“...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?”
The sharp, satirical humor in response to racism creates a curious dynamic: on some level, we enjoy the wit but also the *truth* contained in these observations (and white readers likely often wince in self-recognition at a few points), but it also creates the sense of a narrator/author who can respond with resilience to the dehumanizing racism of American society. Like, Gunnar is almost in an enviable and privileged position as a social commentator, and we defer to his opinion--there's authority in his humor. But it also seduces us into not seeing the deeper, creeping depression that underlies the comedy. Laughter can be empowering, as we saw in _Invisible Man_--it offers a kind of self-assertion in response to the absurd brutality of American racism, and there's something cathartic about it. But as the novel's plot grows increasingly grim and dark, and the jokes just keep coming, even to the last page, it becomes more and more uncomfortable to actually laugh.
ReplyDeleteI had never thought about Gunnar's invisibility through poetry. When I was reading the book, I read the poetry as Gunnar's sort of escape from it all, but the way that you put it, I can totally see how even, as he nears the end, even that is taken from him by people who want to use it as their own. I think that, with this complete loss of an individuality, Gunnar's final transformation is not hard to believe.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Gunnar doesn't get a lot of say in his life. The fame, the talent, the influence, they all fall into his lap and he just goes along with it, even Yoshiko. I feel like his death is also him wanting to take the reigns and decide how he wants to live his life.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the novel I was confused because I wondered how the Gunner that we see throughout most of the novel, a boy who seems to be enjoying life despite the ups and downs, ends up as the cynical and bitter narrator that we meet in the prologue. Honestly I was shocked to hear Gunner speak of the black community as if they were mindless, ignorant, drones who worshiped the ground that he tread on, but I think I understand where he's coming from. They think that Gunner is this great figure, but he's bitter because they fail to realize that he's just another by product of white society racism.
ReplyDelete