Use the space below to comment on ANY aspect of the opening of Mary E. Mebane's autobiography. You might want to focus on the features of African-American autobiography that we discussed in class yesterday. The intersection of race and gender in this text will be our primary focus, but read the opening of this text with an eye to Mebane's descriptions of material life in the South (especially her sensitivity to the domestic labor her mother handles daily), and her negotiation of memory itself. Are there tonal shifts in her text? Moments that she cannot remember? Experiences that she describes as vividly burned in her mind?
We've now read enough texts that you should start comparing and contrasting Mebane's text with those of other African-American women (Jacobs, Angelou, Hurston) and with the autobiographies of Douglass, Wright, and Washington. Keep noticing the form of the genre and how Mebane modifies or follows its demands.
Mary's relationship with her mother is curious. It seems like many if not most African-American memoirs celebrate the strength and unconditional love of the matriarch, as Hurston did in Dust Tracks on the Road. Mary says very matter of factly that her mother shows no tenderness to her, and the narrator believes it is for something she has done. Today we often stereotype the black family as being very loving and affectionate, but Nonnie's refusal to hug and kiss her daughter contrasts this image.
ReplyDeleteMebane recalls almost every aspect of her mother’s daily and weekly routine with many details. Mebane also describes how her mother never showed any affection towards her. Since Mebane was never able to have the approval of her mother, it seems as though she watched her every move so closely so that one day she may do something that would gain her approval or cause her to be affectionate. By paying such close attention to her mother’s routine, Mebane most likely realized she needed more out of her life. Even though Mebane valued different ideas for her future, she was constantly aware of her mother’s daily tasks. Her attention to detail shows how devoted she was to pleasing her mother.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this autobiography focuses primarily on Mary as an individual, she refers to the community in a few places. First, she discusses the way African American families get together for dinners as their primary way of social interaction. Another way she incorporates the community is more subtle. When Mary is slapped by her teacher (46), her mother warns her "don't let your daddy see it." Mary's father is concerned about his children, specifically how his family is perceived by other people. This shows the worth of public appearance to Mary's father.
ReplyDeleteWhat stands out to me, in terms of gender roles, is the moment when Mary is helping with the laundry. She mentions ironing small items next to her mother ironing, "glad to be a woman like Mama" (15). The fact that Mary does not simply act like an adult, but a woman, alludes to the expectations of women versus men. This relates to the items Mary is interested in from the trash. Dresses, high heels, and pocketbooks are all very feminine items. However, later Mary expresses the desire to be like her Aunt Jo, rather than her unaffectionate mother. Her fondness for “The Ugly Duckling” is another example fitting her desire to grow up and be beautiful.
Where hunger and language have starred in our previous texts, Mary Mebane’s autobiography is bound up in visual imagery. Mary is acutely aware of her surroundings, and provides rich, idyllic descriptions of her yard, games, chores, and meals. She expresses her personal penchant for accuracy, but laments that “the world [she] was born into didn’t want that,” that “its very survival depended on not knowing, not seeing” (5).
ReplyDeleteNaturally, one might assume Mary’s attentiveness to form and color would prefigure a precocial consciousness of the black-white divide. But race is scarcely mentioned in the opening chapters. Instead, Mary develops the concept of being born into the “wrong grouping” of human relationships, that is, “not a natural or harmonious” one (24). She is referring to the disconnect between her mother and herself, and her resultant feelings of guilt, alienation and impotence.
Based on the two statements I’ve highlighted above, it would seem Mebane’s autobiography tends toward the personal, rather than the collective black unconscious. The text’s quality of “hitting home” may be due in part to the glimpse into the domestic sphere, which we have only encountered hereto from a male’s limited perspective.
What really stands out for me is the relationship that female African-American autobiographies have to beauty. Though *appearance* is central to all of the autobiographies we've read so far, it seems to work in terms of "passing" or as a means of establishing "blackness." This is different, especially in Mebane's and Angelou's respective pieces.
ReplyDeleteFor Angelou, being beautiful is the same as being white. On page 4, she discusses how she has awful kinky black hair, large feet, and an ugly gap in her teeth. If only she could wake up with long blonde hair, she laments, she could be beautiful. Mebane also describes definitions of beauty. She writes that her hair was not naturally straight, she had thick lips and a broad nose, and she was dark skinned (70).
These autobiographies focus on a problem that is specific to African-American women: the idea of true beauty. Like Toni Morrison's _The Bluest Eye_, black women see themselves as ugly and monstrous because they superimpose ideas of white beauty onto themselves. This is still a prevalent problem. African-American women like Mariah Carey, Beyonce Knowles, and Halle Berry--all of whom have more anglicized features, still set the societal benchmark of beauty for African-American women. These three texts shed light on a different kind of oppression, or at least, a different set of difficulties that are unique to the African-American female population.
In relation to other autobiographies and memoirs of African Americans, this is similar in many respects; in the language and tone, the feelings of alienation and powerlessness, but the difference lies between the two ways in which she spells her life. We have the observer, who takes in all of her surroundings and tries to make sense of them, and then we have this other side, what could be called her adult side, for it mostly comes out when the narrative has clearly taken a retrospective turn. Mebane is very careful not to mix these two, for they, as I see it, represent two very different people housed in the same body, separated by a sea of years. Mebane puts the reader into a state of mind, whether it be one evoked with memory, or with general or acute observation, or with a sense of all those mangled pieces of her sense of self mingling in the same space and words, a characteristic common of any truly meditative work. As the reader we are the observer just as she was the observer, and we must take from what little description is given all our information on the text. Names are thrown up without having ever been mentioned before, and likely not to be mentioned again, and places and events are referred to without being fully explained. In this way are we as the readers somewhat trained to see her world as she saw it, even in our examination of the text, so that we might get a sense of her motives, and the general emotion of her life.
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