28 pages • 56 minutes read
Blues Ain't No Mockingbird
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Themes
Preserving One’s Dignity and Personhood in the Face of Racism
Granny has been driven to her wits’ end by a racism that isn’t violent or overt. It’s a subtle form of prejudice rooted in white people’s assumptions and privilege. The narrator describes Mr. Judson “bringin us boxes of old clothes and raggedy magazines,” and Mrs. Cooper “comin in our kitchen and touchin everything and sayin how clean it all was” (132). White people have repeatedly insinuated themselves into Granny’s and her family’s lives, under the auspices of charity or politeness, and seem unaware that someone wouldn’t want old clothes or to hear the surprise in a visitor’s voice that the kitchen is so clean. Granny is exhausted from dealing with that kind of “politeness,” and she has repeatedly faced the choice of whether to keep allowing this insidious racism or to very firmly not allow it. It’s clear that Granny made her decision long ago.
In the story, the white men casually walk the property, snapping photos where they please. One of the men says, “We thought we’d take a—” and is cut off by Granny saying, “Did you?” (130). That he uses the word “take,” and that he does not phrase it as a question, shows he is used to taking what he wants in these situations; the men cannot fathom being told no. When Granny asserts herself with “Did you?,” it both highlights the men’s assumption and exposes its absurdity. Likewise, the men attempt to ply Granny with flattery and bring her over to their side by crassly suggesting food stamps are shameful and that respectable people—such as Granny—grow their own food. But Granny refuses to respond, and she doesn’t share her opinion of food stamps. Again and again, Granny insists on her personhood: with the county men, with her husband, and with the grandchildren as she tells them the story of the man who threatened to jump from the bridge. She insists on it even when it angers her husband and may lead to consequences for her family. She has lived in the pressure cooker of racism her entire life and will do what it takes to remove any possibility of white interference.
Granny is a complicated character and can’t be categorized as “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong,” and this irreducibility further underscores her personhood. Granny is complex and funny and angry and impulsive. She is, simply, human.
The Seeing Child Versus the Watchful Outsider
The narrator pays close attention to the authority figures in her life: Cathy, Granny, and Granddaddy Cain. Cathy, too, notices and interprets what she sees. The narrator and Cathy are nuanced in their observations, in contrast to the neighbor boys, who see the white county men and say, “They’re makin movie pictures” (130). They see the camera and deduce the easiest explanation. Cathy replies, “That boy don’t never have anything original to say” (130). Likewise, when Granny tells the story of the man on the bridge, the boys excitedly demand to know whether he jumped, which disappoints and angers Granny. While Tyrone and Terry skim across the story’s surface, concerned only with the possibility of a gruesome ending, the narrator and Cathy sense something deeper in the story. It’s Cathy who explains to the narrator why their family has moved so many times, and it’s Cathy who realizes why the male chicken hawk has come, and it’s Cathy who sees symbolic importance in the hammer. Meanwhile, the narrator is the one who narrates, and her unique observations constitute the story. Her narration includes almost no emotionally expressive words; she says what she notices, and she relates it to something she’s learned, elucidating connections that illustrate a broader picture.
The children are engaged in acts of seeing—of searching for meaning. The county men, by contrast, aren’t seeing because they aren’t seeking to understand; they instead want to “take” images for a purpose they barely explain to the family. Though these men are strangers, they treat the family on their own property as if they are strange, and the nonconsensual filming is an act of “othering” (one that the men are either wholly unaware of or simply accustomed to). They assume they know all they need to about Granny because she is an older Black woman who grows her own food. They also assume that she will have no objections to their aim, and underlying that assumption is yet another assumption—that because they are white and she is Black, she will have to be grateful for their “politeness” and allow them to do what they please. But they aren’t seeing Granny. Their whiteness—and their camera—distorts their “vision.” Once the camera is broken, that frame is gone, and they retreat.
Right to Privacy
The first paragraph describes the narrator’s family, her home, a garden, rum cakes that Granny is making, a tire swing, and friends. The children are playing, and the narrator mentions her Granny’s crystal paperweight in the parlor. This is a normal American child, with a normal American family, enjoying a normal day. But when Granny speaks, it’s clear that something abnormal is happening: “Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees” (129). There are men who’ve been there all morning, taking pictures where they please, and they’ve turned their camera on the family. They are treating Granny’s family like “a bunch of trees” rather than human beings (129) because the men are white and Granny and her family are Black.
Ostensibly, the narrator and her family have the kinds of freedoms that in the not-so-distant past were denied Black people. They have their own place, they make their own way, they aren’t enslaved, and the children seem at first to be just as carefree as white children. But Bambara shows that there are layers of freedom still being denied to Black people and that their lives are still not wholly their own. When Granny demands the men leave, she is insisting on her right to privacy—and when the men don’t leave, they are indicating that they can’t fathom any such right for a Black family. The men want something from her and will take it; their politeness is a formality. They continue taking pictures, ignoring Granny’s right to say who enters her land. When Granddaddy Cain appears, they approach him, hoping to reason with someone who better understands how a Black family “should” behave in the presence of white men. Granddaddy Cain tries to dispatch the men with, “Good day, gentlemen” (135), but when the men still don’t leave, he pries apart the camera and destroys the men’s excuse for intruding. He says, “You standin in the misses’ flower bed. […] This is our own place” (136). The place belongs to him and his family, and it is their choice whether to welcome visitors. The men gone, Granny contentedly goes back to her rum cakes, able to be herself without the oppressive eye of whiteness.
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By Toni Cade Bambara
