African American literature has been looked to as a means of illuminating for the modern world the development of a sense of identity out of a culture so fragmented and oppressed it seemed non-existent within the American system. When writers such as Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks presented their material, they illuminated some of the problems inherent within their society, including lack of education, lack of appreciation for their own value and lack of opportunity for the future. All three of these writers worked to capture the important concepts of their society within the figurative elements of daily life, urban or rural, as they are defined from within rather than without. In doing so, they were seeking a sense of identity for their race that did not depend on the definitions of the outside culture. By comparing works such as Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Ellison’s “Battle Royal” and Brooks’ “We Real Cool,” one begins to understand the unifying theme of the black community as a constant struggle between attaining higher social status and more comfortable conditions while still remaining caught within the bounds of an oppressive social system.
At the time Gwendolyn Brooks wrote her poem “We Real Cool”, jazz was becoming popular in the urban north and black people were becoming more expressive of their own identities within the greater public. In this poem, though, Brooks is talking about teenagers who had opted to identify themselves with the white stereotype of dangerous criminals. As she says in her poem, these kids would get together in gangs and do nothing but hang out on street corners, like the white man expected them to, causing trouble and getting involved in crime. Placing herself in their position, she says “We real cool. We left school” (1-2) which leads to them participating in small crimes, beginning with lurking late and then learning to ‘strike straight.’ This same three word sentence structure continues through the remaining two stanzas of the poem to indicate how the boys then begin to associate sin with their inner selves, drinking and partying until they die an early death as a result of their actions. Because each line except for the last one ends with ‘we’, which is the first word of the next sentence, Brooks emphasizes that many black people are falling into the trap of identifying themselves with the white conception of them rather than taking strength in the voice of jazz and black strength that was emerging in the rhythms of her poem and elsewhere. Talking about this ending ‘we’, Brooks said she opts to “say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty, which they don’t bother to question every day” (Stavros, 1970). This emphasizes her intention to express how the black identity is uncertain and unconscious in their actions.
Ralph Ellison makes the search for identity one of his major themes in his telling of the Battle Royal. In this story, the narrator points out that the boys who fight in the battle wear blindfolds which hides their identity as tools of the white men from themselves. Just as they don’t ‘see’ that they are being used in a cruel and dehumanizing way, they also don’t realize that they are contributing to the overall stereotype of black boys as servile (in that they would fight with blindfolds for mere coins) and humble. The blindfolds enable the boys to hide the truth of their identity from themselves during the fight, but their identities are further warped into acceptance of white domination and black suppression as they scramble for the change thrown to them on the electrified carpet and are denied the sexuality paraded in front of them in the form of the nude white woman. These boys have formed their identities on the idea that this is the ‘normal’ way of things to such an extent that the narrator expresses extreme gratitude for the white men’s scholarship. “When, dazed and bloody, he finally delivers it [his speech], he is completely ignored by the drunken men” (Griffin 1969), yet the narrator swallows his own blood and sense of importance, demonstrating that he was among those who would “know your place at all times” (Ellison 1964 p. 33). It is up to the reader to be angry at how appallingly racist these white men have proven to be and how much the black boys have come to identify with a subservient identity. Through this scene, the reader can see that stereotype and prejudice often determine and manipulate the individual’s sense of self as well as how this serves to manipulate the entire society.
The wisdom of seeking success as defined by the dominant white society is not without its own brand of loss and hardship as is explored in Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” In this story, the author places two sisters side by side for an afternoon of visiting as they are compared by their mother. In doing this, the author illustrates how different the girls are in their sense of identity. In the story, both girls have formed their identities based on their past, but each approach this past from a different perspective revealing the depth of one and the near-emptiness of the other. In this comparison, “Walker depicted the true essence of culture and heritage which are not to be found in the objects or external appearance but reflected by attitude and lifestyle” (Curzon, 1974). Dee’s identity is that of an outsider looking in to try to find understanding. She even acts like a tourist with her camera: “She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house.” While she seems to love her mother and sister, she also has no desire to identify directly with their way of life. Maggie’s identity, on the other hand, is formed through her intimate connection with the ways of life of her ancestors. Although Dee wants to collect the things of the house, Maggie actually still uses them. For Maggie, the value of the objects is not only in the memory of who once used them, but also in their ability to be useful in her life. Toward the end of the story, Maggie makes it clear that her identity is more solidly based than that of her sister when she tells her mom “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts.” Although Dee has managed to attain a degree of the white man’s success, she has done so only by sacrificing the kind of deep connection to her identity and her heritage that makes Maggie strong.
In all three of these literary works, the concept of identity for a black person in a white world can be seen to be subservient, weak or sometimes even non-existent. The black person automatically understands the elements of their own society to be meaningless and unimportant in a practical sense, worthy only for gawking or spiteful entertainment. They buy into the concept that the white man’s ways are the ideal while their own innate sense of self is somehow flawed and unimportant. Throughout their writing, though, there is a deep call for black people to wake up and embrace their beauty. These writers are able to convey a greater empathetic understanding of the circumstances of their people, urban or rural, and how these circumstances have come to shatter or build the individual’s sense of self and belonging. Brooks mourns the loss of self to the white man’s expectations in her poetry while also emphasizing the potential strength and beauty of her culture within the words and rhythms of her poem. Ellison demonstrates the danger of buying into the white man’s impressions as this only serves to reinforce attitudes for both whites and blacks. Walker provides the strongest argument for retaining a separate identity as she shows how one sister has lost her sense of self in the world while the other is strong enough to give up everything material without losing herself. The constant struggle of the black community to develop a strong sense of identity while being battered by internal and external attempts to subdue it is a constant theme throughout black literature.
Works Cited
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “We Real Cool.” The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. 3rd Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann & Robert O’Clair (eds.). New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003: 145.
Curzon, Gwendolyn. “Everyday Use by Alice Walker.” African-American Fiction. 2009. Web.
Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1964.
Griffin, Edward M. “Notes from a Clean Well Lighted Place: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 15, N. 3, (1969), pp. 129-44.
Stavros, George. “An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks.” Contemporary Literature. Vol. 11, N. 1, (1970).
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” 2009. Web.