store detective: these are the hurts that myself as a white woman never have to experience.
Edward P. Jones speaks about these ideas so well because just like the racial issues are not something often seen overtly through de jure discrimination, the racial force is not stated overtly in the stories. Instead of saying, "The racism in America is seen in character X here," Jones is able to integrate the ideas of isolation and separation of Black cultures from White counterparts through more subtle ways. It is in the statement at the beginning of Blinsided:
"The white woman had her ideas about what black people did with their lives, especially on weekends, and just about everything they did in her mind could lead to blindness." (293) While that statement is just a thought from the white woman, the thought is what matters. You can never trust those Black people, the white woman seems to say, and Jones is able to elicit a response from all people when he says a statement like that. Everyone knows that is what some white people are thinking, but it is never uttered; just like White Privilege is merely an invisible bag of things White people can do and get for no reason other than they're White.
What Jones is able to do is show the different kinds of hurt that correspond with being an African American, but showing that there are problems with that idea of White privilege that are unspoken. And even in a black man that still "makes it" like the character of Noah in Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a New Sister, the problem of poverty and abandonment meet him head on through his new grandson with a label on his shirt. These problems continue to occur because of White privilege as well as a host of other things, but it is unspoken to the White girl learning about the Civil Rights Movement in a 9th grade history class.
Through writing people for people, Jones is able to get the affects of White Privilege out in a form that is engaging and thought-provoking without being "preachy". I appreciate his work because he is magnificently talented but pointedly honest about the lives of these people. They all live in the same place, but they all go through different experiences based on how their lives have been affected by racism. It hurts in so many different ways, and through Jones' myriad of types of stories we experience the myriad of racist sentiments seen in the lives of his characters. Because the hurt is much more than just being Black: it is what being Black means to those looking in on Jones' world and characters.

The Curious Alphabet of Our Lives

"In the curious alphabet of our lives I sat behind Herman Franks...The curious alphabet of our lives still placed Sylvia Carstairs, my best friend for life, beside me...In the curious alphabet of our lives, Regina Bristol was one seat down from the front of the class, still in one of the middle aisles." -pg.51, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Edward P. Jones got it right in the midst of the little girl narrator with far too much wisdom when he says that our lives are a "curious alphabet." We humans are all made up of the same stuff- the 46 chromosomes, the hair, the eyes, the smelly morning-breath. But we are constantly changing shapes and lives to fit the moment, much like the alphabet in which the world is made of. As the father of the girl in the story "Spanish in the Morning" believes, "The letter 'M', for example, had no life if it only existed between 'N' and 'L'" (43); and such is the life of all the characters in the eclectic-but-unified stories in Jones work. Jones comments on both the arbitrariness and importance of other humans in our lives of constant contact. When compared solely with the alphabet, one could look precisely to Ferdinand de Saussure and his structuralist method and draw some parallels.
While it is completely unfair to look at humans- a complex web of emotions, actions, and functions- in the same sphere as the signs in our language, we can put humans for a moment into Saussure's schema. Words are arbitrary by and large, and although much of structuralism has changed, this idea remains strong. Something is given a label, much like a name for a human, and all of a sudden value is prescribed to it- not by themselves, but by other signs. That something though, that human has no value innately though. The baby doesn't wake up and know: "I am going to be the type of person who does their laundry on a regimented schedule," or " I am going to be the type of person who wakes up with a different man in my bed almost every morning." Just like signs and words, "The value [of a human]...is determined by its environment."
We are all products of those around us- families, friends, cities; and the people in Jones' book are all connected or defined by the unsaid connections that create value. In linguistics, the value of a sign is made salient by its connections to other signs; "Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simputaneous presence of the others" (Saussure, Course in General Linguistics). We then are the same way; our value is made salient to ourselves by the presence of others in our lives. And it is a constantly shifting cast of characters, just as Jones' stories shift relatively quickly. This "curious alphabet" model of humanity is ideal because we live within the framework of our lives but at the same time are becoming something different to someone else at any given moment. It is exciting to see in a book like Jones' where the value of the characters are given by their connections with the things outside of their own consciousness, and sometimes out of their control. The soldier with breast cancer and his connection to the power of nature, the psychic connection between Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia, Caesar's connection to the coin tossed by the little girl on the D.C. street. All these connections create value for who these characters believe they are, or who the world believes they are. The alphabet isn't stagnant, and neither are the lives of the characters in Washington D.C. In fact, neither is my life.