As you post below, think about how we described Mary Mebane's autobiography last Thursday. We focused on the many moments of quiet recognition and delicately voiced epiphany in the text. We also looked a few moments where Mebane has trouble discussing herself and only voices her "I" after discussing "someone" or "one" (page 23-24 is a paramount example of this oblique type of narrative).
As her autobiography proceeds, does it become more frank? Do you continue to notice moments of reticence or narrative shyness? How does the narrative foreground or conceal issues of race, gender, and class?
I would say that Mary becomes more frank as we continue, but there are also moments fraught with vague double meaning. There are more direct revelations of “secret” details, especially in Part Two after the death of her father. His passing coincidentally happens as she is emerging into her teenage years, which sparks many of her stories about friends who become pregnant and drop out of school. She also reveals her own fantasies and desires(142). She purchases a diaphragm for her friend Inez, so she seems to have an understanding of the workings of intimate relationships, despite not having one.
ReplyDeleteWhile her mother tries in Part One (107) to find something that would take her down a notch in her father’s eyes, after Ruf dies there seems to be an end to the direct conflict. Although there is little mention of arguments with her mother, you get a sense that some of the topics she discusses are related to how her mother’s inattention made her feel about herself. Mebane tells us how the community is full of talented singers while she has “little talent”(147). Although she has learned to play the piano quite well, she is still insufficient because she cannot play by ear. One cannot help but see this “nothing I do is good enough” attitude as a reflection of how she felt about her mother.
As the novel proceeds she does become more and more frank about her life. It seems that the more mature she becomes in her life the more that she notices the things around her. She finally notices that everyone around her is quite poor and at one part she interrupts from the future saying that she was suprised to find out later that not everyone went out and got their own chickens or ran around with no shoes all the time. But she does go into a lot more detail with everything that she encounters as she ages. Of course she continues her long descriptions of southern food.
ReplyDeleteMary Mebane gives strong focus to her community in chapter 20. She speaks of what "they and I had in common: we were shaped by the same forces." She then proceeds to share story after story of individuals that she shared communities with at one time or another who either did not or could not realize their potential. Mebane uses the simile that they are "like plants....stunted....because the conditions of our environment forbade our developing upward naturally." Showing this collective community through the stories of Sugar, Inez, Rita, etc. is a more effective means of showing the potential that exists and is thwarted within a group of individuals. The autobiography comes across with more frankness at this point in the text.
ReplyDeleteI think it's almost ironic that the book is named Mary, since she is hardly there. What came to mind for me is the idea of negative space in art. That by filling the space on a page you can create an image of a cup with out actually drawing the cup. That the detail around a space we see a cup because of what is around the cup and not the cup itself. I sort of get that idea with this book. That see Mary by what she describes as being around her. In Chapter 20 (168) we get this serious of sort bios about people that Mary has contact with and the details that she knows of their life. In describing all these people and events we get to see the world around Mary and they reveal the shape that Mary takes. At the same time I feel that a lot of the details are still blurry. That in painting the world around her she is still avoiding really to look at herself. This approach does lend its self to allow Mary Mebane to comment on issue of race and gender outside of her own experience. One such example is the story she tells of her friend Inez (181). That a girl that has a bright future would give all that up on a guy that's illiterate and would end up with nothing and a mass of kids one of them not even her own. That's a really powerful story that couldn't have been told had Mary simply stuck to telling "her" story.
ReplyDeleteHello fellow bloggers. I was absent from class on Thurday because of illness so I'm still a little behind on the text. I looked at the blogs from last week and noticed that noone had specifically commented on the language in the first section of reading, and I took special notice to it.
ReplyDeleteI became aware very early on of Mrs. Mebane's interpretation of language as a child. Often, Mary will tell an anecdote from the point of view of the adults then say that she knew/interpreted their language as meaning something different than what was actually said. In other words she explains the doubleness of language.
The first example was on page 26. Mary tells of the white bus driver who killed the african american soldier. Mary says noone told her that blacks had in turn burned down the warehouse, but she somehow "understood" that it had happened. Mary didn't need someone to specifically describe the events of that day, but she was able to deduct what was meant.
A better example is on page 37. Mary says she knows what her mom truly means when she uses phrases like "messing with that stuff" and "likes a little taste." On the one had, the phrases literally mean what they say. On the other, they stand for Aunt Laura being a drunk.
Mary explores this idea throughout the text; the words "excused" (38), "month," "alphabet" (39). And on page 70 she addresses this specifically, "Something was wrong here. Why did the grown people mean two things at once?"
I just thought this was interesting as we've explored the importance of languge in Black Boy.
A sense of silence pervades Mary; people in the autobiography do not openly discuss how they feel or what is going on around them. On page 108, Mebane confesses that maybe her mother knew about her secret longings and erotic fantasies although she keeps them hidden and never brings them out. She hides her sexual interests from her mom and the world; sex is not to be mentioned. Earlier in the text there is some mention of sex and kids who apparently have sex but always sex is reduced to "it," an ambiguous phrase that keeps it hidden. Sex is never adequately discussed nor are we given her views on it. They are hidden from sight then and now.
ReplyDeleteHer grandmother owning a Shakespeare book (113) is a family shame and secret. Knowledge and reading should not flourish and should be pushed into the dark like sexual desires. Mebane furhtermore uses the word "taboo" on (115).
On page 124, her father does not discuss arguments but resolves them with silence. They do not properly commuincate their emotions, but shut them down and this never solves anything.
Protest is important to Mary Mebane, and throughout her autobiography she emphasizes its importance in her life. She does this subtly. In these references I can see how she strays from other African American narratives and memoirs, and how she represents a more feminine approach to inequality. Having just read Black Boy, the differences in textual style become very noticeable, especially in the way that situations and people are described. In many ways, however, I can see how Mary Mebane is referencing to Black Boy. They both have recurring images, in Black Boy it's fire, burning, hunger, and his identification with the powerlessness of a small boy; in Mary, the themes of magic, protest, and her deformed reactions to any sort of affection contrasted by her own deep longing for it. Both texts are attacks on injustice, buy Mary concentrates more on the lives of those around her, noticing the immense sadness and tragic beauty in the frailness of their life patterns. She practices the art of understatement in these passages, where in the great expanses of time between the words we are struck by the quickness with which they pass. The tragedy being the fact that so many of the lives around her can be summed up in a page or two.
ReplyDeleteYes, her increase in bluntness is very apparent. One can certainly easily observe that as she is maturing and adventuring into more and more of life's experiences that her personality is very much changing. Se is coming to understand that being upfront and straightforward in her thoughts and feelings regarding various matters in her social interactions with others is the best way to go about matters.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite a departure from the somewhat fervent undertone of unspoken emotional tensions that have endured in many characters throughout the story.
On a sidenote I would like to say to Kmastin above me, that you have communicated some very meaningful thoughts, especially in those last couple of sentences.
On and on that note: Light and Love to all. :D