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  • Mythical Narrative:Virginia Hamilton's The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl
  • Anita Moss (bio)

The role of story and the arts in the lives of human beings has been a central theme in several of Virginia Hamilton's novels for children and young adults. A student of African and Afro-American folklore and myth, Hamilton has no doubt been influenced to some extent by the prominence with which many African tales feature the origin of story. In an Ekoi account of the origin of stories, Mouse weaves story children from her observations in the houses of human beings:

Mouse goes everywhere. Through rich men's houses she creeps, and visits even the poorest. At night her little bright eyes watch the doing of secret things and no treasure chamber is so safe but she can tunnel through and see what is hidden there. In the old days she wove a story child from all that she saw, and to each of these she gave a gown of different colors—white, red, blue, and black. The stories became her children and lived in her house and served her, because she had no children of our own.

(Feldman, 9)

Inadvertently a sheep runs against Mouse's door; all of Mouse's stories ran out and ran up and down the earth for all people to tell and to hear. Similarly a West African tale tells how the trickster Anansi uses his wits to obtain the stories of Nyambi, the sky god himself. In The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl Hamilton weaves again her own magical story child. This time the story child is Pretty Pearl, "god chile," who comes willingly down from Mount Kenya to help the people.

Few contemporary American writers for adults or children have explored the limits of narrative as courageously as Virginia Hamilton; the innovative stream-of-consciousness first chapter of Arilla Sun Down, the radically unexpected ending of The Planet of Junior Brown with its community of underground children who have found their own free space in the basement of an abandoned building; the richly textured prose of M.C. Higgins the Great —these are only a few of her achievements. Indeed many of Hamilton's novels for children and young adults have explored the nature of story and narrative itself, often celebrating the charmed circle of power drawn around tellers and listeners. In The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl Hamilton intricately [End Page 50] weaves strands of African myth and folklore with social and family history to create a powerful tapestry which reveals what it is to be divine and mortal, mother and daughter, brother and sister, slave and free human being. Finally the narrative presents a powerful quest for black female identity as artist who is valued by the community. In telling the magical adventures of her memorable female hero, Hamilton incorporates folk poetry and song, using such typical Afro-American literary devices as repetition, call-and-response, and creative improvisation. Not the least of Hamilton's achievements in The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl is her use of intensely poetic prose rendered in a compelling black idiom.

Structurally The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl features a linear quest and a fall from innocence into painful experience. Born on Mount Kenya, Pretty Pearl, god chile, yearns to rescue suffering Africans from oppressive slavery. Pearl's older brother, the chief god on Mount Kenya (called Mount Highness), John de Conquer, warns Pearl not to leave the mountain: "Best not to interfere with human bein's too much. . . . [T]hey got winnin' ways. . . . You can't fool around de human bein's too long, else you commence actin' human youself" (9).

Pretty Pearl, however, dreams of leaving the mountain. She questions the value of her divine status and concludes, "We all lives too long on de Mount. And got nothin' left to fix" (8). John de Conquer rightly thinks to himself, "She growin' and wishin' for to test her strength" (9).

Despite his reservations, John de Conquer, the most powerful god and giver of the magical folk herb, John de Conquer root, often called "King of the Forest," accompanies Pearl on part of her journey. The divine...

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