Betsey Brown
Written by Ntozake Shange
Betsey Brown described in most reviews and the few blogs that I have come across as a "coming of age" story of a 13 year old teenage African-American girl, growing up in 1957 St. Louise. And this description, almost a ploy to simplify the abject complexity of the novel, reducing it merely to a high-school favorite, is where i subject my angusih and objection to. It seems the year 1957, Southern St. Louise and African-American all are just dusted off with the opening sentence.
Indeed Betsey Brown is a coming of age story, but also much more than that. The year in 1957 and Betsey happens to be the first batch of African-American (colored) kids to study with the whites in public school under legislative "integration." And thus the story no longer remains a mere coming of age saga of a pre-pubescent adolescence.
Before i go into details, i must say that Ntozake Shange is new to me. I had read Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. In fact it was the section of fictionon race and gender, pertaining to America's civil rights movement, where i was browsing in the American Library that i came across this book with a colorful cover. I thought, lets give it a try. I googled a bit about Ntozake and found that Ntozake is her pen name. Born as Paulette Williams she has taken this Zulu name, Ntozake menaing one who comes on her own and Shange meaning she who walks like a lion. I instantly get attracted and start with the book. And it was unputdownable.
Betsey Brown, as already mentioned in a 13 year old girl in a middle-class blqck family. The brown family although black i different from the rest. Betsey's father Greer is a doctor and mother Jane a social worker, working for the colored.The eldest of the four children Betsey is a gifted child, thoughful and at a very critical stage of her life. The adoloscent Betsey seems to be caught in her desires of emancipation,curbing an identity of her own in hoplessly adult world. Greer,Betsey's father is a progressive black, who whole heartedly beleives in the Civil Rights movement, tries to instill a spirit of self pride inspite of being black, amidst his children. The Brown family's prosperous middle class status is mostly due to Greer's position as a doctor in the seggregated hospital. Greer has reformative ideas about racial progress,insiting on the importance of social protests. His standpoint on African-ness is reinforced every morning through singing and dancing and quizes on AFrica to the beats of the congo drum.
Betsey is one of the lucky few to be born in a middle-class well-off family with liberal ideas. Her mother taught her, to get rid of stereotypoes and that all whites are not bad, just like there are evil ones amidst blacks as well. Yet it is difficult to decide for a 13 year old. She is aware of the Mongomerry Boycotts (Rosa Parks'-bus boycott at Mongomerry) and yet loves to play with her white neighbour Charlotte-Anne knowing fully about Charlotte's mopther's hatred towards the colored ones. This ambivalence is what makes Betsey Brown so special. Betsey's middle class affluence does not allow her to get eroded in the hatred, the working class blacks feel towards the whites. Hence most of the times, Betsey, does not approve of Veejay's denial of Charlotte Anne and her likes. Betsey's first confrontation with Veejay makes her conscious and guilty of her class. The innocent prank Betsey plays on Bernice (making her lose her job as a nanny for the children), is instantly condemned by Veejay, who sympathises for Bernice, since her mother faces the same pranks of the white kids toiling as an "ayah".
Betsey Brown re-inforces that race is not a monolithic stratum, bringing the same fate to all inhabiting it. Some simply face the wrath of discrimination more, since "class" plays a bigger role. Hence Betsey's cousin Charlie, in spite of fooling around with his bike in the white girls' convent, is left unscathed by the police, who found the Brown Family different and took them to be foreigners (simply because, they did not fit into their stereotype concepts of working class, drug smacking impoverished blacks, who are doomed to die). The class dilemma and hypocrisy of middle class (so what that they are blacks)is brought into the novel a number of times. Through Regina and her dismissal it becomes clear. Regina, from an impoverished black family, working as a housekeeper is too unsophisticated to bury down her sexuality. Much to the pleasure of the adolescent Betsey and her cousin Charlie, Regina carries on her boisterous affair with Roscoe, much to the chagrin of Vida, Betsey's grand mother. She finds Regina to be a bad influence for the children.
Vida, is one of those already conditioned in terrains of racism. She finds Greer and his "african-ism" too loud and uncultured. Also, she hardly finds any valid reason for her daughter to marry the dark Greer. In fact she is happy that the children did not take on Greer's dark color. This simply shows though indirectly "the passing for white" desire deep down in the minds of the colored. Hence Vida feels that her late husband Frank was much different, sober and unlike the order of the colored men, she would come across in her daughter's life. Years of represion can only find way for such mental subjugation. In fact, amidst seggregation, Vida finds comfort and honor. She feels pride in being better off amidst these illeterate, dark skinned working class. She feels "it best to be best amongst the colored ones". And this is what interested me most in the novel.
It seems, Betsey is aware of this dilemma, this invisible seggregation that her grandmother and even to some extent her mother spreads around through their denial of vulgur and loud "niggah ,music", illiterate, unsophisticated black country folks ans so on.
Greer on the other hand is stoic and clear in his support. He fully beleives in "black is beautiful" and hence convinces his wife to allow the children to study in integrated schools. And this in turn creates a greater burden on Betsey.
If Vida through discarding Greer's ideas, turning away Regina alienates Betsey, If Jane through the dislike of loud Negro music perplexes Betsey, then Greer's idea of putting them into integrated schools, because he feels " they are paving the way for those yet to come,... Thousands of lives depend on our children having the courage to go somewhere they have never been accepted or wanted..." enrages her. She feels lonely in the school, amidst the white crowd. And Betsey feels the impending sorrow and burden, the anguish for having to "take up for the whole damn race," and "to do the battle with the white man".
Betsey vents out her anger through drawing hop-scotch designs on the pavements stating "no whites", "colored only". However the hypocrisy of her "middle class" neighbourhood condemned this entire activity proclaiming such acts in the era of reconciliation and de-seggretaion to be vicious. Betsey was outraged. She understood that none of the blacks actually beleived in this de-seggregation and such practices to be restoring their human rights. Yet no one owned to have any hostile feelings against the whites. Betsey pretended to volunteer to wipe out such traces of "such ill-meaning prejudices"(something she was proud of earlier), hiding her bruised ego.
The 13 year old Betsey is now completely out of place. She is eager to curb out her own identity, to do something, to be an Ikette for Tina Turner, marry a negro, later marry her crusg Eugene Boyd, become famous by dancing at the tables in the restaurants meant only for the white, or merely wiping off hair at mrs. Maureen the hairdresser. Whatever it is, she would have a place of her own and would be satisfied. And Betsey flees to Mrs. Maureen. This of course has been triggered by her desire to escape from both her familial and social boundaries. This venture of hers turns out to be a misadventure, and Betsey comes back home, though a bit wiser and feeling "regal" to have "reigned" the St. Loiuse streets on her own.
Amidst all these confusion, it seems Betsey finds her solace and her wisdom for one the most unassuming sources-the black, illiterate, unsophisticated house-keeper Carrie. Carrie in the novel is almost a strong audible voice agaimst the white code of adoption of manners, speaking a different "earthy" language, something completely disapproved of by Vida and Jane.
It is through Carrie that Betsey finally is capable of self-assertion.Carrie the black illiterate prompts Betsey to use the power of literacy in order to demonstrate the danger of adopting a white literary canon. In school, Betsey refuses to accept Paul Lawrence Dunbar as merely "an American." Undoubtedly Dunbar is an American, but hushing up his colored identity seemed to Betsey, denying the fact that colored are capable of writing poetry or books. This had upset her too much to come crying home from school. Carrie instilled in her the courage to fight back, to stand back for herself, using the very word meant to diminish her. years ago, Carrie dropped out of school, hitting a classmate for humiliating her. In the same way, in which Carrie physically fought another woman, so that Betsey can "mentally figt" the white teacher who is ignorant enough to know about the legacy of the blacks. Betsey's weapon will be "words".
And it is through this, Betsey finds the culmination of her favorite Dunbar rendition--"Speak up Ike an''spress yo'se'f"
That is exactly what Shange and her likes always meant- the soul of the civil rights movement-through bold self expresspression, standing up for one's own right.
I enjoyed Shange.. and have vowed to read For colored girls.. and liliane (her other works..
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