Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir 9780822378372

Citation preview

SCENES OF INSTRUCTION

(!;

SCENES OF INSTRUCTION a memoir {!:: Michael Awkward DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham & london 1999

© 1999 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Dante with DIN Neutzeit Grotesk Bold Condensed display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

for Carol

,~}

What I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indispensable, but the irreplaceable.-ROLAND BARTHES, Camera Lucida

My father ... had gone to the city seeking life, but ... [his] life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, ... that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed-of shores of knowing.

-RICHARD WRIGHT, Black Boy We're all consequences of something. Stained with another's past as well as our own. Their past in my blood.

-GAYL JONES, Corregidora

Travel folders call you So do your memories

-PHOEBE SNOW, "Isn't It a Shame?" It was time to put all of the pieces together,

make coherence where before there had been none.

- TONI MORRISON, The Bluest Eye

CONTENTS

{!::

Acknowledgments

xi

Author's Note

xiii

Awkward Silences

xv

Introduction: "Don't Be Like Your Father"

1

Section I: The Mother's Mark

9

Section II:

'~e

You Man Enough?"

49

Section III: Chocolate City

85

Section IV: "closed in silence"

127

Section V: The Mother's Breast

165

Coda: Tippin' In

198

Works Cited or Consulted

203

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS {;:;

A number of people have assisted my efforts to confront the formal, ideological, and ontological challenges I faced during the process of this book's composition. lowe a special debt to my friends and colleagues at the University of Michigan, where this project had its genesis. For discussing, among other things, issues relevant to the academic discourses with which this book is most directly concerned-Afro-Americanis~, literary; cultural, and feminist studiesand for encouraging me despite our shared doubts about what I hoped to accomplish, I want especially to thank Julie Ellison, Lincoln Faller, Chris Flint, Anne Herrmann, Michelle Johnson, Robin Kelley, Marjorie Levinson, Earl Lewis, Athena Vrettos, and Patsy Yaeger. I'm especially grateful to Anita Norich, who read a draft of an earlier version of the manuscript and helped me to rediscover its purpose and potential significance. The opportunity during the fall of 1995 to interact with a stellar interdisciplinary group, the Black Gender Studies Faculty Seminar, confirmed the importance of the sort of gendered and racialized self-inquiry I was interested in offering. From that group, I'd like to thank Elsa Barkley Brown and Marlon Ross in particular for what I hope all of us found an inspiriting collaboration. And for making my three years as Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (when the bulk of this manuscript was drafted) more pleasant and infinitely less stressful than I dreamed possible, I am indebted to Gerri Brewer, Tammy Davis, Camille Spencer, and Evans Young. I completed this book in Philadelphia during what the great R & B singer Donny Hathaway once called "tryin' times." For helping me to cope, I want to thank Howard Arnold, Houston Baker, Jeff Bedrick, Henry Louis Gates, Tresa Grauer, Farah Griffin, Sharon Holland, Peter Kuriloff, E. Daniel Larkin, Dan Lebowitz, Vicky Mahaffey, Nellie McKay, Elsa Ramsden, and Ira Schwartz. Special thanks to Nicole Brittingham Furlonge and Claire Satlof, whose selfless devotion buoyed my spirits. Also, Henrietta Stephens assisted me with the preparation of the final version of this manu-

xii Acknowledgments script, and Tommy Leonardi provided stunning photographic images of scenes from my childhood. My wife, Lauren, and my daughters, Camara and Leah, love me even when I am not particularly lovable, for which I am more grateful than I can possibly express. The sane and sage advice of my intimate critic, Lauren, helped to make this a more focused and coherent project. I am very appreciative of the faith in this project exhibited by Ken Wissoker, editor in chief of Duke University Press. Also, I'm grateful to the anonymous readers commissioned by the press and especially to associate editor Katie Courtland, who offered valuable suggestions about how to craft this difficult narrative. Finally, for granting me permission to share family experiences, I want first to thank my aunt, Peggy McCalla, my mother's lifelong best friend, from whom I have gained a better understanding of my mother and, hence, myself. And I want especially to acknowledge my siblings, Carol, Ricky, and Debby, who've supported me in this endeavor despite their occasional reservations. My siblings continue to sustain me emotionally and spiritually; that "the four seasons," as we used to call ourselves, remain closely connected is proof of the strength of bonds our mother's love helped to forge. I dedicate this book to my sister Carol, who taught me to read, helped to take care of me when she was still a child herself, and continues to offer me lessons in selfless devotion. I don't always heed her advice, often to my spiritual, emotional, and financial detriment, but I always listen. The photographs on pages 13, 14, 20, 53, 172, and 200 are by Tommy Leonardi. The for colored girls cover art on page 137 is by Paul Davis. The Benetton photograph on page 166 is by Oliviero Toscani. The rest of the images are from the author's private collection.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

i!}

I've attempted to protect the privacy of many of the people about whom I speak by changing their names, some of their characteristics, and aspects of the events recounted here. I've compressed events, created dialogue, and sketched a composite neighborhood character, Stink (the actual nickname of a childhood acquaintance), as a necessary form of narrative shorthand. Also, where possible, I've preserved the anonymity of academics and administrators who may not wish to be named.

AWKWARD SILENCES +

In 1988 I wrote to Alice Walker, asking her to participate in a lecture series I was organizing at the University of Michigan to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Their Eyes Were Watching God. She wrote me a gentle, encouraging rejection, which I've saved, in part because internationally renowned people write to me infrequently, but also because I was impressed by the envelope's lowercased designation of the author as a walker. Ignoring the injunction against equating fiction writer and fictional character, I connected Walker with her restless, militant character Meridian, who marches tirelessly for justice during the civil rights movement. a walker, I concluded, connotes restlessness, a searching self who knows that truth, like love, is what Walker's forebear, Zora Neale Hurston, calls "uh movin' thing" that "takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different at every shore" (284). Who knows that in order to comprehend a world structured in dominance, "you got tuh go there," to search literally and figuratively through, among other potentially instructive sites, our mothers' gardens and our fathers' trunks. The quotidian objects that mark these familial spaces-rusty rakes, splashes of color, and the thorny remnants of neglected perennials; well-preserved pictures, unattached, odd-shaped buttons, and the faint odor of a long-wilted carnation-contain memories suffused with encoded meanings that we can begin to unpack only if we are both attentive and creative. I felt inspired by Walker's example to order my own stationery. I experimented with color and font, and with paper grade. But ultimately my efforts failed to yield enveloping richness. m awkward is what Toni Morrison calls in Sula "a nigger joke," "the kind white folks tell when the mill closes down and they're looking for a little comfort somewhere. The kind colored folk tell on themselves when the rain doesn't come, or comes for weeks, and they're looking for a little comfort somehow" (4). As I made huge analytical leaps to connect Walker's symbol, Morrison's formulation, and my name, I remembered long, guilt-filled moments when I wished that instead

xvi Scenes ofInstruction a walker

PrO(. Michael Awkward Department 0( Eogiish University 0( Michigan 7611 Haven Hall Ann Arbor, MI Iborhood 1,3,4, SodII Commi_ M, 11iE COVERNOR Sports EdItor 4, RIdwd Ho_ FnncIf Scholarthlp 4, Society 01 Oublarl