First Ever Ernest J. Gaines Society Panel at ALA 2015

May 23, 2015, saw the first ever panel of the Ernest J. Gaines Society. The panel took place at the American Literature Association and involved three papers on the continued importance of the works of Ernest J. Gaines. Each paper brought new perspectives to Gaines scholarship and opened new avenues for examining Gaines's works in relation to the American and African American literary tradition. The panel, entitled "Rethinking Race and Culture in the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines," explored differing thematic elements in Gaines;s works. Covering "A Long Day in November," The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Catherine Carmier, the papers varied from discussing marital traditions, literary genres, and social hierarchies. Overall, the panel presented eye-opening avenues to expand Gaines scholarship. For this post, I would just like to briefly discuss the papers, providing a little information about each of them.

Pearlie Peters's "Rekindling Old Marital Traditions in African American Folk Culture, Southern Style: Domestic Violence in Selected Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines and Zora Neale Hurston" opened up the panel. In her paper, Peters discussed the closing scene of Gaines's "A Long Day in November" where Amy tells Eddie that he needs to beat her in order to save face in the community. When Amy threatens to leave Eddie again at the end of the end of the story, she tells him that he better stop her before she leaves for good. Eddie picks a switch off the floor and hits her twice. Amy tells him, "Beat me," and he proceeds to beat her even harder (74). After he beats her, Eddie runs towards Amy and picks her up to take her to bed. At dinner, Amy's face is swollen and she's been crying. Eddie finally asks Amy why she wanted him to beat her, even when he didn't beat her for that thing with Freddie Jackson; she responds by saying, "Because I don't want you to be a laughingstock of the plantation" (75).

Upon first reading this scene, it confounded me because I did not understand why Amy wanted Eddie to beat her so he would not be the laughingstock of the community. Perters's presentation covered this topic in some detail, even bringing in examples from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Amy's request, as Peters argues, comes from a space that conflates the public and the private. Everything in the quarters becomes public in some form or another, so if Eddie does not rectify the situation of his wife deciding to leave him, the whole community will see him as a laughingstock because his masculinity has been contested. Peters draws on Robert Hemenway's "Are You a Flying Lark or a Setting Dove" and Hurston's "Story in Harlem Slang" and "Characteristics of Negro Expression" to show that the domestic violence portrayed at the end of "A Long Day in November" and in Hurston's novel was once perceived as being good, respectful domestic violence. This does not justify domestic violence in any way; she just maintains that the situations shown within these texts have precedent in socio-cultural folk communities.

Erin Salius's "Rethinking Historical Realism in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" argues that the way we typically read Gaines's famous 1971 novel needs to be altered. Instead of reading Pittman as historical realism, Salius proposes that we read it as a precursor to more disruptive neo-slave narratives such as Octavia Butler's Kindred, Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada. Scholars place Gaines's novel at the forefront of the neo-slave narrative genre; however, they do not typically see it as novel that mirrors either Butler's or Toni Morrison's Beloved because it is a straightforward, chronological narrative. Other neo-slave narratives contain disruptions and temporal overlap, and they work to, as Dubey argues, to fill gaps in existing historical narratives. Salius argues that we should read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in this way.

Salius proposes that we should read Gaines's novel like a "palimpsest novel." Ashraf Rushdy argues that this form of neo-slave narrative is a novel "in which a contemporary African American subject describes modern social relations that are directly conditioned or affected by an incident, event, or narrative from the time of slavery" (535). This comes from the fact that during Part III of the novel there are numerous references to characters appearing possessed by forces beyond their control. During the scenes with Tee Bob and Mary Agnes this possession appears. Ultimately, the residual effects of slavery come into play withing the novel in regards to the "rules" that Jules Raynard and Jimmy Caya espouse in regards to what Tee Bob can, and should, do with Mary Agnes. To find out more about Salius's argument, check out the summer 2015 issue of Callaloo where her paper will appear.

Matthew Teutsch's "'They want us to be Creoles. . . There is no in-between': Creole Representations in Gaines's Catherine Carmier and Lyle Saxon's Children of Strangers" looks at what Keith Byerman calls "the death of the Creole" in Gaines's and Saxon's novels. To highlight the decline of the Creole community, Teutsch focuses on the trope of passing in both novels. He looks at Famie's son Joel in Children of Strangers and how Joel's desire to pass for white in California ultimately causes him to lose all contact with his mother Famie. He essentially separates himself from her and from the rest of the community in order for him to pass as white. Lillian does the same thing in Gaines's Catherine Carmier. She talks about being unable to live a life between the black and white world, so she ultimately decides to pass as well, leaving her family behind.

Teutsch opens up new ways to look at Gaines's work by exploring it in relation to other writers in Louisiana their treatment of Creole communities. Both Saxon and Gaines explore Creole communities in their works, and both discuss the insular aspects of the people, shunning both black and white penetration into the group. This insulation leads to a gradual decline that ultimately causes the death of the community. Both Joel and Lillian show this because they both decide to pass, and in so doing, they sever all ties with the community itself.

This is just a brief overview of the first annual Ernest J. Gaines Society panel. Next year, there will be two panels at the American Literature Association in San Francisco, CA and one at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference in Boston, MA. Make sure to check back on the center's website for the CFPs.

Gaines, Ernest J. "A Long Day in November." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 3-79. Print.

The Clerk and Social Distinctions on Cane River in Saxon's "Children of Strangers"

Yucca (Melrose) Plantation

Last post, I discussed Lyle Saxon's Children of Strangers (1937) and some of the themes that it has in common with Gaines and other texts. Here, I would like to continue that discussion briefly by bringing up some other aspects of the novel that are worth further investigation.

During Christmas, Mr. Randolph, after "the negroes" had all left the commissary, would take "five of the old mulatto men" with him into the back office and pour six glasses (122). The men would sit around, drink, and talk. Each new about the social distinctions in the area, so that is why they performed this yearly ritual in the privacy of the commissary's office. While Mr. Guy and the mulattoes drink in the back room, the clerk (who I believe is never named) begins to think about the relationships on Cane River. It is not clear where the clerk, often referred to as a hill-man, comes from. Since people refer to him as a hill-man, I assume he comes from North Louisiana, East Texas, or possibly Arkansas. The clerk becomes irritated with Mr. Randolph because the man chose to drink with "a damned race of bastards" instead of with him, a man of Mr. Randolph's own race (122). The clerk recalls that, where he is from, no one would tolerate a white man drinking with mulattoes or "negroes." Along with despising the idea that Mr. Randolph would drink with the "bastards," the clerk begins to think about the fact that the Randolphs, instead of treating him as an equal, treat him "just as a servant, like the niggers, in spite of the fact that he ate at the table with the white people" (122-123). Here the distinction between the clerk and the Randolphs is made clear. Instead of saying, "he ate at the table with them," the narrator specifies that the Randolphs are "white" and the clerk is not. Here, the term "white" constitutes a class distinction because the clerk does not own land and is below the white landowners like the Randolphs.

Immediately after this observation, the clerk starts to think about the distinctions on Cane River.

He couldn't understand these distinctions. There were really four classes on Cane River: Mr. Guy and his kind, and then his, the clerk's kind--he knew that Miss Adelaide considered him 'trash'--then there were the mulattoes who looked down upon the black people, and last, at the bottom of the heap, were the negroes themselves. . . And the negroes didn't seem to give a single damn! (123)

In Saxon's novel, the clerk occupies the position that the Cajuns occupy in Gaines' work. He is "white;" however, he is not white. Since he does not own land, and is considered "trash" by some, he cannot reside on the same level as the Randolphs or the Harrises. Instead, he must maintain a space that does not allow him much movement. What makes the clerk's predicament different from the Cajuns' in Gaines' Catherine Carmier is the fact that Mr. Randolph will drink with the mulattoes and he understands the distinctions, unlike the whites and their relationship with Raoul. In Carmier, Bud Grover provided the Cajuns with more land to farm because, as Madame Bayonne tells Jackson, "White is still white. . . [a]nd white still sticks with white" (73). On the other side, Cajuns still reside below aristocratic white landowners. In A Gathering of Old Men, Gil confronts Candy at Marshall Plantation, telling her, "You never liked any of us. Looking at us as if we're a breed below you. But we're not, Candy. We're all made of the same bone, the same blood, the same skin. Your folks had a break, mine didn't, that's all" (122). On this scene, Sister Mary Ellen Doyle asserts, "Gil is moved to turn on Candy and assert Cajun identity vis-à-vis upper-class whites," and in doing so. Gil realizes the equality he has with blacks and others (186). The clerk never challenges Mr. Randolph outright; instead, he only thinks about the inequalities that he experiences and lets them stew within him.

As I am writing these posts, I realize that there is more and more that could be said about Saxon's novel. I may do one more post about it next time because the clerk's actions in regards to the mulatto Nita and Henry Jack's relationship with Mr. Randolph's brother Paul are both worth examining. Until then, remember to leave a comment or question or below.    







Doyle, Mary Ellen. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2002. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. Catherine Carmier. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. A Gathering of Old Men. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Print.
Saxon, Lyle. Children of Strangers. New Orleans: Robert L. Crager & Co., 1948. Print.

Lyle Saxon's "Children of Strangers"

Saxon at Yucca (Melrose) Plantation

In 1937, Lyle Saxon published Children of Strangers. The novel, which takes place on Cane River near Natchitoches, LA, chronicles the life of Famie, a Creole, who fathers a son with a white criminal, marries her Creole cousin, and eventually losses her status with the Creole community after she falls in love with a African American named Henry Jack. What makes this novel pertinent, apart from the fact that Saxon sets it during the early part of the twentieth century in a central Louisiana community, is the way that Saxon, almost thirty years before Gaines, explores the intricate relationships between gens de couleur libres (Creoles), white landowners like the Randolphs, African Americans like Henry Jack, Dicey, and Mug, and hill-men like the clerk in Guy Randolph's commissary store. 

Unlike Raul Carmier and his father, Famie's ancestor Grandpére Augustin owned the land. Augustin's grandfather was a Frenchman, Vidal, and his grandmother was a mulatto. Vidal brought Augustin's grandmother from New Orleans, where they met at a quadroon ball, and settled on Cane River, which was then part of the Red River. Even though they could not legally marry, the couple had four children and Vidal left all of the land to them after he passed away. Born in 1768, Augustin inherited a portion of the land from his father. He owned it till his death just before the Civil War, and as a land owner, he even owned more than one hundred slaves. After the Civil War, "the mulatto slave-owners," as Guy Randolph says, "suffered just as the white slave-owners did" (228). They ended up selling some of the land, and Mr. Randolph's grandfather purchased Yucca Plantation, "right in the middle of the mulatto holdings" (228). Eventually, the isolated creole community that flourished on Cane River became integrated when "strange families" moved in. Guy Randolph tells the complete story in Chapter XXI to Harry Smith. 

When he begins to discuss why the creole community has started to disown Famie, Mr. Randolph informs Harry that it is because she has sold her possessions to the whites and eventually plans to sell the land as well so she can support her son who has gone to stay in Chicago. Even though the community does not disparage her for having an illegitimate child with a white man because it makes the race lighter, they disagree with her selling the possessions and land to Mr. Randolph because they believe he is robbing her, and them. Eventually, they will disown her completely because of her relationship with Henry Jack, an African American sharecropper. In these respects, Famie resides in the liminal space between the white and black worlds in the same way that Raoul and his family does in Catherine Carmier. Even though her relationship with the white man is not disparaged because it produces a lighter skinned offspring, the community would have considered her an outcast if she had a baby with a black man.

Famie cannot navigate between the white world, the mulatto world, and the black world. She does not have anywhere to go, but she wants her son Joel to succeed. In order to prepare him for success, Famie watches the way that Mr. and Mrs. Randolph's white children behave. She examines them closely so that her son can imitate them. In some ways, this is like Roxy in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). When Harry asks Mr. Randolph how Famie is losing caste, Mr. Randolph begins his reply by saying,

Just this. She was obsessed about this white child of hers. I used to see her here, watching my children. She noticed what they said, what they ate, what they wore . . . and then her child did the same thing. Of course she spoiled him to death. He was a handsome little fellow, but mean. And the meaner he was to her, the better she was to him . . . Well, now he's gone. (229) 

Famie hopes that Joel will become like the whites so that he can essentially "pass." Joel tells his mother about a white man  from New Orleans who visited Yucca Plantation. The man told Joel, "You could pass for white anywhere" (217). Upon hearing this, "Famie felt exultation" (217). The thought that Joel could pass, and Mrs. Randolph makes the same comment about Famie early in the novel, causes Famie to experience joy because she sees a better life for her son, one where he does not have to worry about people looking down on him because of his race. On his last trip home, Joel informs Famie that he is planning to move to California and that he wants to cut off all relationships with the people he knew in Chicago and with his mother. He says, "I've left Chicago for good and all, and I'm going to California where I don't know anybody at all. I've crossed the line in Chicago, but it's dangerous there" (281). Because of the danger and the fact that "[t]oo many people know that [he's] not all white," Joel feels it is best to leave (281). He does not even tell Famie where he will live in California.

In many ways, the passing aspect of Saxon's novel corresponds to the passing novels by African American authors that appeared around the turn of the century and during the Harlem Renaissance. Works such as James Weldon Johsnon's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Charles Chesnutt's Paul Marchand, F.M.C. (set in New Orleans and kind of a reverse passing novel), Jessie Fauset's Plum Bun, and Nella Larsen's Passing are examples. As well, Saxon's novel can be seen in relation to Antebellum texts like Lydia Maria Child's "The Quadroons" and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" or even Victor Séjour's "Le Mulâtre." Next post, I will explore more aspects of Children of Strangers and how it relates to Gaines' Catherine Carmier.  

Saxon, Lyle. Children of Strangers. New Orleans: Robert L. Crager & Co., 1948. Print. 

Louisiana Authors and Writings Poster (1957)