Wright and Johnson's slave narratives and black autobiography

Slave Narrative and Black Autobiography - Richard Wright's "Black Boy" and James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography

The slave narrative maintains a unique station in modern literature. Unlike any other body of literature, it provides us with a first-hand account of institutional racially-motivated human bondage in an ostensibly democratic society. As a reflection on the author, these narratives were the first expression of humanity by a group of people in a society where antediluvian pseudo-science had deemed them to be mere animals. Taken together, the narratives of former black slaves in the Antebellum South provide us with one of the largest bodies of literature written by former slaves in history.

Although these narratives remain but a perspective of slavery, it is important to note that their reception upon publication was divided and, prior to emancipation, extremely partisan. Without exception, former slaves had their accuracy and their intelligence called into question by a southern establishment that had vested social and economic interests in preserving slavery. On the other hand, they enjoyed among the firebrand press of the abolitionist movement a revered status as sentient casualties of an illiberal, anti-humanitarian system of exploitation. These narratives not only sold to polemically inclined readers in the Northeast but also in Europe, which had abandoned slavery in its colonies in 1830. As these stories often revolved around an escape, they served to infuriate the slave masters of Southern states even more.

These works, although they provide us a keen insight into the nature of the period, all but disappeared following emancipation and the end of the Civil War. As black liberty was thought to be a vindicated cause, the accounts of former slaves lost their general appeal and were party only to a cultural heritage attended to only by other freed black slaves. Many black writers of both fiction and non-fiction in the 20th century came to see these narratives as stylistically dated and sought to distance themselves from the narratives. However, this divorce was incomplete and many later works resonated with a uniquely African-American perspective that was characteristic of styles that were first established in the narratives. This style was in turn derived either from the white establishment of the day or from the earlier oral communication styles of tribal Africa. These styles, reflected in the myriad micro-dialects of blacks that still live on in remote corners of the American southeast, reflect many aspects of African tribal life, from the way that blacks convey meaning through music to the way that they see the world. It is to this tribal culture that we must first turn in order to discover the nature of black literature.

African Culture and its Influence on the Mind of the American Slave.

The culture of the regions of west Africa from where slaves were first gathered and traded to the Europeans was marked by the communication employed by the various tribes of the area. Because Africans lacked a written language, their approach to storytelling was both marked by the universality of the oral tradition and dominant animist cultures. Early slave narratives, often oral presentations dictated to European-Americans, embody the traditional metaphors used by tribes in Western Africa such as the Yoruba tribe described in "The Signifying Monkey" by Henry Louis Gates. The stories told in this tradition came to reflect the enslavement of the black people, as can be noted in the nature of creation stories that note the cultural differences between blacks and whites. However, written language registered in the consciousness of enslaved Africans soon after they arrived. Gates presents us with an example of this:

Olorun was the eldest of the deities, and the first child of the King of the Air (Oba Orufi). Some forty years afterward the King of the Air had a second son, Ela, who was the father of the diviners. In the morning all the Whitemen used to come to Ela to learn how to read and write, and in the evening his African children, the babalawo, gathered around him to memorize the Ifa verses and learn divination. Ifa taught them to write on their divining trays, which the Muslims copied as their wooden writing boards (wala), and the Christians copied as the slates used by school children and as books. (emphasis added) Olorun was the eldest of the deities, and the first child of the King of the Air (Oba Orufi). Some forty years afterward the King of the Air had a second son, Ela, who was the father of the diviners. In the morning all the Whitemen used to come to Ela to learn how to read and write, and in the evening his African children, the babalawo, gathered around him to memorize the Ifa verses and learn divination. Ifa taught them to write on their divining trays, which the Muslims copied as their wooden writing boards (wala), and the Christians copied as the slates used by school children and as books. (Gates, 13)

These creation myths reflect the effect on the self-identification of blacks of their enslavement by whites, whose literate culture intrigued the blacks who had gained stature in a tribe through the mastery of oral histories. Many of the memes cited by Saussure as being common to tribal cultures throughout the world are common in black literature. For instance, the image of the trickster-deity (Esu) as one that undermines main characters in stories for the sake of teaching them valuable lessons is a poignant feature in the African-American oral tradition, as it is in Navajo literature where it is represented by the Coyote.

On the other hand, traditional semiotic constraints found in traditional American narratives were avoided altogether in the richly allegorical Animist oral tradition of the earlier African-Americans. For instance, the static nature of the first voice found in American folklore is avoided in the tribal setting, where the speaker often takes on the tone and character of several different people or animals who come to signify a wide array of conceptual wisdom. The semiotic aspects of the spoken language developed in the 1960's by French structuralists, linguists, and semmioticians (signifier, signification, signified) are said by Gates to be nearly duplicated in the verbiage of the slave. Gates notes that signifying "here meaning, in the unwritten dictionary of American Negro usage, "rhetorical understatements." Gates goes on to note the modern connotations of words that are used as English-language alternatives to other words and believes these terms, considered by most to be mere slang, to be richly dressed in semiotic differentiation from what we would consider formal English. Gates excoriates what he considers English-language 'authorities,' claiming that:

By an act of will, some historically nameless community of remarkably self-conscious speakers of English defined their ontological status as one of profound difference vis-a-vis the rest of society. What's more, they undertook this act of self-definition, implicit in a (re)naming ritual, within the process of signification that the English language had inscribed for itself. Contrary to an assertion that Saussure makes in his Course, "the masses" did indeed "have [a] voice in the matter" and replaced the sign "chosen by language." (Gates, 91)

The linguistic stylings of the early black writers and narratives reflected a vernacular interpretation of the English language. This style was parodied by whites who, among other reasons, wished to detract from the merit of black writers by pointing out grammatical inaccuracies, which they thought to be unintentional and the result of feeblemindedness. Blacks responded by describing the nature of and reason for the use of an alternate method of speaking. It must be remembered that such paraodies were not the exclusive dominion of those wishing to insult the freed blacks. Mark Twain used many such dialects for all of his characters, both black and white, to give the reader a glance at the nature of society along the Mississippi river. In 1846, one Black became prominent because of his attempt to describe this uniquely African manner of speaking.

Me tend to dress my scorce to you dis nite on de all imported subject of Language, an de warious tongues ob differn nations and *****rs, libbin and dead, known and unknown: an in so doing me shant stan shilly shally bout preface to de subject, but run bang at him at once like mad bull at "dam haystack."

Gates, 92)

It is interesting to note that Black authors also parodied the English/American style and its grammatical usage. The rigid structure of white American speech continued to be seen as foreign to black slaves even after other aspects of black culture, such as animist religions, began to disappear and be replaced by the modes of religious worship that we have come to think of as archetypically African-American. Although the black firebrand preacher common to the early 20th century and later resembled his white Pentecostal counterpart, it is important to note that such preachers employed much of the rhetorical style we think of as being typical of tribal leaders in Africa. Before segregation was institutionalized in the south, it must be noted that a nascent black intellectual community came to be highly regarded by the North, especially in hotbeds of abolitionism such as Springfield, Massachusetts. Several blacks were even admitted to the Military Academy.

The white intellectual community came to see black literature as somewhat formulaic. The linguist Geneva Smitherman in Talkin and Testifyin. For Smitherman, Signifyin (g) is a black "mode of discourse" that is a synonym of "dropping lugs; joanin; capping; [and] sounding." She believed the slave narrative to be characterized by eight common features:

indirection, circumlocution metaphorical-imagistic (but images rooted in the everyday, real world) humorous, ironic rhythmic fluency and sound teachy but not preachy directed at person or persons usually present in the situational context punning, play on words introduction of the semantically or logically unexpected. (Gates, 94)

It is interesting to note that many of these characteristics are to be found in the Rhythm and Blues genre and that the indirect cadence of the black narrative-writer is to be found in jazz music. R&B is noted for its lyrical styling, its fluency, its puns and metaphors, and the introduction of new gimmicks. Gates notes that there are elements of this in Jazz as well: Another kind of formal parody suggests a given structure precisely by failing to coincide with it-that is, suggests it by dissemblance. Repetition of a form and then inversion of the same through a process of variation is central to jazz. One of the gimmicks that slave narratives (which often take the form of a detective story) use often is a ritual trade-off of expressions that play off one another. These will often repeat a word again and again and have some sort of sexual entendre.

III. Early Literature of the Former Slaves.

The existence of black literature was a threat to the establishment. As Gates puts it, At least since 1600, Europeans had wondered aloud whether or not the African "species of men," as they most commonly put it, could ever create formal literature, could ever master the arts and sciences. If they could, then, the argument ran, the African variety of humanity and the European variety were fundamentally related. If not, then it seemed clear that the African was destined by nature to be a slave. (Gardner, 129) Although the written word was a challenge to most black writers, who were kept from learning how to read by their masters in even the most favorable of circumstances, blacks were never again to find the kind of motivation involved in establishing a literary presence in order to gain there freedom.

Black slave narratives, if written and not dictated, were put to paper by thoughtful former slaves whose intent was to intersperse their own personal experiences with slavery with outright moral castigation. Whereas white literature took many forms and related to every aspect of American live enjoyed by literate people, black literature was primarily developed for a white market. As the ability of blacks to write literature remained a matter of question, this also made every work a political act.

The first slave narrative to be printed was Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man, published in 1760. However, the first widely available example of this genre was the biography of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, published in 1774. It is not known whether or not Gronniosaw wrote the narrative himself or dictated it, but it was very popular both in the United States and in the United Kingdom and was re-printed seven times by 1811. In his work, Gronniosaw clames to be a black Prince. It was not uncommon for blacks to go to Europe following their liberation from slavery; they were seen as exotic and were romanticized in the works of Rousseau and others as noble savages. According to Gates, He states that he was born "in the city of Bournou," which is the "chief city" of the Kingdom of Zaara...Gronniosaw, by representing himself as a prince, implicitly tied his narrative to the literary tradition of the "Noble Savage" and to its subgenre, the "Noble Negro."(Gardner, pg. 133)

By the late 18th century, Europe lacked the institutional slavery commonly found in the United States, but slavery persisted in the colonial dominions of countries such as France and Great Britain until the early 19th century, when they were eliminated. As such, slavery remained a focus of enlightenment philosophers both in continental Europe and in Great Britain, who opposed it and yet saw its abolition as an unrealistic objective that would result in further colonial secession. From a contemporary perspective, the popularity of Gronniosaw's story can be seen as one of Levi-Strauss's memes or as one of the common mythological themes of Joseph Campbell: that of a nobleman that has fallen, through no fault of his own, from a position of high station and who through perseverance and actions that are grounded in 'nobleness' is able to overcome adversity and regain his station. It is through the facility of this perspective that we are able to se how an enlightenment-inspired European readership could at once sympathize with one subjugated to the illiberal institution of slavery and at the same time accept the magnification of this transgression by the fact that the protagonist "deserves better" in accordance with the illiberal institution of nobility. This thematic style was unique to the author; in the case of Fredrick Douglass and others the author vindicates his humanity through sheer force of reason rather than by self-identifying as members of a noble elite. This is not to say, however, that Gronniosaw was not a man of sufficient intellectual merit or that he lacked enlightenment or liberal sympathies. By 60, he had mastered both Dutch and English and spoke passable French. He became something an expert on the tenants of the Calvinist faith, which he discussed at length with a number of Dutch Reformed theologians. (Gardner, pg. 134)

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano or John Stewart was a man from Ghana taken captive who later, at the age of 30 in 1787, was freed by his master in England and wrote a 147-page piece excoriating the institution of slavery. In this work, Thoughts and Sentiments, Cugoano reviews other written literature about slavery and presents his case for abolition. He reasons his intent to write the book by saying:

After coming to England, and seeing others write and read, I had a strong desire to learn, and getting what assistance I could, I applied myself to learn reading and writing, which soon became my recreation, pleasure, and delight; and when my master perceived that I could write some, he sent me to a proper school for that purpose to learn. Since, I have endeavoured to improve my mind in reading, and have sought to gel all the intelligence I could, in my situation in life, towards the state of my brethen and countrymen in complexion, and of the miserable situation of those who are barbarously sold into captivity, and unlawfully held in slavery. (Gardner, pg. 147)

Despite his hatred of slavery, he credits it with his introduction to Christianity, which reflects his belief in monotheism that was common to the tribes of the coast (incidentally, western African countries are to this day predominantly Christian in coastal areas with Islam and animist religions predominating further inland.) The association of Christianity with white Europeans was common to the early slave narrators, who were often born free in Africa as was the case with Cugoano and Gronniosaw. Cugoano was a careful student of the treatment of indigenous populations at the hands of European colonial expansionists and dogmatic missionaries. One incident that he criticizes is that where Pizarro first encounters Atahualpa, emperor of the Incas. Atahualpa was said to have taken the Bible from the explorers and attempt to listen to it with hopes of it saying something to his ear, something that Gronniosaw also tried to do when he first encountered the Bible. Apparently, the Bible did not fulfill its assumed function of whispering in the emperor's ear, whereupon he threw it on the ground and provoked the Spaniards to start slaughtering the Incas. In his criticism of Spanish treatment of the native populations of the Americas, Cugoano's reasoning resembled that of Montaigne, who sought to apologize for the natives' lack of a functional understanding of European customs and morality.

A contemporary and close friend of Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, published a book two years after Cugoana did: The Interesting Nature of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. This work exemplified the literary structure of the new genre and became a template for future novels written by former slaves, including the works of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs. According to Gardner,

From his subtitle, "Written by Himself" and a signed engraving of the black author holding an open text (the Bible) in his lap, to more subtle rhetorical strategies such as the overlapping of the slave's arduous journey to freedom and his simultaneous journey from orality to literacy, Equiano's strategies of self-presentation and rhetorical representation heavily informed, if not determined, the shape of black narrative before 1865." (Gardner, pg. 151)

In many ways, Equiano's two-volume work is a bridge between 18th century British slave narratives and 19th century American ones. As was said, many of the literary devises used by Equiano were later employed by American slave authors. These included two rhetorical strategies: "the trope of chiasmus, and the use of two distinct voices to distinguish, through rhetorical strategies, the simple wonder with which the young Equiano approached the New World of his captors and a more eloquently articulated voice that he employs to describe the author's narrative present."

His narrative, which was published in eight editions between its initial publication and 1837, differs from its literary heirs in that the author reveals his transition from free man in Africa, to slave, to free man and in that the evolution of the author's perspective of white European society is markedly different from that of the American authors in that he sees the whites first as "spirits" and later merely as "superior men." Equiano notably says of his captors, "I was astonished at the wisdom of the white people in all things I saw." (Gardner, pg. 155) This can be sharply contrasted with Douglass's perspective of whites as being that of well-intentioned men and women who are corrupted by the institution of slavery. Equiano was an Igbo of Nigeria; this is the Nigerian ethnic group which would later come to dominate politics due to its early exposure to Europeans, trade, and commerce. Equiano, like his aforementioned contemporaries, sought to become a respected man of letters. His adventures included service under General Wolfe in the seven years war, several voyages to the arctic with a scientific expedition, a grand tour of the Mediterranean, and six months with an Indian tribe in Central America.

IV. 19th Century American Slave Narratives before 1865.

Perhaps the best known of all slave narrators is Frederick Douglass, who is so widely known that many believe him to be the only exemplar of the genre. At the age of twenty, Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 to New York and later Massachusetts, which was then considered the bastion of abolitionist sentiment. Douglass's autobiography, which both documented his personal experiences as a small child with the brutality of slavery and the institution's ability to corrupt his former masters, was one of the most controversial of his day. Douglass was as well respected as an orator as he was as a writer, and his style went on to inspire Civil Rights leaders of the twentieth century, including James Baldwin and Jesse Jackson. Douglass, who lacked the disdain for other blacks and reverence for white Americans exemplified by earlier slave narrators, never employed the most commonly used atavistic tactic commonly used by slave narrators; that of seeking acceptance from the white intellectual community by illustrating differences between himself and the common black man.

From 1841 through 1845, Douglass traveled through New England and as far away as Indiana and Ohio campaigning against the institution of slavery and vocalizing his support for local anti-slavery societies. He took a 'grass-roots' approach, speaking to audiences in public parks, town squares, churches, schoolhouses, abandoned buildings, and lecture halls. He traveled by foot, horseback, railroad, stagecoach, and steamboat, and became known throughout the country for his work to end slavery. Abolitionists everywhere were amazed by his sheer rhetorical brilliance. A correspondent for the abolitionist Salem Register who heard Douglass speak in November 1842 typified the publics response:

The most wonderful performance of the evening was the address of Frederick Douglass, himself a slave only four years ago! His remarks and his manner created the most indescribable sensations in the minds of those unaccustomed to hear freemen of his color speak in public, much more to regard a slave as capable of such an effort. He was a living, speaking, startling proof of the folly, absurdity and inconsistency...of slavery. Fluent, graceful, eloquent, shrewd, sarcastic, he was without making any allowances, a fine specimen of an orator. He seemed to move the audience at his will, and they at times would hang upon his lips with staring eyes and open mouths, as eager to catch every word, as any "sea of upturned faces" that ever rolled at the feet of Everett or Webster to revel in their classic eloquence. (Lampe, viii)

Douglass developed his oratory skills as a slave in Maryland, where he enjoyed a limited degree of freedom as a child where his masters, who had previously not owned a slave, treated him at times like a normal child for several years. During these years he developed an understanding of rhetoric, which was enhanced by his careful observation of the style of ministers in giving sermons. He was also exposed to secular storytellers and slave songs and spirituals, as rhetoric-related activities were more common in that day and age before the development of modern forms of children's entertainment. Much of his oratory ability can be attributed to Caleb Bingham's Columbian Orator, which enhanced his vocabulary and provided him with arguments to foil pro-slavery speakers. Like many later civil rights activists, Douglass gained valuable experience preaching to other blacks and teaching Sunday school. Although Douglass developed a faith in Christianity as was the case with many of his predecessors, he remained singularly committed to the cause of individual liberty. Much of the religious foundation for his rhetorical ability he developed immediately following his escape from slavery in New Bedford, Massachusetts between 1838 and 1841. There he joined New Bedford's A.M.E. Zion Church, where he advanced his public speaking skills as an exhorter, class leader, and became a licensed lay preacher. He preached to the New Bedford A.M.E. Zion congregation on a regular basis. And played a significant part in New Bedford's black abolitionist community.

William Wells Brown became the first African-American to write a novel in 1853. Clotel is a work of fiction whose heroine is the illegitimate black daughter of President Thomas Jefferson. It shares the distinction of being about one who could be considered a fallen person of nobility. The novel is a tragedy, where the heroine has a white lover which later abandons her, is sold into slavery, escapes, and kills herself as the slave-hunters are closing in on her. Although the novel was never as popular as Uncle Tom's Cabin (which at the time was the only book in print out-selling the Bible) it was still immensely popular and went through four editions over the course of ten years. Although in some ways Clotel resembles Uncle Tom's Cabin, it is differentiated in several key ways. Principally, it is about women of color and is the first work in American literature to concentrate almost exclusively on the lives of slave women. In addition to the protagonist, Brown focuses on the experiences of Currer (Jefferson's black lover) Althesa (the other daughter,) and Jefferson's three grand-daughters: Mary, Ellen, and Jane.

Clotel is not only notable for its treatment of racial themes, but also for its treatment of gender. According to Joan Cashin,

Brown's portrayal of the mutability of racial identity forms a marked contrast with his ideas about gender, especially the nature of women. His ideas on the malleability of race as a component of personal identity, on race as a decoy, have obvious roots in his biography. He could "pass" for white, although he chose not to do so when he was a free man. In his labor on the slave ship on the Mississippi River, he had to prepare aging bondsmen for sale and conceal their infirmities. As a free man he helped fugitives create disguises when they fled through Ohio. Naturally he was very much taken with the story of his friends William and Ellen Craft, who escaped bondage by posing as servant and master. Many of the people he encountered had several selves that they presented to the world at different times, putting on and taking off the masks of race as necessary. (Cashin, xi)

James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

Although The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, published in 1912, was later to establish James Weldon Johnson as one of the leading slave narrators, he decided to make this work completely anonymous. None of the fictionalized characters in the book have names, an interesting gambit which reflects the author's lack of certainty in his identity. The 1912 reader was also left without a hint of whether the book was truth or fiction. Such literary techniques were uncommon in turn-of-the-century American literature although similar approaches to biographies had been tried in fictionalized biographies. One of the earliest examples is that of Don Quixote, who's tale is relayed by a non-existent Arab biographer. As a presumed white, Johnson enjoyed a level of distinction that would be unavailable to him if it was known that he was of partial African ancestry. One might guess that this would have also affected the socialization of his children and even possibly their ability to attend prestigious schools.

In this novel, the protagonist engages in a process called "passing," whereby a light-skinned black man decides to live as a white man. Although several things seemed to vindicate the author's young life (such as his gift for playing the piano) one gets the impression that Johnson's way of becoming a human being (the most common theme in slave narratives) was not to master literature, but to merely become a white man. In An American Dilemma, sociologist Gunnar Myrdal defines this process: "For all practical purposes 'passing' means that a Negro becomes a white man, that is, moves from the lower to the higher caste. In the American caste order, this can be accomplished only by the deception of the white people with whom the passer comes to associate and by a conspiracy of silence on the part of other Negroes who might know about it" (683). Johnson makes clear that he can introduce the reader to the inner-world of black America and that although he is living as a presumably 'white' man, that he will never understand this world as he does that of the blacks as an insider; in the white world, he is an admitted imposter even though his wife is white and the professional circles that he travels in are all white.

In the 1920's, Carl Van Vechten, wrote in the preface to the second edition that "The work was hailed on every side, for the most part, as an individual's true story." The book was only to draw the attention of the reading public after the author was known in the 1920's. Vechten, a patron of African-American writers, was well respected in the black community and the re-release of the book during the Harlem Renaissance was incredibly timely. Vechten's introduction pinpointed the work's appeal:

The Autobiography, of course, in the matter of specific incident, has little enough to do with Mr. Johnson's own life, but it is imbued with his own personality and feeling, his views of the subjects discussed, so that to a person who has no previous knowledge of the author's own history, it reads like real autobiography. It would be truer, perhaps, to say that it reads like a composite autobiography of the Negro race in the United States in modern times."

The false autobiography is convincing enough that the reader not familiar with the author's personal history believes it to be true. Like the blackness of the author, the veracity of his tale is something subjective. Subjectivity is one of the main themes presented in the novel. This subjectivity is discussed in Elaine Ginsburg's work "Passing and the Fictions of Identity": This passing plays not on shifting identities but on shifting perceptions, what the world takes the narrative, or the protagonist, to be. In effect, the passing narrative in The Autobiography is itself the subject of another passing narrative, this one to do with literary genre, fiction, and fact. Interestingly, the author later published a truthful autobiography, Along the Way, allowiing the reader to revise his perspective of the author accordingly. This allows the reader to re-assess the novel, reconciling the real life of Johnson with the fiction. The release of this biography was prompted by the curiosity surrounding the novel. A contemporary critic, Joseph Skerrett Jr. remarked that "while some of the events related there were used in the novel, the personality and much of the life experience of the young James Weldon Johnson have little or no critic Joseph Skerrett Jr. remarks, that "while some of the events related there were used in the novel, the personality and much of the life experience of the young James Weldon Johnson have little or no resemblance to the narrator's."

However, much of the real and fictionalized autobiographies co-insides precisely, and phrases that are simply re-worded from the prior source are common to the second book. One can assume that the primary motivation for the issuance of the second book was merely because there was a market for it. Because the reasons for the fictionalization of the novel were mostly social, it should not surprise the reader that the second work, which the author was compelled to write by the reading public, would be extremely similar; Johnson hadn't any reason to dissemble information about his past other than that an open autobiography would scandalize him. However, certain small differences do exist that set the novel aside as a truly fictional account.

Another dominant theme in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is the idea of a journey that manifests itself in both a physical and a spiritual form. As Johnson's unnamed character makes his way from a small town in the south to Atlanta, Florida and finally Europe and New York, these locations take on a significance as they hone the character's knowledge of who he is and how he relates to a racially polarized society. When he is robbed in Atlanta, the protagonist finds himself socially analogous to the common black stereotype of the day: that of a poor day-laborer in search of work. However, like the characters in other Slave Narratives, his talents distinguish him among the workers as they would distinguish Douglass and others among the slaves of a plantation. Whereas writing is often a transitional device symbolizing empowerment, the protagonist's light skin and musical talent that allow him to overcome some of the barriers that were faced by other blacks without such talent. However, the protagonist's literacy does open doors for him. When he is compelled to take a job rolling cigars in Florida, he becomes responsible for reading his illiterate co-workers the newspaper. In many respects his search reflects his inability to identify with either the blacks or the whites in any given community other than on the very basic level as a fellow human. This leaves him with wanderlust and yet everywhere he goes, he sees the unwaveringly categorical schism between the wealthy and more educated whites and the poor, uneducated blacks. His experience with racism is explicit and some cities and subdued in others, but it always remains a matter of personal reflection and identification. His journey takes him to Savannah, Connecticut, Atlanta, Jacksonville, New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Boston, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta again, and Macon, and finally New York. It is in New York that he finishes his journey, in the end deciding that he can only gain parity with whites through subterfuge. According to Ginsberg, "The coincidence of the thematics of geographic mobility and race passing is not accidental. Practically, if one is to pass, one must go somewhere else, where one's identity is unknown." (Ginsberg, 63) The protagonist never stays in a community long enough to become part of society; this reflects his own perception that he is always outside the rest of society.

One of the most poignant parts of the book is when the protagonist realizes that he is black. Before this, he was blissfully ignorant of the idea that he is coloured; it is the social context of the other children of school that presents him with this social schism. We are repeatedly presented with the notion that blacks are made to feel "impure;" not just due to their lack of whiteness but rather the presence of black ancestors and the protagonist's puzzlement at the notion that he has committed what amounts to original sin and is therefore tainted. This is ironic to him as he bears little resemblance to your average southern black man. To the other children at school, it does not register that he is more white than black. "Blackness is produced in this shift of perspective: he forms his idea of what it is to be colored by seeing others who are marked as colored. Learning that he also is colored, he translates that status and condition to himself." (pg. 64)The protagonist only knows that he is afflicted with blackness upon seeing other black people and realizing that he shares their affliction. Despite this knowledge, the narrator could travel through the south without being detected and so chooses a black college over Harvard.

The term "passing" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "to be accepted as equivalent to; to be taken for, to be accepted, received, or held in repute as." The word is Latin in origin, taken from the word passus, a 'step,' which by the eleventh century had come to denote a progressive movement from place to place. The implication is that one who is passing is moving forward, although the black community shunned this practice because it called attention to the fact that to self-identify as being black was undesirable. In many respects, the protagonist resembles the self-hating Jew; one who stands outside society and hates the internal characteristic that has resulted in the construction of a barrier between himself and social acceptance. The establishment of the notion that a black person is inferior to a white one has always been reflected in the notion that light-skinned blacks are superior to dark-skinned blacks. In Philadelphia black high society, tradition holds that for one to be considered worthy of the 'high society' moniker that he or she be no darker than a paper bag. This notion of intermediary levels served for years to undermine any notion of black equality. When blacks were auctioned in the antebellum south, mulattos routinely fetched higher prices on the auction block. If a baby was born to a white woman and a black man, that baby was considered a free man. However, in the opposite situation, that baby was the property of the mother's master. Although this process, coupled with a moratorium on capturing new slaves in Africa, served to 'lighten' the black population, it was brought to a sudden halt with the Jim Crow laws referring to what was known as miscegenation. This word, coined in a promotional treatise that was, in fact, a Democratic hoax designed to scare the electorate, referred to the blending of the races. Anti-miscegenation laws specified that any inter-racial couple was subject to incarceration. In Mississippi, the penalty was lifetime incarceration. These laws retarded the introduction of new light-skinned blacks to the population. The protagonist's mother, a light-skinned black, had been impregnated by a well-off white man.

Johnson relies heavily on categorical themes as they relate to race, but also takes pleasure in describing class and cultural differences as they are reflected in the black people he comes into contact with. It is obvious that he is proud that he is a light-skinned black and not a dark-skinned one. Johnson's propensity for categorization is in constant odds with his inability to find a category to which he himself belongs. Despite this, he is proficient at relaying images of "race life" to a public that (by the time of the second publication) is fascinated with jazz and the image of a black man at the same time the Klu Klux Klan is enjoying its highest-ever attendance and decisions such as Buck v. Bell in Virginia severely curtail the reproductive rights of black women.

At times, Johnson's observations border on caricatures. At one point an old black woman that runs a boarding house treats him to breakfast: "Scrupulously clean, in a spotless white apron and coloured head-handkerchief, her round face beaming with motherly kindness, she was picturesquely beautiful." Such passages border on the Disneyfication of black culture, but others are genuinely insightful as to the nature of black society in the South. These images he reports as a passive observer. Particularly insightful are his passages on black high society. For instance, in Atlanta, a city he doesn't particularly like, he talks of society in terms of differences between the classes. Johnson informs of his relief that the black people that he meets in Atlanta that slouch and behave without any civil graces are of the lower classes. One gets the impression that Johnson, defeated as a black in terms of social merit from a racial or ethnic perspective, stubbornly holds to bourgeois classism, which he sees as a more appropriately representative way of differentiating between common men and their betters.

It is evident that Johnson is quick to deride the city of Atlanta because he had an unpleasant experience there. However, he reports favorably on the city of Jacksonville, where he finds friends among the black establishment which he likens to freemasonry. At times his fascination with acting 'black' seems almost fetishistic. As he proves himself as a piano player, he becomes more and more enamored with his surroundings, which undermines his attempt at objectivity. The author identifies being black as a cogent social reality rather than as a matter of ancestry; in doing so his ideas sound like those of a race determinist. His approach to black culture as an apprentice remind the modern reader of much is what is wrong with race-identity in today's society. There are social parallels to be drawn; one is reminded of culturally alienated American Jews that join the Israeli army or the Nouveau Riche auspices of upper class "New Russian" culture, which compel the society's elite to mimic the buying habits of the Americans they see glamorized on television. Perhaps the most apt example in contemporary American society is the disdain felt by some Hispanic immigrants for one another. The Mexican elite, both in Mexico and in middle-class American society, abhor migrant farmers and the like more than anyone else. Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, who have a strong presence in Manhattan, resent the recent influx of Mexicans because of the image Mexicans give other Spanish speaking people in New York.

Johnson seems to see himself as a tragic figure, quick to promote the attractiveness of his features in an effort to vindicate his existence. He goes so far as to speak fondly and lovingly of his own face upon being scolded by the Principal of the school:

noticed the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty of my mouth, the size and liquid darkness of my eyes, and how the long, black lashes that fringed and shaded them produced an effect that was strangely fascinating even to me. I noticed the softness and glossiness of my dark hair that fell in waves over my temples, making my forehead appear whiter than it really was. (Johnson, 17)

Here we see an almost-homosexual narcissism that lets us know early in the book that Johnson is unable to completely acknowledge his superiority complex. The administration at Johnson's school can be said to have shattered his innocence. Johnson's narration is almost comical in light of the other narrations: although he is nominally crushed to find out that he has 'black' in him, he is afforded many of the opportunities that were soon to be eliminated under Jim Crow. Despite his school's racism, it is integrated with black and white children together. Johnson doesn't talk about being hungry and by the end of school, the protagonist has managed to get accepted to Harvard College. The narrator recounts a time when one of the black boys throws a slate at a white boy and how he described the event to his mother using the word "niggers." His mother is quick to scold but maintains the pleasant illusion that they are not black. Despite her effort to defend the black students, the mother is not quick to illustrate any kinship between the blacks and her family. Because one would expect that an objective mother would have relayed the information about the protagonist's heritage at some point, we can only imply that Johnson's mother was a self-hating black person who passively obfuscated information about her background so that Johnson could see himself among the ranks of the superior white children. Although this passage is intended as irony, one cannot help but see the author's implicit belief that he is better than 'niggers.' This places Johnson's autobiography among the books that were written by authors that were quick to expunge any sameness between themselves and common black men, whereas others might argue that blacks deserve implicit parity with whites.

R.B.Stepto, "FROM BEHIND THE VEIL," 1979

Stephen Butterfield, "BLACK AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN AMERICA,"1974

Davis Charles T., Gates Henry Louis Jr.,"THE SLAVE'S NARRATIVE."

Gates Henry Louis,"THE SIGNIFYING MONKEY"

Mackethan Lucinda H.,"VERSION and INVERSION of the SLAVE NARRATOR's

QUEST for VOICE." CLA Journal 32(2):123-147,1988 DEC.