In a different chord: interpreting the relations among black female sexuality, agency, and the blues

African American Review, Winter, 2003 by Nghana tamu Lewis

Configuring the source of her pain in the fifth line of the last stanza--"Gonna think about my man"--the speaker now has the internal propulsion needed to project pain outward: "And let my fool-self fall." She has, in other words, expelled that part of her being which she now realizes unwisely relies upon a man for its welfare. Beyond our clear understanding that the last line of the poem could not signal the speaker's desire to take her life because this mother would not abandon her child, we now recognize that she nevertheless endeavors to kill her "fool-self' in order to begin to move beyond her suffering. Here the heart speaks the final words in order to signal its claim to a brave and active initiative. No longer merely reflecting upon the situation, the heart reacts to an apparent mental calling that underscores the speaker's determination to alter her situation.

Like the speaker in "Lament Over Love," the singers in "Misery" (1926) and "Cora" (1927) arrive at understandings of the source of their pain which enable them to survive. The singer in "Misery" cries: "Play the blues for me. / Play the blues for me. / No other music / 'Ll ease my misery. / Sing a soothin' song. / Sing a soothin' song. / Cause the man I love's done / Done me wrong." Cora warbles: "I broke my heart this mornin', / Ain't got no heart no more. / Next time a man comes near me / Gonna shut an' lock my door / Cause they treats me mean-- / The ones I love. / They always treats me mean." Instantiating song as she calls for its sound, the singer in "Misery" indicates that the blues are the balm that will sooth as they transform her forlorn condition. Neither ignoring nor wishing to waste away in sorrow, Cora discovers that articulating her mental and emotional anguish actually provides room for a resilient and less despondent internal spirit to emerge, supplanting her fragile and vulnerable existence after another man has mistreated her. "Lament Over Love," "Misery," and "Cora" testify to the ability of the blues to provide self-sufficient and, arguably more importantly, self-signaled coping mechanisms for dealing with the reality of the frustration and anxieties that naturally (and inevitably) attend any sexual relationship between women and men.

In contrast, most of the remaining "Lament Over Love" poems contain lyrics dominated by a series of what we might regard as unrefined sexual interaction between men and women and physically abusive and exploitative treatment of women by men. The singer in "Midwinter Blues" (1926) informs us that "In the middle of the winter, / Snow all over the ground. / 'Twas the night befo' Christmas" that her "Good man turned her down." Similarly, Dorothy in the "Ballad of the Girl Whose Name is Mud" (1942) gets involved with a man who leaves her, presumably shortly after bedding her and taking her money. An anonymous observer of Dorothy's situation insists that, because this "no good man" to whom Dorothy "gave her all to / Dropped her with a thud," among "Decent people / Dorothy's name is mud." Dorothy does not, however, appear at all affected by her forlorn situation, for as our informant points out,