Eisha Mehtab

Professor Fatima Syeda

ENGL 403: Contemporary Literary Criticism

6 June, 2022

A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis on Strong Horse Tea

Strong Horse Tea by Alice Walker is a tragedy-filled short story that focuses on the
struggles of Rannie Toomer, a Black woman and her desperate attempts to save her sick child’s
life. This story reeks of racism when it highlights how her son, Snooks, eventually dies because a
white man could not care less about his race and had considered him unworthy of treatment.
Foucault’s conception of power is that it exists everywhere because it comes from
everywhere and that certain knowledge is suppressed and other knowledge is produced through
power too. All these systems of power that bring about knowledge – whether it is academic,
cultural, corporate, or scientific, is all justified by beliefs we call “truth” or as “knowledge” and
nothing can separate this power relationship from the beliefs. In fact, for him, whenever one
speaks of knowledge, one is also ipso facto speaking of power and vice versa. To unpack Strong
Horse Tea’s themes, symbolism and systems of social institutions according to a Foucauldian
discourse analysis, it only makes sense for one to start with the overpowering racism of this
story.
From the very beginning, Walker’s language and the behavior of the characters in the
story, we can analyze all the ways on how the society where Rannie and Snooks lived were
affected by various sources of power. Alice shows the black family living in a rural area, and that
can be sensed through Sarah’s description of a witch-like attire and how long it was taking for
the doctor to arrive. And then, when describing Rannie Toomer, Alice talks about Rannie
looking unkempt with her “long crusty bottom lip” and then suddenly revealing how she wasn’t
married. Her unmarried status is being talked about more than other bodily features, which is to
say, that the black lady is purposefully written to appear to be living in a weakened position in
society and she does not have power. Not married is largely unstable behavior, especially when
with a child already. Further into the story, the white mailman is seen to think how “Black
people as black as Ronnie Mae always made him uneasy, especially when they didn’t smell
good”. Firstly, the fact that white people have this preconceived notion that black people are
dirty, or unhygienic is a way of establishing power over them. Secondly, we see hints of
colorism when the white mailman says “as black as Ronnie” in a derogatory way, as if different
shades of blacks are somehow worse than other shades of black. The fact that there is no similar
prejudice for people ‘as white as’, as in people with different shades of white, further highlights
the power formation white people have held over black people for decades.
The mailman says further in the story “Why did color folks always want you to do
something for them?” which clearly demonstrates how he thought black people only call whining
for help, and that because he is not black, he is automatically the only superior one to help
others. There may very well be an existing power structure within the black community where
people ask for help and no one thinks of it as having more power than the other. Has he thought
this over that this might be normal for black people? On top of that, Rannie had already called
for the doctor, and not through him. Even though a mailman’s job is to deliver messages, a very
symbolic connection here is how he is ready to take anyone’s messages from place to another-
just not a black woman’s’, because it doesn’t hold value to him even if her child is dying.
Another aspect that is very evident in the story that highlights the Foucauldian theory is
how the Afro-Americans once had faith in their own abilities, their customs and traditions and
how they eventually lost that faith in themselves. In the story, Sarah asks Rannie to use “old
home remedies” to treat her son. Rannie replies saying, “I don’t believe in none of the swamp
magic.” Foucault often says how power is immanent in all social relations, and that all social
relations and institutions are thus relations of power. The power that Afro-Americans held in
their beliefs and practices of medicine, if we take the example of Walker’s story, moved from
them towards “white doctors” who could apparently treat cough better. This tells how two
different generations moved from holding staunch beliefs of their values and customs to being
skeptic of the same.
Alternatively however, from another perspective, we can also infer how Rannie was
capable of understanding how perhaps “cat’s blood” wouldn’t be as favorable to treat the child’s
cough as a “shot” by the doctor without being a learned woman. Which brings us to the discourse
of intellectuality. It is very apparent in the story how the mailman is supposedly dumb, but his
whiteness unthinkingly makes him appear far more superior. For knowledge to be called
knowledge, it mustn’t only come from degrees and colleges, but having the mental capacity to
understand what may be the better choice, option or solution. Rannie had the knowledge but she
didn’t have the social standing to make use of it. So her knowledge didn’t allot her any power.
However, the mailman wasn’t knowledgeable, but he had enough social standing to help and he
still chose not to. This choice of having a choice is allotted to the white man and not the black
woman.
Analyzing Strong Horse Tea certainly highlights the dynamics of power and knowledge
that Foucault talks about. Having given such language to produce to story, to give the characters
words and certain behaviorisms was a way of igniting a conversation about the tragedies black
people had to undergo just because of the colours of their skin, sheds a lot of light on how the
conception of power in racial social structures can be restructured through how text is written
and through how thoughts are expressed.