Louisiana State Capitol and Gerald Duff's "Dirty Rice"

The Patriots

The Pioneers

A couple of weeks ago, I made a trip to the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge. While there, I took the opportunity to look at the architecture of "Huey Long's Monument." The outside contains two sculptures that flank the steps leading up to the capitol's entrance. On the left is the The Pioneers which depicts groups of people such as a Native American, a Spanish conquistador, a Franciscan friar, a backwoodsman, Hernando de Soto, René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle,and others who have contributed to Louisiana's history.  On the right, you will see The Patriots, a sculpture that displays a knight in armor standing on a fallen hero's coffin. Unidentified mourners surround the knight and coffin, and one mourner can be seen behind the knight placing a symbolic wreath to his back.

Why do I even bring up the architecture of the Louisiana State Capitol? I brought it up because in Gerald Duff's Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League the novel's protagonist, Gemar Batiste (from the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe), and his "Cuban" teammate Mike Gonzales visit the state capitol during their time in Baton Rouge, LA. Batiste and Gonzales were in Louisiana's capitol city because they were both set to take part in the Evangeline League's 1935 All Star Game. Upon approaching the monument, Mike points out the statues flanking the entrance to the building. Instead of the two sculptures mentioned above, Mike asks, "Ain't that a big old statue of an Indian man standing there with a bow and arrow in his hands? What's he doing in Louisiana at the capitol?" (156). Gemar answers by telling Mike that the Native American is doing "the same thing that statue of the colored man is doing" (156). Gemar elaborates by stating that whites put the two statutes there in order "to show what troubles they had to go through to take over the Louisiana country" (156).

The Native American sculpture depicts a man standing with a bow and arrow looking around, as if something is about to come upon him. The African American in the other sculpture is bent over pulling weeds and grass out of the ground. To Mike's observations that one is standing awaiting something that has not arrived and that one is bent over low to the ground extracting weeds and grass. Gemar intones that the statue of the slave "is supposed to let you know how the white man started planting rice and sugarcane and beans and stuff as soon as they could get the Indians herded up and out of the way. See, then that's when they had to bring in the colored folks to tend to the farming, Keep the weeds out so the good crops could grow. Pick that cotton, chop that cane, harvest that rice" (156). After hearing Gemar's description, Mike, who is not Cuban but "redbone," declines to enter the capitol and chooses to get ready for the All Star Game instead. The capitol holds nothing for him or Gemar. Being a redbone from Alabama, Mike knows about discrimination, and being from the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe, Gemar knows about it as well.

Just as John Kennedy Toole changed the geography of New Orleans to fit his needs in A Confederacy of Dunces, Duff erects two new sculptures on the capitol's steps: a Native American and an African American slave bent over working in the ground. These statues serve the purpose of showing how Gemar must navigate residing in a white society. Gemar's assessment that the statues represent the white's displacement of Native Americans and subjugation of African American echoes those of Ned Douglass in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. During his sermon by the river, Ned preaches," The red man roamed all over this land long before we got here. The black man cultivated this land from ocean to ocean with his back. The white man brought tools and guns" (115). Ned traces the same progression and role of Native Americans, African Americans, and whites that Gemar mentions in regard to the statues.

Along with pointing out the atrocities of white society in relation to its conquering of Louisiana and America, Ned points out that America incorporates all groups. Ned makes this point overtly by stating, "America is for red, white, and black men. . . . America is for all of us" (115). Gemar, on the other hand, does not comment that America is for everyone; in fact, Gemar's and Mike's actions lead towards the realization that it is not. Mike has to lie, as some other African American players did during the early part of the twentieth century, and claim to be from Cuba in order to even play in the Evangeline League, and Gemar has to endure stereotypes in the way that journalists and his teammates label him in order to survive. (Gemar's navigation of these issues will be discussed in the next post.) Mike and Gemar do not enter the capitol after looking at the outside. Gemar asks Mike if he would like to go in or if he has "seen enough to satisfy" his curiosity (156). Mike simply says, "I'm going to pass on walking through that door" (156). Mike's refusal is straight forward and concise; immediately following it, he says he want to go to the baseball field and drops the subject. Gemar and Mike do not have access to the "white" capitol in 1935; however, they do have access to the baseball field and they use that navigate the racist society they reside within.

What are some other instances in books, poems, plays, etc. where state capitols or government buildings are mentioned in a similar manner to how Duff uses them in Dirty Rice? I'm curious to know because I think it would make an interesting study or class.

Duff, Gerald. Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League. Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2012. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.