Women's Weekend 1984; Talk by Paule Marshall

pleasure to be here and smack dab in the middle of Missouri had a little trouble getting here today but, we made it we made it. what i thought I'd do tonight would be to focus on my last novel Praisesong for the Widow which was published last year in hardcover and which is going to come out later this month in paperback which means that you can afford to buy it. so i thought i just kind of read from that and kind of talk about it a little bit and to take sort of portions from the novel so what i'll have to do is to kind of stop and talk as i read to sort of provide bridges so that it will kind of make sense to you up until the fall of nineteen eighty two i had been sort of wrestling on paper for a good six or seven years

of a certain middle aged middle class widow by the name of Avey Johnson she was turning me as the saying goes every which way but loose she wouldn't do right she would come right no matter how many days and weeks and months and years i put into the typewriter it was one of these no holds barred struggles with a widow and then late in nineteen eighty two i somehow manage to get the upper hand i got him in a hammerlock then i put a full nelson on her and i put her after all of that struggle to my satisfaction between the covers of a book i decided to call Praisesong praise

song is a, maybe I should explain a Praisesong is, it's a long west african poem written usually in praise of an elder as avey johnson is an elder so i decided to call the book Praisesong for the Widow because by that time i had forgiven Avey for all the changes she had put me through and had even come to like her how to describe the widow well she's this very proper, very dignified marian anderson type black woman who wouldn't be caught dead without her gloves usually white, her three strands of pearls, and her sunday go to meeting hat. she's a classic type of a small black middle class you see her outside church every sunday she's um she's our mothers

our aunts our grandmothers she's the older women that we will someday be and nobody writes about her. you very seldom see her in the literature and so i decided that well maybe i will tell her story so by avey my avey johnson is this kind of person she's what they used to refer to in my day as a C.T.T.R. a credit to the race i remember as a little girl because i was kind of bright in school, one of these little wiz kids. i was always being patted on the back. the- I suspected sometimes they wanted to pat me on the head because that used to mean good luck. anyway I was always being patted on the back and called a credit to the race. well that's what Avey is considered. after many years of struggle and so on she has made it

and she's got this wall to wall carpeted house in north white plains westchester county new york which is some of the most expensive real estate in the country they're all of the insurance policies and the bank books and the bonds and the like which are left to her by her late husband, Jerome Johnson their children grown and through college one of her daughters one of her three daughters is a doctor interning at Meharry Hospital there's Avey's very secure job as a supervisor in the motor vehicle bureau and for her vacation since her husband's death there's the cruise she takes to the caribbean each year with her two friends and her six pieces of matching luggage and then on one of these cruises

my conservative proper Avey Johnson does something absolutely radical and revolutionary she jumps ship. She gets up in the middle of the night and packs her six bags and the next morning she walks out on her two friends and the cruise which is- before it's even half over. Now what has caused this piece of reckless behavior on her part it has to do with a dream that Avey Johnson has a few days after the cruise got underway. Now dreams are very important phenomena in afro american life and our dreams are usually not the freudian types that you read about in psychology

all about sex in and unresolved Oedipal conflicts and so one. afro american dreams usually have to do with practical things like money my mother was always saying to me "would you go and get me the dream book please so that i can look up the number at which corresponds to the dream i had last night so I'll know what to play when the runner comes." and afro american dreams also have to do with messages from the ever life messages about impending births and deaths they also have to do with truths, truths concerning ourselves and our lives that are too painful for us to deal with um in the conscious part of our life

well Avey Johnson has one of these real Afro American dreams and that it seems to be trying to tell her something about herself and about her life that there's something terribly wrong with it in the dream she's a little girl again growing up in harlem and she's been sent to spend the summer down home with a great aunt in a place called tatum an island one of the sea islands just off the coast of Georgia or South Carolina now that was a kind of standard practice years ago come summer vacation, instead of the kids being allowed just to run up and down the streets, you were sent down home to spend time with your family in the south because always i remember that I would have this sense of deprivation because all my friends on the block they would go home, they would go down home for the summer and i would be left there on the streets of brooklyn

because my folks came from the west indies and they certainly couldn't afford to send me down there for the summer. Anyway, so Avey was sent down to spend part of the summer with her Great Aunt Coony in tatum and the and the old woman had a habit of taking her on a walk over to a place called Ibo landing they used to take this walk two three times a week and there the old woman would tell her the story handed down over the generations about this group of Ibo slaves from west africa after whom this place, this landing was named and in her dream Avey Johnson relives the walk and the story of the Ibos in her sleep. at least twice a week

and in the late afternoon, as the juniper trees around Tatum began sending out cool shadows her Great Aunt Cuney would take the field hat down from the nail on the door and solemnly place it over her head tie and braids with the same unhurried ceremony she would then draw around the two belts she and the other women her age and tatum always put on when going out one belt at the waist of their plane ankle length house dresses and the other belt this one worn in the belief it gave them extra strength strapped low around their hips like the belt for a sword or a gun holster out of sight behind the old woman Avey would follow suit girding her nonexistent hips with a second belt an imaginary one and placing with the same studied ceremony a smaller version of the field hat which was real on her head to protect her legs from this- from the scrub grass and thorns along the

way she was made to wear thick wool stockings despite the heat and her high top school shoes from last winter which her mother always sent along for her to finish out the summer in thus attired, they would set out her Great Aunt Cuney, forging ahead in a pair of old broke in's which on her feel have like seven league boots and moving so rapidly despite her age that Avey to keep up often had to play a silent game of take a giant step whispering under her breath, "Avey Johnson you may take two giant steps" it took the two of them, the old woman never slacking her pace, an hour or more of steady walking out under the sun before they finally reached the river and the long narrow split of land shaped like a finger pointing east which marked the point where the waters in and around Tatum met up with the open

sea. on the maps of the county it was known as Ibo lending to people in it was here that the broughton Great Aunt would begin. they'd taken him out of the boat's right here where we standin' nobody remembers how many of them it was but there was a good few according to my gran who was a little girl no bigger than you when it happened small boats was brought up here and the ship they had just come from was out of the deep water great big ol ship with sails and the minute those Ibos was brought on shore, they just stopped my gran said and taken a look around long look not say a word just studying the place real good, just taking the time and studing and on it and they seen things that day you and me don't have the power to see. 'Cause those pure born Africans was people me gran said could see in more ways than one the kind could tell you about things that happen long before they was born and things

long after they was dead. well they've seen everything that was to happen around here that day. the slavery time and the war my Gran always talked about the emancipation and everything after that right on up to the hard times today Ibo's didn't miss a thing. even seen you and me standing here talking about them and when they got through sizing up the place real good, seeing what was to come they turned my Gran said and looked at the white folks that brought them here took the time and give them the same long hard look. tell you the truth i don't know how those folks stood it i know i wouldn't have wanted them looking at me that way and when they got through studying them when they knew just from looking at them how those folks were going to do, you know what the Ibo's did? I do! You want me to finish telling it? they just turned my Gran said she always ignored Avey they just turned and walked right on back down to the edge of the river here every last man woman and child and they wasn't taking the time no more

they had seen what they had seen and those Ibo's were stepping and they didn't bother getting back into the small boats, boats take much time they just kept walking right on out over the river now you wouldn't have thought they'd have gotten very far seeing as it was water they was walkin' on besides they had all that iron on them. iron on their ankles and their wrists and fast 'round their necks like a dog collar. enough iron to sink an army. and chains hooking up the iron. but chians didn't stop those Ibo's none neither iron the way my Gran told it, they just kept on walking like the water was solid ground left those other folks standing back here with their mouth hung open and they taken off down the river on foot stepping and when they got to where the ship was, they didn't so much as give it a look just walked on past it. didn't want nothing to do with that ship. Their feets was gonna take them wherever they was going that day. and there were

when they realized there wasn't nothing between them and home but some water and that wasn't giving them no trouble they got so tickled, they started into singing. you could hear them clear across tatum according to her they sounded like they was having such a good time my Gran declared she just picked herself up and took off after them. in her mind her body she always used to say might be in Tatum but her mind, her mind was long gone with the Ibo's her great aunt always paused here giving the impression she was done a moment later there would come a final coder spoken with an amazed and reverential laugh "hah those Ibo's" just up and walked on away, not two minutes after getting here." but how come they didn't drown Aunt Cuney? she had been ten that old and had been hearing the story for four summers straight to ask. slowly, standing on the consecrated ground

her height almost matching her shadow which the late sun and drawn out over the water. her great aunt had turned and regarded her in silence for the longest time. it was to take Avey years to forget the look on the face under the field hat. the disappointment and anger there. if she could have reached up and snatched her question like a fly out of the air and swallowed it, she would've done so and long after she had stopped going to tatum and the old woman with dead she was to catch herself flinching whenever she remembered the dangerously quiet voice that had issued finally from under the wide hat brim. Did it say Jesus drown when he went walking on that water in that Sunday school book your mamma always sends with you? No ma'am, I didn't think so you got any more questions? she had shaken her head no. Well this is this is the dream that Avey has. she remembers this trip that she used to take with her aunt

down to this landing i mean this aunt she hasn't thought of for years this this this this incident from her childhood that that had gone she thought from her consciousness. But there it is, suddenly in this dream. and she can't shake it it begins to spoil the trip for her In fact it so sours the cruise that she decides that she wants to leave. She just wants to get off the ship at the next port of call and take a plane back home. Back home to the safety and sanity and stability of her house in north white plains but she can't get a plane and when she reaches the island the island which happens to be Grenada. But when she ship reaches the island she gets off she can't get a plane ride away of course i had something to do with that she can get this plane right away. She's stuck!

She's stuck in Grenada. and that night alone on the balcony of her luxury hotel room she finds herself thinking about her life really thinking about it very seriously about some of the choices she and her husband made and her thoughts take or all the way back to the time before they had achieved the american success story back to the time those early bitter years as a struggle early in their marriage when it seemed as if they weren't going to make it when they were going to go down to the defeat that surrounded then in this when they were living in brooklyn ah it was a period in the early forties when both of

them are working and yet they still weren't making enough money to meet the bills they had two children and then Avey finds that she's pregnant again Avey tried everything when she realized what had happened the scalding hot bath the bottles of castor oil strong cups the final route tea she had learned about from her mother she bought the unmarked packages small brown pills in the drug store and swallow them all tub drain it seemed a retired insides had been flushed down the bath tub drain and as she they are exhausted with no sight of the hoped for blood she actually considered going back on the promise

she'd make herself of the death of a friend grace grace who had found somebody somewhere and it had it done and her death from a hemorrhage afterwards had made Avey promise herself never that another day coming home early from work she raised up and down the five flights these days between their apartment on the top floor of a walk up and the vestibule until she collapsed and the third floor landing and had to crawl back upstairs all of it to no avail jays face (Jay is her husband) Jay's face when she told him the news mirrored what she felt the same despair and hopelessness and as the months went by and she started to show his eyes began to shy it helplessly away from her stomach even she avoided the sight of it in the mirror by six months she was so large she was forced to give up her job again

by then jay started putting in longer hours of the small department store downtown brooklyn where he worked in the shipping room as an assistant to the irishmen in charge. Long after the store had closed, Jay would still not home a backlog of orders had kept him a truckload of merchandise had arrived at closing time and he'd stay to check it out they were doing inventory the boss had asked him to work late again they had been a large shipment to prepare for the next morning there's no reason to doubt him. He had worked overtime before yet as his lateness grew to be a regular thing and his look when he was home became more invasive as she was reduced to spending her evenings after the children were asleep wondering about the cramped apartment staring at the shabby linoleum in the kitchen or at her clothes in the closet which could no longer fit into something shattered in her min

and another reason for his lateness began to shake take shape in her thoughts with the same slow an ever evidible accumulation of detail as a child in her womb she began seeing them the white sales girls at the store it would be years before they start hiring colored with their flat stomachs and unswollen breasts and their hair swept into a pompadour or hung over one side of the face and of veronica lake they were behind every character in the stores downtown girls in flatbush in bensonhurst and bayridge in brooklyn the first the first time she accused him of and jay stared at her in disbelief and then burst out laughing i've got enough women for the moment thank you he said there's you first of all and your easily a dozen women in one then the two ladies inside he waved toward the

bedroom reassess their five year old an animal that was not yet two were sleeping and also it's probably another young lady on her way his wave also took in her swollen middle although his eyes didn't follow it there that's enough women to one poor colored man at least he said with a wink for the time being that was the first time and last time he joked about it other evenings when incensed by her late by his lateness she brought it up the game he tried reasoning with her would he be so foolish as to risk losing the job over some girl down at the store or worse risk fining himself down at the bottom of the east river tied to a ton of concrete when her father older brother found out what that might be north but it was still America and they were more ways to lynch a colored man than from a tree. besides with all the worries he had the furthest thing from his mind was something was the

thought of some of the woman or where he argued at other times or where he argued at other times did she think he was getting the money to pay all the bills now that they were missing her salary as he was putting in the extra hours. He would have to start bringing home home his pay envelope unopened didn't she realize you needed all the overtime he could get if they were to keep afloat i mean be reasonable Avey it's rough on me too part of her understood the logic of this but her understanding did nothing to contain her rage she continued over the weeks to accuse him helpless to stop herself as her ballooning stomach of the oncoming winter and the treacherous climb down the stairs has kept her confined all day with the children to the fifth floor walkup finally an exasperated jay

ceased trying to reason with her and to answering her outbursts with a stubborn silence and his averted gaze. Until one fateful Tuesday night during her eighth month when she met him in a fury at the door after having waited up for him for hours she bet it was nice and warm where he had just come from shouting at him as he slipped into the living room their little hideaway that was a some dump we had to keep the oven on all day sp is not a freeze to death. No the love had heat all the time why didn't he just stay there why bother coming home at all Brooklyn, she hated it why couldn't he have found a job in manhattan she was somebody who was used to the city the big city everybody she knew was there she couldn't even get to see or talk to her mother she should never have moved with him to this a godforsaken place should never have let him stick her up on some freezing top floor having a baby every time she looked around should never have married him

normally he would have turned from her by then and got to sit in a chair his head bowed until she was done but is if the knife in her voice had finally slashed open the tough skin that had kept his own anger in check over the months he suddenly hurled the newspaper he had brought home to the floor and began shouting also ok say you get out to take the job at that store that are down there and see how you feel working for some red faced irishman who sits on his can all day while the little colored boy runs around and does all the work is anger was such his nostrils were stiff and wide and the muscles on his jaw where as hard as bone under his dark skin he was fed up with her complaints and criticisms and suspicions she didn't appreciate when someone was trying their best it was her attitude more than anything else that was making them so miserable a year of college and she

thought she was somebody. Her premadonna from seventh avenue in harlem. He should've left her right there. should've turned and ran the other way when he saw her coming finally with their voices stranded on a peak from which it seemed they would never find the way down and inflamed and trembling Avey stepped within inches of Jay one hand was raised to strike him with the other she had grabbed Sis who had come running from the bedroom and was holding her fiercely to her side and with her huge belly thrust forward defiantly she screamed in his face god damn you nigger, I'll take my babies and go it took some time and the silence that fell for Jay to find his voice again and when he did it was scarcely audible do you know who you sound like he whispered choked appalled who you even look like there was no need for him to

elaborate they knew the woman he was referring to nearly every saturday morning between midnight and dawn they would see the woman come charging out but one of the rundown tennants on the corner with a gaping front door and an overflow garbage can out front. A house dress flung over a nightgown in the summer a rag of a coat on in the winter she would head for broadway and a string of beer gardens in bars under the trestle of the elevated train there searching for the man her man by the time she found him the rot gut whiskey at a false bottom glass would've already eaten into his friday's pay and his buddies we had said repeatedly at the bar would've drunk their share of it too. the same for the fly young thing perched on the stool next to him with her power and store bought hair and pace diamond

rings she too would've had her share it spending your money and some bar fly down the five stories from their bedroom she and jay would hear the woman her voice violating the night silence as she heard of the man back down halsey street he was a solidly built man almost perhaps a few years chase sr occasionally by the light of street lamps his shoulders with flicker under the whiplash of her voice sometimes when her abuse became too much he would start around menacingly in his tracks don't mess with me this morning but you never left off telling him about himself is no pacifist ways his selfishness is neglected of his own she sent her grievances echoing up and down the deserted street and strumming along the power line of the trolley car telegraphing than from one end of brooklyn to the ever what kind of man is you anyway spending all your money

god dammit didn't I tell you don't mess with me this morning he swung around a hard palm raised for the woman anticipating his movie lean easily out of its way moments later she gave him a contemptuous shot forward setting him on course again but also dismissing his threat because is it would be a different tune she knew what she had at home in bed with her back turned to him like the great wall of china he'd be sounding a whole lot different then Now baby what'chu wanna act like that for got your back all turned to me in everything i was only having a little taste of the fellows us all and then work slowly taken charlie sheen he's back to relax itself a little kind of be good you know what it's like out they got;/;/; l;,.l,a whole you're not going to believe this baby i don't even know the actor ;.;.some idea around the pa come on sugar how my supposed to

sleep with your sweet but line appeared next to me many distressed a let me just rest a hand on it. You know you're my weakness. Baby love in the garbage strewn door. Above the jimmied mailboxes and the gaping front door, it's aphrodisiac, the smell of cat piss on the cellar landing. And so Avery Johnson, sitting on the balcony of her luxury hotel room remembers how it seemed as if that night as if she and Jay had turned into that doomed couple down on the street. She had sensed that Jay was about to abandon her and the children. There had been a kind of force pulling him away from her and sis an anibel and the baby crying in the bedroom. But as Jay stood there straining to go, to flee them,

another force equally as strong held him in place and even seemed to be trying to nudge him toward them. His anguished face, his eyes reflect the struggle. He was like an embattled swimmer caught between two powerful currents moving in opposite directions. For long minutes it was impossible to tell which one would claim him until they could be heard, the faint scraping of his shoe on the floor and one foot could actually now be seen moving back, moving away. One foot and then the other and he would have taken the first irreversible step toward the door. Before the step could be completed though, he stopped short, and with a kind of violence, the other current asserted its hold on him. Jay drew himself up tensing every muscle in his body to the point where it was clearly painful and he was trembling and having steeled both his body

and his will he stepped forward. Jay stepped forward and the sound of his tears as he held her and Sis, the strangeness of it into small rooms for homebuilders cry in the bedroom to a startled halt. Jay steps forward, he stays, just as many black men stay with all the -- although you would never think that given the kind of unhappy statistics of the black family, but he stays. He takes a second job and that he gets a third one. He brings home all his pay envelopes unopened as proof this time that he's actually working. He begins a home study course in accounting, he goes to college at night. Twelve long years he's like a man running a punishing marathon until one day he's finally able to open his own small accounting firm

and they can afford to move from Brooklyn. And as she's reviewing how life Avery recalls the mixed feeling she had for some strange reason just weeks before they're about to make the big move from Brooklyn to North White Plains. It was an act of betrayal but she couldn't help herself. The closing for the house in North White Plains had taken place, the actual move was only weeks away when she found herself thinking not of the new life ahead but of their early years on Halsey Street, of the small rituals and pleasures that had lasted through the birth of Sis. And in the face of the two and three jobs that Jay held for years and after her crowded exhausting day such thoughts seemed a betrayal. She felt like a secret tippler, who, when everyone in the house was sleeping, sneak down to the liquor cabinet, where the memories of that early

period where a wine she couldn't resist. The thoughts usually waylaid her in bed at night during the half hour or so when she would lie there waiting for her overtaxed body to relax enough for her to sleep. Sometimes the most frivolous things from those early years came to mind. One night she caught herself reliving the ridiculous dances Jay used to stage just for the two of them in the living room when they couldn't get out on a Saturday night. "What's your pleasure this evening, Miss Williams?" He would call her by her maiden name. "Will it be the Savoy, Rockland Palace, or the Renny again?" These are all dance halls in Harlem. "Oh, I don't know," she would say, entering the fantasy with him. "Why don't we go over to the Audubon for a change? I hear there's a dance there tonight. I'm kind of tired of those other places. And afterwards if we're hungry we can go back across town for chicken and waffles at Dicky Wells." "Your wish is my command." In minutes he would have the records stacked high at the turntable spindle and the threeway lamp in the room turned low.

He would offer her his arm, and with his other hand clearing a way for them through the imaginary crowd in the make-believe ballroom, he would lead her out to the center of the floor. One by one the records would drop, flying home, take the a train, stompin' at the Savoy, Cotton tail. She was the better dancer and sometimes partway through a number he would spin her off to dance by yourself, and standing aside watch her footwork and the twisting and snaking of her body with an amazed smile. Once teasing her he said "I hope you don't mind my saying it, Miss Williams, but when the white folk came up with a theory about all of us darkies having rhythm, they must have had you in mind. Girl, you can out-jangle Bojangles and out-snake Snakehips." Those fanciful nights out on the town always ended with Avery Parrish's "After Hours." This they played over and over again, Jay's arms

tight around her waist, hers circling his neck, their bodies fused, they would slow-drag to the sound of Avery Parrish's sensuous piano. "You know something old lady? You still feel like new" he said once, whispering it in her ear. And there had been the small rituals that had made Sunday a special day back then. Getting up early, Jay used to slip his clothes on over his pajamas and leaving her in bed, he would walk over to Broadway to buy the papers and the coffee ring they always treated themselves to for Sunday breakfast, and a hard roll for Sis when she came along and was teething. That was the day when the phonograph in the living room remained silent, but like spirits ascending, black voices rose all morning from the second hand radio next to it. the southern is the fisk jubilee choir brings over jordan the five blind boys of atlanta georgia whenever the five blind boys

and dry bones david joined their complex harmonizing forcing his modest baritone down to a base kneebone connected to the leg bone label connected to the ankle bone them bones them bones dry bones he sang in a deep field holler of a voice all hail the word of law norberg says not clear and laid out when he resigned fragments are posted learned as a boy says his eyes that all the takeover her small face he'd been taught the poet's the black poets and the small segregated school in kansas which he had attended as a boy a school that not didn't teach color children anything about the race about themselves he used to say i made the euphrates when dogs were young you to claim standing in his pajamas in the middle of the living room was at sits in her math sat listening and even coffee cake of the armchair i built my heart by the congo and a lonely to sleep

i looked upon the nile and raise the pyramids about that and israelis had indicated their great white haired rancher i know reveres ancient dusty rivers my soul has grown be like the rivers then abruptly he would switch know about davis papa nice huge burst out and coming all the scoops this up in his arms idiot happy etcetera disney who was poppy's darling and who was that these chat kissing her another of his favorites what about the creation of the world is driving up and down the living room jay actor the part of god things changed he clapped his hands and the fund is rolled into one is above the earth came down the cooling waters came down and got say it's going at it at the end no more that's all for today at an enthralled states who have forgotten to breathe during the entire recycle would take a

deed and wondering breath best of all the tv spending bills times when it was just the two of them she and jay off to themselves in the narrow hallway bedroom their bodies in a sweet tango on the bed lying awake nights lying awake nights before the move to north white plains her thoughts secretly would drink heady wine of that memory a pleasure had always been greatest remember those times when jay talk to her and the touching and play at the beginning jay talked telling her his mouth against her ear which she referred to touch with his hand on her skin what he thought of her skin how the talks move feel of it they got all up the site in the first time they met and he had taken her arm to lead her to the dance floor dellinger also what he thought of her breasts as it slips and hands move

slowly over days jay would talk his talk until under its spell under its poetry at would feel the fake runaway beating of her heart just to be just the beat of my poor heart in the dark green and the record they both love that so at johnson's middle aged woman remembers how all that passion and spontaneity how will that intimacy i was lost and as they began this kind of patrols the streets she recalls how jay over the years was transformed into a kind of work or even enjoy this man whom she called her mind jerome johnson whose face toward the end seemed taken over by the face of so called pale in the stranger and along the balcony and that time and she holds a wait

for her husband for both of them for jay and forgery johnson she agrees also about like the two of them once had but haven't firmly grounded in their culture the culture that they had rejected and i will end by just reading that scene of mourning the lights and the surrounding balcony caught the scene of the tears against her blackness the tropical night resonated with the sound of her grief for the first time since jerome johnson's death she was mourning him and i just and so much of his life his life that massive giving of himself which had gone on for over forty hughes is like there this trouble had been so unrelenting when you can discover the whole the way he would say striking the back of one dark hand with the other hard punishing little blows that took his anger out on himself it's like

but it ended with what seemed the pale face of the stranger laughing behind his coffin and davey johnson the mortgage a sobbing wildly and that his death had taken place long before drum johnson's they did nothing though to mark his passing know well dressed corpse know satin lined coffin no remains jj had simply ceased to be over the years here quietly vanish without making his leaving no and and leaving it taken within the little private rituals and pleasures the playfulness and which of those early years the host of feelings and passions they had no and the music which had been their nourishment do it to an outsider these things would come off a little bit would appear ridiculous childish column seemed although you'd be two grown people holding up or ten bands in their living room and spending a sunday mornings listening to gospel singing reciting fragments of old homes were getting coffee cake

such things would not a little to the world they have nonetheless been of the utmost importance he viewed now realized they only through the fog of her grief she understood this for those things have expressed than had been much had been as much a part of them as j's broad nose and the rich seal brown color of his skin so much a part of her as a high riding and to behind which they used to called gallego when they made love moreover something else more rights had reached back beyond their lives to join than to the long line of people would need to have been possible and this link these connections heard in the music and in the praise songs of a sunday happy the euphrates and aunts were young had protected then and put them in position a kind of how all this had passed through their lives without their hardly noticing that in no

time they're exhausted at the end of the day to integrate reading for the blind they had allowed all of that wealth protection and power to slip out of the living room down the five flights of stays out of the house out of their lines rich had vanished in the wasteland of holes the trouble with these negroes out here durham johnson was always saying that your ladies negroes around here would ever begin to make any progress he would speak of his own as if they were race apart at used the winds hearing him but had she been any better hadn't she lived through the sixties as if what's in selma and tanks in the streets of detroit did not pertain to her that was the time that mary and her youngest had telephoned her collect for the poor people's march on washington and she'd almost refuse to accept because she had been so annoyed why because the great hungry roar of the crowd in the background that seemed to be reaching out to drop her into its angry vortex to make up part

of its petition what's she doing out there anyway to ron johnson wanted to know when at how the fall when she ever have to go without three square meals a day so much olivier as she had taken to calling him due to ron johnson and the privacy of her thoughts no longer able to think of him as j and she also begun without realizing it preferred herself as davey johnson remain at you all to someone who no longer existed a woman whose face she sometimes fail to recognize that suddenly with a private against out of the darkness at johnson lunged out a beloved faced came up and she struck the wall of year just in front of her over and over in a rage of tears she is sort of the dark empty we're trying to get at that pale derisive face she saw a projected fear her own face with tear streaked and distorted and she could be heard

uttering a murderous ground likes out repeatedly she sent her fist smashing out the pocketbook on her lap failed its content spilling out as the caps provoking the violence of her blows soon brought a sliding off to cheer and down to the floor on her knee it's and still she continued to pound away the faces she alone could see they even furious to grounding repeating her angry litany too much too much too much and from that point on in the novel guided by the dream of the evils who put the distance of the atlantic between themselves at some of the destructive forces in american life at johnson sets out to change our lives to rediscover their cultural richness but she had disowned the well in advance stages her own personal revolution and she wins it

thank you it's been ages, her own personal revolution , and she wins it. [Applause].