Power to Undo Sin: Race, History and Literary Blackness in Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah, The

Askew's narrative is further comparable to Gaines's novel in that it contains events that pose both a systemic and individual threat to the dignity of an African American character. In Gaines's story, the successful transformation of Jefferson is comparable to the dignity displayed in Askew's character Graceful, who refuses to submit herself to the pitying bribes of her workers. She labors in silence as a protest against a system that attempts to control and define her. She endures the economic necessity of domestic labor under the rueful guise of her racist bosses, but she refuses to capitulate to the condescending attitude of her employers. In fact, her employers eventually resort to begging Graceful to return to work for them, offering her well above the going rate of remuneration. Thus, in her own individual way, Graceful achieves and retains subjectivity by refusing to submit willingly to her oppressors despite her situation. One could argue that Graceful is the protagonist of the novel, that it is her purposeful single-mindedness to which Althea must constantly adjust. A plausible contention could be offered that the story is Graceful's story. As determiner of her own world and thus of her extended family and of her white employers, she embodies the pride of a black community that refuses to dignify a Jim Crow system. The gracefulness of Askew s character is readily contrasted to the clumsy, inept qualities so evident in Althea. Graceful determines to be subject, not object, within her immediate context although she must continue to be reflexive, adjusting to the whims of white power structures. Finally, it is primarily Althea who needs a new understanding of race and culture.

Writing about Gaines's novel, Carlyle Thompson explores the notions of "ritualistic lynching" and "communal rape" (2002, 282). She argues that the "oppression" under "Jim Crowism" makes:

black skin color a badge of degradation. Local ordinances in the North and South restricted black people from earning competitive incomes, and without sufficient income, few were able to secure decent food, education, health care, and housing. Under Jim Crowism, black people are killed before they die; the daily humiliation they experience represents ritualistic lynching. (Thompson 2002, 282)

Similar concerns implied in Askew's novel are significant given the history of the legislature in the new state of Oklahoma that made Jim Crow legislation its first order of business once statehood was granted.13

The notions of ritualistic, communal lynching and/or raping are especially important if one sees the Jim Crow era as a frustrated attempt to retain the pseudo scientific-philosophical notions of biological difference of previous eras that justified the enslavement of Africans due to their supposed status as less than human. Thompson asserts:

In America black men are especially affected by the physical, psychological, and economic violence of white supremacy because they often feel powerless when they cannot safeguard and provide for their families. Like the brutal lynching-burnings where black men are disembodied, castrated, and consumed, the daily socioeconomic oppression that black men experience becomes a communal rape by whites, especially white males who project their sexual desires and apprehensions onto the bodies of black men. ... the bodies of black males become sites for fearful whites to release their castrating depravity. (Thompson 2002, 282-83)