The trippy part

“...when you really think about it, me and America aren’t even enemies. I’m the horse pulling the stagecoach, the donkey in the levee who’s stumbled in the mud and come up lame. You may love me, but I’m tired of thrashing around in the muck and not getting anywhere.”

After reading the prologue of The White Boy Shuffle, the reader has the entire book to prepare for the (literal and figurative) nuclear bomb that will inevitably be dropped, but the last few chapters of the novel are still difficult and unnerving to read. Gunnar, Scoby, Yoshiko and Psycho Loco are the kind of characters that are fun to read about, and it seems like the prestige and influence Gunnar gained after growing up in poverty is something to be proud of.  The narrative itself, laced with Gunnar’s dry humor and compelling poetry, seems like a deeply honest social commentary but not a pessimistic one. All in all, even though you know how it’s all going to end up, it’s hard to comprehend why exactly Gunnar gave up all the advantages he seemed to have.  

It isn’t until reading the epilogue that the motivation behind Gunnar’s drastic decision comes to light, and even then, it still seems like it’s the wrong thing to do. But after reading the epilogue and reconsidering the rest of the novel from that point of view, another way of looking at the events of the novel is revealed.

Like Gunnar explains to Psycho Loco, his frustration doesn’t just stem from being “enemies” with America. It’s clear that on some level America is opposed to black people, but in the novel, it seems like the oppression Gunnar faces because of his race is often met with snide humor and sharp poetry rather than despair.

It isn’t outright discrimination that drives Gunnar to desperation but instead, the loss of his own agency and identity. From the very beginning, he wasn’t his own person, but instead just the latest in a series of Kaufmans whose lives all followed the same script: laughing at racist jokes in an effort to please the white people. As he grew older, he was defined by the incredible natural talent for basketball he had, but it was still the same idea: he became almost a mascot, and he was valued only as a novelty and a tool to keep the team on top. His poetry, at first, might seem like an escape from the same patterns, but it, too, became a tool for other people to use in their own ways, whether by publishing his work in a “coffee-table book of photographs” or reading it at a political rally.

As a reader, it’s easy to look at Gunnar as a basketball player and poet and see how successful he was, but by doing so, it’s almost like we’re proving the point he was trying to make. When we read his poetry, are we just like the stagecoach riders, watching him struggle and enjoying it the art of it? If we are, then his choice to wait for a nuclear escape seems almost justified. Gunnar’s poem, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Crib Death,” warns “ “caveat emptor,”/let the buyer beware,” and by the end of the novel the reader is left wondering if we are that buyer. We’re the ones who regret Gunnar’s death. But are we mourning Gunnar, or his poetry: our “property, permanently damaged?”

would she actually care what Wright thinks though

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is widely recognized as an important piece of literature today, but at the time it was published, it was the subject of controversy among other contemporary black authors. Unlike Native Son or Invisible Man, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the struggle of racism is secondary to the main love story of Janie Crawford, and because of this many felt Hurston wasn’t fulfilling her obligation as a black author: for Their Eyes Were Watching God to be a serious novel, it had to deal with the real social issues of the time.

Not only were many people opposed to the lack of serious social criticism, many also felt that Their Eyes Were Watching God pandered to white audiences and was too reminiscent of the long history of minstrelsy. Hurston’s portrayal of black life and traditions could seem far too idealized, particularly in the migrant worker community of the Everglades, where she downplayed the struggles black people faced working in oppressive conditions. And the scenes of Eatonville seem theatrical, almost as if the black characters are parading around for the amusement of the white audience.

When I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God, it seemed to me that these critics were probably right. It’s a really enjoyable book to read, but it seemed so quaint, so idealized, that I felt like I shouldn’t be enjoying it at all. I kept waiting for the penny to drop and the real narrative of racial struggle to come out, and then when it didn’t, there was the uncomfortable feeling that I just read and enjoyed a book justifying a docile, happy caricature of black history.

But while we watched the documentary about Zora Neale Hurston, it seemed like her novel wasn’t that at all. She spent most of her adult life documenting and researching the traditions of black communities in the South, and during the rest, she seemed to do whatever she wanted without regards to what other people might think. My interpretation of the novel slowly unraveled, because Hurston didn’t seem like the kind of person to write a minstrel story at all.

Now, the more I reread the novel, the more it seems to be a novel illustrating Hurston’s love for the community and traditions she spent her life documenting. The poetic dialogue, written in a non-standard dialect, draws in the reader and shows the beauty of long oral traditions. The portrayal of life in Eatonville shows the rich music and culture that developed in black communities in the deep south. There are elements of the story that are undeniably problematic, especially reading it from a modern point of view. But it doesn’t completely deserve the harsh criticism from Wright and others. Their Eyes Were Watching God may not confront the same issues as Invisible Man or Native Son, but that doesn’t mean it is somehow less valuable, or that Hurston is betraying the black community by writing it. The novel isn't supposed to be a protest novel. It's a love story, between Janie and Tea Cake, and between Hurston and the culture she spent her life immersed in.