African American Literature Beyond Race

An Alternative Reader

Gene Andrew Jarrett

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780814743423
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Collections littéraires nord-américaines

It is widely accepted that the canon of African American literature has racial realism at its core: African American protagonists, social settings, cultural symbols, and racial-political discourse. As a result, writings that are not preoccupied with race have long been invisible—unpublished, out of print, absent from libraries, rarely discussed among scholars, and omitted from anthologies.

However, some of our most celebrated African American authors—from Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright to James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—have resisted this canonical rule, even at the cost of critical dismissal and commercial failure. African American Literature Beyond Race revives this remarkable literary corpus, presenting sixteen short stories, novelettes, and excerpts of novels-from the postbellum nineteenth century to the late twentieth century-that demonstrate this act of literary defiance. Each selection is paired with an original introduction by one of today's leading scholars of African American literature, including Hazel V. Carby, Gerald Early, Mae G. Henderson, George Hutchinson, Carla Peterson, Amritjit Singh, and Werner Sollors.

By casting African Americans in minor roles and marking the protagonists as racially white, neutral, or ambiguous, these works of fiction explore the thematic complexities of human identity, relations, and culture. At the same time, they force us to confront the basic question, “What is African American literature?”

Stories by: James Baldwin, Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Chester B. Himes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Ann Petry, Wallace Thurman, Jean Toomer, Frank J. Webb, Richard Wright, and Frank Yerby.

Critical Introductions by: Hazel V. Carby, John Charles, Gerald Early, Hazel Arnett Ervin, Matthew Guterl, Mae G. Henderson, George B. Hutchinson, Gene Jarrett, Carla L. Peterson, Amritjit Singh, Werner Sollors, and Jeffrey Allen Tucker.

Part I

Postbellum Period, 1865–1900

Chapter 1

Frank J. Webb (1828–1894)

Frank Johnson Webb is best known as the Philadelphian of color who published The Garies and Their Friends with George Routledge & Co. in London in 1857, one of only four African American novels published before the Civil War, and easily the best of the four. Dedicated to Lady Noel Byron, and armed with prefaces by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Lord Brougham, The Garies and Their Friends was well received in England and sold two thousand copies of the regular edition as well as twelve thousand copies in Routledge’s “cheap series.” It was reviewed in the Sunday Times, the Athenæum, and the National Review. In the United States, however, no extended contemporary comments on the novel have been found. Written in the tradition of the urban mystery fiction in the wake of Eugene Sue’s Les mystères de Paris (1843), Webb’s novel offers a vivid and grimly prophetic exposé of racism, prejudice, segregation, mob violence, and political corruption in the Northern City of Brotherly Love, a city Webb knew only too well.

The Garies and Their Friends is also a domestic tale of interrelated families some of whose members cross the all-important “color line”; a rare, and possibly the first, representation of a successful free black businessman as one of the central characters; the first African American novel about the theme of racial “passing”; and possibly also the first American novel about a legally married interracial couple. It is thus surprising that Webb has remained absent from most anthologies of African American literature.

Frank J. Webb was born in Philadelphia on March 21, 1828, the son of a Virginian father and a Pennsylvanian mother. He may have worked in a clothing store and in the printing trade, and he participated in the activities of the Banneker Institute, a colored debating society. In 1845 he married Mary E., whose full maiden name is unknown but may have been Espartero. Webb later wrote that his wife had been born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the daughter of a runaway African slave woman from Virginia and “a Spanish gentleman of wealth” whose efforts to purchase the freedom of Mary’s mother had been unsuccessful but who continued, until Mary was six or seven, to support her and her mother lavishly. Both Frank and Mary were very well educated, were seventeen years old when they married, and were classified as Mulattoes in the 1850 Census.

In 1855, after Webb’s business failed, Mary, who had studied oratory and had become an excellent reader of poetry and drama, began to give public reading tours in cities along the East Coast from Philadelphia to Boston and Salem, attracting the attention of listeners like Charlotte Forten, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cooper Nell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Stowe wrote “The Christian Slave,” an adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), expressly for Mary’s readings. Mary’s further repertoire included scenes from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, excerpts from Monk Lewis, and most especially Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” which, as Webb reported, Mary “read whilst arrayed in the picturesque costume of the North American Indians, which adds greatly to the effect.”

In the fall of 1855 the Webbs were planning to go to Brazil, but their plans were thwarted when the captain of the bark Sam Slick refused to give them passage from Philadelphia to Rio de Janeiro on account of Frank Webb’s skin color. “I allow no man whose complexion is darker than my own to take passage with me,” the captain was reported saying in Frederick Douglass’ Paper. In June 1856, the Webbs traveled to England on the Enoch Pratt shipping line, carrying with them letters of introduction by Stowe and Longfellow. In Britain, Mary continued her readings to great success. One of her performances at the Duchess of Sutherland’s was featured in an article in the Illustrated London News, while Frank wrote his novel.

Mary’s pulmonary ailment necessitated the couple’s relocation. In 1858, after spending some winter months in southern France, the Webbs moved to Kingston, Jamaica, where the Duke of Argyle had offered Webb a position in the post office. Mary continued her public performances in Kingston and Spanishtown, but her health soon took a turn for the worse, and she died of consumption on June 17, 1859.

Frank remained at the post office in Kingston, and in December 1864 he married the Jamaican Mary Rosabell Rodgers. They were to have four Jamaican-born children between 1865 and 1869 and two more American-born children later, for Webb went back to the United States in 1869, took courses at Howard University Law School, and worked as a part-time clerk for the Freedmen’s Bureau. He also returned to his writing career and in 1870 published two novellas, two poems, and some noteworthy political commentary in the African American weekly The New Era under the editorship of J. Stella Martin.

There Webb takes a firm stand against racial discrimination and advocates equal rights laws. In one article Webb asks whether “we, the colored men” shall not “make an effort to further demonstrate, in some substantial manner, our ability to contribute to the material prosperity of this great Republic, of which we form no inconsiderable part?” In another article on a bill for school integration in which Webb raises the question whether at least in Washington, D.C., “the white and colored children cannot breathe the air of the same school room, romp in the same play ground, compete in the same classes, and be flogged by the same teacher, without the safety of the country being imperilled thereby.” He gives the prophetic answer: “The day will come when people will smile at the fact that this question could have been discussed with so much acrimony of spirit.”

Webb stopped contributing to the New Era just before Frederick Douglass took over the editorship and renamed the paper The New National Era. Webb also mentioned in a hopeful letter of 1870 to the writer Mary Wager Fisher that he had sent his second novel, a five-hundred-page manuscript entitled “Paul Sumner,” to Samuel Stillman Conant at Harper’s Weekly and that he deemed it superior to his first novel. Yet it remained unpublished, the manuscript has not been found, and there seems to be no paper trail of it in the Harper archives.

Around 1870 Webb relocated to Galveston, Texas, where, once again, he worked for the post office; he was also active in Republican Party politics. In 1881 he became principal and teacher at the Barnes Institute School, a public school for colored children. In addition, he was a licensed lay reader at St. Augustine’s Protestant Episcopal Church, while his wife lectured and wrote papers in support of racial uplift. Frank Webb died in Galveston on May 7, 1894. The obituary in the Galveston Daily News mourned him as an “esteemed resident of this city,” and he was buried at Lake View Cemetery.

Among Webb’s New Era writings was “Two Wolves and a Lamb” which, taken from the Toby Press edition of Frank Webb: Fiction, Poetry, and Essays (2004), appears here for the first time in an anthology.¹ It is a Gothic tale of spiritualism and domination, possession and deception, set among expatriates in Paris and southern France that makes problematic the easy distinction between good and evil, between sanity and madness, and between a sense of justice as pure retribution and the most horrifying acts of Satanic sadism. Gus, whose love of food connects this tale with The Garies and Their Friends, introduces Philip Braham, the narrator, to Laura Burrows (the “lamb”), to Marie Goffe and her sister, to Laura’s mischievous cousins (the “wolves”), as well as to Laura’s fiancé Mr. Walton. The drama that unfolds with surprising turns culminates in an almost surrealistic scene of absolute horror and death. The perhaps misleading animal nicknames of the young women (lamb, wolves) prepare the reader for the representation of real animals (a snake, a horse), though not for the horror-film-worthy ending in which Webb seems to outdo Edgar Allan Poe. Rosemary Crockett, one of the very few critics to have commented on “Two Wolves and a Lamb,” found that the tale “provides mystical experiences, deserted islands, castle ruins, snakes, drugged wine, a love triangle, insanity, and the death of three lovers.”²

The scenes around Cannes explicitly connect Webb’s tale with the French writer of color Alexandre Dumas, père, whose last volume of the Three Musketeers trilogy was set there. In fact, the setting of the concluding part of Webb’s novella was the very fort on the Isle Ste.-Marguerite where the “Man in the Iron Mask” had been imprisoned for over a decade. The representation of a truly evil character that concerned Webb in his depiction of the racist upstart George Stevens in The Garies and Their Friends who shrinks back from no crime in order to accomplish his sinister goals has been deepened and complicated in “Two Wolves and a Lamb.” Here, as in most of his works, Webb also clearly enjoyed literary allusions, culinary details, lavishly interspersed French phrases, a precise sense of topography, and the careful depiction of minor characters, in this case, for example, the Chevalier D’Oyen and Dr. Saddler, two figures who also make their appearance in Webb’s class-crossing love story, “Marvin Hayle.”

While readers will find certain stylistic and thematic parallels between the New Era novellas and The Garies and Their Friends, they will also notice the absence of racially marked characters in Webb’s literary works of 1870. Rather than interpret this thematic choice as an “escape” from racism (Webb’s political articles from the same period tell us otherwise), one probably should see in it a demonstration that a black writer “can claim these subjects,” as Eric Gardner has rightly suggested.³ Rosemary Crockett also noted that it would be odd to think that Webb was trying to reach a larger white audience “by peopling his stories with white characters,” when he published those very tales in the New Era, “a national newspaper, ‘edited by Colored Men’ and focusing on the concerns of the colored community.”

After New Orleans-born f.m.c. (“free man of color”) Victor Séjour’s success as a French dramatist in the mid-nineteenth century, Frank J. Webb may have been the first African American writer to write in this mode in the English language. It is also possible that Webb’s pioneering examples of what would be called “raceless fiction” in the 1950s and what Gene Andrew Jarrett has now brought together under the rubric of “anomalous” African American literature, permitted Webb to write about personal matters in a way that would not be obvious because of the apparent disguise. What Marvin Hayle says in that novella about another writer might also apply to Webb himself: “under the shield of other names”—and one could add, a Euro-American cast of characters—“he has told the story of his own life.” Of course, too little is known about Frank Webb’s life to make this more than mere speculation. In any event, “Two Wolves and a Lamb” may be considered the precursor of a long tradition in African American fiction reprinted in this anthology.

Werner Sollors, Harvard University

TWO WOLVES AND A LAMB: AN ORIGINAL TALE

“Gus, who were those three young ladies to whom you bowed so graciously
as we drove through the Bois de Boulogne this evening?”

Gus deigned me no reply, but eyed lovingly a morsel of cotelet he held
exalted upon the point of his fork, as though he would first thoroughly
enjoy the sense of sight ere that of taste was gratified.

“I say, do you hear me, Gus?” I repeated, impatiently.

Gus, who continued to eye the mutton, remarked vaguely:

“Pon honor, ’tis too bad: this cotelet is decidedly overdone—too brown entirely; it is a burning shame that in an establishment like this a cook should be employed capable of such an atrocity. No, my cook—”

“Hang your cook!” I interrupted, impatiently; “when you are at dinner it seems impossible to get from you a word or idea not associated with the food you are consuming. Did you hear my question?”

“Yes, I did hear you grumbling something about carriage—young ladies—Bois de Boulogne. Pass that claret, please. Tut! This is too bad! The wine is as warm as Mississippi water in July, and quite as turbid, too. I declare, that vile garçon has been giving it a shake.”

At this juncture a look of most ineffable disgust must have overspread my face, for Gus smiled, and resumed:

“Oh, pardon me. You made some inquiry about those girls we met during our drive. Ah, yes, I remember. At present, however, I am much too hungry to be communicative; better wait until we have finished dinner. Here comes the omelette soufflée; there is no time for chat now; an omelette, you know, must be eaten hot. Let us get through it at once like men. There is nothing so calculated to produce serenity of mind as a steady performance of one’s duties; and I wish to have nothing to reproach myself with on that score. Besides, I will confide to you in the strictest confidence that I am lion-like in my nature—magnanimous and all that sort of thing—yet with a decided prejudice against being disturbed at my meals. I prefer doing but one thing at a time, especially when that thing is dining. ‘Yes,’ as Johnson said, ‘I like to dine.’”

Gus was incorrigible. I deemed it prudent for the present to let him alone. It seemed almost unkind to disturb him from what was evidently so near his heart; so I sat quietly whilst he finished his omelette, trifled with a portion of the Charlotte Russe, devoured a large Marie Louise pear, and not until the garçon brought in the coffee and we had lighted our cigars did I again venture the question with which I have commenced my story.

We were quite alone in one of the petits salons at Verys, where, after a long drive, we had betaken ourselves for dinner. The smoke from our fragrant panetellas was floating dreamily and cloudlike over our heads, when Gus, arousing himself with an effort, said:

“So you are interested in that singular trio whom the Parisians, with their fondness for soubriquets, have named ‘the Wolves and the Lamb.’ They are countrymen of mine, who have accompanied their venerable father to Paris to dissipate the fortune he has been lucky enough to accumulate.”

“Are they sisters?” I inquired.

“The tall girls are twins; the other is their cousin. She is as different from them as it is possible for a woman to be. The twins have ordinary cultivation and acquirements—are excessively brusque in manner and eccentric in disposition. Their cousin is a girl of angelic sweetness of temper; besides she is one of the most accomplished ladies I have ever met. The sole occupation of the Wolves seems to be the invention of torments to inflict upon the Lamb, who endures them with a patience worthy of the name. The present pet weakness of the Wolves is a disgusting penchant for snakes. But, by the way, should you like to know them?”

“Of course, I should; your description has aroused my curiosity. One so fascinating, the others so singular. Let me know them by all means; they will be anything but everyday acquaintances.”

“Well, then, so be it”, rejoined Gus. “I am pretty certain we shall find them at home this evening. There is no better time than the present—only bear in mind, my good fellow, you are not to fall in love with the Lamb; that amiable creature is already appropriated.”

As he concluded he rose lazily and drew on his paletot. The dinner paid for and the accustomed douceur given to the garçon, we departed. Arm in arm we sauntered slowly to the Hotel Wagram, and soon were in our rooms dressing for our visit to the Goffes.

“Don’t be surprised,” said Gus as we were walking along the Boulevard on our way thither, “at any eccentricity, however gross, the Wolves may be disposed to commit; nor visit your displeasure on my unfortunate head in case they should snub you. Many a man as good as yourself, my dear fellow, has met with shocking treatment at their fair hands. One thing you will have to console you. No matter how much the Wolves may snap and snarl, you will be amply recompensed for any injuries they may inflict in the winning kindness and gentleness of the Lamb.”

We found them occupying a splendid suite of apartments in the rue de—. When I say splendid, I mean that sort of gorgeousness made up of gilding and French upholstery. The furniture was as costly as money could procure, but each article of it seemed to have been chosen more for its individual value, than with reference to the rest. It had been, seemingly, gathered together without any idea of harmony, or even contrast.

I entered leaning on the arm of my friend. Being somewhat nearsighted, I found myself vis-à-vis to the twins ere I was aware of it.

Gus introduced me in his blandest manner, producing, however, no other result than a cold nod from the eldest of the twins and an exclamation from the sister of—.

“Mr. William, I beg you will not introduce me to any more men. I know four now, and I hate them.”

My friend’s warning had led me to expect that I might not be most graciously received; yet I was quite appalled at this rough, insulting reception. I began to stammer something about venturing to intrude, anxiety to be introduced, and so forth, when I was cut short in my timid utterances by the twin who had honored me with a nod remarking:

“You can sit down, sir, now that you are here; and do pray dispose of your hat. People who twirl their...