Literacy Narratives from Poets in the Kitchen PAULE MARSHALL Pale Marsal (b, 1929 in Broly, New Yor) lewnad storytelling fom fer mother, «natoeof Barbados, chase West ulin friends used o gather in Marshalls hone after a hard day of “scrubbing flow” She graduated fom Brooklgn College in 1953 aed reeioed e Guggenheim fellowship in 1960. She tus @ brain i New York Cly public Maries before sorking for Our World, « popular 19508 Afvinn-American magazine. In 1958, Marshalls frst novel Brown Gis), Brownstones zs pubis. The noel ein hat ‘Marctal!ells “Bajon (Barbadian) Brooklyn” and acconding fo one nade, expresses “ina lyrical, powerful language culturally distinc and expansive worl.” Marsa’ other novels include Soul Clap Hands ani Sing (1960), ‘The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), Praisesong, for the ‘Widow (1989), and Daughters (1991). Her mast recent nove, The Fisher King for hich she rcetoed the Dos Passos Prize or iterture us published in 2000, In 1992 she bee a MacArtlu Fellow She has born a ectirer on lack erate nd a teacher of rete writing ot numerous erste and currently a pressor of English at New York University ‘The history of Barbados, the mist easterly of the West Ines, begins ‘oth the areal ofa English ship in 1605 avd with British setters ct the PALIEMaRstAiL + from Poss re Kncne 197 sina lan 2627. Slavery ws abolished rs 1834 The island, eighty of those population of 256,000 ie of African descent, delared ite independence from Brit in 1966 but remains within the Commie Sow vans aco, when I was teaching a graduate seminar in fiction at Columbia University, a well-known male novelist visited my class to speak on his development as a writer In discussing his formative years, he didn’t realize it but he seriously endangered his life by remarking, that women writers are luckier than those of his sex because they ust: ally spend so much time as chileiren around their mothers and their ‘mothers’ friends in the kitchen. What did he say that for? The women students immediately for- got about being in awe of him and began readying their attack for the question and answer period later on. Even I bristled. There again was that awful image of women locked away from the world in the ‘kitchen with only each other to talk to, and their daughters locked in with them. But my guest wasn’t really being sexist or trying to be provocative or even spoiling fora fight. What he meant—when he got around to examtin- ing himself more fully—was that, given the way children are (or were) raised in our society, with litle giels kept closer to home and their moth- fers, the women writer stancls a better chance of being exposed, while growing up, to the kind of tak that goes on among women, more often than notin the kitchen; and that this experience gives her an edge over her ale counterpart by instilling in her an appreciation for ordinary speech, Itwas clear that my guest lecturer attached great importance to this, which is understandable. Common speech and the plain, workaday words that make it up are, after all, the stock in trade of some of the best fiction writers. They are the principal means by which a character in a novel or story reveals himself and gives voice sometimes to profound feelings and complex ideas about himself and the world, Perhaps the proper measure of a writer’s talent is his skill in rendering everyday speech—when itis appropriate to his story—as well as his ability to tap, toexploit, the beauty, poetry and wisdom it often contains. “If you say what's on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends you'll probably say something beautiful.” Grace Paley" tells this, she says, toher students at the beginning of every writing course. It’sall a matter of exposure and a training of the ear forthe would-be ‘writer in those early years of his orher apprenticeship. And, according to ‘Contemporary American fiction witer198 CHAPTERS + Boucanow my guest lecturer, this training, thebestof i, often takes ple in as glamorous setting asthe Kitchen Fe dct know i but he was essentially describing my experience as lite git | grew up among poets. Now they didi’t look like poctvhtever tnt bd sup to ok He, Nog bout rem aiggested that poetry was thei calling They were usta group of ondinary housewives and mothers, my mother included, who dressed inva way (Ghapeless housedreses, dowdy felt hals and Tong, dark, solemn coats) that made it impossible forme fo imagine they had ever been your Nor did they do what poets were supposed to do—spend thee days in an aftic room writing verse. They never put pen to paper cncept to write occasionally fo thelr relatives in Barbados. "take my pen in hard hoping these few lines will find you in health as they leave fhe fair forthe fine being” was the way thelr eters invasiably began Rather, their day seas spent “scrubbing floor,” a8 they described the work they did Several momings a week these urknown bards would put an apron and. pai of old house shoes ina shopping bog and take te train or stectear Irom our section of Brooklyn out to Fatbush, There, thse ‘oho didn't have steady jobs would wait on certain designated corners for the white Rousewives in the neighborhood to come along and bar- gain with them over pay fora days work cleaning ther houses. This Sas the ritual even in the winter ‘ater armed with th fer dollars they had earned, which in hel vocabulary beeame “a few ravemouth pennies” they made their way beck to our neighborhood, where they would sometimes stop off have a cup of tea or cocoa together before going home to cook dinner for their husbands and children The basement itchen ofthe brownstone house where my family lived was the usual gathering place. Once nse the warm safety fits walls the women thew off te drab coats and hats, sealed themalves at the lage center lable, drank ther cups of tea or coc, and talked ‘While my sister and Ist ata smaller table over in a comer doing out homework, they talked-endlessly, passionately, poetically, and with impressive range. No subject was beyond them. True, they would indulge in the usual gossip: whose husband was running with whom ‘whose daughter looked slightly “in the way” (pregnant) under her bridal gown as she walked down the asi Thal sort of thing. Bt they also tackled the great issues ofthe tse. They were always, for example discussing the state ofthe economy. It was the mid and late 30s ten and the aftershock ofthe Depression, with ts soup lies and suicides oon Wall Street, wa stil being elt Pavia Manstiaul from Poms KrcHEN 199 Some people, they declared, ida’ tknow how to deal with adversity They didn’t know that you had to “tie up your belly” (hold in the pain, that is) when things got rough and go on with life. They took their image from the bellyband that is tied around the stomach of a newborn baby to Koop the navel pressed in. ‘They talked politics. Roosevelt was their hero. He had come along and rescued the country with relief and jobs, and in gratitude they. christened their sons Franklin and Delano and hoped they would live up to the names, FE D.R. was their hero, Marcus Garvey was theit God. The name of the fiery, Jamaican-born black nationalist of the ‘20s was constantly invoked around the table. For he had been their leader when they first ‘came to the United States from the West Indies shortly after World War I. ‘They had contributed to his organization, the United Negro Improve= ‘ment Association (UNIA), out of their meager salaries, bought shares in his ill-fated Black Star Shipping Line, and atthe height of the movement they had marched as members of his “nurses’ brigade” in theie white uniforms on Seventh Avenue in Harlem during the great Garvey Day parades. Garvey: He lived on through the power of their memories, And their talk was of war and rumors of wars, They raged against ‘World War Il when itbroke out in Europe, blaming iton the politicians, “Ws these politicians. They're the ones always starting up all this lot of War. But what they care? It’s the poor people got to suffer and mothers ‘with their sons,” IF it was ther sons, they swore they would keep them out of the Army by giving them soap to eat each day to make their hearts sound defective, Hitler? Fe was for them "the devil incarnate.” Then there was home. They reminisced often and at length about home. The old country, Barbados—or Bimshire, as they affectionately called it. The little Caribbean island in the sun they loved but had to leave. “Poor—poor but sweet” was the way they remembered it, ‘And naturally they discussed their adopted home. America came in for both good and bad marks. They lashed out at it for the racism, they encountered. They took fo task some of the people they worked for, especially those who gave them only a hard-boiled egg and a few spoonfuls of cottage cheese for lunch, “As if anybody can sera floot on ‘an egg and some cheese that don’t have no taste to it!” Yet although they caught H in “this man country,” as they called America, it was nonetheless a place where “you could atleast see your way to make a dollar.” That much they acknowledged. They might even one day accumulate enough dollars, with both them and their shusbands working, to buy the brownstone houses which, ike my fam- ily, they were only leasing at that period. This was their consuming ambition: to “buy house” and to see the children through.200. CHAPTER4” ¢ Eoucanon ‘There was no way for me to understand it at the time, but the talk that filled the kitchen those afternoons was highly functional. It served as therapy, the cheapest kind available to my mother and her friends Not only did it help them recover feom the long wait on the corner that ‘moming and the bargaining over theis labor, it restored them toa sense of themselves and reaffirmed their self-worth. Through language they ‘were able to overcome the humiliations of the work-day. But more than therapy, that freewheeling, wide-ranging, exuberant talk functioned as an outlet for the tremendous creative energy they possessed. They were women in whom the need for self-expression was strong, and since language was the only vehicle readily available to them they made of it an art form that~in keeping with the African tradition in which art and life are one—was an integral part of their lives. ‘And their talk was a refuge, They never realy ceased being balfled and overwhelmed by America—its vastness, complexity and power. Its strange customs and laws, Ata level beyond words they remained fear- ful and in awe. Their uneasiness andl fear were even reflected in their attituee toward the children they had given birth to in this country. They referred to those like myself, the little Brooklyn-born Bajans (Bar- badians), as “these New York children” and complained that they couldn't discipline us properly because of the laws here. “You can’t beat these children as you would like, you know, because the authori ties in this place will dash you in jail for them, Afterall, these is New York children.” Not only were we different, American, we had, as they saw it, escaped their ultimate authority Conironted therefore by a world they could not encompass, which ‘even limited their rights as parents, and at the same time finding, them- selves permanently separated from the world they had known, they took refuge in Tanguage. “Language is the only homeland,” Czeslaw Milosz, the emigré Polish writer and Nobel Laureate, has said. This is hat it became for the women at the kitchen table, It served another puxpose also, I suspect. My mother and her fiends were afterall the female counterpart of Ralph Ellison's invisible man? Indeed, you might say they suffered a triple invisibility, being black, female and foreigners. They really didn’t count in American soci- ety except asa source of cheap labor. But given the kind of women they ‘were, they couldn't tolerate the fact oftheir invisibility, their powerless- ness. And they fought back, using the only weapon at their command: the spoken word 2s of novel published in 1947 dat has Hecorte the seminal metaphor for Afan Ameseans Pavus MARSHALL 6 from Pore mie Knesn 201 Thoselataternoon conversations ona wide ringeo topes were way fr them to fel they exercised some mensureofconck ever ee livesand de events hat shaped them. "Soul ga talk yuh lk te were always exhorting each other "In this man weeld yo goto to yuh mouth and makea gua” They were in conto if nly verbally and ifonly for the two hours or so that they remained in our house, Tor me siting over inthe corner, being seen but net heard, which was the rule for dren in those dao, twas only what the women lake about—the content but the way They put hinge nel syle ‘The sight ony wit and humor they brought ther tories ane cussions and thee poets inventiveness at daring with languages ‘which ofcourse I cotld only sense but not define back the “They had taken the standard English taught them inthe primary schools of Brebados and transformed it into an ion, an instrument that more adequately described them—changing around the syntak and imposing their own rythm and ascents that te sentences were more pleasing 16 thir eas, They added the few Afscan sounds snd words that ha murvves, such asthe deisive suck feth sound andthe ‘word “yany” meshing tea, And tomake t more vivid, mone keeps ing with their expressive qual, they brought to bear 8 Tl of metaphors, parable, Biblical quotations, sayings and the like: The se an’ got no back door” they would say, meaning, tha i wasn't ike a hose whereif there wasa ire you could ran out he back. Meaning that was nt to beefed with, And meaning perhaps nt lager sense that man should teatall of nate with auton and ape “has rad ellby heat an calle every generation blessed Fey sometines vet in or hyperbole ’A woman expecting a baby was never sid to be pregrant They revered hat word, Rather she wasn the wa” or bt et" bling big” "Guess who butt upon inthe market te gther da fing bigagan” ‘And a woman with a reputation of being too fre with her axl favors was known in their book asa "thoroughfare sense of men, lke a sted steam of cars moving up and down the toad of ere Orshemight be died a fee be” hich wasmy favorite the Wo, ike the image it conjured! up ofa woman sandalous peraps but independent, who fie from one flower to another in garden of ale beat sampling her i, ing her Pensa le roles reversed And nothing 10 matter how beau was ever described as ply beautiful 1 was aways “beautifully the beautiuroply dress the bnutfo-ugly house, the besulifuutly car Why the word ugh." Tse to wonder when the thing they were referring to was beautiful202 CHAPTERS © EpucaTion and they knew it Why the antonym, the contradiction, the liking of rae sod to pazzleme greatly 3s a.cild. : aie the tacory in linguistics which states thatthe idiom of peop the way they ase language, reflects not oly the most fundamen aor ey halo themselves ae the world but their very concep da ice hig: Peshaps in using the term “beautlul-ugly” to describe sn ryt, my mother ant her frends were expressing what nae eve wo be a fundamental dualism in fe: heen that thing pera te its opposite and that these opposites, these contra ae ene ce up the whole. But thir was not a Manichacan brand of siargea! that sees matey, Hesh, te body, as inerently evi, because thay onetanty addressed each other as "soully-gl"—soul spn gl Me say ste vine seleAnd it wascear rom thei tone that hey espn as mach weight and importance a the othe. They had never cand of te mind/body spit sino col, hey mumned up His een atstade ina Phase, Goa" they would sa, "on love ugly and lai’ stuck on pry See everyday spe, the simple commonplace. werds—but aiwaye th imagination and sll—they gave voice the most com- plex ideas. Flannery O'Connor? would have approved of how they re continary language works she put i “doubletime,” stretching, recline deafening searing Like Joseph Conrad’ they were always Sa Inte ew life in the “old old words wora hin. care erage” And the goals of their oral art were the sameas his “to make wee ene fo make you fel. to make you se.” This was ther guiding ease ime Twas eight or nine T graduated from the comer ofthe Litchen the neighborhood ibrar, and hus fom she spoken to the } iSten word, The Macon Street Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library Wasa tmposing hall block long eifice of heavy gray masonry, with fissepancted dor al he rt gad oll mea oes Synbaing iat thet comes of leaning lanking the wide steps outside aera encarta inpeenve Mowe peo pele marble wih gleaming bas linge a the centr and sces-—led up t the éeulaton ae ark a great pertulum clock gazed down ftom the baleony stacks that faced the entranae Ustlly stationed atthe top ofthe steps ike the tas outide Buckingham Palace wasthe custodian a ster-faced West qRann ype who for years, iT was old enough to obtain an adult cara trol bhoneditly choo me with one ha into the Caldren’s Room -ligous sot fue in 27 An Pera, which faces the release ofthe opt rom shale hough ancetcim, “poner wie (925-196. iia ton writer (1857-1924, PRULE MARSHALL * from Poets av Tr KeceiEy 203 and with the other threaten me into silence, a finger to his lips, You. would have thought he was the chief librarian and not just someone ‘whose jl it was to keep the brass polished and the clock wound. I put him in a story called “Barbados” years later and had terrible things hap pen to hima the end, [was sheltered from the storm of adolescence in the Macon Strect brary, reading voraciously, indiscriminately, everything fiom Jane Austen to Zane Grey, but with a special passion for the long, full: blown, richly detailed eightventh- and nineteenth -century picaresque tales: Tom Jones, Great Expectations, Vanity Far. But although Iloved nearly everything lead and would enter fully into the lives of the characters—incioed, would cease being myself and become them—I sensed a lack after a time. Something I couldn't quite define was missing. And then one day, browsing in the poetry section, I came across a book by someone called Paul Laurence Dunbar, and ‘opening it I found the photograph of a wistful, sad-eyed poet who to my surprise was black. I turned to a poem at random. “Little brown- __baby wif spa’klin’/eyes/Come to yo’ pappy an’ set on his knee.” Although T had a little difficulty at first with the words in dialect, the poem spoke to me as nothing {had read before of the closeness, the spe- ial relationship Thad had with my father, who by then had become an ardent believer in Father Divine and gone to live in Father's “kingdom” in Haarlem. Reading ithelped to ease somewhat the tight knot of sorrow and longing I carried around in my chest that refused to go away. [read : another poem, “Lins! Lias! Bless de Lawall/Don’ you know de day’s/ erbroad?/EI you don’ get up, you scamp/Dey'll be trouble in dis camp." I laughed. It reminded me of the way my mother sometimes | __ yelled at my sister and me to get out of hed in the mornings, And another: “Seen my lady home las’ night/Jump back, honey, jump back. Hel /hu han’ /an’ /sque’2 it tight...” About love between a black man and a black woman. I had never seen that written about before and it roused jn me all Kinds of delicious feelings and hopes. ‘And I began to search then for books and stories and poems about -/ “The Race” (as it was put back then), about my people, While not aban- doning Thackeray, Fielding, Dickens and the others, [started asking the reference librarian, who was white, for books by Negro writers, = although I must admit I diel so at first with a feeling oF shame—the shame I and many others used to experience in those days whenever the word “Negro” or “colored” came up, No grade schoo! literature teacher of mine had ever mentioned Dunbar or James Weldon Johnson or Langston Hughes." I didn’t know: “Poul Laurence Dunbar (187-1906, James Weldon Johnson (1871-198), Langston Hughes (1002 1967} -Afrcan-Amverian pots of Une latest Renae,20¢ CHAPTERS © Foucaniow that Zora Neale Hurston’ existed and was busy writing and being pub- Tishedl during those years. Nor was I macle aware of people like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman*—their spirit and example—ar the great yoth-century abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth. There wasn’t leven Negro Hlistory Week when Lattended P'5.35 on Decatur Street! What I needed, what all the kids—West Indian and native black “American alike-—with whom I grew up needed, was an equivalent of the Jewish shul, someplace where we could go after school—the schools that were shortchanging us—and read works by those like our selves and learn about our history. Itwas around that time also that I began harboring the dangerous thought of someday trying to write myself. Pethaps a poem about an apple tree, although I had never seen one. Or the story of a girl who Could magically transplant herself to wherever she wanted to be in the world—suich as Father Divine’s kingdom in Harlem, Dunbar—his dark, eloquent face, his large volume of poems—permitted me to ‘dzoam that I might someday write, and with something of the power with words zy mother and her friends possessed. ‘When people at readings and writers’ conferences ask me who my major influences were, they are sometimes a little disappointed when Idon’timmediately name the usual literary giants. True, lam indebted to those writers, white and black, whom Lead during my formative years and still zead for instruction and pleasure. But they were preceded in. my life by another set of giants whom I always acknowledge before alll others: the group of women around the table long ago. They taught me ‘my first lesson in the narrative art. They trained my ear. They seta stan~ dard of excellence, This is why the best of my work must be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the rich legacy of language and culture they so freely passed on to mein the wordshop ofthe kitchen. INTERPRETATIONS. 1. Were the “poets in the kitchen” as interesting on paper asin their conversations? What does Marshall think their orality revealed about them? Cite two or three examples. 2. Marshall’s “unknown bards” use language to combat their power Jessness in a culture in which they experienced the “triple invisibility “atin American novelist (1901-1960, Frederick, Douglass (1817-189), Haeret Tybman (1920-1913)—Afrca-Amedcan abotonist, PaULEMAnsHAuL © fromPomstviinKincsen 205 of being black, female and foreigners.” Which expr of being iB Ihich expressions best APPLICATIONS In what contexts do Marshall's poets view language as a refuge? How do you respond to this concept? Sense sees ‘What kind of iteracy is Marsal wing about when she speaks of her carly upbringing? What musta pescipant in ches cone fersaton be aware of What elher Lads ers mht fe invoked by "these unknown bards"? : Later on inher lie, Mashall comes to understand and vale another kind of lieragy Out she hs dbcoveed inthe “Maco Suet ranch othe broklyn Public rary What and oferey ik? Ho feo nd of Mere te a “ttowas aroun that time also that Lbugan harboring the dangerous thought of someday trying to write myst” Why does Marshall use he Word "dangerot Hovr does herconseration of becom ing a writer affect her perceptions of literacy? Wht happen 0 your sense of iteracy when you engage in iting tsk?