Heat of the Night

UGH SO I NEVER CLICKED PUBLISHED SO IGNORE THE DATE AND PRETEND IT IS STILL VALENTINE'S DAY, PLEASE.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. My boyfriend and I had to celebrate early this year (long distance) so we spent the weekend with each other and good food. The weather was gorgeous so my reading took somewhat of a backseat to tennis. I'll refrain from making a tennis-themed Valentine joke (love all?).

But now the weekend is over and it is back to reality.

Gayl Jones' experimental novel, Corregidora (1975). Brandi won't let me forget that I recommended this bok as a Thanksgiving break novel last semester. It's dark. Really really dark. But it's also gorgeous. Let's get started, shall we?

Over the weekend, my boyfriend finally admitted that he likes the Hamilton mix tape. Finally. I might never fully convert him to the musical, but he fell down the Hamilton rabbit hole when it was performed by Ja Rule or Busta Rhymes or Kelly Clarkson. I can't say I blame him--it's good. It's cutting, incisive, and fierce. It got me thinking about the histories we tell and the histories we don't. Doesn't it seem like there is a minor pattern for reviving the histories we have lost or chosen to ignore? Lin Manuel Miranda uses hip-hop, Toni Morrison uses recitafs, and how many concept albums have focused on a historical rebel? I'm not saying it's how every forgotten history is restored, but there is something there. It makes sense that there would be a pattern: folk history or subversive history is passed orally. The oral tradition is where forgotten histories live.

Gayl Jones captures this trend in her darkly magnificent blues novel. Corregidora follows blues singer Ursa Corregidora. Ursa's mother and grandmother share the same father: their former slave-owner, Corregidora. The novel traces Ursa's search for self-identity after she--well, let me stop right there. You can't take this sort of journey on an empty stomach, and when a character's name is Ursa (Big Dipper, remember?), you know you are in for a long one.

I'm going to start with a tomato sauce. Sliced garlic and red pepper flakes add heat while the tomatoes provide the heart sweetness. I'm not clever enough to compare this to jazz, but I think there is something there. Think about the history of jazz. Jazz is the sound of the voiceless: the ones who are marginalized because of race, gender, class, sexuality, etc. It's all of those dark tones making their way to the spotlight. This sauce is nothing like that, but I want it to be.

So while the sauce simmers, I'm back to Corregidora. This is a novel about the ways slavery's legacy continues to disrupt families; it reveals the ways we cannot reconcile our multiple histories. As mentioned, Ursa's great-grandmother is raped by her master Corregidora. She then gives birth to a daughter who grows up to be a young woman who is also raped by Corregidora. When she BITES OFF HIS PENIS (his legacy and money maker), they escape to the U.S., but Corregidora's legacy haunts them. Ursa's foremothers urge her to "make generations" so their legacy may carry forward and bear the knowledge of Corregidora. Their history is biological, carried within their very bodies.

As Ursa explains, because the history of slavery in Brazil was officially erased ("they burned all the slavery papers so it would be like they never had it"), her mothers pass down the history orally so it can never be forgotten:

My grat-grandmama told my grandmama the part she lived through that my grandmama didn't live through and my grandmama told my mama what they both lived through and my mama told me what they all lived through and we were suppose to pass it down like that from generation to generation so we'd never forget. Even though they'd burned everything to play like it didn't never happen. Yeah, and where's the next generation?

You see, Ursa cannot "make generations." After her husband pushes her down the stairs, she is rushed to the hosptial. This is actually where the novel opens--her reflections on this moment. Ursa is pregnant when she is pushed, and the doctors perform a forced hysterectomy. Ursa awakens from her surgery to discover that another white man has taken away her family's ability to choose their formation of their biological families.

She tells her future husband, Tadpole, that she feels as though "part of [her] life's already marked out for [her]--the barren part." While Ursa's mothers were marked by motherhood, Ursa is marked by its impossibility.

Black motherhood carries different burdens than white motherhood, as a whole. Motherhood in general is almost like a cannibalism of sorts. That sounds weird, but bear with me. Let's take a bite of this fettucine before continuing. The sauce is done so we can mix in the noodles, along with some butter and spinach. Maybe some goat cheese.

It's not too bloody looking, right? Fine to eat while thiking about this stuff. This will save nicely for lunch tomorrow as well. Leftovers are the best.

Take a bite. Eat it up. Carry it with you.

In mythology, incestual cannibalism--the cannibalism of one's children--is the perfect contradiction. It is an act both of self-affirmation and self-negation. By consuming your own child, your own blood, you both double yourself and erase yourself. The act of motherhood is a similar paradox: you are both perpetuating yourself by extending your lineage, but you are erasing your identity as an individual. You sacrifice your present to your future, both affirming yourself and negating yourself.

But black women face a different dilemma within this. The Corregidora women are compelled to perpetuate the legacy of slavery and their personal traumas by bearing children but erase their own futures by doing so. The violent history of slavery is consumed by so much horror that it can only remain as a paradox.

How can you reconcile your past, present, and future when they are so immersed in conflict?

That is Ursa's journey throughout the novel. I'm going to misrepresent it as some sort of cliche, but Ursa finds her voice through music. Please, please, please don't let that misguide you because goddamn is it a beautiful trip.

While still struggling with her forced hysterectomy, Ursa considers her singing voice: What she said about the voice being better because it tells what you've been through. Consequences. It seems as if you're not singing your past, you're humming it. Consequences of what? Shit, we're all consequences of something. Stained with another's past as well as our own. Their past is in my blood. I'm a blood . . . Let me feel my pussy. The center of a woman's being. Is it? No seeds. Is that what snaps away my music, a harp string broken, guitar string, string of my banjo belly. Strain in my voice . . . When do you sing the blues? Every time I want to cry, I sing the blues . . . I sang to you out of my whole body.

From the beginning, the text ties music to the body. If making generations is making a legacy, by tying music to the woman's body, Jones asserts music--or art--as a replacement for generations. In other words, art becomes an alternate way to pass on a legacy. In fact, the text claims that making a legacy is almost inherently female. Corregidora's legacy is one that is contradictory. He had a baby with his wife but it was "nothing but a lttle sick rabbit that didn't live but to be a day old." As a result, Corregidora isn't remembered as a father but as a violent slaveowner. He doesn't get to control his legacy--the Corregidora women do. They spit fire from generation to generation, but when Ursa can no longer "make generations," she finds the alternative: she makes art. She takes control of the narrative and of her history.

Artistry and motherhood is closely linked in the second haf of the 20th century. I'm not entirely sure yet if it is mother as artist or artist as mother, but I'm thinking of texts like Corregidora, Possession, and The Woman Warrior, but we see it earlier on as well in works like The Awakening and "Yellow Wallpaper." I'm not sure which comes first for these texts: artist or mother. I'm still thinking on it.

Regardless, Corregidora shows us that history isn't just written by the victors; it's written by the survivors as well. The leftovers. The people who carry it with them.

Things to consider:

• mobility and slavery

• mobility and legacy

• maternal legacy

• mother/daughter identity

• motherhood, artistry, and creation

#corregidora #gayljones #incest #motherartist #artistmother #music #blues #legacy #mobility #daughter