TFG Completo - Nota: 9.5 PDF

Preview

Summary

TFG - Lenguas Modernas y Traducción ...

Description

Race and Gender in Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six Bits” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” Trabajo de Fin de Grado

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Grado en Lenguas Modernas y Traducción Curso 2018-2019 Presentado por:

Dª Raquel Checa Martínez Dirigido por: D. Juan F. Elices Agudo Alcalá de Henares, a 17 de septiembre de 2019

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstracts

1. Introduction

2. Analysis

2.1.

Why is African American literature important?

2.1.1. “The Gilded Six Bits”

2.2.

Why is music so important within the black community?

2.2.1. “Strange Fruit”

3. Conclusion

4. Works Cited

2

Abstracts Throughout this dissertation, I would like, first, to disclose the work of two great female artists such as Zora Neale Hurston and Billie Holliday, who lived in very difficult times. I will analyse and compare “The Gilded Six Bits” and “Strange Fruit”, considering their differences and similarities. I will begin with a general introduction, in which I will delve into the situation of the black community in the United States, both in the past and the present. Next, I will focus on the position of black women and finally on the two figures around whom this essay gravitates. After the introduction, both works will be analysed, bearing in mind their historical context, their language use and, above all, their symbolism. In addition, as I previously mentioned, this paper will also discuss their concealed satirical tone, in order to expose the exact situation the black community, and especially black women, had to face back at those times, not only in terms of “race” and “gender”, but also in relation to language and culture. Key Words: “The Gilded Six Bits”, “Strange Fruit”, race, gender, black community

A lo largo de este trabajo, me gustaría, en primer lugar, centrarme en la obra de dos grandes mujeres como Zora Neale Hurston y Billie Holliday, que vivieron en tiempos muy difíciles y convulsos. Analizaré y compararé "The Gilded Six Bits" y "Strange Fruit", considerando sus diferencias y similitudes. Comenzaré con una introducción general, en la que haré un recorrido por la situación de la comunidad negra en los Estados Unidos, tanto en el pasado como en la actualidad. A continuación, me centraré en la posición de las mujeres negras y, por último, en las dos protagonistas de este ensayo. Tras la introducción de ambas obras, se analizará el poema de Neale Hurston "The Gilded Six Bits" y la canción de Holiday “Strange Fruit", teniendo en cuenta su contexto histórico, su uso lingüístico y, sobre todo, su simbolismo. Además, como mencioné anteriormente, buscaré las diferencias y similitudes entre ellas, para discutir su tono satírico oculto, con el fin de revelar la situación exacta que la comunidad negra, y más concretamente, las mujeres negras, tuvieron que soportar en esos momentos, no sólo en términos de “raza” y “género”, sino también en cuestiones que pueden pasar desapercibidos, tales como el uso de la “lengua”. Palabras clave: “The Gilded Six Bits”, “Strange Fruit”, raza, género, comunidad negra 3

4

1. Introduction The desire for white supremacy has been conspicuous since the beginning of time. It has been inextricably associated to each colonization process, and to a certain extent, it continues to be seen today, though to a lesser degree. Racism is, unfortunately, endemic in our current societies. However, as an introduction, I would like to highlight the situation that the black community was facing less than a hundred years ago, in the 1930s. Back at this period, the whole world collapsed after the crack of 1929, better known as The Great Depression. It was the longest and most traumatic crisis in the twentieth century. In most countries it began around 1929, until the late thirties and even early forties and it had devastating effects. The Great Depression originated in the United States, where the unemployment rate reached 25% of the population (García Castillo, n.d.). Due to this extreme economic situation, African-Americans were the first to be fired, which meant that they were exposed to three times more unemployment than whites. In addition, public subsidies were generally destined to whites, and even some charities excluded blacks from their social soup kitchens. The social exclusion that the black community went through provoked important movements among AfricanAmericans, who founded organizations such as “The National Negro Congress” (1936), or the “Southern Negro Youth Congress” (1937). Moreover, in the 1932 elections, the black community supported the Democratic candidate Franklin Roosevelt, who was eventually elected president. Roosevelt, then, established the well-known “New Deal”, an intervention plan to cope with the effects that the Great Depression had left on the poorest sectors of the US population, including the black community. After years of struggle, the success of the “New Deal” was undeniable, which is why many of its programs remain active today. Thanks to the Democratic Party, there were reforms specifically aimed at African-Americans, such as making public housing available to 5

black families or allowing black youth to continue their education. Additionally, as a relevant fact for this essay, there was a Federal writers project that supported the work of many black authors (Lynch, 2018). Nevertheless, even though African-Americans benefited greatly from Roosevelt's policies, discrimination was still common in the streets. Furthermore, it did not only focus on racial issues, but also distinguished between women and men. Within the black community, for many years, African-American women and men fought against the abolition of slavery. However, over time, gender differences also appeared within the black community itself, which turned black women into fighters in the face of two forms of exclusion, racism and male chauvinism. These women were exploited in homes and in labour camps, and were physically and morally subdued, without having access to any type of education (Wiegand, 2001). This gender difference between black men and women was extended because of the fifteenth amendment of the US constitution, which allowed black men to vote. Despite this, the Southern states refused to grant freedom to African-Americans, implementing totally racist policies such as the "Jim Crow Laws" (Mosner, 2018). Besides, violent racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan appeared, beating and murdering those black citizens who stood up for their rights. For these and other reasons, along the first decades of the twentieth century, part of the black population migrated to the big cities. As it is widely known, there were many that tried to face and challenge this inequality. However, throughout this essay, we will speak only of two women that were greatly relevant at the time, Zora Neale Hurston and Billie Holiday. Both were especially important because of the way in which they protested, using art. Moreover, they did not only complain about everything that their people were going through, but also against the mistreatment women like them, who were doubly marginalized because of their race and 6

sex, had to endure. So, two of their works will be analysed and compared, Hurston's "The Gilded Six Bits" and Holiday's "Strange Fruit", considering their differences and similarities, their historical context, their language and their symbolism, in order to understand the importance and their impact on the black community.

7

2. Analysis 2.1.Why is African-American literature important? To start with, literature is one of the strongest pillars of any culture. It transmits values, ideas and thoughts that can connect readers. When studying US literature, the first thing that draws our attention is its great diversity, having authors from very different cultural backgrounds. However, it is to be expected that the literature produced back in the colonization process is prevailingly dominated by a male, white voice of a considerable social status (VanSpanckeren, 2007). This does not mean that there were no other literary profiles, but they encountered way more difficulties to make themselves heard. After all this, during the Great Depression, there were numerous programs that were implemented to help the unemployed, although the best and most comprehensive was undoubtedly “The Work Process Administration” (Clayton, 1978). Within this project, it is relevant to highlight the so-called “Federal Writers Project”, which helped precisely these marginalized authors, and more specifically, black writers, who, as Lynda M. Hill rightly argued: “They were the only people able to contribute first-hand memories of the slave’s perspective of a history that would otherwise be lost” (1998, p.64). In short, literature does not only enrich us with knowledge, but also raises issues on which we should reflect. As presented above, race is one of the most important questions in the history of the United States, so the study of African American literature could be considered, in many cases, a more direct appreciation of a community that has been extremely marginalized over the years.

8

2.1.1. “The Gilded Six Bits” It seems appropriate to begin the analysis on Hurston’s short story, mentioning Alice Walker, since her work was essential to revive the interest in the author. In 1975, Walker published her essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”, in which she recounted her journey through Florida in search of Hurston's tomb, whose location was still unknown. She also included her conversations with the people she met along the way, some of whom still remembered Hurston. Walker published the essay in Ms. magazine, a feminist and liberal publication, and later included it in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983), under the title “Looking for Zora”. Additionally, after reading some biographies and auto-biographies, including Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), it is necessary to provide some background information about her life. Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891. She lived in both the 19th and 20th centuries, finally dying on 28 January 1960. She is generally known for being a great anthropologist and writer, as well as an icon of the Harlem Renaissance, commonly acknowledged as the rebirth of black art in the African American community of Harlem and New York back in the 1920s. She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first town entirely populated by African Americans in the United States, which greatly influenced her writing. Her parents were humble yet important people. Her father became the mayor of Eatonville and her mother was a teacher. Hurston's mother died when she was little, her father remarried and sent her to a private school in Jacksonville. Despite this, her education was not very prominent, but she was still passionate about reading. She worked for years as a waitress and maid. At one point in her life, however, she enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C. to pursue a degree in literature, although she eventually

9

had to quit it, because she could not afford it. She was also granted a scholarship to study anthropology at Barnard College, graduating in 1928. Throughout her life in Harlem, her early works drew the attention of those with whom she would later found the Harlem Renaissance. Perhaps, this is just the part of Hurston's life that is more frequently studied. Nevertheless, despite being one of the most important black writers in North America mainly after her death, her image was not that acclaimed while she was alive, especially because of her contradictory political ideology. This political thought, which is thoroughly explained in her autobiography, enables her to explain her love and admiration for whites, while being careful when talking about the socio-political problems affecting the black community: “Racial Solidarity is a fiction and always will be” (Hurston, 1942, p.329). Additionally, Langston Hughes, one of the landmarks of the Harlem Renaissance, in his autobiography, The Big Sea (1940), shows Hurston as an ignorant public figure who instead of living acted: Of this “niggerati,” Zora Neale Hurston was certainly the most amusing. Only to reach a wider audience, need she ever write books — because she is a perfect book of entertainment in herself. In her youth she was always getting scholarships and things from wealthy people, some of whom simply paid her just to sit around and represent the Negro race for them, she did it in such a racy fashion. She was full of side-splitting anecdotes, humorous tales, and tragicomic stories, remembered out of her life in the south as a daughter of a travelling minister of God. She could make you laugh one minute and cry the next. To many of her white friends, no doubt, she was a perfect “darkie,” in the nice meaning they give the term — that is a naive, childlike, sweetly humorous, and highly colored Negro. (1940, p.23839) Therefore, if it had been up to Hughes, Hurston's work would have remained buried next to her in her tomb, lost from the hand of God. Indeed, it is true that, at first glance,

10

Hurston's autobiography seems to justify such criticisms. Albeit, that does not seem to be her view about the black community in many of her works. In this case, as the title of this section indicates, we will speak of one of her short stories, “The Gilded Six Bits”. Apparently, it begins depicting traditional US values such as hard work, tough man and loyal woman. However, the setting does not seem to be that traditional, since the story occurs in a both black village and house, and that was not considered normal, as almost no story talked about the black community back at those days: “It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement” (Hurston, 1933, p. 1). Nevertheless, despite the prejudices about blacks, both on the part of whites and the black community itself, Hurston sets the story in a place free of hardship: But there was something happy about the place. The front yard was parted by a sidewalk from gate to door-step, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground in a slant. A mess of honey flowers planted without a plan but booming cheerily from their helter-skelter places. The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white. (Hurston, 1933, p.1) In this way she seeks to normalize the lives of Black people, trying to eliminate prejudices about what should or should not be expected or assumed. After presenting this setting, Hurston describes, again, an apparently ideal couple in an ideal environment, in which the protagonist, Joe, is madly in love with his wife, Missie May, and by the way they both react when he returns home, it can be implied that he works for and to make her happy: She grabbed the clean meal sack at hand and dried herself hurriedly and began to dress. But before she could tie her slippers, there came the ring of singing metal on wood. Nine times. Missie May grinned with delight. She had no seen the big tall man come stealing in the gate and creep up the walk grinning happily at the joyful mischief he was about to commit. But she knew it was her husband

11

throwing silver dollars in the front door for her to pick up and pile beside her plate at dinner. It was this way every Saturday afternoon. (Hurston, 1933, p.1). This beginning may seem very romantic to some. However, as the story progresses, it can be seen how the author repeatedly emphasizes gender inequalities between men and women within the black community. In this fragment, it is the action of collecting coins from the ground that implies inequality for numerous reasons. The first and perhaps most important one is that he is the one who brings the money home, which directly implies an economic domination of men over women. Secondly, she collects the coins from the ground, an action that denigrates the woman, as if she were working for him. Finally, it is necessary to emphasize that both take this situation as a game, which in reality allows to understand how these behaviours never come to be interpreted as inequality. Furthermore, this inequality continues in the following lines: “Whew! Dat play-fight done got me all warmed-up.” Joe exclaimed. “Got me some water in the kittle?” “Yo’ water is on the fire and yo’ clean things is cross the bed. Hurry up and wash yo’self and git changed so we kin eat. Ah’m hungry.” As Missie said this, she bore the steaming kettle into the bedroom. “You ain’t hungry, sugar.” Joe contradicted her. “Youse jes’ a little empty. Ah’m the one whut’s hungry. Ah could eat up camp meetin’, back off’ssociation, and drink Jurdan dry. Have it on the table when Ah git out de tub.” (Hurston, 1933, p.2) Missie seems to have anticipated all of her husband's needs and has everything ready to eat as soon as possible. However, the man of the house imposes his will, pointing out that he wants everything ready by the time he finishes his bath. Apparently, Missie slows his feet telling him to mind his own business. However, it is in her intervention that she accepts her place as “real wife”: “Don't you mess wid mah business, man. You git in yo'

12

clothes. Ah'm a real wife, not no dress and breath. Ah might not look lak one, but if you burn me, you won't git a thing but wife ashes” (Hurston, 1933, p.2). It could be said that to be a “real wife”, you had to meet certain requirements, among them please your husband, as he is the breadwinner. In a way, we could interpret this as the presence of the church in education, since these very conservative thoughts were mostly based on religion. In this situation, being a “real wife” probably meant commitment to your marriage by doing your best for your husband and family. According to the Bible: “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life” (Proverbs 31:10-12 - NIV Bible, 2019). However, it was not only religious education that influenced the society of the time, but also advertising.

("10 Sexist Vintage Ads That Disrespected and Humiliated Womanhood", 2016)

13

In the 1930s, advertisements like this appeared in newspapers and magazines. In this case, it was the announcement of a detergent, thanks to which, both your tights and your marriage will work very well. On the other hand, there were also those women who did not share the same opinion about marriage or life. These were the women who fought for their rights, especially in the workplace. As mentioned in the introduction, the Great Depression left the United States in an unprecedented state of unemployment. As the country began to rise, women were eager to work to support their families, as many of the men prepared for the next war. Then another commercial appeared:

(Gourley, 2008)

But, Who's Rosie and who's Mrs. America? As author Catherine Gourley explains on the back cover of her book Rosie and Mrs. America: Perceptions of Women in the 1930s and 1940s, they were not real people, they were just the different images of women at that time (Gourley, 2008, Page???). Therefore, this image prompted women to ask themselves

14

who they wanted to be. However, the fact that they might occupy men’s positions angered many and that is why they strove to contaminate the minds of those pioneering feminists with terms like "real wife". In general terms, a real wife has the task of being discreet and faithful and the duty to take care of her home, placing her husband's physical and emotional needs above hers. In this way, Hurston depicts the reality of women at that time, regardless of their skin color, showing that, after all, they all pursued the same thing to be a “real wife”. As the story goes on, Joe proves to have missed Missie very much by proposing to do something together: “We goin’ down de road a ...