The named and the nameless: Morrison's 124 and Naylor's "the other place" as semiotic chorae

African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Elizabeth T. Hayes

Why should the women in these two texts remain in effect unnamed while the houses are named? The answer to this question is critical to an understanding of Beloved and Mama Day. In cultures the world over, naming is a politically charged act. In Judeo-Christian epistemology, logos implies power, both sociopolitical power (Adam's naming of the animals signifies his dominion over them) and creative power ("God said 'Let there be light' and there was light" [Gen.l:3]; "In the beginning was the Word [...] and the Word was God" [John 1:1]). In West African tribal cultures, the creative power of the word is called nommo. In these cultures, naming is considered a sacred act because it brings a person into being or makes real and actual what was considered only figurative or inanimate prior to its naming. Indeed, it is believed that a baby who has not been named in a naming ritual does not yet exist as a person but remains in the category of "living object" (Handley 677). As a Yoruban proverb says, "Whatever we have a name for, that is" (Benston 165). West Africans enslaved in America brought with them their belief in nommo, which was reinforced by Anglo-American culture's post-Enlightenment equation of the word, especially the written word, with rationality and thus with (patriarchal) power.

Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison are American writers who have been steeped from childhood in African American cultures and traditions. They are well aware of the significance of naming, both in the African and in the Anglo-American traditions. Morrison, in fact, uses the African term nommo in "Unspeakable Things Unspoken" to describe the power of the artist's words to summon into being characters and scenes that "work," that take on life (33). In African American literature, naming has always held a special, "double" significance because of its dual cultural heritage. Dropping one's slave name and renaming oneself to begin life anew as a free person was often the first act of a former slave: Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth are examples. Stamp Paid in Beloved renames himself even before attaining freedom, as a repudiation of slavery and a means of claiming subjectivity. When she is freed, Baby Suggs rejects the slave name "Jenny Whitlow"-a name no one but white people have ever called her--and continues to call herself "Baby Suggs." ("Baby" was her husband's nickname for her, and she had adopted her husband's surname, "Suggs," even though slave marriages were not recognized by whites.) She uses the name "Baby Suggs" because she wants her husband to recognize her should he by chance still be alive and searching for her, even though she has heard nothing from him or about him since his disappearance in an escape attempt 20 years previously. (They had agreed that if either ever had the opportunity to escape, the opportunity should be seized without thought for the other.)

Names are significant in Mama Day also. Sapphira rejects the slave name "Wade" for her free-born sons, giving them a surname of her own devising--"Day"--that implies the dawn of a new life for the family. Miranda views her sister Abigail's fulfillment of her naming duties during the crisis of Cocoa's birth not just as a necessary task completed but as an important sign of her sister's strength of character. According to custom, the crib name must be given to a baby by "the mama's mama" (Naylor 39), and it must be a name that fixes and anchors that child as a unique individual within the family and the community. Despite Miranda and Abigail's round-the-clock struggle to save the tiny infant, Abigail has the presence of mind to give the baby "a proper crib name" (39)--exactly the right crib name, Miranda notes with approval. "The Baby Girl" fixes Cocoa perfectly as the last of the line of Day women, the Kore to Sapphira's Mother and Mama Day's Crone. Naming is clearly a socially and politically charged act in both Mama Day and Beloved.