Tayari's Blog: BOOKS ABOUT OTHER BOOKS

Okay, here's what's on my mind. Women writers and writers of color often write novels that revise the so-called "classics." Take THE WIND DONE GONE. Randall is obvious reacting to America's Love Affair with Gone With The Wind. There are other examples: Jean Rhys's WIDE SARGASSO SEA which is from the point of view of JANE EYRE'S infamous "madwoman in the attic." I could go on and on. Oh, one more. MY JIM, which is about the wife of Huck Finn's faithful Negro, Jim.

Here's my worry. What does is mean that so many maginalized writers are writing books that almost REQUIRE that a person read a "so-called" classic? I know it is meant as an act of resistance, I believe that it is effective, but what does is mean to construct a literary tradition that is in reaction to another text, one that the author finds offensive?

I often read criticism of texts by marginalized writers which contextualize that writer in terms of a more mainstream writer. I am thinking of Ann Petry's masterpiece, THE STREET, which is often described as a "woman's NATIVE SON." I never see white male writers described in the context of being a "white version" of a person of color's work.

So, I guess I am saying that I am really ambivalent about the project of THE WIND DONE GONE. Being from Atlanta, I understand why she took it on and I must admit that I reacted with something like glee when the Margaret Mitchell House was so pissed off about the book and tried to stop its publication. But, still, I am uneasy.

There is another novel, PROPERTY, by Valerie Martin. This novel is from the point of view of a white slave-owning woman. It does not reference Gone With The Wind or any of it's characters. Nevertheless, I believe it does more to undermine the myth of Tara than any other work of fiction I have ever read. After reading that novel, I will never quite look at slavery in the same way. Martin examines the uneasy position of white woman in the ante bellum south-- themselves almost property of their husbands while still able to inflict great cruelty and power of the African men and women under thier control. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.