Heroic "hussies" and "brilliant queers": genderracial resistance in the works of Langston Hughes

African American Review, Fall, 1994 by Anne Borden

I said, Madam,

That may be true--

But I'll be dogged

If I love you! (Selected 202)

The speaker rejects the mythic relationship between white and Black women and instead asserts her own reality to the reader. The poem simultaneously identifies gender-racial myths about relations between white and Black women, and gives voice to Black female resistance.

Hughes demonstrates that the oppressions of Black women and men are linked because of race, but are manifested in genderspecific ways. In "Mulatto" and "Father and Son," the image of the "loose black woman" used to justify rape by white men is connected with the label of "bastard" pinned on children of white fathers, and with the use of the image of Black men as sexual beasts to justify lynching.

"Mulatto" addresses the consciousness of a white male plantation owner, as felt by a Black boy:

What's a body but a toy?

Juicy bodies

Of nigger wenches

Blue black

Against black fences.

O, you little bastard boy,

What's a body but a toy? (Selected

160)

As a means of survival, the boy finds himself pondering the oppressor's-eye-view of his mother. He risks, in such intimacy, the internalization of genderracial myths which would contribute to his own oppression of Black women and self-destructive behaviors. The poem actively resists this internalization of myths when the boy shouts, "I am your son, white man!" (161), rejecting the myths used to justify the rape of his mother and the economic exploitation of both mother and son.

In addressing the sexual exploitation of Black women by white men, Hughes explores the use of gender stereotypes as a means of reinforcing racial oppression. In "Father and Son," Coralee Lewis comes to live in the "big house" of the plantation upon which she and her family work for one Colonel Norwood. Her second son by Colonel Norwood, Bert, resists the label of "bastard" his father has pinned on him. As a small child he refers to Colonel Norwood as "Papa," despite his father's repeated warnings and beatings. Returning home from college one summer, he confronts his father, who will send him to college yet won't allow him to enter through the front of the house. The confrontation climaxes when Bert kills his father in self-defense. As her son is chased by a vicious mob, Miss Lewis holds the dead Colonel Norwood in her arms, screaming:

"You said he warn't your'n--Cora's po' little yellow bastard. But he is your'n, Colonel Tom, and he's runnin' from you.... You can't fool me--You ain't never been so still like this before--you's out yonder, runnin' ma boy! Colonel Thomas Norwood runnin' ma boy through de fields in de dark, runnin' ma po' helpless Bert through de fields in de dark for to lynch him and to kill him.... God damn you, Tom Norwood! ... God damn you!" (Ways 247)

The oppression of Coralee and her son are linked because of racism, but are manifested in gender-specific ways. Coralee is left penniless, because "the dead man left no heirs" (255). Her association with Colonel Norwood is negated by the white community's view of her as "loose" and unworthy. The lynching of Bert and his brother, which ends the story, is a white response to Bert's rebellion against the role ascribed to him as a "nigger" and a "bastard"; it is justified by whites through the myth that Black men are beasts.