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The Liberating Literary and African American Vernacular Voices of Gayl JonesLiberating Voices: Oral Traditions in African American Literature by Gayl Jones; TheHealing by Gayl JonesReview by: Bernard W. BellComparative Literature Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1999), pp. 247-258Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247184 .

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Review EssayThe Liberating Literaryand African AmericanVernacularVoices of Gayl Jones

LiberatingVoices: Oral Traditions n African American Literature.By GaylJones.New York:Penguin,1992. 228 pp. $36.00.TheHealing.ByGaylJones.Boston:BeaconP,1998. 283 pp.$23.00 hard-cover;$12.00 paperback.Afterfive years n Europe,GaylJoneshas returned o the United Stateswith a new attitudeand two new books:Liberating oices,a collection ofessays,and The Healing,a novel.1 Like the blues women in her highlysuccessfulearlyfiction, she lives a life of quiet desperation,volcanic de-sire, maledomination,and distrustof white Americans. From ts tenor,tone, and texture, her writingsseem to be her political liberation andspiritualsalvation. Raw,sexually explicit and violent, psychologicallydenseandpainfullypoignant,the languageof the vernacularvoices thatJonesusesto represent he lives of Ursa in Corregidorand Evain Eva'sMantransgresseshematicandstylisticconventions. In these earlynov-elsJones ingers hejaggedgrain Ellison'sdescriptivephrase or the blues)of the legacyof slaveryand the politics of identity that black women inlove and troubleon the marginsof society struggle o transformas theytell their own storiesandsing theirown songsin African Americanver-nacularvoices.Illustrativeof the complex relationshipamong life, language,andliterature,Jones abruptly esignedher professorship t the UniversityofMichigan n a 1983letterto PresidentRonaldReaganafterher husband'sviolent confrontationwith gay activists and his indictment for assault,takingflight to Europewith RobertHiggins,her husband.Duringtheirnearlysix-yearexpatriation n Europe, he couple apparentlyivedmainlyin France as the celebrated author of such black feminist novels asCorregidora1975) andEva'sMan(1976) immersedherselfin the multi-

COMPARATIVELITERATURESTUDIES, Vol. 36, No. 3, 1999.Copyright 1999 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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248 COMPARATIVEITERATURETUDIESlingualsoundsand sense of transcultural xperiences,continuedto writefiction, andpublishedanovel, DieVogelfangerinThe Birdcatcher)n Ger-many.Returning n late 1988 to her hometownof Lexington,Kentucky,to care for hergravely ll mother,the extremelyreclusivewriterarrangedwith BeaconPress n her usualmanner(bye-mailrather han in person)to have her recent fiction published.At the sametime, an intermittentconflict in writingbetween the Jonesesand the local authorities overallegedracialinjusticestoward he family,especiallythe hospitalcareofher mother,culminated in a violent confrontation with the police thatresulted in RobertJonescutting his throat and GaylJonesbeing hospi-talized formental examination.

Manytraditional pecialists n comparative iteratureand some con-temporarymulticulturalists ill findGaylJones's oices inLiberatingVoicesdulceet utileand in TheHealingmoreexperimental n theme, style andstructure,yet less radicallyblack feminist than her earlier fiction. Atranshistorical,ranscultural riticalsurveyof literature,LiberatingVoicesfocuseson the relationshipof oral to writtentechniquebyAfricanAmeri-can writersand critics in their development of an indigenousliterarytradition. Its thesis is that "themovementfromthe restrictive orms(in-heritorsof self-doubt,self-repudiation, nd the minstreltradition)to theliberationof voice and freerpersonalities n more intricate texts . . . linksthe writersof [the] African Americanliterarytraditionand is commonto all literatureswhich have held (or assumed)a position of subordina-tion to another literarytradition."ButJones glossesover the fact thatneither all subordinationnor all liberationstrugglesare the same andthat historical differencesare fundamentalto cultural distinctiveness.Organized n sections on poetry,shortfiction, and the novel, the Intro-duction, fifteen chapters, and Conclusion of LiberatingVoices to myknowledge he firstcriticalsurveybyacontemporary lack womanwriterthat attemptsan extendedcomparisonof the oral foundationof AfricanAmerican literaturewith those of non-African American literaturesprovidea provocativeand importantyet inadequate,misleadingmapofthe oral or vernacular radition in African Americanliterature.The primarymportanceof Liberating oices s that in supportingheproposition hat"thefoundationofevery iteraryradition soral,whetherit is visible or invisible in the text,"Jonesgives extensive examplesof"the reeingofvoice" n literature romdifferent imes,places,andpeoples.FromChaucer andJoyceto the Canadian writerMargaretLaurenceonone hand,andfromLadyMurasaki"s aleofGenjito AmosTutuola'sThePalm-WineDrinkard n the other,readers xperiencea cavalcadeof sto-ries and storytellers romaroundthe worldthat move innovativelybe-

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BOOKREVIEWS 249yond the conventions of their time. "Likemany of their Latin Americancounterparts,"Jones writes in the Introduction, "African American writ-ers frequently combine aesthetics with social motive, so that art almostalways conjoins humanity and society; thus, kinetic art' is mostly cham-pioned" (Voices 2). But the most frequent comparisons of the vernacularand literaryvoices are with Spanish authors and texts, especially Cervantesand Lorca, who, consistent with her emphasis, were more subversive inliterary technique than in thematic and social practice.In the Conclusion, Jones makes an interesting case for the validityof a blues standard by comparing it to some of the significant literarystandards and "stylistic strategies" of the oral traditions in Africa andAsia that conflict with those of the West. In her efforts to situate the oraland literarytradition of African Americans in the global context of worldliterature, however, Jones does not provide adequate sociohistorical andsocioculutural contexts to illuminate the distinctiveness of the code-switching between dialects and between languages in the different textsthat she briefly analyses and injudiciously uses to make broad generaliza-tions in the short chapters on selected African American writers andtexts. A similar inadequacy is apparent in what she calls the "movementfrom literary double-consciousness to literary 'true self-consciousness'"(Voices 178).Jones sapparently nfamiliarwithmanyof the recentAfricanAmeri-can vernacular tudiesthat were basically inspiredby the theories andpracticeofRalphEllison,especiallyShadow ndAct (1964). On one handare those by such black academicsand writersas Stephen Henderson,BernardW.Bell,JohnEdgarWideman,HoustonA. Baker, r.,andHenryLouisGates,Jr.2On the otherhandarethose bysuchwhite academicsasLawrenceLevine,KeithBeyerman, ohnCallahan,andEricSundquist.3Althoughsherefersvaguely o the criticismofWideman,BakerandGates,especially n the Postscript ndGlossary, swellas to anessaybyCallahan,Jonesdoesnot groundher literary heoryandcriticismin the distinctivehistoricalpatternof the journeyof blackAmericans romAfricaandsla-veryin the United Statesto freedom.This weakensthe authenticityandauthorityof her discussionof the importanceof the complex relation-shipbetweenblackfolk speechor dialect andminstrelsy.Althoughhercomparisonof the creativeuse of language,especiallythe vernacular,by HenryJamesandMarkTwain s useful,Jonesneglectsto outline the sociohistoricalcontexts necessary o understand he com-plex dynamicsof how specificracial,ethnic, gender,class, and regionalpowerrelationshipsweremaintainedor subvertedby language.Specifi-cally,she doesnot illuminethe manneranddegreeto which texts during

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250 COMPARATIVE LITERATURESTUDIESthe Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods by James, the expa-triate around 1876 to England, and Twain, the migrant around 1874 toNew England, neglected, reflected, or reconstructed the principles andconventions of the romantic, plantation, minstrel, and realistic tradi-tions of literary representation in the nineteenth and twentieth centu-ries. Nor does she address the tensions between crole languages, regionaldialects, and standard American English in the struggle for freedom, lit-eracy, and civil rights in different black communities in the South andNorth, especially the role of publishing companies established by blackchurches beginning in 1817 and of black newspapers beginning in 1827,as well as the subsequent role of black literary clubs. And though heranalysis of "the links between dialect, perspective, character, and audi-ence" in Dunbar's "The Lynching of Jube Benson" and in Sterling A.Brown's"Uncle Joe"arehighly instructive, it would have been even moreilluminating had Jones explained why and how the "realistic dialect" inthe 1930s of Brown, a distinguished Howard University professor, poetand critic, contrasted with the "ridiculous dialect of the minstrel tradi-tion" and contributed to the poetic "reappraisalof the folk as serious,complex, and multidimensional" (Voices 31).Finally, Jones's surface comparison of Sherley A. Williams andLangston Hughes as blues poets is provocative, but misleading. Williams'scriticism of Hughes's conventional blues poem "YoungGal's Blues" as"'an example of an oral form moving unchanged into literary tradition'"is cited to demonstrate that Williams's own poem, "Someone Sweet An-gel Chile," is more improvisational (Voices 38). Instead, this conclusiondramatically demonstrates the dangers of hasty inductive leaps from in-adequate evidence. Although her movement of black feminist critics andwriters from the literary margins to the center is appropriately in tunewith the 1980s, Jones misleadingly suggests, based on this single example,that Williams is a better blues poet than Hughes.Even though she is insightful in her use of John Wideman's 1976bicentennial essay "Frameand Dialect" and acknowledges the need forasserting personal and national identity through language, Jones does notprovide a clear, adequate definition of the historical and socioculturaldifferences among American, especially African American, dialects. Nordoes her theory of a black literary voice provide a coherent explanationof how these differences influence literary representations of AfricanAmerican character and culture during different major art movements,except for the distorting influence of minstrel humor on Paul LaurenceDunbar, by such individuals as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Joel ChandlerHarris,Thomas Nelson Page, George Washington Cable, and Mark Twain.

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BOOKREVIEWS 251The tension between Jones's early education in Kentucky and elitecollege education in Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as her yearsin Europe explains much of the paradox of her liberating voice in fiction.It also explains in part why she fallaciously assumes in the Postscript thatAfrican American literary criticism reverted between 1982, when shefirst wrote LiberatingVoices,and 1991, when the book was first publishedby Harvard University Press, to "New Criticism" in reaction to the "pre-scriptive and proscriptive criticism" of the Black Arts movement of the1960s. But as the writings in the late 1970s and 1980s by such importantblack critics as Baker, Gates, Hortense Spillers, and Robert Stepto con-firm, many celebrated black academic critics moved beyond the radical,non-academic vernacular theories and practices of the Black Arts move-ment of the 1960s. Earning their doctoral degrees from white institu-tions, they were primarily influenced by the structuralism andpost-structuralism of such French and continental theorists as RolandBarthes, JacquesLacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva,and M. M. Bakhtin. In the 1980s the aesthetic battle over literary voiceand audience thus shifted once again from "art for people's sake" to the

poetics of postmodernism.In assessing the manner and degree to which the literary and Afri-can American vernacular voices in The Healingare liberating, it is appro-priate to apply Jones's own literary standards for excellence. In herassessment of the dialect and folklore in the literary texts of Dunbar andHurston, Jones asks: "How does one employ the language in order to re-turn it to the elasticity, viability, and indeed complexity, 'intelligenceand sensibility,' that it often has when not divorced from the oral modesand folk creators?"Although Jones neglects to consider the interferenceof the author's idiolect, the distinctive pattern of linguistic features ofone's own speech behavior, in the literary representation of the speech ofdifferent characters with authority and authenticity, it is reasonable nev-ertheless for readersto examine "the elasticity, viability, and. . .complex-ity" of the language in The Healing. According to Wideman, moreover,"Once a convention for dramatizing black speech appears in fiction, theliterary critic should be concerned not with matters of phonetic accu-racy, but with tracing the evolution of a written code and determininghow that code refers to the spoken language in suggestive, artful, cre-ative ways"("Frameand Dialect" 36).How, then, should readers, especially literary critics, respond to theposition of contemporary novelists and critics like Jones and Widemanin assessing the black voice in The Healing! Assuming that language is asystem of signs for communicating ideas and feelings about reality and

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252 COMPARATIVE LITERATURESTUDIESforestablishingandmaintainingrelationshipswith others,the most rea-sonable andappropriate esponse s to address heir concernby focusingon the problemsof agency, authenticity,and authorityin the text. Innarratology nagentis the representation f a humanbeingwhosespeechacts influence events. But as it is usedhere, agency,to paraphrase hi-losopherCharlesTaylor, s the socioculturalandsociopsychologicalpro-cess by which the individual assumesa responsiblepolitical position inmaintainingorchangingthe systemsof languageandpowerbywhichheor she constructsandrepresentsa personalandgroup dentityorsubjec-tivity of authenticityandauthority.4Althoughin SincerityndAuthentic-ity Lionel Trillingexplains authenticity "as a criterion of art and as aqualityof the personal ife which maybe either enhancedor diminishedby art,"5CharlesTaylordefinesauthenticitymorebroadly n The Ethicsof Authenticity. [Authenticity (A) involves (i) creation and construc-tion as well as discovery, ii) originaliity,andfrequently iii) oppositionto the rules of society and even potentiallyto what we recognizeas mo-rality.But it isalso true. . . that it (B) requires i) opennessto horizonsofsignificance (for otherwise the creation loses the background hat cansave it from insignificance)and (ii) a self-definition in dialogue.Thatthese demandsmaybe in tension has to be allowed. But what must bewrong is a simple privilegingof one over the other of (A), say,at theexpenseof (B), orvice versa."6 uthenticitythusimpliesboth transcend-ing or overcomingrestrictive material conditions and transgressing rviolatingsocial and moralboundaries. n contrast,authority s basicallythe power o influenceorcommand hought,opinion,or behavior."Threegroundson which legitimateauthorityoften rest,"Marvin E. Olsen re-mindsus in "Poweras a Social Process,""are(a) traditionalvalues,be-liefs, norms, and customs, (b) legal prerogativesestablished throughmore-or-less ationalagreements,and (c) special expertiseorknowledgerelevant to the situation. To the extent that an actor draws egitimacyfromthree sources .. his authority s especially strong."7 he problemsof agency,authenticity,and authorityin The Healingare most produc-tively exploredby focusingon the residualoral formsof religiousritual,vernacular anguage,andmusic.Although the blackvoice in CorregidorandEva'sManwaspraisedby such literary ights asJamesBaldwin,Maya Angelou, JamesUpdike,andJohnWideman,Wideman'sanalysis s the mostcriticallyilluminat-ing. "In . . . Corregidorahere is no hierarchicalrelationshipbetweenblackspeech and a separate iterary anguage,no implicitdependency,"Widemanwrites."Thenorms of black oral traditionexist full-bodied nthe verbalstyle of the novel: lexicon, syntax,grammar, ttitudestoward

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BOOKREVIEWS 253speech, moral and aesthetic judgments are rendered in the terms of theuniverse they reflect and reinforce. The entire novel flows through thefilter of the narrator's sensibility, and Corregidora's sensibility is con-structed of blocks of black speech, her own, her men's, the speech of thepeople who patronize Happy's bar,the voices of her mother and the deadblack women keeping alive the memories of slavery" ("Frameand Dia-lect" 36). But The Healing moves beyond her previous blues novels be-cause, as Jones states, "they emphasized the narrowest range of subjectmatter- the man-done-her-wrong-type blues- and even the blues itselfhas more possibility and range. The Healing is meant to be a rejection ofthose earlier novels."8Rather than a blues singer, the central character and principal nar-rator of The Healing is a faith healer, Harlan Jane Eagleton, who was for-merly a beautician who gambled on horses and the business manager of anot-so-famous black rock-and-roll singer, Joan Savage, who is a biblio-phile that "prefersto be called, Savage Joan the Darling Bitch" (148).We first meet Harlan in the frame story as she travels by bus to one of the"little southern and midwestern tank towns" where she performsher heal-ing ritual with a gathering of believers and skeptics. "Iopen a tin of Spiritof Scandinavia sardines, floating in mustardsauce," the vernacular voiceof the narratorbegins dramatically in the opening paragraphof the novel."The woman on the bus beside me grunts and leans toward the aisle .....A Bible's open in my lap. I'm holding it eater-cornered, trying to keepthe sardine oil off the pages, or the mustardsauce. When I finish the tinof sardines, I drink the mustardsauce. The woman beside me gruntsagain"(3). Picked up by Martha and a local welcoming committee, Harlan re-flects on the relationship of language, knowledge, and power that is theprimarytheme of the novel. "The women in the backseat are still think-ing how common I am, how full of chitchat, and my vocabulary soundselementary, it don't even sound like that preacher-teacher woman thatgive that lecture, ain't that wondrous and fantabulous vocabulary themhealers uses, and if I could really heal, wouldn't I alreadyjust know aboutthem trains too? And I don't talk that revelation talk, that prophet pas-sion. Just some ordinary woman, could be one of them, or one of theirdaughters, one of their own girls" (25).After establishing the authority and viability of the black femalefaith healer in the initial two chapters, the dialect becomes more elasticand complex as the story within a story shifts in flashbacks and increas-ingly shorter chapters to the relationship between Harlan and Joan. Theagency and authority of Harlan, the protagonist/narrator, is challengedand contested by other voices in her non-linear, retrogressive movement

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254 COMPARATIVE LITERATURESTUDIESfromhealer to Joan'sbusinessmanager, o beautician,and to her self-healingof a stab wound from a jealous, misguidedJoanthat transformedher into the healingwoman whom we meet in the openingchapter.Theframe toryclosesthe forty-sixchapter, ive-partnovel enigmaticallywitha two-pageEpiloguein the black dialect of a local hostess committeethat welcomesHarlan,the healing woman,to yet another town. But inthis town,Nicholas does not tell the storyof herhealing powers.Insteadof Nicholas, she discoversa male from herpastwhom she leastexpectedwaitingto bear witness to her healing powers.Stylisticallyand structur-ally,TheHealing s compellinglyandchallenginglyinnovative.In moving beyondthe "humorous r pathetic"black dialect of theplantationand minstreltraditionsand of the conventional framestruc-ture forrepresentingblackAmericanculture andcharacter, onesfiltersher novel throughthe sensibilityof the protagonist/narrator,ho trans-gresses he hierarchical elationshipbetween AfricanAmericanvernacu-lar English and literary languageand between foreign languagesandstandardAmerican Englishdialects. Omitting all quotation marksfordirectaddresses nddialogue,as well as erasingall specifictime markersin identifyingspecific episodes,Jonesconstructsa complextext of char-acters and events whoseauthorityandauthenticityareoccasionallyun-derminedby its ambitiouselasticityandheteroglossia.Forexample,after one of Harlanshealing rituals,we hear the fol-lowingcreativevoices straining o encompassboth the local andglobal,the oralandliterate modes of knowingandbeing in the worldwith oth-ers:

I can alreadyhear 'em talking about me, those flibbertigib-bets. She ain't no preacherwoman or a teacher womanneither,she a faithhealer,one of them others be saying.What'sthe differ-ence? She look like she belongon a submarine r on a motorcycle.They don't allowwomens on no submarine.On the modernsub-marinethey do, 'cause this is the age of feminism. Her and thatbum's acket. It's what they call a bomber acket. Anyway,I seenher heal someone in D.C. I seen her when she healed in Memphisand then again in KansasCity. She even healed folks in Milan,that'sovertherein Italy.Dottoressa s whatthey calls her there inthat Milan. I seen this pictureof her healing over there in Italyandsheweresurrounded yall these Italianswholookedjustlikedcoloredpeopleto me. Sayshe's even healed folks in Brazil. knowthey'sgot coloredpeople in Brazil.Curandera'swhatthey call herin Brazil. 13)

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BOOKREVIEWS 255On one hand the non-standard grammar,vocabulary, and pronunciation,especially the use of neologisms, foreign words, and repetition to controlthe vitality and rhythm of the dialogue, enhances the transgressive agency,epistemology, and ontology of the narrative as Jones juxtaposes at differ-ent times and to various degrees a wide range of voices that are ortho-graphically but not typographically marked by hierarchical social andnational distinctiveness.On the other hand, the authority and authenticity of the wide rangeof voices are diminished by anomalous and incongruous repetitions ofwords, catalogues of books, and sentences in different languages. AlthoughHarlan was born in New Orleans and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, forexample, people say that she has a Geechee or Gullah accent, which ischaracteristic of the residual African speech behavior of black Ameri-cans acculturated on the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands. "Don'tsound like a accent to me, but other people call it a Gechee accent. Thensome people tell me I got a blend of different types of accents" (43). Thetransgressive,experimental style and structure of The Healing suggest thatcrossing traditional national, cultural, social, and linguistic boundaries isthe liberating healing for or faith in the promise of a new world order ofmutual respect for cultural unity with diversity for believers and disbe-lievers. In addition to the voice of the narrator/protagonist, the range ofvoices whose regional distinctiveness and social variations are not clearinclude Martha and her welcoming committee; Josef Ehelich von Fremd,the Afro-German thorough-bred horse owner and Harlan's lover; Nicho-las, his black security guardand the witness to Harlan'sfirst healing; Joan,the well-read, multilingual black college graduate and socially misguidedrock-and-roll singer; James, Joan's ex-husband with whom Harlan has asexual encounter; Norvelle, the medical anthropologist in Africa andHarlan's ex-husband; and Jaboti, the grandmother whose stories aboutthe turtle shell that she was required to wear while performing in a carni-val as the Turtle Woman symbolizes the strategies of mask-wearing andtricksterism that enabled black Americans, especially women, to survivethe prejudice of and domination by others.In blending fact with fiction, non-standard with standard English,American with non- American languages, and vernacular with literaryvoices, Jones moves thematically and stylistically beyond national, cul-tural, and linguistic boundaries. "I grew up speaking English as well asGerman," Harlan's Afro-German lover responds to her apparent culturalprovincialism. "MostEuropeansspeak several languages. I speak English,French, German, Dutch, a little Portuguese.It'sonly you Americans who'restingy about language, who believe that your own language is the univer-

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256 COMPARATIVE LITERATURESTUDIESsal language.I guessit is the universal anguage.You'vemade it the uni-versallanguage.You'vemade it so yourlanguage s identifiedwith mo'dernity,with internationalism.I even know some Americans,though,who've lived in Berlinforyears,and in otherEuropean ities, and insiston speakingonly English.Who insist on Englishonly even when they'rein otherpeople'scountry"46). Clearlycritical of Harlan'singuistic imi-tations,Jones,the impliedauthor, s moresympatheticwith Harlan's on-testing of modernnarrativepracticeand modernwaysof knowingandbeing in the world with others.Reflectingon the possibility hatNicholas, the Afro-German's ody-guard who "witnessed the first true healing," would retire as her"confabulatory" itness,andforeshadowinghis replacement n the Epi-logue, Harlanstates:

Coursethere'sprobablya lot of fakers that hires theyselveswit-nesses,y'allknow like them evangelistfakers there'strue evan-gelists and there'sevangelistfakers and some of themprobablydo better witnessing than the true witnesses. Youknow, maybeone of them evangelistfakershave a truewitness to thy healings,but the peopledon't believe the true witness so'sthey'sgot to hiretheyselvesa fakewitness,'causethe fake witness to the healingsismorebelievable han the truewitness.Now I'mwonderingwhetherthat would make the healer a faker,if the healings theyselves isreal,but the healergot to hire a fakewitness,'causeeven the truebelievers don't believe the true witness. 'Causemaybethe fakewitnessgot moreconfabulatorymagination han the true witnessthat justgot a knowledgeof the healings."(11)

In so faras truthis a fictive or imaginativeconstruction n language hatcommunicatesthe ideas and feelings of the speakeror writer about thenature of realityto an audience,storytellingis both an epistemologicalandontological act.Nicholas, forexample,"usedta ell the tale with morefanfare,moreflourish,moreconfabulatoriness.And when he tells aboutthat healing,it soundslike a truetale; it don't sound like no confabulatoryale. Lestthe wayhe usedtatell the tale of that healing.Now he tends to be kindadry.And those people that come to faith healing most of them want tohear confabulatory-sounding stories, which don't mean they'sconfabulatory toriesthey ownself.It'sjust that when peoplecome to behealed, they just likes to hear themconfabulatory-soundingtories.Andthere'sotherfolksthat comes to them faithhealingsnot to be heal'd but

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BOOKREVIEWS 257to be entertained, like it's a circus or a carnival rather than a faith heal-ing. Them sorts you don't know whether there's true believers amongstthem or not" (11). Rather than provide a specific example of Nicholas'"confabulatory" storytelling, the entire text of The Healing is Jones'"confabulatory"tale.Unlike her earlier novels, the language of the vernacular and liter-aryvoices in The Healingis neither raw,nor sexually explicit and violent,nor painfully poignant. Instead, the language with which Jones constructsthe lives of Harlan Eagleton and Joan Savage, aspires with uneven suc-cess to the narrative and sociolinguistic standards or elasticity, viability,and complexity that the novelist outlines in LiberatingVoices.By ground-ing her text in the religious ritual of healing, the vernacular voices of ablack healing woman, and the music of a college-educated black rock-and-roll singer, Jones moves beyond the cultural limitations of her bluesvoice in Corregidoraand Eva's Man. In order to expand the varieties andcomplexities of agency, authority, and authenticity that mark The Heal-ing, Jones explicitly contrasts the notorious Eva of her earlier novel withthe identity formation of contemporary Americans of African descent,especially ordinary black women who are not "criminally insane." Butonly Jones's imaginative construction of Harlan bears witness to some ofthe levels of irony and paradox that mark the political and spiritualstruggle of many black women to reconcile the double consciousness oftheir personal and group identities as people of African descent. Stylisti-cally and structurally, the liberation movement of the novel is most ap-parent in the non-linear, reflexive interplay between the past and present,the spoken and written language, and the vernacular and formal culturalforms of the characters. Regrettably, however, the liberating movementof the voices in The Healingdisrupts a static, unitary, blues constructionof black identity with a more confusing than compelling narrative visionof an emerging transracial, transcultural social order of variable ways ofknowing and being black in the world with others. Even so, many read-ers, including the National Book Awards Panel that nominated the bookas a finalist, may judge the vision and voices of The Healingmore satisfy-ing than other novels published in 1998

BernardW. BellThe PennsylvaniaState University

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258 COMPARATIVE LITERATURESTUDIESNOTES

1. Gayl Jones, LiberatingVoices:Oral Traditionn AfricanAmericanLiteratureNewYork:Penguin, 1992); Gayl Jones, TheHealing Boston: Beacon, 1998).2. Stephen Henderson, Understandinghe New BlackPoetry(New York: WilliamMorrow,1973); BernardW. Bell, The FolkRootsof Contemporary fro-American oetry(Detroit: Broadside,1974); BernardW. Bell, TheAfro-AmericanNovel andIts Tradition(Amherst: U of MassachusettsP, 1987); John EdgarWideman, "Frameand Dialect:The Evolution of the Black Voice in Fiction,"AmericanPoetryReview5 (1976): 33-37;John EdgarWideman,"Definingthe Black Voice in Fiction,"BlackAmericanLiteraryForum2 (1977), 79-82; Houston A. Baker,Jr.,Blues, Ideology,andAfro-AmericanLit-erature Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984); and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,The SignifyingMonkey New York:OxfordUP, 1988).3. LawrenceLevine,BlackCulture ndBlackConsciousnessOxford:OxfordUP, 1977);Keith Byerman,FingeringheJaggedGrain,(Athens: U of GeorgiaP, 1985);JohnCalla-han, In theAfricanAmericanGrain(Urbana:U of Illinois P, 1988): and EricSundquist,The Hammers f Creation, Athens: U of GeorgiaP, 1992).4. GeraldPrince, Dictionaryof Narratology:HumanAgencyandLanguageLincoln:U of NebraskaP, 1987) ChapterOne.5. Lionel Trilling, Sincerity ndAuthenticity Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1971) 134-6. CharlesTaylor,The Ethicsof Authenticity Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1991) 66.7. Marvin E. Olsen, "Power as a Social Process,"Powerin Societies(New York:Macmillan, 1970) 7.

8. Quoted in Veronica Chambers, "The Invisible Woman Reappears Sort Of,"Newsweek 16 February1998) 68.