heal thyself
Lately I’ve been reflecting on the debt I owe so many Black women scholars. I stepped away from academia several years ago and have no regrets, but your training doesn’t leave you and it’s been energizing to find current scholarship that aligns with my kid lit writer’s goals. Graduate school feels like a lifetime ago and yet the scholars I discovered during that time have shaped the way I view the world. In fact, as I was reading Ghost Boys last month, I found myself trying to recall a quote by an esteemed Black woman scholar; only two words remained in my memory—“agonistic engagement”—so I searched my hard drive and up popped the first chapter of my dissertation, “’If Rigor Is Our Dream’: The Re-Membering of Violence by Black Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance.” Those two words are part of a passage from Hortense Spillers‘ seminal 1987 essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” which served as the theoretical backbone of my project. When I applied to graduate school in 1995, I only knew that I was interested in Black women’s quilts and Billie Holiday. One year later, I was at NYU taking a course on the Harlem Renaissance and my research focus had narrowed considerably. I knew Black women had been lynched but finding names and records proved challenging. Spillers helped me understand the erasure of Black women lynch victims from the historical record:
Indeed, across the spate of discourse that I examined for this writing, the acts of enslavement and responses to it comprise a more or less agonistic engagement of confrontational hostilities among males. The visual and historical evidence betrays the dominant discourse on the matter as incomplete, but counter-evidence is inadequate as well: the sexual violation of captive females and their own express rage against their oppressors did not constitute events that captains and their crews rushed to record in letters to their sponsoring companies, or sons on board in letters home to their New England mamas (73).
When a phenomenon like slavery—or lynching, or police violence—is framed as a struggle between men, the role of women gets obscured. In the above passage, Spillers implicates White women; they are involved and yet they are ignorant, they keep the home fires burning while the men in their lives enslave, assault, and exploit Africans. White male enslavers shield their delicate wives, sisters, and mothers from the truth, and this self-interested impulse to deceive/protect White women has been used to justify terrorizing Black people for centuries. Jessie Daniel Ames stood up to lynchers in the 1930s, but it’s important to remember that many White women supported mob violence, instigated and participated in lynchings, and even joined the Ku Klux Klan. To this day, when a White woman calls for help, White men respond with force—which is why #PermitPatty and #bbqBecky aren’t just funny memes. White women calling the police on Black people—even children—over a perceived threat can have deadly consequences.
Studying lynching for ten years changed me as a writer, and in some ways prepared me for this difficult moment in US history. Very little surprises me, though I’m often disappointed by the way some on the left respond to this latest surge of White supremacist violence. In a recent RaceBaitR essay, Zaire Bidgel laments the fact that it’s “so rare that Black people are given space to fully express their pain. There is always a label applied to it. It’s too loud, too violent, too painful, too much.” Most Black people realize that “our healing is solely our responsibility,” and yet there is continuous pressure in a White supremacist society to put the needs of the dominant group first (see the recent calls for “civility”). But Bidgel rightly asks, “How can we, as Black people, heal with white needs at the center of our thoughts and processes? How can we truly support ourselves and emotional wellbeing while serving the needs of those who continue to actively oppress and enact violence against us?”
The answer, of course, is that we can’t. The theorizing of Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse helped me to consider not just the representation of violence but also the violence of representation. As I’ve written elsewhere, the kid lit community likes to think of itself as a group of progressive adults who prioritize the needs of children and teens. Yet #DiversityJedi scholars have demonstrated that good intentions aren’t enough when writing about traumatic historical events. The choices made by writers, illustrators, and publishing professionals can produce books that are inaccurate, offensive, and even harmful to young readers. For Bidgel,
Pre-empting Black healing for the comfort or needs of whiteness is violence. We have lost so much of ourselves, our families, our communities, in (often forced) support of whiteness, regardless of if we see or acknowledge it. Interrupting expressions of Black pain and healing to think of the needs of white people, who have a direct hand in the pain we’ve been dealt is dehumanizing. It serves as a reminder that white needs must always be considered.
Which brings me back to Ghost Boys. Bidgel isn’t writing about books for young readers but their analysis of race dynamics in the nonprofit arena immediately made me think of another White-dominated space: the publishing industry. In an interview on WNYC, Jewell Parker Rhodes explained that she chose to include the character Sarah in order to humanize her father—a White police officer on trial for killing a Black boy named Jerome. Bullied at school, Jerome accepts a toy gun from a new friend and experiences a rare moment of freedom while pretending to be a cop. Then someone calls 911, the dispatcher leaves out important details when notifying the police, and the outcome mirrors the 2014 killing of Tamir Rice in a Cleveland playground: two White officers arrive, one immediately shoots Jerome in the back. They fail to provide life-saving procedures, are slow to call an ambulance and as a result, Jerome dies.
The courtroom scenes in the book are hard-hitting, but when it comes to Jerome’s interaction with Sarah, there are some surprising silences. When Jerome realizes only his murderer’s daughter can see him he asks, “‘Why can’t it be Kim who sees me? Why this stupid girl?’” (53). A second Chicago “ghost boy” arrives to answer Jerome’s question; Emmett Till, fourteen-year-old victim of an infamous 1955 lynching in Mississippi, urges Jerome to devote his afterlife to helping Sarah instead of his grieving sister Kim:
“Believe this, Jerome. It matters that Sarah can see you.”
“And I’m supposed to help her?”
“Got anything better to do?”
“Got me. Absolutely nothing.” (103)
The fact that Jerome’s family can’t see him makes helping them impossible and makes the White girl his priority. With Emmett’s guidance, Jerome begins to see Sarah as a victim much like himself: “She wants quiet, too. Protestors picket outside her house. Sarah keeps her window closed. Her world is upended. I get that. Sarah’s almost as messed up as me” (106). Except, of course, Sarah hasn’t had her life violently, prematurely, and unjustly terminated by a racist cop. Initially Jerome expresses justifiable anger and resentment towards Sarah, though his conditioning interferes:
Stop crying, I want to shout. Instead I mutter, “Your bed is nice. Pretty.” Being nice is automatic. How stupid to be nice. I always tried. What did it get me?
I’m getting angrier and angrier. I explode. My hand connects. Peter Pan flies across the room. The book hits the wall, drops to the floor…
Sarah’s eyes are different now. Frightened again. Nervous.
Ghost boy shakes his head like he’s disappointed in me. Not fair, I think. I holler: “Why do I need a white girl looking after me?”
“You’re right. But maybe you’re supposed to do something for Sarah?”
“Naw, naw. That’s sick. Her dad kills me and I’m supposed to help? Who are you anyway?”
“Emmett. Emmett Till.”…
“You’re the Chicago boy? Murdered like me?”
“1955. Down South.’” (96-97)
Unlike other novels where Black authors introduce White characters by having their Black protagonists attend predominantly White schools, Rhodes chooses to have her ghost boys float into Sarah’s bedroom. This, to me, is a shocking and potentially subversive decision given that Black men and boys historically have been cast as rapists desperate for contact with “pure” White women (allegedly because Black women were not “true” women, which made them unappealing to Black men and vulnerable to being raped by White men). Anti-lynching crusader and journalist Ida B. Wells proved that most lynchings were not about rape at all, but the sexual assault of White women was “beyond the pale” and made Black males deserving of the most brutal torture and death. Having Jerome compliment Sarah on her nice, pretty bed before lashing out violently brought to mind scenes from DW Griffith’s 1916 film Birth of a Nation:
“A curtain flutters. I see the girl. Like magic, I float inside, into the second floor and a pink bedroom.
The girl stumbles, falls against her dresser. She wants to scream, I can tell. But she doesn’t” (63).
The subversive potential of this scene is lost, however, since the child reader has not been informed—and likely would not know—about White women’s specific role in the lynching dynamic. Jerome has had “the talk” with his father: “How many times had I heard: ‘Be careful of police’; ‘Be careful of white people…’ Everybody in the neighborhood knew it. Pop told me as soon as I could read” (69-70). Jerome also learns about Black history from his father: “Slavery was awful. Afterwards, Pop said the KKK began lynching” (147). When he is shot, Jerome’s grandmother repeatedly references Emmett Till yet no one seems to have told this Black boy specifically to stay away from White girls. So Jerome has no idea that—were he still alive—entering Sarah’s frilly pink bedroom could have cost him his life in another era (and see the recent case of a White cop falsely arresting his daughter’s Black boyfriend). As a result, Jerome feels no anxiety about their encounter. Instead, his interactions with this White girl have a strangely romantic undertone; when he’s near Sarah, Jerome smells lilacs and when she looks up at him, “Her eyes are real; they have depth; they’re ice blue, sparkling with tears” (181). At first, Jerome admits, “If she wasn’t a girl, I’d think about hitting her” (64) but soon he’s apologizing for being “mean” and Jerome wishes he could hug and be hugged by Sarah (110).
Jerome effectively becomes Sarah’s protector, urging her not to watch the video of his death: “I don’t know why I’m saying this. Crazy, part of me doesn’t want to see Sarah hurt” (107). When Sarah asks a White Jewish librarian at her school to see the image of Emmett Till in his open casket, Jerome turns away: “I don’t want to see. Dead is dead. Doesn’t matter what dead looks like” (117). It does matter, of course, which is why Mamie Till Mobley insisted that the world see what Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam had done to her son. But it is Sarah who insists on viewing the disturbing image and by the end of the novel, she has become radicalized. Jerome convinces her to reconcile with her father who, by the end of the trial, “looks beat down” (121). Jerome only witnesses his own family’s suffering but he actively works to reunite the White family: “Sarah isn’t speaking to her dad. I don’t know why but it bothers me. Bad” (177). Having rejected his own legitimate Black rage, Jerome becomes the role model Sarah needs:
“I hate him. Don’t you?”
Do I?
Ma, Pop, Grandma taught me it’s wrong to hate. “No, I don’t hate your dad. You shouldn’t either.”
“He killed you.”
“He made a mistake.”
“He’s racist.”
“He made a mistake. A bad one.” Real bad.
Just like it was bad for Mike, Eddie, Snap to bully me. Bully Carlos.” (179)
At Jerome’s urging, Sarah focuses on her father’s redeeming qualities and asks him to help her launch a website dedicated to raising awareness of Black boys killed by police. Officer Moore agrees, and Jerome concludes that “Sarah’s going to be fine. She’s a white girl but she’s not ‘white girl.’ She’s Sarah. Me and all the other boys on her computer screen have names. Jerome Rogers. Tamir Rice. Laquan McDonald. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Jordan Edwards. We’re people. Black kids” (184). Jerome concludes that “Sarah’s dad and Emmett’s killers, lived life wrong” (182-3) and finds his place within the “crew” of ghost boys: “I understand now. Everything isn’t all about me” (147). For Sarah, the future looks bright; Jerome sees her “grown, writing books, protesting for change. Teaching people how to see other people. Teaching her kids (imagine, Sarah, a mom!) to learn, not judge” (183).
By contrast, Jerome’s sister Kim grieves and memorializes her brother privately with Carlos and Jerome’s former bullies as her new brothers/protectors. Perhaps in time Kim will follow in the footsteps of so many Black women and girls who turn their grief and righteous Black rage into : Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother, just opened a youth center in her son’s name; Lezley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown, is running for political office in Ferguson. In the award-winning novel Piecing Me Together, Renée Watson’s teenage protagonist Jade responds to the trauma of another Black girl being brutalized by police by mobilizing her friends and community members.
I don’t know how many daughters of White cops accused of shooting Black people have become anti-racist activists. I suspect Rhodes’ depiction of Sarah Moore is purely aspirational, and art can show us what’s possible alongside what is real. But I do wonder why Rhodes chose to include Emmett Till in this narrative if she was unwilling to fully unpack the painful history of lynching. The author takes time to explain the alleged whistle that prompted Till’s murder, but doesn’t explain why an accusation made by a White woman against a Black boy led to such a horrific act of violence. In the afterword, Rhodes explains her aim in writing Ghost Boys: “Through discussion, awareness, and societal and civic action, I hope our youth will be able to dismantle personal and systemic racism” (206). Yet in the list of resources provided at the back of the book, one finds a link to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech but nothing on lynching.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice recently opened in Alabama. Ashley Akunna contends that police brutality is the evolution of lynching. Three senators just introduced a bill because lynching still isn’t a federal hate crime. Last week the Emmett Till case was reopened by the Justice Department, and Carolyn Bryant has admitted that her accusations against Emmett—whistling, flirting, grabbing—were false. So it’s a good time to tell the truth about lynching. But can that be done in a middle grade novel? Some will no doubt argue that the subject matter is too grim and/or too mature for young readers, yet anti-bias expert Louise Derman-Sparks reminds us that “it is developmentally appropriate for children to deal with ‘controversial issues’ such as prejudice and fairness,” and “learning to engage in critical thinking about what is true about people’s actions is fundamental to becoming a citizen of a democratic country.” Can this particular truth surface in a publishing industry and kid lit community dominated by White women? Is that why these “Becky books” diminish Black rage and White culpability (Blacks are always “just as bad” as Whites)? I don’t want these books banned or stripped of their awards and starred reviews. If I were still a professor, I would teach these books; like all novels, they have strengths and limitations. What I’m most interested in is the pattern, and I think readers should ask why Black girls are being marginalized and/or erased from these narratives about police brutality. Why are Black authors choosing instead to put White girls at the center of their stories? Hopefully we’ll see more Jades and fewer Beckys in future novels about anti-Black violence.
