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

College Literature, Fall 2007 by Hada, Kenneth

Althea felt suddenly that she held in her hands the power to undo sin. Her own sin, the past. She pulled her arms in, put the baby over her shoulder, muffling his cries; gently she patted his back. In a clear, calm voice she said, "this baby's starving. He's got to nurse." Graceful met her gaze, and the whole history passed between them, separate, skewed, held in common: the single narrative of their bound-together lives. (Askew 2001, 346)

This passage occurs late in the novel as the race riot is occurring. Graceful feels compelled to return to her family in Greenwood despite the shooting and burning. Her unwanted, newborn child is a burden to her since it would be impossible to care for a starving infant while desperately trying to escape on foot a dangerous mob of Negro-hating men. This scene is one of several situations in which a role reversal between Althea and Graceful occurs. The helpless baby becomes symbolic of the commonality of human flesh that potentially binds the two women, and by extension, the white and non-white races.

Askew makes much use of role reversal and crossing into the social contexts of the other as a subversive strategy of her writing. A peculiar example of crossing occurs in a black church scene where an ignorant white woman sits through the service as various leaders talk openly about the lynching mentality within the state. After various speeches, the white woman weakly stands to her feet and speaks hesitantly: "I just wanted to say to you, that . . . I feel . . . terribly . . . sorry. I'm just so . . . sorry" (2001, 144). The lady's presence suggests a symbolic understanding of the Christian experience in Oklahoma tainted by ignorance and isolation. The prevalence of Christianity in Oklahoma should have made common ground possible for whites and non-whites, but the opposite was the usual case. Christian imagery and language were routinely used to justify racial difference and segregated social space. Askew's novel depicts another important distinction in the Christian experience of Oklahoma's past. For the non-white congregations, church was often a place where social concerns were voiced and the collective call for racial survival was as important (if not more so) as individual salvation.

Askew's use of history, especially with her attention to the religious factors within Oklahoma history, follows the tradition established by prominent Oklahoma writer Ralph Ellison. Ellison's posthumously published Juneteenth (1999) allegorizes the black experience throughout American history.8 In particular, Ellison understands the migration of many blacks to Oklahoma who saw Indian Territory as their Beulah.9 Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks knew that "freedom was ... to be found in the West of the old Indian Territory. . . . Long before it became the State of Oklahoma the Territory had been a sanctuary for runaway slaves who sought there the protection of the Five Great Indian Nations" (1986, 131-32).

In Juneteenth, Ellison's white supremacist character, Senator Sunraider and African- American, Rev. Hickman, embody the question of whether politics or religion can be a means to liberation. Raised to be the spiritual son of Rev. Hickman, Senator Sunraider (as a child he was known as Bliss) has left his spiritual grounding in the Oklahoma soil to realize his personal quest to become a senator of a northeastern state. In the process, his identity has changed from that of an innocent boy in an intimate, fatherly relationship with Hickman to a bigot who manipulates race issues to secure his political stature. Hickman's congregation nurtured the senator and provided a place where the boy preacher developed his spirituality and oratory abilities, apparently to follow in his "father's" footsteps. Ellison's story, then, allegorizes this broken, family tragedy, as years later, Hickman sits by the dying senator's bed. Much of the bedside dialogue and revealed memory in the novel displays Hickman's belated attempt to help the wayward Senator recover his sense of true identity. Hickman believes that one's identity is a composition of place and soul. He recognizes that his beloved Bliss has grown into an unlovely racist, who in the process, has denied his spiritual and geographical roots. Ellison's story, however, suggests the tragic futility of evading history both on a personal and societal level. In other words, one's spirituality is intricately linked with the place of origin. In the black experience, the oppression one endures ironically creates the graceful energy to overcome it. The aging minister contemplates the implications of misguided souls and lost identities: