Monday, October 4, 2010

The People Could Fly Reflection



This collection of folktales is unlike anything I have ever read. Hamilton’s preservation of voice, the sometimes amusing-sometimes violently gruesome subject matter, and the enormity of the context make this an extremely valuable text. Reading through, I was immediately struck by the contrast between these stories and other watered down fairy-tales most often deemed appropriate for young people. The stories in The People often didn’t fit into the paradigm of morality tales that I am most familiar with, though a quick comparison of Little-Red-Riding-Hood versions in class highlights how much even these have been paired away from original versions.

I also enjoyed the way these stories displayed the African-American oral tradition. Stories would start with, “Heard tell about” or “Don’t know some animal tells. Hear um but forget um”. It wasn’t hard to imagine sitting and listening as the tales unfold from the storyteller. In this respect, the most difficult, but in many ways the most interesting story for me was “Bruh Alligator Meets Trouble”, because it was translated from Gullah dialect. When reading a passage like, “He tippin right pontop and ‘e shum he yeye”, I had to repeatedly consult the glossary at the end of the chapter. I thought about conversations I had in my pre-service classes about the pitfalls an educator can potentially face when students speak and write in vernacular. Too often, we assume that “standard” English is synonymous with “correct” English. This and several of the other tales in the collection story provided authenticity to a language that is full and vibrant but that isn’t necessarily the “power-language” of the time.

From a critical perspective, the use of metaphor and symbolism in these stories weave a rich fabric of moral lessons, and social critique. One story that displays an interesting use of metaphor is The Two Johns. Big John, in a constant desire to one-up Little John, kills his own prized horses, the other man’s grandmother and eventually himself. Little John proudly (though minus the grandma) marches away with his baskets of money. While it is initially difficult to figure out the moral of the story, Hamilton’s explanation that a message lies in the fact that the little man is smart and the big man is foolish, allows for a deeper understanding. In this tale and several others, size matters less than intelligence and wit. In other words, the quick slave could best the powerful master. This dynamic of the powerless overcoming the powerful speaks directly to the dreams of African slaves, forced into abominable conditions, but escaping through story and imagination.

This sentiment was echoed when Wiley outsmarts the Hairy Man, when Manuel overcomes the king, and in the “Got Free” stories where a slave would get the better of his master. However, the most beautiful use of this metaphor occurs in the last story of the collection. In “The People Could Fly”, slaves return to the magic of their African heritage and fly away from the whips and chains of their oppressors. In this story, the powerless transcend the physical constraints of their servitude and escape to freedom, “The ones flyin were black and whining sticks, wheelin above the head of the Overseer”. This story and the entire collection is testimony to the atrocities that plagued the lives of slaves and to the necessity of story for humans to make sense of our lives.

1 comment:

Jessica said...

Hi Chris,

I really enjoyed reading your response to The People Could Fly. Let me start by repeating what we all talked about in class on Tuesday- I too really wanted to hear these stories read to me. Pointing out that some of the stories start with “Heard tell about” and “….Hear um but forget um” help the reader to understand that these folktales were originally oral telling. I think your issue with “Bruh Alligator Meets Trouble” is one that many (if not most) of us had with the text. I appreciate that you stuck with the tough dialect and referred to the glossary, instead of just glossing over the language you had trouble pronouncing. You took this even a step further acknowledging your previous education pedagogy courses and the discussions over vernacular.
In your critical response you talk about the use of language to drive home morals and values that reflect that of the African slaves. You tap into the idea of the powerless overcoming the powerful. You touch on many aspects found in the text that are essential to the folklore genre. You make a really good point of how these stories were necessity for the slaves to make sense of their hard lives. Isn’t that really the point of most folklore, to make life feel more negotiable?
Finally, I want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said in class the other night, about it taking 28 years before you read these stories, your country’s folktales. I also had never read slave tales or African folklore, and it’s sad. Although I’ll probably never have an opportunity to fully explore this text (or one like it) in my future classroom, I’ve realized it is important to me to find a way to include it in my class.