| I read Jean Toomer's poems and story stories from Cane, here and there, but never in school. In 1989, after completing the Master's degree, I purchased a book called "Jean Toomer: An Artist." I had never heard of the author of this scholarly biography on Toomer and his work. While I purchased a copy of Cane and came to love Toomer's work, I was more intrigued by the author of this scholarly biography. The author was a Black woman! I had never read the work of a Black woman scholar and university teacher. I never had the opportunity to sit in a classroom where a Black woman professor stood at the front of class. At that time, with two degrees in English, I never had the opportunity to make a personal connection with the authors I read in my classes. While I heard about the greatness of British and American authors in the classroom, my study of African American, Latina/o, Asian, and African literatures was done outside the classroom. I am reading this book, by a Black woman scholar and teacher, and I am listening and thinking. Not long after I completed my doctorate, I taught undergraduate courses in African American literature using the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. This woman was co-editor of this text, along with Henry Louis Gates. Some years later, while I am teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, I remember this woman who teaches at the Madison campus. I called and talked to her a couple of times. Once I remember talking to her after I was told by a colleague that I did not "fit in." I was over-forty then --; and worse, perceived as someone "arriving" from the poorer side of the tracks. This past spring, I taught Black Women Writers, the class she created here at the Madison campus back in the 1980's. She died January 22nd. Now I read of "mysteries" surrounding her life. What mysteries? I am always the last person to hear gossip -- local or otherwise. It has always been that way with me because I try to focus on issues from education to poverty to Darfur to our eroding civil rights. Well, we have plenty of issues! But listen to what this story tells us so that even in death, when we can no longer employ the western preference of seeing the body over recognizing and feeling the inner self, we should hear and feel the possibility of her story empowering us to effect change in the practice of relating to one another. For, we are a part of her story, in one way or another. We are born of the chaos and contradictions we have created, which makes her story our story too. Carla Peterson suggests that African American writers still struggle to reconcile the body and the spirit and represent the beauty of the African American self, in this post-slavery era. In the history of this country, in its formation, the bodies of Black women were thought appropriate to serve as physical labors in the fields, as breeders of more laborers, and as sexual tools for the master. The female black body was, at once, seen as masculine and feminine and, thus, Peterson writes, considered "grotesque." We have been struggling ever since to recover our bodies and our spirits, for without acknowledging both, we are hollow and defenseless, unable to muster resistance to the practices that see our bodies against a set of idealized norms -- young, White, male, blue-eyed, etc. -- Anything else is grotesque. Did Nellie McKay reconcile, in her way, body and spirit, to represent the beauty of the African American self? Did she not find a way to overcome voicelessness for herself and her people, among social constructions of racial differences that deny the young and old body since black? Did she not make people hear and listen? Most important, did some of us hear her and respond to the call of our collective memory against the effort to make us forget? As a mother, McKay listened and did what she had to do toward her children. As a scholar and a teacher, she responded to the call. All our stories hold triumph and lies. What is amazing is that McKay was triumphant despite the lies already constructed around her body and spirit! And her greatest triumph might well be that she makes us think about what she had to do simply to live, to do what she loved to do. She was a teacher. She did her job well, despite all the odds against her. And she is still teaching. Listen and respond in a way that she would be proud of you! Then that will be all that matters. |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels A living lesson from Nellie McKay |
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