"Dirty Rice" and the Act of Naming

Previously, I wrote about Gemar and Mike's visit to the Louisiana State Capitol in Gerald Duff's book Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League. For this post, I would like to continue part of that conversation; specifically, I want to touch on the act of "naming" in the novel and on Gemar's attempts to navigate the racial landscape that surrounds him after he leaves the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe and heads to Louisiana to play baseball. As Gemar's play on the field begins to draw attention, he inevitably encounters individuals who want to label him and to name him every stereotype in the book.

Every player on the Rayne Rice Birds has a nickname. In fact, no player chose what his name would be; instead, the other players decided and after the "naming" nothing could be done to change it. Upon meeting Dynamite Dunn, the Rice Birds' catcher, Gemar intones that "he didn't call himself [Dynamite]" (18). Journalists, radio broadcasters, fans, and other players came up with the name to use it in stories about the team and in interactions with one another. Gemar continues by saying. "I never met but one or two players in my time in the Evangeline League who would call themselves by their nicknames. Both of them had something wrong with their thinking, too" (18). Early on, Gemar makes a point to let the reader know that names are important and that they carry meaning.  

After a game during the first home stand of the season, Tommy Grenier from the Rayne Tribune comes to the locker room and interviews Gemar for a story. Gemar observes, upon seeing Tommy, that his name does not fit him. Instead of an older man wearing a necktie and sweating profusely, Gemar thinks, "I would've though that the name Tommy was something you'd call a young white kid" (108). As Gemar thinks this, Tommy begins to construct a story that ultimately names Gemar and casts him in a stereotypical light. From the very title, Tommy's piece labels Gemar as something he is not. Gemar comments that the title, "Alabama Indian Tomahawks Cardinals," does not reflect who he is at all, namely that he is part of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe, not an Alabama Indian. Later in the article, Tommy plays up the fact that Gemar is Native American; he writes, "He's called Chief by his teammates on the Rice Birds roster, . . . He depends on a fastball he calls his Thunder Bolt, mixed in with a curve named Snake Crawler. He was big poison to the Cardinal hitters, and he lets out an authentic Indian war whoop every time he sets a batter down" (emphasis added 109). Ultimately, according to Tommy, the Evangeline League better pay attention because "Big Chief Gemar Batiste is on the warpath, and he's hungry for strike-outs and scalps" (109).

Tommy's article reinforced readers' views of what a Native American should be. "It satisfied the way they wanted to see things," Tommy mentions, "It's a lot more interesting to believe a red man will let out a war whoop when he gets somebody out in a game then than it is to see the truth" (110).  People's preconceived notions of how a Native American like Gemar should act permeates Tommy's article. In many ways, Tommy performs the same act of naming that those like William Apess, David Walker, and Hosea Easton vociferously spoke out against in the early nineteenth century. Gemar continues by saying that he "learned early on in life to take advantage of the way the white folks liked to think about Indians" (110). In essence, Gemar learned to "wear the mask" just like Procter and Grant do in Gaines' works. However, even if Gemar lets himself believe what the white man says about him, he will never let himself truly believe it because "if you don't let yourself start believing you truly are the creature the white man wants you to think you are," he says, "you can get something out of acting the way they expect you to" (110). Gemar gets the ability to make a living during what the whites called the Great Depression and members of his tribe called normal by doing something he enjoys, playing baseball. Gemar allows for the perpetuation of the stereotypes in much the same way that Procter Lewis and Grant Wiggins do, to subvert them.

Concluding, there are numerous other instances of naming in Dirty Rice. The manager and the owners, after Gemar throws a no-hitter, want Gemar to play up his "Indianess" for the fans because his uniqueness will bring in more money. After the no-hitter, Dynamite Dunn and others take Gemar to a cockfight. Here, Gemar reflects on the idea of naming, finding himself drawn to an underdog fighter named Little Red from Alabam just because of the word "Alabam." That word, Gemar says, "was another case that shows how much it means what a living thing is called" (188). Regarding the names the names the chickens received from their owners, Gemar notes, "The naming of a fighting chicken wasn't meant to satisfy the chicken but the man who slapped it on him" (185). Naming works a way to establish control and power over a subject. Gemar feels this throughout the novel, and like the chickens in the cockpit, he plays along. However, unlike the chickens, he plays along because he knows how to navigate the space where he resides.

There is much more that could be said about this novel; however, I will leave that for the comments below. What do you think about the act of naming either in Dirty Rice or elsewhere? What do you see as Gemar's role in the act of naming and going along with it? These and other questions are ones that could be explored in greater detail.

Duff, Gerald. Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League. Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2012. Print.

Rayne Rice Birds 1937

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.