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COLLECTIVE IDENTITY FORMATION AND CULTURAL
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COLLECTIVE IDENTITY FORMATION AND CULTURAL TRAUMA
IN BLACK FEMINIST DRAMA:
IN THE BLOOD AND FUNNYHOUSE OFA NEGRO
By

Tonya S. Braddox

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in paﬂial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Literature in English

2009

ABSTRACT
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY FORMATION AND CULTURAL TRAUMA

IN BLACK F EMINIST DRAMA:
IN THE BLOOD AND F UNNYHOUSE OF A NEGRO

By
Tonya S. Braddox
Black feminist theatre establishes a collective identity for African American
women affected by cultural trauma. Recent studies in the ﬁeld of trauma theory and
literary studies claim cultural trauma forms collective identities. The negative effects of
cultural trauma are turned into positive memories by staging reenactrnents of traumatic
events. The dramas of Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks stage collective
identities for speciﬁc segments of women within the Aﬁican American community. The
cultural trauma experienced by these women is rejection based on colorism and

economics.

Copyright by
TONYA S. BRADDOX
2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1

Articulating the Language of Trauma
in Black Feminist Drama ................................................................................................... 6

Collective Identity Formations and
Black Feminist Theatre ...................................................................................................... 24

Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 28

iv

Collective Identity Formation and Cultural Trauma in Black Feminist Drama:
In the Blood and F unnyhouse of a Negro

According to Cathy Caruth, early work in the ﬁeld of trauma and literary studies
emphasized “learning to listen” and the need to recognize “what it means to remember
traumatic experience and what it means to recognize trauma” (Caruth viii). Later
scholars have focused instead on the broader category of “cultural trauma” and on public
reenactrnents of cultural trauma. They seek to arrive at a truth that explains the collective
trauma experienced during events such as the Holocaust and the Transatlantic slave trade.
In this context, I want to posit black feminist theatre as an effort to establish a collective
identity for African American women affected by cultural trauma. I explore how black
feminist drama addresses and seeks to offer a chance at recovery to victims of racism and
sexism. Lisa M. Andersen’s Black Feminism in Contemporary Drama sets a precedent
for this view by etching a place in the American drarnatic literary canon for black
feminist drama. Mthin the black feminist literary framework, a collective voice is read,
heard, and reenacted on behalf of black women. Andersen notes:

Although feminist theatre scholars have written critical works on plays
by black women playwrights, the clear, cogent concept of a black
feminist theatre remains elusive. That is not to say that there is not, or has
not been, black feminist theatre; it means only that black feminist writing
about black feminist theatre has been scarce.
(Andersen 1)
Andersen crafts a theoretical lens for a black feminist aesthetics that attends to “the

context in which a work is situated, how its construction and production are shaped, and

how that shaping is informed by its politics” (2). The dramas of Adrienne Kennedy and
Suzan-Lori Parks are critical reﬂections of black feminist aesthetics. Both playwrights
are recognized as part of the black feminist dramatic literary cannon alongside other
noted black feminist authors, such as Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, and Ntozake
Shange. Their works speak for those whose voices have been muted, and they place
those voices front and center. Although Andersen paves the way for further development
in this ﬁeld, she does not identify any speciﬁc cultural trauma that contributes to the
formation of a collective identity among African American women. African American
women’s collective identity comprises diverse voices that are situated in black feminism.
Hence, I posit that within this diversity can be found signs of cultural trauma that
delineate the collective identities of various groups among Aﬁ'ican American women. In
particular, these plays attend to the voices of poor black women and the so-called “tragic
mulatto,” who struggle with the cultural trauma of rejection based on (respectively)
economics and colorism.l

My analysis of black feminist theatre will focus on how the language of trauma is
articulated. In my analysis, the language of trauma refers to the nonverbal speech acts
and dialogic text that describe a traumatic episode performed by the actor. In other
words, when the language of trauma is performed, it provides a visual representation for

the abstract concept of trauma. The abstract concept of trauma is often associated with

 

1 Most critical analyses on theatre focus on performance to interpret the text, but this thesis will only
examine the play’s text—its stage directions, the author’s notes, and key dialogue. I take the view that
dramatic text is always in dialogue with the reader. Readers of the text are actors, directors, stage hands,
and eventually, the public. Readers should attempt to fully understand the text before planning a
production or seeing a performance. The text must live in their minds as a visual reference before

reenactment for the stage.

several words, such as shock, pain, suffering, misery, grief, trouble and nightmare.2
Trauma is not limited to a reaction to one speciﬁc experience. It can also be a result of a
series of repeated experiences. I argue that a response to these repeated experiences
results in outbursts of self-hatred, sufferer of nightmares, speechless acts, and numbing
pain. Although the protagonist in a drama is represented as an individual, moreover, her
portrayal implies a cultural trauma experienced by many individuals simultaneously and
perhaps at the same level of intensity. Thus, the individual experience is a voice for a
collective identity. The individual voice speaks on behalf of the members associated with
the collective identity. For instance, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun portrays
the reality of many Aﬁican Americans living during the 19403 and 19505: poverty,
unemployment, and racism. By focusing on a speciﬁc family living in Southside
Chicago, Hansberry exposes the conditions experienced by many Africans Americans
living in similar urban settings, thus creating a collective identity for families that were
affected by the same conditions. Hansberry has stated that when staging A Raisin in the
Sun, “[one] must pay very great attention to the speciﬁc” to arrive at the universal or the
collective (Nemiroff 114).

Before turning to the question of how the language of trauma operates in black

feminist theatre, I want to frame it with a brief discussion Of recent scholarship on

 

2 Jeffrey Alexander claims trauma is “not something naturally existing; it is something constructed by

society” (Alexander 2). Alexander situates his claim against Caruth’s psychoanalytic theory that trauma
originates with “the power and objectivity of the originating naumatic event” and because the event is
unconsciously reenacted, it is hard to leave behind (Alexander 6, 7). Thus, the individual is haunted by the
event (Alexander 7). This notion is depicted in Adrienne Kennedy’s drama, F unnyhouse of a Negro.

Several trauma theorists, including Dori Laub, Cathy Caruth, and Laura S. Brown, use the
following words to describe traumatic experiences: horror, nightmares, anxiety, and “marks of psychic
numbing” (Caruth 73, 81, 100). Therefore, I have created a list of words often associated with trauma that
are discussed in this thesis.

reenactrnents of cultural trauma. My investigation brings together two theories of trauma:
one theory outlines the cultural trauma experienced by African Americans, and the other
discusses how African Americans participate in reenactrnents that celebrate their history
and create new ways of remembering history. In “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,”
the sociologist Jeffrey Alexander argues that trauma “is not the result of a group
experiencing pain”; rather, it is the result of the group’s core members deciding
collectively to react to that pain, thus creating the group’s own identity (Alexander
10-24). He identiﬁes “collective actions” and “institutional processes,” and he theorizes
the “speech acts” of social groups that exist in “historical, cultural, and institutional”
situations. He also discusses “four critical representations” of a newly developed
“master narrative” that explains the nature of pain, victimization, the relation of the
trauma victim to the wider audience, and the “social construction” of responsibility for
the experience (Alexander 15). Alexander identiﬁes “power structures” and “social
agents” that effect the representation of traumatic events placed in the public sphere as
theatrical spectacles, such as the Colonial Williamsburg tourist attraction located in
Virginia (Alexander 10). Where Alexander identiﬁes and explains speciﬁc elements that
comprise the notion of cultural trauma, the concept has been developed over time by
several scholars that aim to address how various racial groups have formed collective
identities through “collective memor[ies]” (Eyerman 60). Among those scholars is
sociologist Ron Eyerman. In his essay, “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation Of
African American Identity,” he explains the different stages of cultural trauma and

traj ects how Aﬁican Americans have developed their collective identity over time, from

“the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement” (Eyerman 60). Eyerman notes
how African Americans have retained memories of the past and have created an “ongoing
process” of “public commemoration” through, historical writings, narratives, music and
drarnatizations (65, 75, 82, 94). The notion that traumatic experiences are reenacted in
the public sphere led me to investigate Lisa Woolfork’s research on how the African
American community is seeking new ways to address a negative past and turn it into a
positive memory (Eyerman 84-88).

Woolfork’s Embodying American Slavery in Contemporary Culture has two
chapters that further Eyerman”s assessment of the collective cultural trauma. She begins
her analysis with a discussion of individual characters in Aﬁican American literary works
and ﬁlms before discussing the collective experience. Woolfork examines the black
spectatorship of slavery representation in ritual and historical reenactrnents (Woolfork
99). These spectators’ reactions are not predictable and often open up the dialogue on
new ways to “re-remember” the collective experience. Woolfork believes both ritual and
historical reenactrnents are in dialogue with one another. She documents present-day
educational tools that place the collective traumatic experience on the theatrical stage.
Her investigation reveals “the costs and consequences” of staging the re-embodiment of
American slavery, thus addressing the problem with taking a highly sensitive subject
from the academic arena and placing it outside of that arena (Woolfork 161). Depending
on your audience, this position can have both positive and negative effects. Woolfork’s
research is important and demonstrates how scholars can view reenactrnents of cultural

traumas in a different arena: the theatre.

Articulating the Language of Trauma in Black Feminist Drama

From black feminist drama, a close reading of Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood and
Adrienne Kennedy’s F unnyhouse of a Negro add diverse voices for the collective
traumatic experiences of contemporary black women. Both Kennedy and Parks construct
dialogue incorporating speech acts and body language, to articulate traumatic experiences
of black women in America between 19605 and 19903. Their works focus on an
individual’s traumatic experiences can contribute to a collective identity. In In the Blood
and F unnyhouse of a Negro, dialogic texts performed through nonverbal speech acts and
body linguistics articulate a series of traumatic episodes. These reenactrnents, in text and
speech acts, serve as the syntax for the language of trauma in black feminist theatre.

Therefore, In the Blood and F unnyhouse require more than a mere reading of the
text and a broad visualization of their performance. The plays’ themes are sensitive and
require more than a sensationalistic approach. The reader must reread the plays several
times before understanding their cultural signiﬁcance in American history and literature.
Perhaps, these plays provide a historical mapping of the black female experience.
Therefore, I will unravel the language of trauma articulated in these dramatic pieces to
understand how over time the black female subject has experienced a series of cultural
trauma and have established a collective identity.

It is noteworthy that the two playwrights I consider here have expressed similar
sentiments regarding their roles as writers for the theatre. For instance, during an
interview with BOMB magazine, both admit to the joys and their love of being writers,

but they are not necessarily fond of being “theater person[s]” (Parks, BOMB 2). Kennedy

and Parks do not affectionately embrace production work, nor do they work with the
director, actors, or other theatre crew members. Hence, the initial purpose for writing
their plays is to tell a story through dialogue--to articulate a thought in a dialogic format.
Their intention for writing their plays did not always include the possibility of production
and performance. The interview insinuates that Kennedy and Parks are comfortable with
how their works are subjects of academic discourses (Parks, BOMB 2). This offers an
invitation to further explore their texts and unpack their signiﬁcance to the American
literary canon.

Woolfork’s discussion of reenactrnents of the past suggests that those who
perform these reenactrnents “want to ‘speak for [their] ancestors,” but not necessarily to
walk in their shoes (Woolfork 171). To walk in someone’s shoes denotes empathy, to
truly place oneself in the exact position to understand the circumstances that cause a
speciﬁc effect. Yet, although Woolfork’s scholarship reveals that Colonial
Williamsburg’s historical re-enactors3 are reluctant to ﬁrlly embody the trauma of their
ancestors, this is not the case in Kennedy’s and Parks’s plays. Here the actors have to
fully embody the character (171). Embodying a character requires the actor to mentally,
physically, and emotionally embrace the persona of a character. Actors seek to interpret
and to provide an accurate representation of their characters. In relation to Woolfork’s
analysis, my research will reveal how embodying non-verbal speech acts and executing
speciﬁc body linguistics articulate the cultural traumas experienced by black women

today in doctor’s ofﬁces and at the hands of governmental agencies.

 

9

3 Colonial Williamsburg’s historical reenactrnents of slavery is a “celebration of European colonial history’

that include employees who portray enslaved Africans and African Americans. These reenactrnents are not
“memorialization[s]” (Woolfork 159). The aim is to provide a “living history.”

When Aﬁican American playwrights choose to write about the repercussions of an
event or an experience, is it the same as presenting a reenactment of the past? If so, why
would an author choose to illustrate an experience in this way? Both Kennedy’s and
Parks’s reenactrnents allow the reader to see “living memories” that are crucial to our
understanding the experience of black female subjects in America. Both playwrights
contribute to an experimental theatre that presents reenactrnents of the black experience
that go beyond the customary realism. Besides the use of imagery and allegory, the body
and speakerly language4 in their plays are signiﬁcant in capturing the trauma of the black
female experience.

Adrienne Kennedy ﬁrst emerged as a major African American dramatist during
the Black Arts Movement (BAM) of the 19605, and she provided a different voice for the
African American community. At the time, many mainstream critics failed to recognize
her contributions to BAM because her works did not advocate hard-core black
nationalism. However, the racial identity crisis existing during the 19605 is evident in
Kennedy’s surrealistic play, F unnyhouse of a Negro. The play reenacts a painful part of
African American history: the struggle for acceptance into and recognition by the
hegemonic cultural and political arenas. During the Black Power Movement (BPM),
African Americans rallied for their civil rights in America alongside a desire to return to
their roots in Africa. Kennedy radically addresses issues of identity in her plays, which
deﬁnes her as a contributor to the BPM. F unnyhouse is not apologetic in its portrayal of

the tragic biracial woman; Negro-Sarah portrays the consciousness of many black women

 

4 According to African American scholar, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., speakerly text is “designed ‘to emulate
the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical patterns of actual speech’” (Gates l81).

who have tried to pass for white during the twentieth century and have experienced
rejection based on colorism. Although Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing and ﬁlms
such as Imitation of Life treat similar issues, Kennedy’s play more explicitly portrays the
psychological effects of trying to pass.

Although Kennedy models her plays after her own family, this seemingly speciﬁc
focus highlights complexities that existed in the larger society (Kolin 5-7). For example,
Kennedy’s earlier works bear the mark of F rantz Fanon’s writing on the psychology of
colonialism. The identity crisis that the black female protagonist, Negro-Sarah,
experiences is summed up in the words of Hegel taken from The Phenomenology of
Mind: “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that and by the fact that it
exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or
recognized” (Fanon 216). Kennedy claims that she is “writing [...] days of images
ﬁercely pounding in [her] head and days of walking [...] I am at the typewriter almost
every waking moment and suddenly there is a play [...] Somehow under this spell they
become written” (Kennedy Kennedy Reader 10). Kennedy’s comments suggests that the
subconscious is haunted with horriﬁc images and the images of the subconscious are
transcribed in a way that depicts the traumatic effects of racism and the pressure to
conform to the United States of America’s cultural standards and politics often
experienced by Aﬁican Americans. F unnyhouse is a reﬂection of the author’s fourteen-
month trip to Europe, Ghana, and Nigeria (Bryant-Jackson & Overbeck 23). During this
trip, she “became aware of masks” and the “strength in being a black person and a

connection to West Africa” (23). According to Kennedy, “almost every image in

F unnyhouse” was developed while visiting West Africa (Bryant-Jackson & Overbeck 23).
Coincidentally, Kennedy’s a play echoes the sentiments of Fanon (F anon 50).

In F unnyhouse, Negro-Sarah desires to be recognized by her white counterparts as
an equal. Her African ancestry haunts her and she agonizes over why she is unable to
embody her European ancestry. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon pinpoints the
psychological eﬁects of someone who is haunted and obsessed with occupying the
identity of her oppressor (Fanon 60, Kolin 30). To emphasize the damage it has done to
Negro-Sarah’s psyche, Kennedy divides her subconscious into four “selves”: the Duchess
of Hapsburg, Queen Victoria Regina, Jesus, and Patrice Lumurnba. The subconscious
“selves” articulate four trauma-laden issues: racial terrorism, culture, materialism, and
politics. The ﬁrst of the latter two will be discussed later in the essay. The former two
are blatantly visible on stage. For example, the stage directions state, “QUEEN
VICTORIA is standing before [N egrO-Sarah’s] bed holding a small mirror in her hand
[and] THE DUCHESS OF HAPSBURG is standing at the foot of the bed [...] Throughout
the entire [ﬁrst] scene, they do not move” (Kennedy F unnyhouse 5). Both selves are
dressed in “royal gowns of white” and from beneath their white headpieces springs “wild
kinky hair” (5, 6). Kennedy depicts the nightmare of the troubled “mulatta” in the stage
directions and in the following dialogue,

Victoria

It is my father. He is arriving again for the night. (The Duchess
makes no reply.) He comes through the jungle to ﬁnd me. He
never tires of his journey.

Duchess

How dare he enter the castle, he who is the darkest of them all, the
darkest one? My mother looked like a white man, hair as straight

10

as any white woman’s. And at least I am yellow, but he is black,
the blackest one of them all. I hope he was dead. Yet he still
comes through the jungle to ﬁnd me.
As the knocking from the father increases in volume, the Mother
repeatedly says,

Black man, black man, I never should have let a black man put his
hands on me. The wild black beast raped me and now my skull is
shining.5
(Kennedy, 6-7)
Her father’s haunting presence causes Negro-Sarah to yearn for something she
may never achieve -- acceptance. The constant rejection she receives from the larger
society leads to traumatic episodes. Somehow, Negro-Sarah believes that she will be

99 ‘6

accepted if she is “a more pallid Negro, souless, educated and irreligious,” lacking
moral value. She dreams of living in rooms with “European antiques [...] walls of books,
a piano, oriental carpets and eat meals on the white glass table” (9). She associates all of
these things with whiteness. Possessing Eurocentric material culture will grant her access
to white society and essentially gain its approval and acknowledgment. Moreover, she
wants to erase her Aﬁican ancestry and any external features that remind her of it (9).

For she says, “I need them as an embankment to keep me from reﬂecting too much upon
the fact that I am a Negro [...] In appearance I am good-looking in a boring way; no
glaring Negroid features” (Kennedy F unnyhouse 9). Because she cannot obliterate her
blackness and the turmoil of being biracial in a society in which one race is more

accepted over the other, she continues to have dark episodes of her hair falling out and

cursing her Negro father. For instance,

 

5 The “skull is shining” refers the self-imposed baldness.

ll

Duchess

NO. (She screams and opens her red paper bag and draws ﬁom it
her fallen hair: It is a great mass of dark wild. She holds it up to
him. He appears not understand. He stares at it.). It is my hair.
(He continues to stare at her) When I awakened this morning it
had fallen out, not all of it but a mass from the crown of my pillow.
I arose and in the greyish winter morning light of my room I stood
staring at my hair, dazed by my sleeplessness, still shaken by
nightmares of my mother. Was it true, yes, it was my hair. In the
mirror I saw that, although my hair remained on both sides, clearly
on the crown and at my temples my scalp was bare. (She removes
her black crown and shows him the top of her head.)

Funnyman
(Staring at her) Why would your hair fall out? Is it because you
are cruel? How could a black father haunt you so?

Duchess
He haunted my very conception. He was a wild black beast who
raped my mother.

Funnyman
He is a black Negro. (Laughing)

Duchess

Ever since I can remember he’s been in a nigger pose of agony. He
is the wilderness. He speaks niggerly groveling about wanting to
touch me with his black hand.

Funnyman
How tormented and cruel you are.

(Kennedy, 12-13)

The dialogue between one of Negro-Sarah’s “selves”, Duchess of Hapsburg, and the

Funnyman illustrates how self-hatred is manifested through someone else’s traumatic

episode. The scene reenacts how trauma is passed from one generation to the next.

Negro-Sarah inherits her mulatto mother’s hatred for her black father because

consistently her mother accuses the father of raping her and leaving her with a reminder,

12

a black child. A black child who has European features with kinky hair. The mother was
troubled about her identity and passed her identity crisis to her child. The trauma for
Negro-Sarah is her mother’s rejection of her African ancestry; Sarah is rejected because
she is a reminder of the “ugly” episode that she let a black man touch her. Reenactment
of the rape is through dialogue and it is not performed on the stage. Repeatedly, the
protagonist states,

He keeps returning. How dare he enter the castle walls, he who is

the darkest of them all, the darkest one? My mother looked like a

white woman, hair as straight as any white woman’s. And I am

yellow but he, he is black, the blackest one of them all. I hoped he

was dead. Yet he still comes through the jungle.

(Kennedy 10, 11)

This repetition consistently reminds the reader and the audience that Negro-Sarah’s self-
hatred has not been rectiﬁed by her parents. Negro-Sarah envisions the death of her
father. However, in the last scene, the white Landlady of the boarding house brings
clarity to Negro-Sarah’s clouded world. The reader and the audience learn that the father
is alive and has written Negro-Sarah: he tried to “save” the Mother and Negro-Sarah from
their agony; he has begged for his daughter’s forgiveness for his being black (Kennedy
F unnyhouse 22). The father’s pleas did not save Negro-Sarah; she hangs herself. Her

Jewish boyfriend, Raymond, reveals Sarah’s true story.

Raymond
(Observing [Negro-Sarah Is] hanging ﬁgure.) She was a ﬁlnny
little liar.

l3

Landlady
(Informing him.)
Her father hung himself in a Harlem hotel when Patrice Lumumba6
died.
Raymond
Her father never hung himself in a Harlem hotel when Patrice
Lumumba was murdered. I know the man. He is a doctor, married
to a white whore. He lives in the city in rooms with European
antiques, photographs of Roman ruins, walls of books and oriental
carpets. Her father is a nigger who eat his meals on a white glass
table.
(Kennedy F unnyhouse 22)
This revelation is essential to understanding Negro-Sarah’s anxiety. Her father is
a man who coveted the materials of Europe and its culture. He tried to gain social access
to the “white world,” but his marriage to a “white whore” does not qualify him. Sarah
covets the same things her father possessed. Although this is not seen in the play, the
assumption is that Sarah’s black father may have contributed to her trauma. He exposed
her to a world that had already rejected him and his wife. Being the offspring of an
ostracized black male and an outcasted white mother, Sarah’s social status will torment
her (and has) until her death. The stigma attached to being a black woman during the
19605 is overwhelming and Sarah buckles under the pressure (Kennedy F unnyhouse 24).
Sarah buckles under the pressure to conform to standards that seem impossible. The

cultural trauma of rejection on the basis of colorism is not denied because many black

women are placed in opposition using the litmus test of who is lighter and who is darker.

 

6 Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and ﬁrst prime minister of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo. He wanted to make the Republic of the Congo to be the leader of the Pan-African
Union during 19605 (Appiah & Gates 1208). He was murdered while Kennedy and her family were
visiting Ghana and many of the people talked about his death (Bryant-Jackson & Overbeck 72).

I4

The closer the individual is to appearing European, the better the chances Of accessing
systems of privilege in education, economics, and social life.

Kennedy uses imagism and repetitive words7 to reenact the trauma experienced
by the black female protagonist. These are characteristics of Kennedy’s works (Bryant-
Jackson & Overbeck 70). The syntax articulated for the language of trauma in
Kennedy’s play is imagery and repetition. Kennedy’s dramas are often difficult to
comprehend because the works do not adhere to the realism oﬁen associated with Aﬁican
American literature Of the 19605. Kennedy narrates the black experience using a
surrealistic approach. This is the reason for many mainstream critics having problems
classifying Kennedy’s work with BAM. Most works of BAM are overtly radical and
explicit. Many of the works are poetic, but they rarely require a peeling away of several
layers to reach the core of the story line. In addition, Kennedy’s earlier plays are written
as scenes or episodes and not as ﬁIlly structured plays.

Suzan-Lori Parks’s works are deeply inﬂuenced by Kennedy, but the work I want
to consider here is a ﬁrlly structured drama: In the Blood. Inﬂuenced by Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Suzan-Lori Parks names her protagonist, Hester, La
Negrita. In the American literary canon, this character, Hester, epitomizes the tainted,
ostracized woman. Parks constructs the character Hester in In the Blood to represent a
segment of women within the African American community that are labeled outcasts by

their own as well as others outside of the racial community. Parks challenges the

 

7 Kennedy’s use of repetition in both words and the protagonist’s nightmares “represent the trauma [...]

dreaded by [an] expected destiny.” It can also be said that individuals who experience “psychic trauma” do
manifest “signs of continuation of the trauma patterns, [...] anxiety dreams, sometimes a driven need to talk
about” the event(s) of the traumatic episode (Caruth 81).

15

assumptions made about young black women who have several children with several
different men and receive public assistance from governmental agencies. She
complicates the black female protagonists’ situation by allowing the reader/audience see
the obvious stereotypes. Here, however, Hester is not drug-addicted. This is an image
oﬁen associated with young black women collecting welfare beneﬁts. The image of the
“welfare queen” conceived by Daniel Moynihan in his 1965 report “was revived and
invigorated in the debates for ‘welfare reform’ in the 19905” (Andersen 65). The purpose
of the reform was to assist persons like Hester with securing that “one leg up” (Parks Red
Letter Plays 66). However, the crux of Hester’s trauma is how she is sexually exploited
by those who are able to help her and who thus perpetuate her problem and the image.
Along with the sexual exploitation, the stigma of being a recipient of the United States
welfare system is a part of the cultural trauma for many poor black women.
Hester’s naiveté regarding her social identity keeps her illiterate and ignorant.

She is a representation of many poor black women subject to this experience. A series Of
traumatic episodes eventually leads Hester to commit the violent act of murder. Parks
provides a forum for the reader/audience to examine and discuss how others have
experimented with different solutions to remedy this social issue. She is implying that
the dialogue between the Doctor and Hester is regularly reenacted in doctors’ offices
across the United States.

[Doctor] steps even closer.

Hester

((somethin-somethin-A-somethin.))

(Rest)
I need glasses.

I6

Doctor
You cant read this?

Hester
I gotta go.

Hester turns to go and he grabs her hand, holding her fast.

Doctor
When I removal of your “womanly part5” do you know what parts
Im talking about?

Hester
Yr gonna take my womans parts?

Doctor

My hands are tied. The Higher Ups are calling the shots now.
(Rest)

You have 5 healthy children, itll be for the best, considering.

Hester
My womans parts.

Doctor
Ive forwarded my recommendations to yr caseworker. Its out of

my hands. Im sorry.

Hester
I gotta go.

(Parks, Red Letter Plays 42-43)

During this scene, the stage direction states that she does not move, but “stands
there numbly” (43). The numb stand is a body linguistic conveying a complex reaction to
a traumatic episode. The trauma is the revelation that someone else is controlling her
reproductive rights (Roberts 248). The fact that the Doctor is reporting his results from
the medical examination to a governmental agency, Welfare, causes an indescribable

reaction. Hester does not react with words; she is rendered speechless. According to

Evelynn Hamonds, black women’s sexuality is usually “described in metaphors of
speechlessness” (Collins 123). Therefore, this speechless act raises the question of black
whether black women’s silence on their sexuality contributes to their not receiving the
help they need. The speechless act is a reaction to the Doctor’s previous actions. Hester
confuses sex with affection. During previous office visits, the play implies that Hester
had a sexual encounter with the Doctor; however, as the play progresses the reader/
audience realizes that she naively believes that the Doctor had her best interests at heart.
Hester is completely unaware of how the Doctor has exploited her and rejects her on
basis of her social status.

In the ﬁrst confession, he consciously describe the classism that exists within the
African American community and how the “likes” of Hester could never be apart of his
social economic class. In addition, he states that Hester is “one of [his] neediest cases”
looking for affection (Parks Red Letter Plays 44). He admits his disdain for her; at ﬁrst,
he did not want to touch her, but he sexually exploits her in the alley (Parks Red Letter
Plays 45). One of her “joys” she procreated with the Doctor is the son, Trouble (3, 12).
Her trauma is learning that the very organ used to help bring life into the world will be
taken away from her. This is a violation of her human rights to decide for herself and of
her rights to mothering another “joy,” another “treasure” (12). Of course, the Doctor and
“The Higher Ups” do not agree and seek to remedy the problem of the mythically
constructed “welfare mother” by controlling reproduction.

This segues to a word that explicitly describe how the government perceives all of

those like Hester; the word is “spay.” Welfare, a middle-class black woman, visits Hester

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to collect an update on the family. During the visit, Welfare mentions Hester’s doctor
visit and his recommendation to remove her “womanly part5” (Parks Red Letter Plays
56). Welfare blatantly says the word “spay” (56). For humans, the word is ‘sterilize.’ For
animals, the word is ‘spay.’ This distinction in itself suggests Hester is placed in the
same category of a domesticated animal, a cat or a dog. Hester does react to this
categorization, as I will discuss in just a moment.

Another possibility that explains Hester’s reaction to the Doctor’s
recommendation is an expression of helplessness. Hester is unable to defend herself with
words or comparable action. The non-movement and the unuttered words corporeally
articulates a speciﬁc cultural trauma experienced by this group of black women. The
cultural trauma identiﬁed here is the systemic regulation of the poor black female
subject’s social behavior and economic status in the United States. Historically, the ﬁght
for the reproductive rights ofAﬁican American women receiving public assistance from
governmental agencies culminated during the 19905 (Roberts 217). In her 1997 critically
acclaimed book, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of
Liberty, Dorothy Roberts explains: “This [is a] brand of welfare reform [that] does not
simply exclude Black women; it penalizes their reproduction. The law not only cuts Off
Black children from beneﬁts needed to survive but it blames their very birth for their
disadvantaged status” (245). This is another aspect of cultural trauma experienced by
poor black women in the United States.

Something far more disturbing is exploitation by someone who would seem to

completely understand one’s plight. This someone in Hester’s life is Welfare. Although

19

the character Welfare represents a United States government agency, the representation
appears to be someone close racially and of the same sex. This “someone” should be able
. to empathize with the struggles of another woman within the same racial group.

However, this relationship is another traumatic episode in Hester’s life. Hester’s
response is similar to an abused person who would like to end the abuse, but feels
powerless in following through. The fact that Hester does not kill Welfare indicates she
does not know how to do it without hurting herself. This episode provides a minuscule
preview to the play’s violent ending. Violence as a reaction to a traumatic episode is
mapped in this way,

Welfare

No need to raise your voice no need of that at all. You have to help
me help you, Hester.

(Rest)

Run yr ﬁngers through my hair. Go on. Feel it. Silky isn’t it?

Hester
Yes, Maam.

Welfare

Comes from a balanced diet. Three meals a day. Strict adherence
to the food pyramid. Money in my pocket, clothes on my back,
teeth in my mouth, womanly parts where they should be, hair on
my head, husband in my bed.

Hester combs Welfares hair.
Welfare
Yr doctor recommends that you get a hysterectomy. Take out yr

woman parts. A spay.

Hester
Spay.

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Welfare
I hope things wont come to that. I will do what I can. But you
have to help me, Hester.

Hester
((Dont make hurt you.))

Welfare
What?

Hester
I didnt mean it. Just slipped out.
(Parks, Red Letter Plays 55-59)
Hester does want to hurt Welfare. This is a response to the trauma inﬂicted upon
her from Welfare. Welfare has promised to help her obtain that “one leg up” and has not
delivered. She claims that help will come by “garnish[ing]” the wages of her children’s
fathers (Parks Red Letter Plays 55). Hester has given the names of four of her children’s
fathers, but Welfare states, “no luck as yet but we’re looking. Sometimes these searches
take years” (55). This is frustrating for Hester because it has already been years and
Welfare has not found one (55). The worst part of Hester’s ordeal is when Welfare
confesses that her and her husband intend to include this young black mother in their
sexual escapades. Their sexual abuse of Hester signiﬁes their rejection of her. Like the
Doctor, they feel she is beneath them and is not worthy to be considered a human, a
woman, a mother (62).

Moreover, Welfare8 is willing to participate in a system that maintains “well-

drawn boundary line[s]” between the haves and the have-nots (62). The fact that a person

 

8 According to Patricia H. Collins, “The general thinking among many middle-class reformers,
[speciﬁcally within the African American community], ‘was that most uneducated, unskilled women were
in need of social and moral uplift and, therefore, lacked the reﬁnement...to join in the uplift process, at least
as members of their organizations’” (Black Feminist Thought 214). Thus, Welfare’s refusal to help Hester
reﬂects the internal conﬂicts that exist within the racial community.

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of the same racial group is willing to take advantage of someone else’s dire situation is an
instigator in this traumatic episode. The major cause of trauma in this scenario is
rejection on the basis of economic status and one value in the larger society. Rejection
weighs heavily on the sufferer’s subconscious. This scene appears just before the
intermission illustrates the “push off the cliff.” Hester’s body language articulates an
awakening that conﬁrms her sentiments, “I dont think the world likes women
much” (59). The stage directions at the end of the scene state that Hester receives another
“painful stomach attack” that causes her to double over and is “recovering from her
attack” (63). The words “pain” and “attack” are apart of the language of trauma; the
body linguistics interpret these words and provide a visual for the audience. Reenacting
this traumatic episode for the audience invites them to experience that pain of rejection
she is experiencing. Thus the audience inadvertently experiences the same pain of many
young black women who are in the same situation as Hester. This is a part of the
collective identity of poor black women in the United State.

As mentioned earlier, the word “spay” is troubling to Hester and should be
troubling to the reader/audience. She may not know how to read and write, but she does
understand the impact of the word. How does the concept of the word affect Hester’s
state of being? She blames herself for not succeeding, but acknowledges that “the world
dont help” (Parks Red Letter Plays 59). The Reverend D.’s avoidance of her reaffirms
this notion. He promises to give Hester money to help her out. However, he does not
follow through with his promise and in doing so, he avoids her by lying to her and

pushing her away. This is another form of rejection. This last traumatic episode does

22

mark a signiﬁcant climax in Hester’s mental state. The Reverend D. calls her a “common
slut”; the word ‘slut’ is written on the wall under the bridge at the beginning of the play
(103). He uses this word as a threat for her not to tell Welfare about his status. He
threatens to “crush [her] underfoot” (103). After all the other fathers have proven to be
absent and reluctant to acknowledge their part in creating this situation for this young
woman, the father of the last child sets the tone for the ﬁnale.

The amounting traumatic episodes lead to a deadly end. After the Reverend D.
leaves, her eldest son, Jabber, repeats the word “slut.” Even though Hester does not
recognize the written form of the word, she understands the meaning of the word. When
the word is repeatedly said, she “quickly raises her club and hits him once” and Jabber
falls to his death (Parks Red Letter Plays 103). While her other children are watching,
she continuously hits Jabber’s body in a frenzy. With blood on her hands, she is “grief-
stricken” (1 06).

The syntax articulated for the language of trauma in Parks’s works are the words
associated with trauma and the body linguistics written in the stage directions. Parks
carefully selects the words that will carry weight and provide multiple meanings that
cause the reader and audience to consider the subject matter on many different levels.
One word or word image can open up dialogue among the audience that may not have
existed until Parks suggests it for consideration, such as the word ‘spay.’ When you
unpack the word ‘spay’, the ﬁrst thing that comes to mind is to sterilize an animal. But,
why would the same word be used on a human, on Hester? The character, Hester, is

associated with an animal that is in heat and needs to be sterilized before a litter is

23

reproduced. This is a serious accusation placed on a helpless individual. Hence, the
question remains, how can an individual’s traumatic experience speak for the collective
experience?
Collective Identity Formations and Black Feminist Theatre

The historical mapping of the black female subject and the collective cultural
trauma that exist in post-American slavery and post-Civil Rights eras are featured in
feminist dramas by African American women. By focusing on the principal characters of
F unnyhouse ofa Negro and In the Blood, an aim to be recognized and accepted by the
hegemonic cultural and political arenas is at the center of their traumatic experiences.

Eyerman’s essay argues that the formation of a collective identity among Aﬁican
Americans is a process that is linked to a cultural trauma and “the construction of
collective memory” (Eyerman 60). Therefore, I suggest the collective identity among
today’s young African American women is their common experience with rejection and
sexual exploitation. Both Kennedy and Parks illustrate how psychologically,
emotionally, and physically black women consistently have been on the receiving end of
injustice. In addition, Aﬁican American women have received not so pleasant labels,
such as jezebel, welfare queen, or mammy, etc. The worse part is the expectation to live
up to these ideas that were inaccurate in their description of black women.

Although F unnyhouse’s Negro-Sarah and In the Bloods Hester, La Negrita are
from two different socioeconomic classes and historical periods, they share similar
traumatic experiences based on their racial identity. As a collective, the women’s

problems converge forming a solidarity in addressing social issues that affect them.

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Blaring examples of racial and gender-related discrimination include perpetuation of
illiteracy, cultural and material exclusion, and sexual exploitation. Moreover, these
discriminatory practices contribute to the group and individual’s low self-esteem that
leads them to make bad decisions in their lives. In both dramatic works, the notion of
receiving and not receiving a decent education is associated with the hegemonic culture.
White male hegemony is the presumed possessor of power and decides the curriculum
taught in schools and who can gain access to higher levels of education.

Hester can barely read and does not receive any help from Welfare to help change
this recoverable situation. The frustration of trying to learn her alphabet stiﬂes any
progress to move her family out of poverty. This stiﬂing points to the United States’
perpetuation of a controlling image known as the welfare mother. This controlling image
was created for “poor, working-class Black women who use [...] social welfare beneﬁts to
which they are entitled by law” (Collins 78). By the mid-19905, this image ﬂourished
along with the “breeder image” stereotype, thus, creating the political debate about how
to control Black women’s fertility (79). Inherent of this image is the collective identity of
being alone, a “bad mother,” content with sitting around, collecting a welfare check and
“passing on her bad values to her offspring” (79). This negative image perpetuates a
cultural trauma experienced by those who are victims of the system. Scenarios of
repeated rejection and neglect by a system that claims to assist its recipients has the
potential of producing a series of traumatic effects. Because there is a subculture
operating among Black women who are apart of the welfare system, they do possess a

collective identity to this cultural trauma. This is the cultural trauma they experience at

25

the hands of both governmental agencies and those in and out of their racial community.
Their cultural trauma is the experience with and the re-memory of an institution that
consistently denies their human rights.

Negro-Sarah’s character does not fall under any of the controlling images
identiﬁed by Patricia H. Collins in her critically acclaimed analysis, Black Feminist
Thought. However, the controlling image of the tragic mulatto is close to experiences
and desires of the character. The collective voice for Sarah represents the sentiments of
those who feel that they are misunderstood by both Aﬁican and White Americans. They
often cry that one racial identity is more evident than the other and often are distressed
over this matter. Sarah keeps rejecting her black father’s skin color and African culture.
This collective voice experiences a culture in turmoil. Because they refuse to accept all
of their multiracial identity, the trauma constructed for them is based on re-remembering
painful experiences of rejection revolving around their identity. Perhaps, the remedy is to
try and erase the race that lacks privilege and presents the most challenges.

Sarah’s collective voice does not resemble the double-consciousness as theorized
by W.E.B. DuBois; this collective voice echos the cultural theory of Fanon, a desire to be
something one is not. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon discusses in detail the struggle
with racial identity in the Antilles. Although his document focuses on the Caribbean, that
collective voice is also spoken by American-born mulattos. For some who desired the
lighter race, their African ancestry haunted them and tortured them. This collective
nightmare experienced by individuals formed a group memory that reﬂected their

traumatic experiences with racial identity (Eyerman 65, 66).

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Hence, the two components of collective identity for African American women,
the “welfare queen” and the “tragic mulatto,” are indicative of cultural traumas that
helped shaped them. These cultural traumas are on display in the public sphere and are
perpetuated by various forms of media. However, the purpose of black feminist theatre is
to provide a forum to address and attack the issues that pose a threat to the continuing
existence of the black female subject. Even though Andersen does not highlight cultural
traumas as a factor in black women’s collective identity, she does provide an opening to

continue this discourse.

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Works Cited

Andersen, Lisa M. Black Feminism in Contemporary Drama. Chicago: University of
Illinois, 2008.

Appiah, Kwame A. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. “Patrice Lumumba.” African_a: The
Encyclopedia of the African an_d African Americg Experience. New York:
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Bryant-Jackson, Paul K. and Lois More Overbeck, eds. Instersecting Boundap'es: The
Theater of Adrienne Kennedy. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1992.

Caruth, Cathy, ed. Traum_a: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ.,
1995.

Collins, Patricia H. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge. Consciousness and the
Politics Of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000.

 

Eyerman, Ron. “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation ofAﬁican American
Identity.” Cultural TraumL and Collective Identity. Berkeley: Univ. of California,
2004. 60-111.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin. White Mask_s. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory ofAfrican-American Literm
Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

Kennedy, Adrienne. The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Introduction by Werner Sollors.
Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 2001.

---. Funnyhouse of a Neggg. New York: Samuel French, 1997.

Kolin, Phillip C. Understanding Adrienne Kennedy. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina,
2005.

Nemiroff, Robert, ed. Lorraine Hansber_ry in Her Own Words: To Be Young,
Gifted and Black. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Parks, Suzan—Lori. “Adrienne Kennedy.” BOMB: A Quaterly Arts & Culture Magazine.

54:Winter 1996. http://www.bombsite.com/issues/54/articles/ 1929. 24 April
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---. The Red Letter Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and The Meaning of
Libem. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

Woolfork, Lisa. Embodying American Slaveg in Contempqrm Culture. Chicago:
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