Poetry sustains life. Of this I am certain. There is no doubt in my mind that the pain of poverty whether material or emotional lack can be eased by the power of language. I know this intimately. For in that misunderstood childhood of mine, I found that sanctuary in poetry. It restored me, allowed me to come back from the space of woundedness and sadness to a recognition of beauty.
bell hooks (Wounds of Passion)
Cultural theorist and leading voice of black feminist scholarship, bell hooks dreamt of a life marked by poetry. In her second attempt at an autobiographical recollection of a life lived in the segregated vistas of late twentieth-century American society, Wounds of Passion (1997), she recalls the first time she went to hear African American poet Adrienne Rich read her lines. What she heard, the pain Rich’s engulfing timbre unearthed in her innocent little soul, shattered the preconceived notions she nursed about the possibility of a life lived in poetry. Rich’s words enacted a warning, one that she was unprepared for. Finally, young Gloria Watkins (bell hooks’ given name) was forced to realize how futile her life’s dream had been right from the start – who would want to listen to a black woman’s lines in a society where her existence as a citizen is questioned on a daily basis? And yet hooks did not want to give in on her dream; she understood now, perhaps better than before, the need to reclaim a space within American life so that her poetry and that of other minority voices may be heard and listened to. She had to bring to light a ‘site of memory’ which in turn would allow her to live out her long-awaited life in poetry. Hence, the writing and publication of Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982).
What began as a graduate student’s project at setting the record straight once and for all, speaking for those who were denied the right of voice and (re)presentation, turned into a foundational text for black feminist scholarship. Hooks’ work of historical recovery took more than a decade to reach an audience but when it did arrive onto the bookshelves of American libraries and bookstores it unleashed the possibility to have black women poets, minority writers, housewives, working class mothers, live a life that is recognized, admitted to, re-membered. Ain’t I a Woman brought to the table a new way of thinking about America, the not-so-beguiling ‘melting pot’ nation of phantasmagoric opportunities for those that have it in them to succeed. Hooks’ recovery narrative tells a different story of the Promised Land’s mythical existence. She treats American citizenship as a highly racialized and gendered (social) project. By examining the various ideological and political strategies that white women reformists employed throughout the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, in order to aver all rights of citizenship for themselves, hooks allows for a broader understanding of the distinct ways through which race and gender discourses engage the dynamics of equality and citizenship in American society, and vice versa:
Every women’s movement in America from its earliest origin to the present day has been built on a racist foundation – a fact which in no way invalidates feminism as a political ideology. The racial apartheid social structure that characterized 19th and early 20th century American life was mirrored in the women’s rights movement. The first white women’s rights advocates were never seeking social equality for all women; they were seeking social equality for white women. Because many 19th century white women’s rights advocates were also active in the abolitionist movement, it is often assumed they were anti-racist. Historiographers and especially recent feminist writing have created a version of American history in which white women’s rights advocates are presented as champions of oppressed black people…In actuality, most white abolitionists, male and female, though vehement in their anti-slavery protest, were totally opposed to granting social equality to black people.
Reading hooks’ work of historical re-memberance, we come to realize that neither ‘race’ nor ‘gender’ as latter-day social categories can stand on their own to (re)present fully the diversity of American nationhood. Letting the silences speak, opening up a forum for a new, challenging discourse on ‘engendered race’, hooks questions the validity of ‘reclaiming a creative space of one’s own’ in the first place. Doesn’t this practice help perpetuate an already too familiar set of elitist activities? Isn’t the exclusivity of a ‘creative space’ a far cry away from the illiterate reality of nameless protagonists (present and past) whose circumstances prevent them from celebrating/actualizing their identities? Not entirely.
Cultural historian Pierre Nora examines the relationship that exists between historical investment and individual memory, offering a reading of ‘historical truths’ and ‘remembered events’ through lieux de mémoire, that is, ‘sites of memory’ which “originate with the sense that there is no spontaneous memory, that we must deliberately create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally.” Within American social practices, such ‘sites of memory’ appear to be a necessity, a final defense against misrepresentation and unilateral polemics in historical study. As children of history and memory, lieux de mémoire, according to Nora, are unlike any previously encountered type of history, ancient or modern, since contrary to historical objects, they are without a referent in reality. However, Nora is quick to point out that this unique trait does not leave the ‘sites of memory’ without a referent all-together; lieux de mémoire are their own referents. In other words, they constitute a double act: they are “a site of excess closed upon itself, concentrated in its own name, but also forever open to the full range of its possible significations.” Bearing this in mind, hooks’ work of historical recovery filtered through the tools of feminist scholarship, emerges as an example of one such ‘site of memory’; moreover, her poignant implementation of the authority of experience, when dealing with race and gender (re)presentations, unfolds an open-ended set of enquiries that are not meant to be fully resolved.
What are we to make of the ‘silences’ that her work has successfully ‘voiced’? When such silences fall, when they are no longer veiled, what purpose do they serve? Are they really empowering for their lack of previous recognition or for their claim to provide revelatory insight into past historical moments? Could they in turn constitute other ‘sites of memory’ that will help voice the ‘otherness’ of thus far undesirable lifestyles or unwelcomed experiences? Could they speak to one and many?
Ain’t I a Woman, although thoroughly insightful and first of its kind (as far as writings on the condition of African American women’s history are concerned), is not alone in voicing these questions. Silences have provided storytellers with opportunities continuously throughout human history. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey gain their creative power from the untresspassed silences of antic Greek beliefs; The Old and The New Testament reinforce the mysticism of varied Christian faith(s) by opening up their pages to the silences of God’s ways. And the list goes on. Nevertheless, when it comes to the imaginative investment and creative wits of American artists, none come close to hooks’ explorative style as the poet Walt Whitman.
A strange paring the two may prove to be (and indeed I have often asked myself what it is about their respective work that makes me think of it as being linked by the ‘engendered silences’ of American citizenship); Whitman’s nineteenth-century sentiments of American nationhood appear strikingly out-of-touch when paired up with the life-shattering lessons that hooks’ late twentieth-century work coveys. On the one hand, Whitman’s America is characterized by a prevailing sense of oneness. In “Our Old Feuillage” (1860), America is portrayed as a unifying entity that permeates the multi-social/ethnic/racial commonalities of its citizens. Equally possessed by Northerners and Southerners (even Kanadians!), Whitman’s American identity brings together the diverging and sometimes lethal aspirations of its people; it nullifies the boundaries of race, class, gender that inhabit the reality of American life, so that American citizens are always one and all, united in their belonging to an idea of a belonging. On the other hand, black feminist critic bell hooks does not allow herself such dangerous/anachronistic indulgences. Her America is not a bounded collective identity; her work points to American reality as a set of multiple, shifting, and contingent identities that are in need of recovery, since the white supremist patriarchal power structure, which polices American citizenship and nationhood, disavows the cultural and lawful validity of their existence. Yet, both Whitman and hooks are concerned with (re)presentations of American citizenship. Both writers understand that to (re)present America is to (re)present/theorize identity, belonging, history, culture, and place; and the ‘silences’ of identity, belonging, history, culture, and place; and the ‘reclaiming of silences’- both authorized and subversive – of identity, belonging, history, culture, and place.
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